An Unlikely Source

Text: John 4:5-26, 39-42

Focus: God's transforming power

Function: God used an unlikely source to prove who and what He can transform.

Form: Storytelling.

Intro: This morning we get to speak about revival. I love revival.

I love the renewal story the God brings to this entire town and I love it because the person God used is an unlikely source.

The unlikely source was a woman with many strikes against her by our religious standards.

If this were a TV crime drama, the prosecutor would not use her because she is not a credible witness.

But that isn't the way that God sees people.

This woman was living with a man whom she was not married. She was five times divorced. Some commentators point to the fact that she alone was at the well at lunchtime was because she was rejected, maybe even banned, from coming when all the “decent folks” in the community went to the well.

And her story of exclusion isn't limited to the town folks, her family and friends.

Jesus' disciples might have felt the same way.

The text says that they were shocked that their leader would be talking to her. First, she was a woman. Second, she was a Samaritan woman.

Samaritans were people that the Jews considered to be racially impure.

So, the towns people knew her as “evil sinner.” The disciples knew her as “half-breed.”

But Jesus knew her as a daughter of God.

And Jesus restores her with the promise of the life giving power of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, the gift that Jesus promises will satisfy the longing in the human soul.

We would guess that the woman's five divorces and the current living arrangement sprung from a deep desire inside of her to feel alive.

We can even surmise that she was trying to fill the innate human need for connection to the divine with destructive relationships.

Not only does Jesus restore her, but He restores the whole town to Him through her.

When Jesus meets the woman. She herself is shocked that He is willing to speak to her.

“How come you are speaking to me?” She says.

Perhaps life had beat her up so much that her charms weren't working anymore and a strange man giving attention to her was no longer common.

And the first thing Jesus does us use His mystical language, “drink from the water I give you and never thirst again.” Jesus intrigues her with the promise that God knows her needs and longing and can heal them.

Then, Jesus tells her about her living arrangement and her divorces and she realizes that Jesus is a prophet. I love the line: “Sir. I perceive that you are a prophet!” It seems to me to be the epitome of understatement.

There are a lot of reasons for the brokenness that invades people's lives. And I know that Jesus is still the Great Physician who can heal the wounded soul. This is what He promises her.

I know, because I have experienced it for myself.

God just keeps on healing us. He loves to do it.

So, who this woman is and the fact that God uses her to inspire revival to the entire town is central to the story.

Jesus used an unlikely source.

But by His Holy Spirit, it worked.

This seems to be a theme in the gospels. He works through unlikely sources. Perhaps that is the point of grace.

Let me move this story forward 2,000 years.

At one Church I pastored, the congregation had decided that no one who was divorced and remarried could serve as deacons.

Some accepted this, and others didn't.

One couple, strongly compelled to be members of the Church, faithful in everything they did, decided if they could not be deacons, they could be beacons of light, And they were.

I never told the congregation that I didn't agree with their decision. A pastor is always an itinerant, he or she works for God and is on loan from God to the congregation.

The sooner the pastor figures this out, the easier it is to be the spiritual guide for the congregation.

The congregation sets those rules, policies and practices. A good pastor can work with any system.

So, I didn't complain.

But pastoral personalities do attract different people.

For some reason, I seem to attract those unlikely sources like the woman at the well.

Maybe this is just my ego, but I think -I hope- that it is because believe in grace.

And, through the preaching of Grace, God began to change both the culture and the dynamic of that Church.

So, let us go back to the woman.

She certainly qualifies for the first part of the phrase: “love this sinner hate the...”

People like her are the people we are talking about.

Loving the sinner isn't our problem.

We all love the sinner. Every Christian does.

But sincere Christians can disagree as to whose sin we should hate.

I say, love the sinner, hate my own sin. And if someone disagrees with that, GREAT! There are good reasons, good biblical reasons, to disagree with my perspective on this. A church where everyone has to be, or is made to feel like, a clone of the pastor is not a healthy church.

And so, divorced people have felt comfortable where I have been pastor. But on the reverse side of that, some people have actually said that they are uncomfortable having “people like that” in their church. I have heard it other places, I am sure I will never hear it here.

Back to this church that had this policy: It was a great ministry for me, probably my favorite one so far.

And as a result of what God was doing through me, not me, but God through me, many divorced and remarried couples found God and joined the church.

I didn't realize that it was a problem for some.

It caught me unaware.

A few had family members and friends from other more conservative congregations in the area who chided them for associating with divorced and remarried people.

It came back to me that my stand on divorce and remarriage was too generous for a few since I allowed “those kinds” of people to minister in the Church. I allowed them to serve.

And that church was a great ministry for us. We eventually we moved beyond the hiccup of that issue.

But here is the rub. Here is where this story from Jesus' ministry and my experience coincided.

Here is how “I allowed” this to kind of person to serve happened.

One Sunday morning, during Joys and concerns, a divorced and remarried woman stood up to praise God about how God was healing her life.

And something wonderful happened. I don't quite know what it was except it was a great move of the Holy Spirit. It was a revival.

I didn't get to preach that Sunday.

Before her testimony was over, several people came to the altar for prayer and ministry.

It was a miracle just like what happened in this Samaritan village. The woman at the well, who nobody liked, went back to town and God used her to bring the whole village to faith in Jesus Christ.

God used this woman, who wasn't supposed to serve in our church to spark a revival.

I remember feeling the gentle nudge of the Holy Spirit in my own mind reminding me of this passage. I thought this exact phrase “God used an unlikely source.”

This is what Jesus spoke of when He said the Holy Spirit would flow out of us like rivers of living water.

I don't remember exactly what words she used in our Church, but I remember the gist.

She started giving witness to God's unconditional love to her.

She spoke of how wonderful it was that God had delivered her from a violent abusive husband and gave her a gentle man.

She started testifying about how great it was to be in a congregation where her past didn't matter anymore, where she sensed the actual love and acceptance of God.

Now, I had been preaching grace in the Church for 6 years at this point and I preached it another 4 years.

But I don't believe it was ever better understood until this woman, who to them was an unlikely source, testified to God's redeeming power in her life.

God changed the culture of that Church.

The change wasn't without a small amount of conflict, conflict, when it doesn't create winners and losers can be a healthy process whereby everyone grows. As a matter of fact, we rarely grow without conflict because they challenge us.

But it is hard to argue with change when the Holy Spirit moved in such a loving way.

And God is still doing the same thing today.

And that is what happens when we let the Holy Spirit work through us.

She told me later how terrified she was to stand up and speak. She told the entire church “I feel the hand of God on me this morning and I need to share what God has done.”

You see, God is in the business of healing the brokenhearted.

I keep having to remind myself that Jesus left the Church here on earth to continue this work.

God does this because God wants to connect with every single person.

Every single person is God's child and His heart breaks over whoever lives a life without being reconciled to Him

CONCL:

This is Lent.

I haven't been preaching as much about the three years of Jesus teaching us how to live.

I have been preaching the three days of Jesus reconciling sacrifice for us.

He gave His life to restore us to God.

His promise, to this woman, is a life-giving refreshment, restoration from Him.

And if you are here this morning and this relationship with Jesus has never began. Why not today?

As it was then, and is always, this altar is open.