Several months ago I caught John Larroquette, the actor, on the “Tonight Show.” Somehow the conversation turned to religion. I don’t remember much about the conversation, but I do remember Mr. Larroquette making a comment about television evangelists that has stuck with me. He said, “Seeing those guys in their $600 suits and their Rolexes just doesn’t do it for me.”
As someone who preaches the gospel I think you should know I once owned a Rolex. I bought it from a guy in New York City. I stepped off the bus and six guys with brief cases, all filled with Rolex watches, approached me. It was a buyers market. I got mine for $12. It didn’t seem excessive to me so I wasn’t sure what Mr. Larroquette was talking about. I later found out that real Rolex watches cost thousands of dollars. That probably explains why mine quit working within a year. I was a little upset at the time, but I feel much better now. I’d rather be known as an unwise shopper than a hypocrite.
The suit I’m wearing didn’t cost me $600. Value City doesn’t have $600 suits. Well they do, but they’ve all been marked down to $59.95. That seems like a bit of a stretch to me. I asked my wife who would fall for that gimmick. She said, “The same guys who think they’re getting a Rolex for $12.
At any rate, I wasn’t affected much by Mr. Larroquettes comments. Not at first. After all, they didn’t apply to me. But the more I thought about those comments and my reaction to them the more I wondered if that isn’t part of the problem with the Christian church today. John Larroquette is unimpressed by Christianity because he is unimpressed by those who represent it, specifically those who preach it. As one who supposedly represents it and preaches it, I was disassociating myself with the culprits of the pulpits and blaming the hypocritical evangelists and the skeptics who give too much credence to the hypocrites and not enough to the poor, honest, Christian folk, like myself.
There’s another problem that the Christian church battles. This problem is evidenced by the fact that many people believe the stories of the Bible, they just don’t see any connection between those wonderful Bible stories and the lives of individuals today. I recently saw a survey that said 70% of Americans believe in God, but only 30% attend church regularly.
These are troubled times by many accounts. Psychiatrists, therapists, and a vast array of counselors are over-booked with patients. Psychics have their own 900 number and the non-fiction best-seller list always seems to include a “self-help” book or three. There apparently is no shortage of clientele in need of some life-transforming encounter and a willingness to pay whatever the price might be to experience it. With so much need for change and such willingness to seek it in whatever avenues are available, the only thing that could keep people out of church is a lack of faith in the church’s ability to provide that change. So we are left with a community of believers convinced of God’s existence but unconvinced of his presence or power in their lives.
Today’s situation is somewhat reminiscent of the wanderings of the Israelites in the wilderness. They didn’t question God’s existence but they did question his motives. The Israelites at least generally took their questions and complaints to God. Today we cry out, not so much in verbal murmurings as in desperate or superficial actions that belie any hope for the future.
I teach in a public school system. I serve on the Student Assistance Program (SAP) team as they are generally called. SAP teams are educators who intervene with students at risk because of drug or alcohol involvement or emotional problems. I knew we had some troubled kids in our school. But I never realized the extent of their problems or the large number of students involved until I became active with the SAP team.
Let me give you just one example. Two sisters revealed to one of our team members that they feared going home in the evening because they didn’t know their father might do to them or their mother on any given evening. They were crying for help. For a number of reasons the social agencies that should have been able to help them were unable to do so.
The sisters are representative of many of the kids with whom the SAP team becomes involved. They make up perhaps 10% - 12% of our student body on a local level. I can’t begin to imagine the enormity of the problem on the state or national level. As we talk to these kids or hear their stories we get an overwhelming sense of hopelessness or despair on their part. They feel isolated and alone. They are crying for a loving, caring presence in their lives; someone to deliver them from their wilderness.
But they also represent a larger segment of people; adults who experience the same sense of isolation and loneliness. People want to know that someone cares about them. Unfortunately, too many of them don’t’ see anyone like that within the church. They see, like John Larroquette, people who have become obsessed with material trappings. people who talk a good talk, but don’t walk the walk. Those people who believe in God but are not in church are absent because they see no relevance in church to their lives, and those of us who are there have failed to show them the relevance. Those of us who should be guiding the weak in faith through the wilderness are too often lost in the wilderness ourselves. So the question becomes: How does one find a faith that is relevant to our lives today and on into the 21st century?
Perhaps we can find the answer at Jacob’s well. Jesus was on his way to Galilee. He was passing through Samaria and stopped at a well in the town of Sychar. There he met a woman; a Samaritan woman. We’ve already read much of the story. It can be a little tricky and very theological. if you want to talk high theology you’ll have to see someone else. Let me give you the NRSV, the new Russell simplified version. The lady was an outcast, probably with low self-esteem. She’d been married five times and was living with a man who was not her husband. Society frowned on that much more in Jesus’ day. A man who by all the protocol of the times shouldn’t even have given her the time of day, Jesus asked her for a drink of water. There’s probably a whole lot about theology that woman didn’t understand, but this woman understood water; it satisfied her thirst; it was relevant to her life. Jesus told her he had water that was even better than the water in the well.
But it was Jacob’s well, the well of the revered ancestor. For generations the well had provided relief from thirst for man and animal alike. What kind of water could be better than that; what could be more relevant to her life than that well?
Jesus said, “Woman, the water I give you is so good once you take a drink of it you’ll never need another drink.”
Many of us might read the account of Jesus and the Samaritan woman and wonder how such an ambiguous conversation could lead this woman to believe in Christ. I don’t think we should get bogged down in that. Suffice it to say that there was something about the man that made her a believer. So much did she believe that she left her water jug right there at the well and returned to town to tell everyone about him. And what she told them must have been very convincing because John tells us that many other Samaritans from the town believed what the woman told them and came to meet Jesus themselves. They urged him to stay and two days later he had won over many more.
John doesn’t tell us exactly what Jesus said to win over these Samaritans. I like that. It doesn’t give us narrow expectations. I know some people who think God has to work like he did in the Bible for them to believe its God working. If he doesn’t heal them or their family, or their friends like he did those in the Bible, he’s not working. If he can’t make them walk on water like he did for Peter, he’s not working. And if they fall in the water anything other than a great fish is not good enough to save them because that’s how God saved Jonah.
But we don’t know what God might say to us through Jesus to change us. And we certainly aren’t going to expect him to say what he said to the Samaritans because we don’t know what he said. What we do know is that when the Samaritans met Jesus for themselves they were no longer dependent upon what others said. They had a personal reference point. What we do know is that Jesus took the Samaritan woman and his disciples to a realm of relevance beyond that which they knew existed. There was nothing more relevant than food and water, for that matter there still isn’t. But Jesus made them see there was something about him that was even more relevant than earthly life’s basic necessities. If he’s more relevant than the necessities of earthly living, how much more important must he be than the trivialities which dominate our lives?
The key was the Samaritans had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. They weren’t dependent upon the stories of others, the promises of others, or even the faith of others. They had personal experience. There was no opportunity for disillusionment because of the failings of the church, the clergy or other believers. They looked to Christ and not his representatives. If we look to the church or its pastors there is always the possibility of disillusionment. It’s sad, but it’s true. We shouldn’t place too much trust in human beings or the institutions they control.
The good news is that we can still have a personal encounter with Christ. We can pack up all our questions, doubts, disappointments, and any other spiritual baggage we might have. We can carry them to the place of greatest geographical or historical significance and we can set them on the most relevant issues of our lives. Then we can say, “Here Jesus, match this.”
And he will. And after he’s matched them he’ll surpass them. He’ll show us relevance beyond anything we’ve ever imagined, and he’ll show us the insignificance of all the things we thought were important.
I can’t tell you exactly how he’ll do it for you. I just know he will.
