A Big Gospel Heart
One Sunday a children’s program leader noticed a little girl standing outside the room, looking in
with great eagerness at the fun the other children were having. The leader went outside and invited the little girl inside. "They’ll all laugh at me." "Why do you think that honey?" "Because I don’t have any shoes."
Heartbroken at this little girl’s situation and knowing that she really wanted to join in, the leader
tried to convince the little girl that the other kids would not laugh at her. But despite this the
leader couldn’t persuade the little girl to join in with the other kids. A second leader came over,
and was filled in as to what was going on. He took the little girl aside and spoke with her.
This second leader then left the little girl and rejoined the group to lead the next activity. Before
he started he said, "OK everyone, before we go any further I want you all to take your shoes and socks off and place them by the wall. For the rest of today we’re going to operate with bare-feet." The little girl who had no shoes beamed, ran over and joined in with the rest of the group.
If you are like me, there have been times in your life when you have felt on the outside. You were
excluded for some reason. Perhaps because of your gender, the colour of your skin, your ethnic
background or some other aspect of who you are that just wasn’t acceptable to others. Despite your desire to be a part of something, you were left out in the cold. You didn’t fit in.
Now, not fitting in is usually about being unable or unwilling to conform to someone else’s idea of normal, someone else’s standards. Standards are tough things because, if you think about it, most of the standards and customs that we face are man-made. Boundaries set up to exclude. Walls created to keep things comfortable for those inside the walls.
But what about the church. Is there to be a difference in the church?. Well, if you’ve been here
much in the last few months you’ve heard that the church is to be a place of welcome for all people. An environment where everyone can be equipped and encouraged and treated equally. And accepted. And we’ve heard that that acceptance is firmly rooted...in the acceptance that God has given to us.
But...we fail sometimes too, don’t we. Even in a church this size, we can, if we’re not thoughtful
and careful, create little cliques, lines of inclusion and exclusion. We do this to make ourselves
more comfortable. So we greet those we know, and we’re slower to interact with those we don’t know. It takes more mental energy to get to know new people, so, again, we drift toward those we’re more at home with, perhaps not realizing at all those we’re excluding.
But...how do we change this? How do we prevent walls from growing up between us? How do we let down the walls that may be here already? How can we, if it’s possible, help to make sure that this is a church without walls? Without man-made barriers to full participation in the life of the church.
Two weeks ago Jan spoke about the importance of transparency in community. Last week Kerry talked about discovering that our identity as individuals is in Christ Jesus.
Today’s topic is “A Big Gospel Heart”, and we’ll spend some time together looking at a very important event in the life of Jesus and in the life of one very surprised young woman. To do this today, I want to look at our New Testament passage that gives us some exciting insights into the type of people God is calling us to be.
Jesus and the Samaritan Woman
Now, this story has a lot to it. I want to suggest that when we look at what Jesus was up to in this
story, we’ll notice Him pretty aggressively breaking through barriers that exist between people.
I. JESUS REMOVED THE BARRIERS: What were the barriers in this scene?
(1) First of all, He removed the geographical barrier.
John 4:4-5 Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
When I was a teenager, before I was saved, I used to stay up late with friends. Sometimes we’d be walking the streets at 2 or 3 PM in the morning. Sometimes the police would patrol the neighbourhood.
I learned that you should never walk through Rosedale if you’re 15, long-haired and with a bunch of friends who look like they’re on leave from an institution.
Geography is a barrier. It concentrates people in a given area be they rich, poor, educated or otherwise. Geography can limit access. It can limit potential. It can limit relationships. That’s why it’s a problem.
And Jesus crossed the line...the line set by Jews and the Samaritans to keep their territories separate. To make sure relationships didn’t happen between the two different groups. But Jesus crossed the line, dared to go where it was socially unacceptable to go.
(2) Next, Jesus removed the racial barriers. A little while ago I spoke with a professional gentleman who was the director of a funeral home. He was African-Canadian.
The conversation went to the topic of racial discrimination. He said he had been born and raised
and educated here in Canada, and then had worked for 7 years in the states, and then returned to Toronto.
He said, in the States, if someone doesn’t like you because of your colour, they let you know in no uncertain terms. Canadians, he said, are very polite in the way they conceal prejudices.
Although he felt safer here in some ways, he said he actually preferred American honesty to Canadian “politeness”.
In our Scripture passage today, Jesus did much more than cross a physical boundary. He also crossed a racial boundary. Before the time of Jesus, there was much war.
Those who won the wars captured whole nations of people and controlled and the mixing of ethnic populations. Now this led to the formation of a race of people who were a mixture of ethnic groups, who came to be known as the Samaritans.
The Jews, who resettled Jerusalem after the captivity, considered the Samaritans as mongrels or
half-breeds and not Jewish.
There was a long history of racial separation. Race really mattered and deeply affected people and, of course, separated the two groups. But...Jesus crossed the line, crossed the racial divide, by going into Samaria and interacting with someone from another race.
White men, like me, can have a hard time understanding just how humiliating and demeaning
racist attitudes can be.
But we have a huge, very serious responsibility, especially as Christian men, to understand, to not
contribute to such injustice, and to fight against it where we can.
Racism is evil. Why is racism so bad? It is a dignity-robbing, relationship-killing, God-defying sin that renders any virtue we may have greatly diminished. What harm do racist attitudes have?
Think about the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide. Apartheid while it controlled South Africa.
This church will become more multi-racial. We will have more and more people who speak different languages and have different customs. That’s because God loves colour! He created it!
He created us! And God has blessed Canada by making us a place that welcomes and embraces people from the world over.
Soon, more than half of Canada will be visible minorities. That’s wonderful. Truly awesome. And we will have the privilege of loving each person to Jesus. IF we repent of the sin of racism. IF we follow Jesus’ example and freely cross barriers of race to welcome everyone into our community.
Jesus crossed another line:
John 4:7-9 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)"
She was as shocked as Jesus’ disciples would be later when they return from town to see Jesus talking to a woman whom custom did not allow Jesus to interact with.
Notice she says, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman”.
Jesus, the taboo-breaker, doesn’t answer the woman. He doesn’t even acknowledge the racial and gender barriers he is cutting across as He asks her a simple question in response...a request actually, for a drink of water.
(3) Jesus removed the gender barrier.
The same way that white men can have a hard time understanding the barriers that exist for people of colour, all men likely have a hard time grasping how gender barriers affect women.
It’s commonly known that woman get paid less for doing the same work as men. Still, in this day and age. Just recently there’s been an outcry at the fact that women pay more for basic clothing than men.
It’s called “Gender Pricing” and businesses have profited in the hundreds of millions because nobody used to raise an eyebrow to this kind of discrimination based on gender.
But Jesus risked breaking the taboos of his day by speaking with a woman. Jesus did this a lot actually, and he sometimes took heat for how freely he would honour women by including them n what he did.
Please, let us make sure that there are no gender barriers among us.
(4) Jesus removed the spiritual barrier.
John 4:10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you
would have asked him and he would have given you living water...Everyone who drinks this water will be
thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
And later:
John 4:20-24 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."
Jesus was trying to help her understand that religious practices are not what matters. God is
interested in communion with us. He wants relationship with us. He is interested in our authentic worship.
He wants us to worship not by rote or tradition necessarily, but ‘in spirit’. Our spirits connect
with the living God and we grow to know Him even as we are known by Him.
And He wants us to worship in truth. But God values worship done in truth...worship that is both a response of faith to God’s own revelation in Christ Jesus and worship that isn’t an act or an outward appearance.
God doesn’t care what we wear on the outside. What matters to Him is what is on the inside.
Jesus does three things here that are helpful.
1) He crosses barriers made by people and engages a person who needs Him. He builds bridges by accepting her for who she was. Sometimes we need to actively build those bridges. We need to demonstrate that we are willing to be friends with people who might expect us not to be.
2) While interacting He dispels myths. “This isn’t about religion”, He says.
3) He points the woman to what really matters: Relationship with God.
So we need to remove walls that exclude people. We need to be thoughtful about always including new people as our friends. We need to actively reach out and build bridges as well.
This is at least two things. It is vital for us to do in order to continue to mature as a church, and it
actually relates directly to one of the key points of our purpose statement. That part is to lead people to follow Jesus Christ.
God is building a new community among us, one to which He calls every tribe and tongue to be a
part of...if we really start to grasp what that means, we’re going to be passionate about others
coming to Jesus. And being nurtured in their faith? This is an important sign of health in the church. Healthy
things grow.
And healthy churches keep focused on God’s call to keep reaching out, keep inviting in, and to never rest from including all who come our way.
I began with a story about a little girl who thought she wouldn’t fit in...wouldn’t be accepted by
others. Someone came and creatively leveled the playing field so that she could fit in.
So she could join the game with confidence that she
had a fighting chance to make friends and be part of
something really great.
In a moment we will celebrate communion. Let’s pray
that we will be a people who will think and behave in a
way that never puts up man-made barriers to the new
people God sends to us, so that our circle of
community...of communion will grow ever wider.
Can we be like that children’s worker who looked at
the young girl with compassion, concern and
thoughtfulness, and made a place of welcome for her?
Let’s pray. Father God, thank you that you love each person here. Thank you that you sent Jesus to convince us of your love. We have heard and we
are persuaded that you do indeed love us and a great many others who you are right now preparing to join with us in our mission to love the world to
you. Build us up as a community that reflects your glory and as a church that is known as gracious, welcoming and accepting of all people. This we
ask in Jesus name. Amen.
