"Jesus: Friend of the Rejected, Part 1"

John 4: 4-29

     Dear Friends in Christ,  

   The night before I began working on this sermon Marilyn and I watched part of one of our favorite summertime television shows that we had recorded on our DVR.  It’s called “So You Think You Can Dance.”  How many of you have ever seen this show?  For those who haven’t, it features aspiring and I might add very talented young men and women who are wanting to make it into the world of dancing.  After thousands had tried out in major cities across our land and after a grueling and demanding week in Las Vegas for those who made it that far, the judges had whittled the total number of dancers down to 24 and on this particular night they were going to each one of these dancers’ homes with the news of whether or not they had made the top 10.  Five guys and five girls got the good news that, yes, they had been selected to compete on this popular dance show, but for the others the news was not so good.  And for each one of those that did not make it, there were lots of tears of disappointment but also lots of hugs of support and encouragement from their families who had gathered with them to hear the news and even from the judges who delivered the bad news.  But no matter how much support and encouragement they received, if there was one word that probably best described how they felt, that one word would have to be rejection.

   Rejection – it’s a tough part of life that we’ve all probably experienced at some time or another in some form or another, whether it came from a boyfriend or girlfriend, a husband or wife, a parent or a child, a friend or an employer.  And in our text for today we run into one woman whose entire adult life was characterized by rejection, but whose life was changed forever by the One who accepted her right where she was.  Let’s turn our attention then to the magical day when this 5-time divorcee stood in the presence of her Creator and this gentle physician took the time to stitch up her torn and tattered heart.

   The story begins with the presence of Jesus.  Verse 5 of our text says: “He came to a town in Samaria called Sychar.”  Just seeing Jesus in Samaria is worth noting because as many of you know, back then Jews and Samaritans were not exactly friendly to one another.  We saw a very good example of this in our Gospel lesson a couple weeks ago taken from Luke 9 when the Samaritans refused to let Jesus and his disciples pass through their land, which made James and John so upset that they asked Jesus if they could call down fire from heaven to destroy them.   Most of the time though Jewish people would simply bypass the region of Samaria because they viewed it as unclean.  They would literally walk around the boundary of it to avoid it.  Indeed, no God-fearing Jewish man would be found dead or alive in Samaria.  How curious then that the God who became man was found very much alive in Samaria.

   But you know what that tells us, my friends?  It tells us that Jesus, the one whom we’re identifying in the sermon series I’m currently preaching as the One and Only, has a way of putting himself directly in the pathway of hurting people, regardless of where they might be or who they might be.  We see so many examples of this in the Gospels.  I think, for instance, of Zaccheus, the lying and cheating tax collector who climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus.  No one else took note of him that day.  But Jesus sure did and he invited himself into his home so that he could change Zaccheus’ life forever.  Or what about blind Bartimaeus who was begging alongside the road when Jesus passed by and who started to cause such a ruckus and  commotion to get Jesus’ attention that the crowd told him to shut up, but Jesus told him to cheer up as he restored his sight?  There’s no doubt about it.  Jesus has a place in his heart for hurting people.  In fact, you almost get the impression from those stories that he even orchestrates moments so that he can have one-on-one, face-to-face encounters with those who need him, just like he does with the woman in our text for today. 

   Please note that she comes to the well at the 6^th hour, which would have been noon.  All the other women would have filled their jugs early in the morning when it was still cool.  But apparently this woman would rather endure the heat of the noontime sun than the cool stares and glares they would send her way.  So she comes by herself. 

   And as she draws water from the well, Jesus approaches her and asks her for a drink.  He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy food.  And when he spoke to this woman, she was kind of caught off guard because he was breaking certain cultural traditions back then.  For starters, Jews did not speak to Samaritans or vice versa as I mentioned earlier.  And secondly, men did not speak to women in public.  I know that sounds odd to our modern ears, but that’s the way it was back then.  It just wasn’t done.  And yet that doesn’t stop Jesus from engaging this Samaritan woman in conversation because he could see in her great potential that neither she nor no one else could see, which leads us to the 2^nd point of this sermon.  And that is the passion of Christ.

   Jesus felt a deep passion for this woman, so he says to her, "If only 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."  I love how Jesus begins that statement: “If only you knew.”  How many times do you think he feels like saying that to us?  To the person who feels unforgivable, as though they’ve out sinned God’s grace, and are consequently over-burdened and overwhelmed with guilt because of past sins, Jesus says, “Oh, if only you knew.”  To the lonely elderly person who’s thinking, “I guess God is finished with me.  What good could I possibly be to anyone at this stage of my life?” Jesus says, “If only you knew.”  To the stressed out employer, to the worn out employee, to the mom with frazzled nerves, to the spouse who is weary of trying to keep their sinking ship of a marriage afloat, to anyone who says, “I’m finished.  I just can’t take it anymore; life is too tough.” Jesus says, “Oh, if only you knew.  If only you knew what I could give to you and what I could do for you.”

   So to this woman who had experienced the pain of rejection 5 times from 5 different husbands, Jesus says, “If only you knew the kind of water, the kind of refreshment I could bring to you.”  Unfortunately, she’s not quite on the same wavelength as Jesus.  She thinks he’s talking about some special type of literal water, but Jesus is so patient with her and ultimately leads her to understand that the water he is offering her is different.  He tells her in v.14: “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."  To which she replies: "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

   You probably won’t find a more honest request than that in all of Scripture and that’s because you probably won’t find a more desperate soul than this in all of Scripture.  Just look at the strikes this woman had against her.  First of all, she’s of the wrong race.  She’s a Samaritan at a time when the Samaritans were barely hanging from the lowest rung of the social ladder.  But not only is she of the wrong race, she is also of the wrong gender.  She is a female in a very male dominated culture.  But she’s not just a female.  She is a female who has made some bad choices.  Five times she gave her heart to a man, five times it was given back.  And now she was living with a man who wouldn’t marry her.  And my hunch is that she was doing that just in order to survive.  You see, there were no food stamps in Samaria, no governmental aid programs to help the less fortunate, no Labors of Love meals offered by the local congregation to provide the poor with at least one good meal a month.  And it’s not hard to imagine that wherever she goes, there's a gaggle of kids right behind her, each one looking like a different daddy. 

   She’s got problems, doesn’t she?  She’s engulfed by them, encircled by them, encased in them.  Discrimination on one side.  Gender mistreatment on the other side.  Mistakes from the past behind her and worries about the future in front of her.  Some of you know exactly what that is like where no matter where you turn there’s a problem of a different sort waiting for you.  And we wonder how in the world we get into those messes.  Well, in some cases, certainly not all cases, it comes down to one word.  And that is the word cycle.  Sometimes we have a way of creating a cycle of problems in our lives.  By not dealing with one problem correctly we create a second one and that leads to a third and so on.  Let me give you a scenario to help you understand what I’m talking about.

   Let’s say your first problem is your job.  The economy has gone bad, as we’ve seen in our country and especially our area recently.  So now you’re having to work extra hours or an extra job so you can meet all those financial obligations you incurred when the economy was good. You leave the house when it’s dark in the morning and you return when it’s dark in the evening, all of which is placing an undue amount of stress on you and your family.  Which leads to problem #2.  And that is you and your spouse.  Because you’re not spending good quality or quantity time together, you’re not getting any closer.  Home feels like the Arctic Circle.  You get the cold shoulder every time you turn around.  That creates tension in an emotional sense, which leads to problem #3.  You get this knot in your neck or this pain in your back as your body starts to negatively react to all the stress you’re under.  So now you’re dealing with health issues.  But how are you going to deal with health issues?  You can’t take a vacation because you need the overtime at work.  You can’t quit your job because you need your health insurance.  It’s just one thing piled upon another and another and another. 

   But then one day you see the solution as you’re driving home from work.  There it is parked outside a boat dealership – a 22 ft. beauty!  That’ll make you feel better.  And all of a sudden you allow yourself to just kind of escape into this fantasy world of what that boat could do for you.  And before you know it, you’re standing there in front of it, wondering should I or shouldn’t I; should I or shouldn’t I?  And then you see it – a sign that says 0% financing which you feel is a direct sign from God that you’re supposed to have this boat.  So you purchase it without even consulting with your wife and you pull it home to your driveway.  Which leads to problem #4.  You are now deeper in debt than you’ve ever been before.  Which leads back to problem #1.  You have to work more hours to pay for the boat.  Which only intensifies problem #2 as your wife is not too happy with what’s parked out in the driveway.  Which leads to problem #3.  You can’t get that crick out of your neck.  And on and on it goes as you spiral deeper and deeper and deeper into your problems.  

    What I’ve just described for you is where a lot of people live today.  Maybe you know somebody like that.  Maybe you are somebody like that.   And if you are, you may very well be a sitting duck for a victim mentality, for depression, for a multi-variety of health problems, marital problems, and family problems.  Put simply, you need help in breaking the cycle, just like the woman in our text did.  So I want to show you what Jesus did with her, what I’m going to call the prescription of Christ.  But I have one problem.  I’m out of time.  So you’re going to have to come back next week to hear what Paul Harvey would call the rest of the story.  Until then, may the peace of God that surpasses all human understanding keep your hearts and minds firmly anchored to the rock of ages Jesus Christ at all times, for he truly is the One and Only.  He’s the one and only Great Physician who can take care of all our problems.  He’s our one and only Savior from sin.  He’s our one and only hope of salvation.  So come back next week to see what the One and Only does for this rejected and dejected woman and what he can do for you. 

      Amen.