This past Wednesday night, a rather famous person in our country passed away. It would probably be better if I said infamous as he was the head of what the BBC called, “The Most Hated Family in America.” Late Wednesday night Fred Phelps, former pastor of Westboro Baptist Church passed away at the age of 84.
Few people in our country have lost sleep over the passing of Phelps. To say that he was almost universally disliked would be quite an understatement. Not only did his actions and the actions of his congregation spew a message of hatred, their actions left all sense of decency far distant in the rear-view mirror as they protested on numerous occasions with messages against homosexuality at the funerals of fallen soldiers and others as well as at other occasions that might gain the church, and I use that term very loosely, a few headlines. I never have quite figured out the connection between homosexuality and the funerals of fallen soldiers except perhaps for the shock value.
To be clear, I was never a fan of Phelps or his church. I found their actions to be both despicable and distasteful. On more than one occasion I preached about the message of hate spewing from his congregation as they celebrated their most famous quote, still the name of the church’s webpage, “God hates fags.” The basic context of my sermon on those occasions was, God, who the Bible says is love, does not hate anybody and to say otherwise is not only bad theology, it is bad Bible.
I would not have been surprised if the world would have ignored Phelps death and just moved on. The world does that pretty regularly. I remember thinking, following leading a funeral for a good friend, “Hey people, slow down a minute. Don’t you realize Bob is dead?” The truth was, the world didn’t really care Bob was dead because the world didn’t know Bob was dead. The world, for that matter didn’t even know Bob.
The world did know Fred Phelps but the world wasn’t better off by that knowledge. Knowing how most people felt, when I heard he had died, I figured people would say something to the effect of, “Good riddance,” and then go on.
I was somewhat surprised by the vile hatred that went out from so many people on social media, not only toward Phelps but also to members of his family that had been estranged from Phelps for years. I read comments like, “Burn in hell!” and that was one of the nicer comments. There was little in the way of condolences for members of the family, including Nathan Phelps, who was the most famous of the Phelps run-aways. He posted on line his father passed away and few made even surface attempts to offer comfort to a man who had just lost his father. Instead were those proclaiming that the largest protest ever be done at the funeral of Fred Phelps. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” was a sentiment forgotten in favor of Do unto others as they have already done to you. That reading was both sad and at the same time shined a bright light on the state of the human condition.
The human condition, we want to stay angry. We don’t want reconciliation. We would prefer to hate. We don’t want to forgive. We refuse to believe there is any grace out there for people like the Fred Phelps of the world.
I wish I could say all this was by non-Christians but the truth is, when it comes to someone we love to hate, Christians are no different from the rest of the world. We may sing, “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love,” but that love will only go so far and is really reserved for just certain people.
We tend to believe there is a special place in hell for the despicable human beings of the world like Fred Phelps. The truth is, if that is the case for Fred Phelps, that same spot is reserved for you and me as well. Why you ask? Well, in truth, we like to weigh sin. We think some sins are worse than others because we, all too often, equate sin and crime. Stealing a 25 cent pack of bubble gum doesn’t equate to robbing a bank. Both might be criminal actions, crime, but taken to court they won’t get the same sentence.
We see sin the same way. We think, “Fred Phelps is out there throwing around hatred.” We think how terrible that is, and in that we are right. Yet we are so concerned about the splinter in Fred Phelps eye we ignore the log in our own. We forget about the lie we told our neighbor. We forget about that little piece of gossip we passed on after hearing it. We forget about the treatment we gave the store clerk or the waitress in the restaurant. None of those things are as bad as what Phelps said and did.
To my way of thinking, in the eyes of God, sin is sin. There are no rankings. There are no differences. If we sin, we sin.
In our lesson this morning, Jesus and the disciples are making their way back to Galilee, but to get there they traveled through Samaria. The Samaritans were hated by the Jews. They were seen as half-breeds, Jews who married foreigners and therefore, less than pure and purity and cleanliness were of upmost importance. So, any good Jew wanted as little to do with Samaritans as possible.
Jesus and the disciples come to the Samaritan town of Sychar. Once there, Jesus remains at the well outside of town while the disciples go into town. It is about noon when a woman comes out of town to retrieve water. While the scene wouldn’t be unusual, women came from town to the well to retrieve water on a regular basis, the timing of this woman’s trip made things more than a bit odd. It was the heat of the day. Most of the women, and hauling water in the Biblical era was women’s work, came early in the morning or closer to sunset in the evening. They came at the time of day when it wasn’t quite so hot. This woman, however, comes out during the heat of the day. Many of us would be more than a bit curious about why.
For his part Jesus doesn’t ask about that. We soon learn he didn’t need to do so, he already knew the answer. All Jesus does is ask for a drink of water. Now the woman is curious. She recognizes Jesus as a Jew and she knows the score and questions why Jesus, a Jew, would ask anything of her, a woman of Samaria. Jesus tells her if she knew who he actually was he would give her living water. It is clear she doesn’t understand what he is talking about. She wants to know how he is going to draw water, he has no bucket and the well is deep. Then he tells her, those who drink the water from the well will get thirsty again but those who drink his living water will never get thirsty. Now he has her attention. Her mind immediately goes to the idea of no more trips to the well in the noon day sun. She still doesn’t get it.
Jesus doesn’t press the matter. He changes the subject, telling her to go get her husband. She replies she has no husband. In my mind I can see Jesus smile just a bit. “You are right,” he replies, but then the other shoe drops, “you have had five husbands and the man you are living with now is not your husband.” Jesus exposes her sin for what it is. She asks if Jesus is a prophet. Jesus tells her in a round-about way, he isn’t a prophet, he is the Messiah. The woman then goes into town and tells everyone she meets, “Come and meet the man who knows everything I ever did.”
As I see the story play out in my mind the thought occurred to me, what the woman found at the well was more than water. Jesus’ offer of Living Water, was an offer of grace. The lesson never says Jesus forgave her sins but it seems pretty clear to me that Jesus did forgive those sins and probably more. We can see she received grace, she received forgiveness. How do I know? Her willingness to tell her story, warts and all. Who would go and tell such a story if they hadn’t first experienced divine forgiveness. That is, in a word, grace.
As Christians we love this story. We love this story because we all want the forgiveness the woman received. We love this story because we all want the grace Jesus gave to this woman.
As I have thought about this story over the last day or two an image came to me from something the woman said, “The well is deep.” Of course she was right, the well literally was deep. Most wells are. But I also got to thinking, the well of God’s grace is also deep and that is good news. It is good news for you and me. We can receive the Living Water of God’s grace. We can receive forgiveness for our sins.
But, there is more. It isn’t in our lesson but it is in the Bible. If we are going to receive that grace, we have to be willing to give grace. If we are to receive that forgiveness we have to be willing to give that forgiveness. Jesus says in Luke 6, “forgive and you will be forgiven.” The implication there is, if we don’t forgive we will not be forgiven. We also prayed just moments ago, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In other words, we are asking God to forgive us in the same way we are willing to forgive those who have wronged us.
What also falls hand-in-hand with this is repenting, asking forgiveness from those we have wronged. Sometime back, I started feeling guilty about the way I had treated a high school classmate back so many years ago. I really treated this classmate badly and I wanted to apologize and ask for forgiveness. It took me a while to find and make contact but when I did I asked forgiveness. The classmate readily gave me the forgiveness I sought. I also know by faith, God has forgiven me as well.
I told you at the beginning of this message, after I completed my sermon this week, yesterday I put it aside as I felt God leading me to do something different. While I freely admit I haven’t always been the most obedient person in the world, today I at least try to be obedient to where the Spirit is leading me. So I put that sermon aside. You may or may not hear it at some point in the future.
Here is the reason why I felt I had to change it. I felt the Spirit saying, “OK, so what? What is the point of all of this? What action are you leading people to do?” As I thought about this I realized that many of my sermons don’t really lead to any action. So, at least for now, you won’t hear that other sermon again because it doesn’t lead you to action. Until I come up with a way for it to lead you to some action, it will remain on the shelf.
And here is what I want you to do. We all have wronged someone as I did with my high school classmate. Ask forgiveness from that person. It may take some effort to track them down, but do it. It may even be that you can’t track them down. Perhaps they have disappeared from the place where you knew them and no one you know has an idea of where to look. Perhaps they have passed from this life to the next. If you can’t find them, write them a letter asking their forgiveness. You won’t hear them say you are forgiven. Even if you find them, they may not forgive you. But, do you know what? Then it becomes their problem and not yours. You humbled yourself and asked their forgiveness. That is all you can do.
Another thing, be ready. If someone comes to you and asks your forgiveness, be ready to give it as my classmate gave it to me.
Whatever you do, in any of these circumstances, you will feel better for the effort. I know God will bless you for the effort by lowering a bucket deep into the well of grace and pour that grace upon you. You will drink of the Living Water.
I can’t say whether Fred Phelps has felt that grace poured out on him or not. But, what I do know this, the well is deep, even for the likes of Fred Phelps. God makes the decisions about who drinks of the Living Water. We just know the well is deep.
I also know this, as people of faith, we need to find it within ourselves to forgive him. We don’t forgive so much for his sake, he is dead and our forgiveness is meaningless to him at this point. Instead, we forgive for our own sake. We forgive for peace in our hearts. We forgive because God asks us to do so. It isn’t always easy. No one ever said a life in faith would be easy. So we work at it and we forgive.
We forgive because each time we do, we dip back into the well of grace, we drink the Living Water and the well is deep.
