Call to Worship Lead me Jesus/ Open my eyes
Prayer of Approach & Confession & The Lord’s Prayer (NBoP 831; BoP 605)
Opening Praise: BoP 369 I heard the voice of Jesus say
Responsive Reading – Psalm 95 [BoP 650]
Children’s story – What are Idols?
Children’s Hymn: songs 123 Jesus is all the world to me
Scripture Readings:
OT – Exodus 17:1-7
1The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.”
Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the LORD to the test?”
3But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”
4Then Moses cried out to the LORD, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.”
5The LORD answered Moses, “Walk on ahead of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the LORD saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”
Epistle – Romans 5:1-11
1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
6You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Hymn of Illumination: BoP 258 Spirit of God, descend
Scripture Readings:
Gospel – John 4:5-42
5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9The 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.)
10Jesus 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.”
11“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”
13Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but 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.”
15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17“I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
19“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet 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. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
25The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”
27Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29“Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ£?” 30They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
31Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
32But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
33Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
34“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
39Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41And because of his words many more became believers.
42They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world.”
Sermon: Thirst of faith [John 4:5-42, Exodus 17:1-7, Romans 5:1-11, Psalm 96]
We live in a thirsty nation. That’s a really odd kind of statement, especially for the spring time. I am sure you are either eager to point out that it is spring time, the snow is melting, the rivers and streams are full and flowing, the fields are filled with water as what frost there was this year lets up. And the same is true right across the nation except in some areas that are facing the real risk of dangerous flooding. But we really do live in a thirsty nation.
And no, I am not saying the people of Canada are especially thirsty right now because they have been rationing Moosehead beer either, in the light of recently resolved strike. I am not speaking about any of those things that really belong only to a bodily thirst, though the thirst I am speaking of certainly includes it. I am speaking about a deep thirst for fulfillment, and meaning and a sense of purpose. I mean being filled with refreshing felling of having actually accomplished something with our lives, knowing that we are a part of something really great.
But for at least a generation that has not been the case. We have been told time and again that what we have and what we are doing is harmful. We have hungered and thirsted after status symbols, after so-called ‘necessities’ in our lives only to find out that the happiness and the fulfillment, the refreshment just is not there. House, car, size of family, the right toys, the right vacations, and none of these things really seems to do what we expect, and what advertisers have said they would do. And these are the idols that the psalmist wrote of in our reading today from Psalm 96
We are at that point after the snake-oil sales man has left town, holding the bottle realizing we’ve been sold our own well water or worse, and we are wondering how we could have been caught SO off-guard. And yet, we are still thirsty.
And we are thirsty because for many of us we never even began to quench the thirst that bites at our being and causes us to feel weary. What’s even more exhausting is the parching dust that puffs up every time one of our hopes or dreams fall flat on its face. And yet, while we see it, while we feel that thirst we find nothing to quench it.
And it is explained as simply as this. Jesus walked for many miles with his disciples, and at the end of one of those walks he came to a town in a region where he – as a Jew – would not have been altogether welcome. And John tells us that Jesus was tired. There, don’t doubt the humanity of Jesus, because at the end of a long hard day he was tired. So I am throwing out the idea right now that Christians have to be some kind of super people who always have the energy for another event, and another fundraiser, and another mission drive. No, we like our Lord get tired. Jesus got so tired, he told his disciples to go on and he’ll be along in a bit. You can almost here the pain in his voice, the choking strain from perhaps parched lips. Unlike many of us, Jesus at least has the knowledge to stop when he is tired. He stops when rest will do him good. Some of us will work on to the point where we are putting the Lord God to the test; asking God to hold us up while we do yet one more thing. You know what, when God gives you a chance to rest, you rest. When you find yourself at the end of a good days bit of work, with a place to sit down and have some refreshment – maybe it is not the well of Sychar – all-the-same sit and take the rest that is given.
Jesus takes his rest and while sitting there by the well a woman comes to quench her thirst. Maybe the water-jugs for the day’s meal needed to be filled, maybe she was thirsty for bathwater, maybe for laundry water, or cooking water. Like you and I she has things to do, a life to lead, a body to fill up so she can keep on going about her business.
And so right there I need to pause to speak about the people that are not here today, and I mean not here as in not gathered somewhere with the whole church in the world. They, like the woman who comes to the well are about their day-to-day, even if they are ‘skipping’ church because Sunday mornings is the only day they get to rest, sleep-in. You and I both know that tomorrow they are going to be as in need of refreshment, if not more, than they are right now, and at that point I hope you are present for your neighbour, and that you DO remember something about what was said and sung and prayed about today, and that you share a cup of what you’ve been given even though you came to this place and time not to fill, but to be emptied out. But we’ll come to that. . .
Jesus asks the woman of Samaria at the well of Sychar for a cup of water to quench his bodily thirst. There it is again, Christians need to eat and drink like anybody else.
Jesus asks her for a drink and she scoffs. She says, “I am a Samaritan and you are a Jew, why are you asking for a drink?” I like that moment, that sharp simple denial because that is the second way we keep ourselves from being refreshed. The first is not going to, or stopping at the well at all, I’ve already mentioned that. But this second way we keep ourselves from being refreshed is the one that many people who go to church – at least for a while – hit whenever Jesus asks us for the simplest of services. We respond to Jesus, saying: “Who, me?! Some one like you Jesus does not want someone like me.” I said last Sunday that the front door of the church is to make sure that the world’s sinners have a clear way in to get to know the Lord and their salvation, and pews of the church are not there to give you a place to sturdy yourself while the minister rambles on for an hour, but to rest and take that load of sin off your life so that when you stand to go you can leave refreshed.
The woman tells Jesus that he does not want her as a servant because she is different, she’s not the religious type, she’s not of the right family, or the right upbringing or background. She’s about to discover that when the Lord calls you, YOU are the person that is suited to the task being asked.
The woman denies Christ, and she even attempts to mock him. “Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us this well?” she asks. She has set herself up though because Jesus is indeed greater, and goes onto prove it.
Jesus says to her, “Everyone who drinks of this well, shall become thirsty again.” And that is the confrontation that we have before us here today. Because while we might have said to the Lord, ‘Lord, I am just not the kind of person who should be going to church.’, here you are. And while may have also said, ‘Jesus, you really can do better than me.’, you’ve responded and sit in the pew saved for you. But this last hurdle, to recognize and accept what Christ is offering, is our biggest struggle. It means realizing just how thirsty we are. It means admitting that we are thirsty and not for the kind of refreshment that we can dip our ladle in the streams of life can fill ourselves with.
It means admitting that no sleeping-in, no job, no house, no car, no earthly wealth of land or jewels or goods, no bodily health, no status and recognition, not even our family, not one or all of these things together is going to give you the refreshment you desire most.
Get rid of all those things and what do you have left? Can you find the will to take another breath without those marks on your life to make you feel fulfilled?
Do you feel your thirst now?
The woman at the well was thirsty. She was thirsty for the kind of meaning she had placed on the relationships in her life. They were not satisfying her. She tramped her way from one husband to another as if one of those men could fill that empty place inside.
You know people like that in you own life because our community is full of them. And I am not speaking about people in ‘undefined’ relationships, but first count everyone who does not go to church, then add to that the people who go to church but who are more excited about the things they are doing, or the things they have, than they are about Christ.
I am not by any means denying that we have a need in our lives for family, for shelter, for means of transportation. These things are not evil in themselves, they are things. But when those things becomes the method of fulfillment than they become idols in our lives because they separate us from each other in the fellowship we are meant to have, and most of all these things separate us from God and the refreshment that we are called in to receive.
Jesus shows the woman at the well her whole life, and as he lays it out she sees her real hunger and thirst. What I am offering, what I have tried to show week after week and help you all see is our need as God’s people to be refreshed. I will not refresh you, but God will refresh you.
And that refreshing stream that will fill you is Christ’s love, offered to you in the truth of scripture, poured out for you in the love that flowed from the cross at Calvary, it is the promise of God’s guiding and fulfilling presence by the Holy Spirit.
And in that peace, that like a river flows, we have dipped our hands in service and in worship to glorify God, and be refreshed in all manner of being. As your cups runneth-over may the joy you have received bless others, for we live in a thirsty world that gathers at wells of daily provision asking if there is anything more, and you can give that answer: “In Christ, we are refreshed and in faith we live forever in grace!”
May God be praised, Amen
Prayer of Thanksgiving and Intercession
God’s Tithes and our gifts
Doxology (NBoP 830; BoP 603)
Offertory Prayer
Commissioning Hymn: BoP 250 Praise me soul
Benediction
Dismissal: We celebrate the gifts we share [to the tune of Martyrdom BoP 13]
We celebrate the gifts we share,
In service we proclaim
Our Saviour Christ who for us died
To wash away sin’s stain.
By faith we go and labour on,
Through tasks God’s Word reveals;
Amidst the joy of worship done,
To wonder as He heals.