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May 10, 2009 Sunday - AM	By Leigh Ann Raynor

Thomasville First United Methodist Church

May 10, 2009

John 4:5-10,15-30

                                                                    Walk His Way: He Included 

If you would like to see the video I mention in this sermon, search www.youtube.com for "A Game of Hope". )

Today we're continuing the sermon series we call, "Walk His Way". It's about being intentional in choosing to walk the way of Christ, something that doesn't really come naturally for any of us.

In the United Methodist funeral liturgy there is a quote from Scripture, from I John 3, that says, "Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure."

That's what this sermon series is about. It's about seeing Christ as he is, and trying to do those things that he did. Last week we talked about how and why Jesus prayed. Today I'm going to talk about how he included everyone in his love, even those people (maybe especially those people) whom his companions and peers tried to exclude.

This morning at the 8:45 service we showed the most moving video. It was about a football game between Gainesville State School, and Grapevine Faith Christian School. Both of those are in Texas. But this wasn't your ordinary football game, because Gainesville State School is also prison for young men. Being on the football team meant getting out of prison on Friday nights during football season, because as you can understand, every game is an "away" game. One football season these boys had lost 8 straight games when they were to play Grapevine Faith School for the first time, because that school had moved up a division. The head coach for the Christian School had a game plan, but it wasn't about winning the game. He knew that these boys who were going to be playing his team never had any fans. They were prisoners. They had never run through a spirit line. They didn't have anyone on their side of the field cheering for them in the bleachers. So he sent out an email to his school and to the parents of his students asking for some of them to sit on the other side of the field, on the opposition's side, and cheer for them. Imagine the surprise of those boys when, for the first time, cheerleaders formed a spirit line for them to run through. Imagine their joy when for the first time, they had people calling their names and cheering them on during the game.

They lost again, but for the first time, the players said, they felt like winners because someone cheered for them, someone was on their side, someone included them.

Today's sermon is about how, as Christians, we should always be looking for ways to include people, not exclude them. We should be looking for ways to make people feel like honored guests when they come to this church. We should be looking for ways to open the circle, not circle the wagons.

I've watched that video at least 10 times, and it still makes me cry every time. If you had been the coach of the home team, do you think it would have ever occurred to you to think, "Those boys on the other team don't ever have any fans cheering for them. Their parents won't be at the game. Let's get some of our parents, our fans, to cheer for the opposing team." I don't believe I would have ever thought of that.

Jesus included. While others around him excluded people because of their religion or their race or their gender, Jesus included. One of the best examples of that can be seen in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. Let me read her story to you. It's a rather lengthy passage, and in fact I left some of it out. But you need this much to understand her story:

Last week I talked about the widow who was constantly harassing a judge to hear her case, and I told you that if she were playing baseball she would be "out" before she ever stepped up to the plate because she had 3 strikes against her. Strike 1 was simply that she was female. Strike 2 was that she was a widow, and strike 3 was that she was poor.

Something of the same thing was going on here. This woman also had 3 strikes against her, the first being simply that she was a woman.

When I was reading in preparation for this sermon, I read an experience that former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote. once described something that happened when he was visiting a part of the Moslem world that still segregates women much as they did in Judea, 2000 years ago. One evening, Justice Douglas was talking with two Moslem women, when the husband of one of the women arrived on the scene. Douglas said that his face was livid, and that he was cursing as he approached. He took his closed fist and hit his wife on the side of the face so hard it knocked her to the ground. He then pulled her up by grabbing her hair, and drug her off with him. Later, he came to apologize to Mr. Douglas, but not for his own behavior. He was apologizing for his wife's conduct. He hoped Mr. Douglas would not think too badly of his wife for what she had done. And what has she done that was so disgraceful? She had spoken to him.

Such was life also in Biblical times.

Even the woman in this passage was shocked that Jesus would talk to her. That was just the way things were in that part of the world. For the most part, Jewish men didn't talk to women who weren't members of their own families, and certainly not in public.

It's still that way for orthodox Jews. Once in Israel an obviously Orthodox Jew approached me in a motel lobby. He said that he wanted to speak to me, but that we had to go somewhere less public. Being the suspicious type, I wasn't about to go anywhere "less public" with someone I'd never seen before. And he told me, "You don't understand; it's against my religion to be speaking to a woman in public on the Sabbath." I suggested that if it was against his religion, he stop doing it.

Strike one - this was a woman. Strike two - this was a Samaritan Woman. If ever there was anyone that the Jews would like to exclude, it would be the Samaritans. The Jews hated the Samaritans with a passion you and I don't even know. A Jew would take a broom and brush away a Samaritan's footprints.

This hatred went back for generations - for about 400 years by the time Jesus was in his ministry. A Samaritan was considered a traitor, they were impure, and even more importantly, their worship was considered impure by the Jews.

You see, the race of Samaritan people came about during time that the Kingdom of Israel was divided into two nations. The Northern portion was called Israel and its capital was Samaria; the Southern portion was Judah and its capital was Jerusalem.

In 721 BC, when Assyria conquered Israel, they exiled the brightest and the best they hadn't killed, but left a remnant, leaving a remnant. The Assyrians then populated Israel with other people - their own, and other prisoners from other nations they had conquered.

In 586 BC, what the Assyrians had done to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Babylonians did to the Southern Kingdom of Judah. They decimated all of Judah, including Jerusalem and the Temple, and they exiled the people to Babylon. In 537 BC, when Cyrus of Persia defeated the Babylonians, the Jewish people were allowed to come home and to rebuild.

The people waiting for them? They were considered traitors. The returning exiles shunned the Samaritans. They were symbols of disloyalty. They weren't pure.

Samaritans worshipped the same God the Jews worshipped. They worshipped Yahweh. What they didn't believe, however, is that they had to go to what they considered to be a little peasant town, Jerusalem, to worship Him. They had built their own temple, which they had to do because the Jews of the Southern Kingdom wouldn't allow them to help build the Temple in Jerusalem.

That's what the woman at the well was talking about when she said, "So tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim, where our ancestors worshiped?"

Strike one, she was a woman. Strike two, she was a Samaritan. And strike three, she was a sinner.

It's very significant that this woman came to draw her water at noon - the hottest part of the day. All of the other women drew their water in the early morning hours when it was cooler. In fact, the drawing of the water at the community well was a time of socializing for the women. It was like being in the beauty parlor. A time to relax, sit back, chat.

This woman knew that she wouldn't be included; she wouldn't be welcomed by the other women. She was a sinner.

Jewish law said that the limit for one person to be married was three times. This woman had been married five times already, and the man she was living with at this time was not her husband. She had gone far beyond the limit, and no doubt the people around her saw her as far beyond hope.

But not Jesus. Even after three strikes, she was still "in" as far as he was concerned. In fact, one of the most fascinating things about this passage is the word he used for her when he called her "woman". John uses the Greek word "gune". It's a term of endearment. It's the equivalent of saying, "special lady." And in fact, it was the same word he used for his own mother at the wedding in Cana, and the word he used for his mother when he called to her from the Cross.

And here is what is especially significant. This Samaritan woman - this undisguised sinner, was the first person to whom Jesus reveals his true identity, according to John. She says, "I know the Messiah is coming", and he replies, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you."

This is a remarkable story to me. Strike three, and she's still in.

Let's look at how Jesus walked that day. The thing that we most need to see is that he was intentional about including. It wasn't a mistake that Jesus walked through Samaria. Most pious Jews would walk around it, no matter how much further that meant they had to walk. A worshipping Jew didn't want to walk through Samaria because these were religiously unclean people, and if a Jew came into contact with an unclean person, then he/she was made unclean and couldn't go into the Temple to worship until they went through a prescribed cleansing ritual. No Jew wanted to go through Samaria, but Jesus was intentional about doing so.

He was intentional about being alone so his ministry that day would be unhindered by the people who might question him. He had sent the disciples on ahead to get some food. Why would Jesus stop in the middle of the day, at noon in the hot sun, and tell the disciples, "You go ahead and get some food and bring it back here." Was he more tired than the rest of the disciples were? Did it take 12 people to go get lunch? No. Jesus was intentional about being alone that day, intentional about his encounter with this sinful woman.

As followers of Christ, would you say that we're intentional about including people? When the version of the hymnal we have now was first printed, the vows for a Profession of Faith were changed. I didn't like them. I'm still not crazy about them. I think the older vows were more direct and to the point. But I especially remember my reaction when I read the vow that says, "Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the Church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races?"

The first time I read that I thought to myself, "Oh please, give me a break. Why is it that we have to be so politically correct that the church has even changed its vows?" But as the years have gone on I've seen that that vow isn't just a matter of political correctness; it's being intentionally inclusive.

If you've never felt excluded, if you've never different in a crowd of sameness, you might not know how important that is. But if you are sensitive to what is going on around you, you can be intentionally inclusive.

Last week I went to a seminar and twice during the day the speaker said, "Let's all stand up". The first time she said, "If you've taken this class before, stand up." While I was standing I noticed two people in wheelchairs raising their hands. I had to wonder how they were feeling at that moment. Did they feel excluded? It reminded me of a time in another church; I had church members who had a son who had been paralyzed in a car accident and had been mad at God for a long time. I had been intentional about stopping by the store where he worked and just chatting from time to time. And each time I'd leave, I'd invite him to come back to church. I was so thrilled the first time I saw his wheelchair there in the aisle of the church. And then we sang the opening hymn, which was "Stand Up for Jesus".

I asked him later if that had bothered him and he said no. I was glad for that, but it was a lesson to me to be a little more intentional about including people. That's why, in our bulletin, the asterisk doesn't denote "The people stand". It says, "Let those who are able, please stand." I started putting it that way in bulletins after that particular experience.

Are you intentional about seeking people for Christ that others might overlook? The truth is that most of us aren't. I don't know if you remember this or not, but once we had a skit in which Matt Delarber played a homeless person. In order to look the part, he hadn't shaved in a couple of days, and he was wearing some pretty ragged clothes. People in the 8:45 service knew Matt and knew it was a skit, but people in the 11:00 service didn't. Several people said to me, "I thought that was really a homeless man standing up there talking!" I asked them if they thought we had also given this homeless man a wireless microphone, but that part hadn't occurred to them.

Well the truth is that we would at least a little surprised if this church suddenly started attracting the homeless, or the poor, or the least and last and lost of society. But shouldn't we be intentional in doing exactly that?

At the District Superintendent's retirement party I was talking to Brian Gerstel, who is the minister at a new church in Albany called, "The Pointe". He was telling me that the people they target for membership are the very people that may not feel comfortable at a traditional church. He said there are lots of tattoos, lots of what we might consider inappropriate "dress" for church, lots of motorcycles, lots of lost people. They are intentional in their evangelism. They include.

Well up until about midnight yesterday, or this morning, that was about the end of this sermon. You can blame God for the fact that there is more. I was feeling okay about this sermon that took about 20 minutes to say what I could have said in a sentence - "Jesus included everyone in his love and his ministry, and so should you." And just as I was closing my eyes last night, honestly there was a voice in my head, a voice whispering in my soul, and it said, "You aren't Jesus in this story."

And then I fell asleep. And then I was suddenly wide awake, sitting up in bed saying, "Oh my gosh. We aren't Jesus in this story. Some of us are the woman at the well."

And I opened my computer back up, so you can blame God for there being more to this sermon.

You see, the woman in this story became an evangelist. This sinful woman went back into her community and told everyone that she thought she had met the Messiah, and everyone came to see him.

But before she could be the one evangelizing, before she could be intentional about looking outward, she had to be intentional in looking inward.

In this passage, Jesus confronts her with herself. He says to her, "Go get your husband." That was rather an abrupt insertion into the conversation. This woman and Jesus are having a conversation about water from the well and the living water that Jesus has to offer, when in the middle of the conversation he says to her, "Go get your husband." And she replies that she doesn't have a husband. That's when Jesus confronts her with herself, and says, "That's right. You've had 5 husbands and the man you're living with now is not your husband." He confronts her with her own sin, but almost seems to congratulate her for telling the truth.

And so in the early hours of the morning I realized we aren't Jesus in this story. We're the thirsty ones. And the first step to finding water for these thirsty souls of ours is to be intentional about looking inside, intentional about truth, intentional about confession.

When Jesus confronted this woman with herself, with her own sin, did you notice what she did? She tried to change the subject. There's a little hint for you. If you're in a conversation that is uncomfortable, change the subject to something the other person is interested in. That's what this woman did. She said, "You must be a prophet. Tell me something, why is it that the Jews say the only place to worship is in the Temple in Jerusalem, but our ancestors say that this is the place to worship?"

Trying to change the subject didn't work with Jesus. He wasn't out to get this woman, but if she was to be included in his kingdom, she first had to look inside and see the need for salvation.

Jesus included. He included the sinners, the tax collectors, the prostitutes. Jesus included, and he was intentional about including.

But maybe what we really need to see is that in this story, we're not Jesus. We're the woman who is alone. We're the person who is lost. We are the person who desperately wants to be included. We are the ones in need of salvation. We want that living water that Jesus has.

The first step to that is confession. The first step to salvation is looking at the perfection of Christ, which then forces us to look internally at our own imperfection. I invite you, in prayer, to do just that.

© Thomasville First United Methodist Church

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Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By Leigh Ann Raynor © Thomasville First United Methodist Church. Website: www.tfumc.com