The Unimportant Person - John 4:27-41 - October 21, 2012
Brad Paisley sings a song called, “What If She’s An Angel?” And maybe you’ve heard, and maybe you haven’t, if I could sing it for you, I would, but since I can’t, I’m just going to read you the lyrics. This is how it goes …
There's a man standing on the corner
With a sign sayin "will work for food"
You know the man
You see him every morning
The one you never give your money to
You can sit there with your window rolled up
Wondering when the lights going to turn green
Never knowing what a couple more bucks
In his pocket might mean
What if he's an angel sent here from heaven
And he's making certain that you're doing your best
To take the time to help one another
Brother are you going to pass that test?
You can go on with your day to day
Trying to forget what you saw in his face
Knowing deep down it could have been his saving grace
What if he's an angel?
There's a man
And there's a woman
Living right above you in apartment G
There's alot of noise coming through the ceiling
And it don't sound like harmony
You can sit there with your TV turned up
While the words and his anger fly
Come tomorrow when you see her with her shades on
Can you look her in the eye?
What if she's an angel sent here from heaven
And she's making certain that you're doing your best
To take the time to help one another
Brother are you going to pass that test?
You can go on with your day to day
Trying to forget what you saw in her face
Knowing deep down it could have been her saving grace
What if she's an angel?
A little girl on daddy's lap
Hiding her disease with a baseball cap
You can turn the channel
Most people do
But what if you were sitting in her daddy's shoes?
Maybe she's an angel
Sent here from Heaven
And she's making certain you're doing your best
To take the time to help one another
Brother are you going to pass that test
You can go on with your day to day
Trying to forget what you saw in her face
Knowing deep down it could have been her saving grace
What if she's an angel?
[ From: http://www.metrolyrics.com/what-if-shes-an-angel-lyrics-brad-paisley.html ]
You could change the channel – most people do. … Friends, who are the people that we don’t make time for? Those whom we overlook? Those whom we look through, look past, walk by and choose not to see? Although we might never speak these words what we’re really saying when we do, is this: “You’re not important to me. Your life doesn’t matter. I just don’t care enough to be bothered.”
The unimportant person. The world is full of them, isn’t it? The African woman whose body is wasting away as she lies in a hospital bed dying of AIDS. The hundreds of thousands of street children in Brazil. Those who live in the shanty towns in Mexico scavenging out of the garbage dumps. The eccentric widower around the corner who no-one ever talks to. The alcoholic single mother down the street who is struggling to raise four kids. The fourteen year old girl who has just had an abortion. The eight year old boy trying his first joint. The prostitute on the street corner. Those who grieve the loss of loved ones alone. The unimportant. Those whom society turns a blind eye to. Those whom we would rather pretend we don’t see - like the homeless man on the street. Perhaps the unimportant people in your life are those who make you uncomfortable because they are different from you. They believe differently than you do, dress differently, they act differently, they are older or younger than you are. Perhaps they scare you, perhaps you just don’t have any idea how to relate to them.
Let’s go back to the Gospel of John again. Turn with me, please to John 4, and we’re going to hear how the Samaritan woman’s encounter with Jesus played out. John 4 beginning in verse 19 and we’ll see if this give us some perspective on the unimportant people in our lives:
“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am He.” Just then His disciples returned and were surprised to find Him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” They came out of the town and made their way toward Him. Meanwhile His disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then His disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought Him food?” “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”” (John 4:19–38, NIV84)
Folks I want you to understand that the Samaritan woman in our Scripture passage this morning would qualify as one of the unimportant people of our world. In fact for Jesus, to even be interacting with her would have been abhorrent to the Jewish religious leaders. She was first of all a Samaritan - a race which the Jews hated - she was known to be living in sin having had many lovers, and she was in a public place. No Jewish man with any concern for his standing in the community, or with the religious authorities, would be caught talking to a woman like this. If any group of people was unimportant to the religious leaders of the day - it was the Samaritans.
But the harsh truth is that in the eyes of the world you and I could be included in the ranks of the unimportant as well. 7 Billion people in the world – how many know your name? How many care what happens to you? Each and every one of us is unimportant to the majority of the people in the world. Douglas Adams in one of his books describes an invention he calls the “multiple perspective machine.” It is a fictional device of course but the hapless individual who is thrown into this machine sees himself through the eyes of the universe. The impact of seeing how infitismely unimportant he really is, shatters his mind beyond repair.
If you have had a handful of people in your life to whom you are important – people who care enough to be there for you when you need them to – then you are tremendously blessed. So many people in our society go through their entire lives isolated and lonely never knowing what it truly means to be loved, to be befriended, or to be important in someone else’s life. They are those whom the world has discarded. They are those whom people look through, look past, but never really see. Their cries for help, for friendship most often go unnoticed, unless their cries are so loud that they end up in the headlines of our newspapers and by then it is far too late.
Last week Amanda Todd took her own life. 15 Years old. A month before that she had posted a video on YouTube. She doesn’t speak in the video. Instead she holds up note cards upon which she has written the words that she can’t find the voice to speak. One of them says, “I’ve decided to tell you about my never ending story.” Another says, “I have nobody. I need someone.” Amanda had been bullied, rejected, scorned, ridiculed. The cards on the screen that she holds up one after another share her anguish, her heartache, her loneliness and isolation – that feeling of forever being on the outside of things, of being overlooked, neglected, unwanted, unimportant. Her story is heart wrenching and tragic but what’s just as horrible is that she’s not alone in feeling the way she felt. Millions of people around the world – maybe even some here this morning – can relate – even in some small way – to what Amanda must have been going through these last months. The reasons might be different – but the feelings are the same.
Last week we talked about truth. What is the truth in Amanda’s story? The lie the world told her is that “No-one cares about you. You aren’t worth bothering about. You’re a waste of space. You’re unimportant.” But those are lies.
The truth is different. One of the most beautiful truths of Scripture is that People Matter To God. People might not matter to people - but people matter to God. The Bible tells us that we are created in the image of God, we are sculpted by the hand of God, we have the ability to communicate with God through prayer. We talk about the relationship we can have with God through Jesus Christ, about the guidance and conviction which the Holy Spirit provides us. People matter to God and we see the truth of that in our Scripture passage this morning.
No one would have blinked an eye had Jesus completely ignored the Samaritan woman at the well. Why not? Because that’s what they would have done! They would have turned away, changed the channel, walked past. But because people matter to God, Jesus does the unexpected. He looks at her. He sees her as a person – broken and needy but a person none-the-less.
He sees her, and He speaks to her, astounding both the woman and His disciples. The woman herself asks him (v.9) “how can you ask me for a drink?” in other words, “Why are you speaking to me?” and the disciples (v. 27), when they return from the city, are “surprised to find him talking with a woman.” Jesus took the time to speak with a woman the Jews would have viewed as unimportant. And not only her – but with the townsfolk who came – Samaritan townsfolk – but Jesus saw them as people rather than as labels. These ordinary people, rough around the edges, outcasts in Jewish society, were important enough to Jesus that He defied His own people, acted counter to His own culture, and made time to spend with them. And the result? Well verse 41 tells us that because of this many came to believe His words. Lives were changed, hearts transformed, because Jesus took the time for people.
How about you? Do you make time for people? I know your lives are busy. There is always something more that needs to be done, isn’t there? But when God brings that person across your path that the world has made feel unimportant, when someone hurting, grieving, or angry at the world comes your way, how will you respond? Will you make the time for that person and allow God to touch their life through you? “My food, said Jesus, is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work.” God’s will was to reach all peoples so that none should perish. What is your food?
To say that people matter to God, and therefore they should matter to us, is not a big stretch, is it? It’s more of a self evident truth. Ephesians 5:1 tells us to be “imitators of God … living a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” But despite the fact that we believe it, that we agree with it, we need to constantly evaluate whether or not we are living our lives in light of that truth. Because if we are, there should be evidence of it in our lives - the truth should transform us.
A young woman about 20 years old had been living on the streets of a suburban neighborhood for about five years because of her severely abusive alcoholic parents. She was a pleasant-looking young woman behind the tattered and dirty clothes, oily hair, and dirty makeup-free face. Somehow she had managed to avoid the alcohol her parents lived for and the drugs that soothed most of the other homeless people in her area. She had a little old Bible that an aunt had given her when she was 11 years old, that she kept in her one canvas bag that held all of her belongings.
She got by, like most homeless folks, with rummaging for bottles and cans and asking the odd person for spare change, but she never gave herself up to prostitution or stealing. Through all the years of torment, her only refuge was this Bible that she had learned inside and out, which of course led her to depend on the Lord and love him. She had too much pain though, and not enough skills to get out of the situation she was in, but tried to live as close as she could to how the Bible instructed.
For years she had watched people go to the church a couple blocks away from the place she slept alone at night in the bushes. She would look at all the well-dressed people get out of their cars and walk into church as families. She would sit in the parking lot and listen to the muffled music of the worship service, she would pray and read her Bible until the end of the service, and then watch as the people mingled and laughed and hugged before they got back in their cars and drove off. This was her church service. She dreamed of being like "those people" but believed that she could never fit in there.
Finally one day she decided that she would take the money she had made from her collections and instead of food, she would go to Value Village and buy the prettiest dress she could find. She didn’t know how a dress should fit and felt very uncomfortable wearing it, but she bought what she thought was a very pretty dress. The following Sunday she got up, gathered all the courage she could muster, and put on her dress. She had no place to take a shower and no makeup, but she tried her best to clean her face and do something with her hair.
She trembled with nervousness as she made her way to the church and tried to sneak in so that she wouldn’t have to shake hands with greeters. Of course there was no place to hide so she walked through the foyer attracting a few looks of disgust but mostly people just looked away and ignored her. It took everything she had not to run out of the building, but she stayed and found a seat in the back corner of the sanctuary where she closed her eyes and prayed until the service started moments later. She sobbed not so silently through the entire service knowing that she would probably not put herself through this again, but feeling so ecstatic about having had the chance to at least be a part of one church service in her life, to experience some of what these people did.
She found herself hesitating to leave at the end of the service because she wanted to get all she could out of being there before being asked to leave, or just bolting out of there back to her life. When she decided to get up and leave, the foyer was very busy and it took some effort and much discomfort walking alone through the crowd of cheerful people. She finally did escape, and as she walked toward her "home," a young teenage girl noticed the color of her dress, and interrupted her father asking him who that was walking away, as she had never seen her before. He glanced quickly, finished up his conversation, then looked more intently as she exited the parking lot. As this family was driving home in the same direction as the girl, they noticed her going into the bushes a couple blocks away in her dress.
This family just happened to be a quite wealthy family who regularly took in foster kids who were preparing for independent living when they turned 18. The father had also helped finance a low-cost building project for the homeless in a nearby city. The following Saturday morning, this family went in search of this girl as their curiosity had increased over the week. The dad went into the bushes, where he saw her enter the previous Sunday, and saw her sleeping there with an old blanket over her and her Bible sitting open beside her. He didn’t want to startle her, so he gently kept saying hello from a distance until she finally woke. Before anything else was said, he quickly asked her if she had come to their church the previous week. This sort of lowered her anxiety, and she hesitantly said yes.
The dad ended up putting her in a motel for the night, and the mom gave her some nice clothes and some makeup from home. Sunday morning they picked her up--of course she had been ready for hours. When they saw her, they could barely recognize her because of the difference. Now she got to go to church like everyone else.
After church that Sunday the family took her out for lunch, and by the end of it, they had invited the girl to come live with them, kind of like an adult foster kid, I guess. Within a year, she enrolled and was very successful in Bible college, …. Today she is living on her own and is the children’s ministry director of an even larger church in that community, which has a huge outreach program for homeless people that she helped initiate. (From Homeless to Home, Sean Harder, www.sermoncentral.com, Illustrations)
Friends, is that not a picture of what Jesus was doing at the well as He entered into the life, the pain, the reality, the despair, the hope of the Samaritan woman? Is it not a picture of the love with which Christ as loved us – a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God? Is it not a picture of how God can use our lives to touch the lives of those that world would call “unimportant?”
There is a second truth that we need to be aware of. People Are Spiritually Lost. In our society today people are not necessarily opposed to spirituality. On the contrary the next time you go into a bookstore take a look at the shelves of material relating to spirituality. There are hundreds of books being published every year on the subject of spirituality and most of them aren’t Christian books. There is an openness to spirituality these days that we need to be aware of. In some ways this openness is a double-edged sword. It permits us the opportunity to share God’s word, but on the other hand people no longer like to think in black and white opposites. Many are willing to accept God’s word as a good moral stance, but shy away from seeing Jesus as the only way. They wander from religion to religion, from cult to cult, and eventually decide on their own version of spirituality picking and choosing the elements they like from each one they have investigated.
Dad and I were out hunting grouse a few years ago in a heavily forested area. It was a dull, grey day, completely overcast and foggy. We started on a well defined path and as the birds started taking off we followed them as they flew into the bushes following them for some time. After an hour or so we figured it was time to head back to the car and we moved off to intercept the trail we had been following. We never did find it. It wasn’t long before we realized we were good and lost. But the truth is we had been lost for pretty much the whole time yet we hadn’t realized it.
Jesus says that He came to “seek and save the lost.” Today people are lost spiritually and don’t even know it. Like we mentioned last week, they manufacture their own versions of spirituality trying to define God and make Him obedient to them. They feel that if they live good, moral lives, that God will welcome them into the afterlife with open arms. But the truth as revealed in the Bible is that people are not o.k. just because they lead good moral lives. If we rely on our moral acts to gain salvation we are doomed to a Christless eternity. Each and everyone of us is under sin. “There is no one righteous, not even one, there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless, there is no one who does good, not even one.” Every single person that you and I know needs Jesus. If they are on any other path they are lost and wandering in the darkness. So who do you know in your life who is wandering, who is on the wrong path, or who doesn’t even know that there is a path? If you can’t think of anyone by face or name then you are not buying into the truth that People Matter to God. If you believe that people matter to God, and that people are spiritually lost, you will be forming friendships, relationships, with them and helping them, not just in their physical need, but in their spiritual need as well.
The woman at the well didn’t realize that she was spiritually lost. She thought she was worshipping God. Early in His encounter with this woman Jesus tells her that she worships what she doesn’t know while the Jews worshipped that which they did know. She wasn’t even aware that she was lost, that she was on the wrong path. Jesus needed to tell her.
And that leads into the third truth that I want us to think about today. People Need Christ. An attractive young woman whose career required a good deal of traveling was asked if she was ever bothered by uninvited male attention. She answered, "Never, I just say five words and immediately I am left alone." "What are the five words?" her colleague asked? She said, "I simply ask, 'Are you a born-again Christian?'" and then they leave me alone.” It’s not enough just to know that people are lost. It doesn’t do us any good to tell someone they are lost if we can’t point them in the right direction. Jesus speaks these words to His disciples: “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He does not say “I am a way” and nor does He say “I am a truth.” He makes it very clear that He is the one and only way – the one and only truth. Those who accept Him and believe in Him find that which we all so desperately need. We find that in Christ our sins are forgiven. Our past with all of our bad choices, with all of our rebelliousness, with all of our guilt and shame can be laid to rest in Christ. We find that in Jesus we have a companion who is with us always. We find in Him, as He told the Samaritan woman, springs of living water welling up into eternal life.
He did not tell her to keep worshipping as she had been doing because she wasn’t worshipping what was true. Jesus was pointing out to her that He was the one she needed to follow because there was no other that would suffice. And it’s in Christ that we find that we matter to God. In fact we matter to God so deeply that He sent His one and only son to die for us, to suffer separation from God in our place, so that if we only believe in Him then we will enter from this life into eternal life. As Jesus says in our text this morning, the fields are ripe for the harvest. In this community there are people in need – physical need. There are those who need the seed of God’s word planted in their hearts. In this community there are people who are ready to be lead to the Lord. And the need isn’t just here – it is world wide. But the question remains: who among us will sow? Who among us will reap? Who among us will go?
Three truths that should be foundational to our daily lives: People Matter to God. People are Spiritually Lost. People Need Christ. If we accept and own those truths, the way we live our life will be transformed, and we will see the world around us with new eyes. We will see past the world’s eyes and discover God’s truth which reveals that there are no unimportant people – only people the world has cast aside.
This is World Relief Sunday. Their theme this year is “Together We Stand.” Together we can make a difference as Jesus made a difference in the life of the woman at the well. Together we can help the needy, the oppressed, the hurting, the broken, the hungry, the desperate, the lost. Together we go out into the world around us where there is so much pain, and hurt and darkness and sorrow and need and we can allow God to work through us to reveal His truth – that people matter to God.
So what can we do? Start by Being Open to seeing people as God seems them. Look past the labels the world might place upon them and see them as men and women made in God’s image and for whom Jesus died. James writes these words, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1:27, NIV84) What’s God looking for? He’s looking for you and me to really see people – to see that they matter - and to recognize the need. The widows and orphans were the powerless, the needy - they were in many ways the unimportant people in Jesus’ day and God says “they matter to Me therefore they should matter to you.” Call yourself a Christian all you want, but if you’re not loving on the people in the world around you, you’re missing out on God’s own heart.
Secondly, Let Your Voice Be Heard. In the book of Isaiah we read these words, “learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17, NIV84) In other words – speak up against the injustices in the world – those things that are not good, nor right, nor true, nor pleasing to God. Last month some of us began to do just that as we contacted the Prime Minister and the MP’s and began to make our voices heard as we opposed legislation that allows unborn children in Canada to be murdered right up to the point that they have fully emerged from their mother’s birth canal. For some of us that’s the first time that we’ve let our voices be heard. Don’t let it be the last!
Thirdly, Step Into The Need. In the book of Matthew, Jesus speaks of the day when all peoples will stand before Him saying, “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:34–40, NIV84)
Step into the need! Of those to whom much has been given, much is expected. You can’t touch everyone’s life but you can certainly touch the lives of some. When we serve others it’s as though we are serving the Lord.
Finally, Give Yourself To Prayer. If you struggle to see that people – real, individual people, matter to God – pray that God would open your eyes to see them as He sees them. Pray that God would grant you courage to speak up against injustice and to let your voice be heard, the love and boldness to enter into the need and come alongside the people He is leading you to. Pray for those you can help and for those whom you can’t. Lift others in prayer as they do the same for together we stand and together we can make a difference!
Let’s pray …
