Today is the Third Sunday in Lent. On the First Sunday of Lent we discovered that God’s grace extends beyond Eden. On the Second Sunday in Lent we were reminded that God’s grace is a better way than our works way. Today Jesus teaches us that God’s grace knows no barriers.
Title: Enough Grace to Go Around
Text: John 4:1-26 (4:5-42)
Thesis: God’s grace is not an exclusive grace… it is an all inclusive grace that knows no barriers.
Introduction
There four “Rules of Threes” an average human can survive:
1. three minutes without air
2. three hours without warmth in extreme cold
3. three weeks without food
4. three days without water
Fortunately we have water on tap and beyond that we can buy all the bottled water we can drink. Starbucks Ethos Water (PepsiCo). Evian. PepsiCo’s Aquafina. Coca-Cola’s Dasani. Fiji Water. Propel Fitness Water. Arrowhead Water (Nestle’). Nestle Pure Water. Perrier (Nestle’). Eldorado Springs Water. No-Name Waters… Contrary to what we would like to believe, much if not most of the bottled water on the market today is simply purified faucet water. The thirst for bottled water is a $4billion industry in the United States alone.
In our text today we find Jesus tired and thirsty… asking a woman for a drink from a well. That encounter led to a much deeper conversation about physical thirst and spiritual thirst. But for our purposes this morning, the thing we need to grasp as we begin this discussion is that God is at work… Jesus is there by a well near the Samaritan village of Sychar and he is talking to a Samaritan woman.
The key elements are the facts that Jesus was in Samaria and talking to a Samaritan woman. Jesus is demonstrating that God’s grace breaks down barriers. There are no barriers that grace cannot penetrate or cross over.
During the Season of Lent it is good to be reminded of that both on a personal level as well as on a missional level.
I. Grace breaks down every barrier, John 4:1-9 and 27
The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?” 4:9
Palestine, where Jesus spent his life, was an area 120 miles in length that ran along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Palestine had three designated areas: Judea (Jerusalem) was the southern area. Galilee was the northern area. And Samaria was the area separating the two. We could think of it as Ft. Collins to the north, Boulder in the middle and metro Denver in the south…
In our text Jesus is planning to go from the southern area of Judea to the northern area of Galilee. In order to get there he had to go through Samaria. Going through Samaria was a problem. Good Jews did not associate with Samaritans and vice versa. Centuries earlier the Israelites were taken into captivity by the King of Assyria who then repopulated the region with other peoples (displaced foreigners or aliens) from his kingdom. The “other” people eventually intermarried with the Jewish population that remained and the people were then known as Samaritans. They were so despised by the pure Jews that they were forbidden to help in the rebuilding of Jerusalem when the King of Babylon allowed Nehemiah to return and rebuild the city. So the Samaritans, who could not worship in Jerusalem, had their own place of worship at Mt. Gerizim. We are talking about centuries of historic social, racial and religious tensions.
In Jesus’ day there were barriers that separated people.
A. Barriers in Jesus’ Day
The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with the Samaritans. She said to Jesus, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?” John 4:9
1. Race – Jewish bias toward the Samaritans and vice versa
2. Gender – Jewish man and Samaritan woman
The love of ethnic or racial purity is not uncommon. In an earlier congregation we served, an elderly Swedish woman’s widowed and very Swedish son was getting remarried. And when she was telling me about the upcoming nuptials she could hardly contain herself when she said of the bride, “And she’s a Swede too!”
Back to the account… in going from Judea to Galilee Jesus had to go through Samaria or go around Samaria. Most good Jews went around. Going around meant going east of Judea, crossing the Jordan River into Perea where they traveled north along the Jordan River to where they could see Mt. Gilboa. When they could see Mt. Gilboa they crossed back over the Jordan into Galilee. They were willing to extend their trip an additional day in order to avoid contact with the Samaritans.
That would be like labeling Boulder, aka The Republic of Boulder, a place to be avoided at all costs. After all the people there all wear Birkenstocks drive Subaru cars with Co-Exist bumper stickers and evolving fish on their trunk lids, they all eat granola, are liberal politically, are known for being eclectic and diverse, they are greenies, ride bikes, are open-minded, they appoint unregistered voters who are not citizens to serve on community committees, there’s the World Naked Bike Ride and the Naked Pumpkin Run, and if that were not enough, they have a Frozen Dead Guy just up the road…
Those Boulderites… I’d rather drive a hundred miles out of my way than pass through Boulder!
Not only was ethnicity a barrier between Jesus and the Samaritan woman… gender posed a huge barrier as well.
2. Gender
We do have boundaries when it comes to the way men and women relate in polite society. When either sex crosses those boundaries one is likely to be called for sexual harassment. Jesus was a Jewish man talking to a Samaritan woman. In Jesus’ day a Jewish man talking to a Samaritan woman is something he would not do and he would never, ever ask a Samaritan woman for anything.
Similarly in our day, gender issues can be a barrier.
B. Barriers in Our Day
I cannot remember when gender was not a moral and social issue and it is increasingly so. As a boy growing up there was a man in our town who lived with his aging parents who was a hermaphrodite. That was polite name. In retrospect he was a gentle soul but at the time we were told to stay away from Billy.
It begins so simply but becomes complicated very quickly. Male and Female. Androgyne. Bigender. Transgender. Asexual. Bisexual. Heterosexual. Homosexual. Gay. Exgay. Lesbian. Exlesbian… the list is actually much longer but this should suffice to make the point.
Wouldn’t it be nice if gender issues were no more scandalous than a conversation between a man and a woman?
And then there is the race and ethnicity thing…
Today a section of a lunch counter from the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth department store finds its home in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. In 1960 the Greensboro 4 staged a series of non-violent sit-ins to bring national attention to racial segregation. Today that Woolworth store is the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.
But the Civil Rights Movement did not fix our prejudices… in fact they are more complicated than ever.
Today we speak of hate crimes. Hate crimes (also known as bias-motivated crimes) occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group, usually defined by racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, class, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, or political affiliation.
Bringing it home…right here in Colorado:
• 49.1 percent of hate crimes stemmed from racial bias.
• 18.5 percent of hate crimes were motivated by sexual-orientation bias.
• 17.7 percent of hate crimes resulted from religious bias.
• 13.5 percent of hate crimes were prompted by ethnicity/national origin bias.
• 1.2 percent of hate crimes were from biases against disabilities.
Though we are appalled by and would never engage in hate-crime kinds of activity… we are more likely to avoid rather than engage and befriend those who are different than us. Race was and continues to be a barrier in our day along with politics and politics. The wrong side of the tracks is still the wrong side of the tracks. The Reverend Fred Phelps, passed away this past week in Topeka, Kansas but the vitriolic antics of the Westboro Baptist Church continue. Whenever we throw up a barrier between us and another we have stymied and cut off the flow of God’s grace through us to others.
Barriers separate people on various fronts, however the point here is that Jesus broke down every barrier… there are no marginalized people who may be excluded from God’s grace. Jesus was visibly setting an example for his followers then and now showing us that in Christ there is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female, civilized or uncivilized, slave or free, rich or poor… in this new life none of those things matter. Galatians 2:28 and Colossians 3:11
The last thing Jesus said to his followers before he ascended into heaven and just before the Day of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit is this: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses… in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the world.” Acts 1:8
I do not believe Jesus was implying that any sphere of mission is more important than another. Jerusalem – right here at home is important and we are working on reaching beyond the boundary of our church property lines. Judea is important and so we are engaged in ministries along the Front Range planting new churches and other regional ministries of our Conference, and we are engaged in supporting ministries and missions reaching to the utter most parts of the earth. The one area we are not engaging is our Samaria.
Our Samaria is/are the place/places we do not like to travel through. The people in our Samaria live outside of our comfort zone. The need to be exposed to the grace of God in word and deed.
The people living in our Samaria are marginalized people. They live on the fringes.
So where is our Samaria and who are our Samaritans?
1. The places we do not go with the love of Christ.
2. The people we are least likely to engage and befriend with the love of Christ
Identifying our church Samaria is one of the things our Strategic Ministry Planning Team and Council are doing with what we learned from taking our spiritual and missional PULSE, so to speak. We are asking, “How can we break down the barriers that inhibit our sharing of God’s grace?”
Conclusion:
The Iron Curtain has been down for quite some time, but things haven't changed for everybody.
For years the Iron Curtain (actually, a fence) separated two populations of red deer living in the forests encompassing the border between Germany and what is now the Czech Republic. When government officials began to dismantle the fence in 1989 (around the time the Berlin Wall fell), the physical barrier between those populations was removed. But when wildlife biologists began studying the deer in 2002, they quickly realized that the deer living in Germany were not migrating into the Czech Republic, and the deer living in the Czech Republic were not migrating into Germany. In other words, both populations of deer were still behaving as if the fence remained intact.
One deer in particular has become a microcosm of the entire population. Her name is Ahornia, and her movements in the forests of eastern Germany were tracked for several years by a GPS collar fitted to her neck by biologist Marco Heurich. During the time she was monitored, Ahornia's location was tracked more than 11,000 times in Germany—but not a single time in the Czech Republic. She was tracked at the border of the two countries several times, but she never crossed over.
Two elements of Ahornia's story are particularly noteworthy:
• First, she was born 18 years after the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the fence that comprised the Iron Curtain. She has no physical memory of the fence's existence, and yet she is still blocked by it.
• Second, the land formerly occupied by the fence and its guard towers has now been turned into a large and thriving nature preserve. In other words, the land beyond the fence has become a haven—the perfect home for deer like Ahornia and her family—and yet she will not enter.
Marco Heurich and his team of biologists have come up with several explanations for the deer's strange behavior. Most deer travel across traditional trails, for example—ones that are passed down through generations by modeling and repetition. It's possible that Ahornia and the other members of her herd simply haven't ventured beyond the beaten path.
But wildlife filmmaker Tom Synnatzschke, who often works in the area, has a different explanation. According to Tom, "The wall in the head is still there." (PreachingToday.com, This illustration was first heard in a sermon by Walt Barrett at Riverside Community Church in St. Charles, Illinois.)
I wonder if most barriers are in fact… in our heads. Such barriers do not exist in the head of the heart of God. Perhaps with a change in our heads and hearts we too would be rid of barriers in sharing God’s grace.
God’s grace is not an exclusive grace… it is an all inclusive grace that knows no barriers.
