SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everyone.
SPEAKER_00: Great.
SPEAKER_00: It's a significant morning for me in many ways.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to I've not written anything down for to say this beginning part, so I just wanted to be from my heart, really.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a few three things really that are significant to me this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Number one is it is my anniversary today to my wonderful wife of twelve years.
SPEAKER_00: So absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: If you know Laura, if you know Laura, she's an incredible gift to us, and most obviously to me and my children.
SPEAKER_00: So she is a wonderful, beautiful, incredible woman.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm very grateful to be married to her for 12 years.
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's yeah, a great gift to me and a great support and a great help.
SPEAKER_00: She is actually trying to get her youngest to sleep at the moment, so don't go surprise her, it would be my encouragement to you.
SPEAKER_00: Number two is I have my wonderful family here.
SPEAKER_00: They probably hate me saying this and making them known, but they have a wonderful family here.
SPEAKER_00: So we're just going to give them a round of applause.
SPEAKER_00: That'd be really great.
SPEAKER_00: I won't point them out where they are because that'll be mean.
SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, that I'm so thankful to have them with it with me today and our family to celebrate and to be together.
SPEAKER_00: Um and then thirdly, obviously, this evening, obviously, I'm I'm gratefully obviously becoming an elder amongst you guys.
SPEAKER_00: Right, on to this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So on this morning, we are continuing our series called On an Ordinary Day.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we are in through this series, we're exploring moments in scripture where God showed up to people who really weren't expecting him.
SPEAKER_00: So people that didn't feel qualified for God to meet them.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I wanted to start with this a story from my own life on this, a personal story from my own life.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and um, this is when I was 18 years old.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I wasn't a Christian at this time, it was the moment I became a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh the story goes as I was invited by my youth leaders at the time to the Christian youth festival, many of us know called New Day, which will be there in um less than a month.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and um I was desperate at that time not to go.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh well I at that time I was fed up with Christians, God, and anything to do with Jesus at that time, and that will become clear in a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: So to get out of it and to not hurt my youth leaders' feelings, I told my youth leaders that I my parents couldn't afford for me to go, which was a complete lie.
SPEAKER_00: I know I felt bad about it, but I felt far happier that I wouldn't be going that summer.
SPEAKER_00: Um, just again, being all around the Jesus stuff.
SPEAKER_00: However, what was happening in that moment as I declared this to my youth leaders that, oh, what a shame I can't go.
SPEAKER_00: My friend was standing right there with me, my long-term friend, also not a Christian, um, filled with compassion, he said, Don't worry, John, I'll pay for you to go.
SPEAKER_00: What a hero he must have thought himself to be.
SPEAKER_00: You know, he must have thought, I'm so generous, I'm such a great person.
SPEAKER_00: But for me, obviously, in my head, he was ruining my entire summer.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it took everything in me not to find the nearest thing next to me and beat him with it.
SPEAKER_00: So, but I couldn't say no without unraveling the lie I've just told.
SPEAKER_00: So I smiled, said thank you very much, and three months later found myself at New Day.
SPEAKER_00: So while I was there, I spent the whole time trying to prove that my friend's investment was the worst incredible waste of money of his life.
SPEAKER_00: So I avoided every of the main sessions that were available.
SPEAKER_00: I had a very persistent headache and spent the most of the week lying in my tent enduring every hour, waiting to go back home to my Xbox.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but here's the thing though, the reason I had got to this place of just, again, not really wanting to be there is the previous year I'd actually been to New Day as well.
SPEAKER_00: And something about that time had really gotten under my skin.
SPEAKER_00: And I felt I just felt compelled to reach out to God when I got home.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to do anything when I was there.
SPEAKER_00: I felt compelled to God to reach out to him at home.
SPEAKER_00: And I did something that was massively vulnerable for me.
SPEAKER_00: I I sat in my room at the age of 17 and told God sincerely, if you're real, if you actually love me, show yourself to me.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna be honest, I heard absolutely nothing.
SPEAKER_00: I felt nothing, just complete and utter silence.
SPEAKER_00: And that kind of silence affects people differently.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it can it can motivate some people, it can drive them a bit deeper, a bit more harder in their pursuit of things, but that certainly wasn't true of me.
SPEAKER_00: It hardened me, it hurt that I was thinking if God were real, he certainly didn't love me.
SPEAKER_00: And so now I hear I was back at New Day a year on, kind of looking back where that where the journey of disappointment began.
SPEAKER_00: Again, just fast-forwarded by a year, not wanting to be involved in anything.
SPEAKER_00: So I sat there in this hot tent alone.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone else had gone off to the meetings, all my friends and everything, and um, on what felt like probably the most pointless afternoons of my life, that is the moment where everything changed.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I wasn't praying, I wasn't thinking about God particularly at the time, I was just sitting there, and then a moment happened to me.
SPEAKER_00: As I sat there, just again by myself, these words started to rise up within me.
SPEAKER_00: Not, and they weren't really thoughts exactly, they almost felt like they came from deep within me, as it's a pro it's a weird experience.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it wasn't again the normal running commentary of your mind, it was something different in quality, something that felt like another voice, which I know again, for many of you who probably aren't aware of that, just it sounds very strange.
SPEAKER_00: It was not audible, it was not coming from the outside, but it was also unmistakably not mine.
SPEAKER_00: And it was five words repeated like a drum beat within me.
SPEAKER_00: You need to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You need to follow Jesus, you need to follow Jesus, you need to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't I didn't know what that meant back there.
SPEAKER_00: I was young, again, not a Christian, and essentially I again I'd written God off at that point, but weirdly as well, it was like there was a quality within them as well.
SPEAKER_00: Like there was joy within these words, um, like within the self-like you know that we all we all understand that when there's a mo when there's significant words are spoken, there's something really powerful about them.
SPEAKER_00: Like someone says at a wedding, they says, I do to their spouse.
SPEAKER_00: There's there's something in those words, it's pregnant with powerful joy and commitment.
SPEAKER_00: And it was like that from this this as well, there was joy within these words, it belonged to them.
SPEAKER_00: And also with these kind of words beating within me, there came love.
SPEAKER_00: A love that completely covered me.
SPEAKER_00: It was like a blanket being thrown over me, and it was sudden and overwhelming, the deepest sense of being loved I'd ever felt in my life, and it was not kind of tolerated but seen, known, wanted, and cherished.
SPEAKER_00: And that kind of experience lasted probably about two or three minutes.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't loud, it wasn't kind of violent, there was no shaking involved or anything.
SPEAKER_00: It was gentle but powerful, and then it stopped.
SPEAKER_00: And then I was kind of left there in my tent, like what on earth happened there?
SPEAKER_00: And I walked out to into an ordinary afternoon, nobody knew anything had happened, I didn't tell anyone, I didn't even know how to describe it as well, and I spent the next few days trying to work it over for myself, trying to work out what on earth had happened to me.
SPEAKER_00: And looking back, um, I'd thought for a while Christianity was plausible, but I and so I can understood how someone could believe it, but I while I believed it was plausible, I didn't see it as desirable, and so I and and you didn't so I didn't want Jesus to be who he said he was because I was hurt, I was disappointed from the starting point.
SPEAKER_00: And when you don't want something to be true, even if it is, you'll find a thousand reasons to doubt it.
SPEAKER_00: And but that afternoon in the tent that I had, I experienced what Jesus was offering, and I wanted in.
SPEAKER_00: And so when they gave the call later that week, if you wanted to follow Jesus and give your life to him, I didn't hesitate.
SPEAKER_00: I ran straight to the front, and what I discovered is over the course of my followership of Jesus, is this is what he does.
SPEAKER_00: This is who he is, and he has been doing it a long time since he found me in that tent in Norfolk at New Day.
SPEAKER_00: And um, there's a woman who had a similar kind of day to what I had, and it will be in John chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of reading from John this morning, so we're gonna be in John chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, feel free to turn there, but equally it will also appear on the screens as well.
SPEAKER_00: And while you go there, um I want I I want to just set the scene for you.
SPEAKER_00: So again, this is the middle of an ordinary day in the first century.
SPEAKER_00: It's noon in a place called Samaria.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the sun is kind of directly overhead, it's beating down on open country and nowhere to hide.
SPEAKER_00: The kind of experience many of us have had this week, you know, where it's one kind of normal walk where you'd go out for a walk, turns it into an absolute trek.
SPEAKER_00: And a woman walks, makes a walk alone to a well, carrying a heavy water jar.
SPEAKER_00: And like everyone in ancient rural culture, she does this every single day, and she does it now at the worst possible hour when everyone else has long since gone inside.
SPEAKER_00: And so when she arrives, there's also a man sitting there on the stone rim, tired from the road, waiting for his friends to come back with food.
SPEAKER_00: And she as she sees him, she approaches and she has no idea how significant this encounter is about to be.
SPEAKER_00: So let's read.
SPEAKER_00: So John, we're starting in verse 4, again, it also appears on the screen as well.
SPEAKER_00: It says this It says, Now he, and this is Jesus, had to go through Samaria.
SPEAKER_00: So he came to a town in Samaria called Sakar, near the plot of ground Jacob had been had given to his son Joseph.
SPEAKER_00: Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well.
SPEAKER_00: It was about noon.
SPEAKER_00: When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.
SPEAKER_00: His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritan woman said to him, You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman.
SPEAKER_00: How can you ask me for a drink?
SPEAKER_00: For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered, 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.
SPEAKER_00: Sir, the woman said, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.
SPEAKER_00: Where can you get this living water?
SPEAKER_00: Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.
SPEAKER_00: But whoever drinks from the water I give them will never thirst.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: The 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.
SPEAKER_00: He told her, Go call your husband and come back.
SPEAKER_00: I have no husband, she replies.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to her, You all right, when you say you have no husband, the fact is you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.
SPEAKER_00: And what you have just said is quite true.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where we're going to stop.
SPEAKER_00: Now, um, this account written in John's Gospel is probably one of the most remarkable encounters, I think, that happens in the whole of his eyewitness account.
SPEAKER_00: And it but I find it's actually one of the most misread as well at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so before we go any further, I want to take us back into the world of this story because I think the details really matter as we are understanding it.
SPEAKER_00: And so the story is as we find Jesus near the very beginning of his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And so, and he's been in Judea, and now he's heading home to Galilee for ministry, and he takes the direct route, he takes the direct route straight through Samaria.
SPEAKER_00: So you should be able to see on the screen a map.
SPEAKER_00: Most Jewish people didn't take that route, they didn't go through Samaria because again, Jews and Samaritans had centuries of bad blood between them.
SPEAKER_00: Jews saw Samaritans as these kind of compromised, religiously impure half-breeds.
SPEAKER_00: While Samaritans didn't like Jews because the Jews destroyed their temple a long while ago, so you know, not great.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna destroy their temple, it's not gonna feel pretty happy about it.
SPEAKER_00: So most people to avoid this conflict, they just took the long way around.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't cut through hostile territory if they could help it.
SPEAKER_00: So they went round.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus takes a direct route, and Jesus doesn't say he chose to, actually, what the Greek in the New Testament and New Test the Greek is what the New Testament was originally written in, reads more like he said he he had to, he was compelled to.
SPEAKER_00: That this wasn't a shortcut because Jesus wanted to get there a bit quick.
SPEAKER_00: What Jesus what John the writer is almost hinting at is this is like a divine operation that God had sent him through that territory.
SPEAKER_00: So he arrives at this place called Sakar, roughly about halfway through what would have been an eight-day journey on foot.
SPEAKER_00: So he's been he's already walked at this point about 40 miles, he's not done that in one day.
SPEAKER_00: And John tells us, almost in passing, and it kind of we kind of miss it, says, he was tired.
SPEAKER_00: And I want us to kind of sit with that for a moment, because three chapters earlier, at the beginning of John's writing, he says Jesus is God incarnate, God with flesh on.
SPEAKER_00: That the word was with God and was God, and the word became flesh and made his dwelling amongst us.
SPEAKER_00: And here he is, sitting on a stone well in the middle of nowhere, his body depleted, sweat on his brow, his tongue dry.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is God, this John is saying this is God the Son, the second member of the Trinity, becoming truly like one of us, relating to us, connecting with us in our suffering, in our earthliness.
SPEAKER_00: As Paul wrote in Philippians, he said, though he was in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, so he humbled himself, being found like one of us.
SPEAKER_00: So this is God hungry, waiting, dependent.
SPEAKER_00: It blows our minds, right?
SPEAKER_00: Blows my mind.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus again sitting on this well, sh the woman appears to him, walks to him, and again, a woman were walking alone to the well at noon.
SPEAKER_00: And this matters in ancient Near Eastern context, you know, women drew water often, most often, in the morning and the evenings.
SPEAKER_00: You know, those were the communal hours.
SPEAKER_00: It was cooler, it was a social time, the times where you'd meet and talk with one another.
SPEAKER_00: And coming at noon, it was the worst possible time.
SPEAKER_00: It was the heat again alone, tells us something about why she's coming, what she's coming there for.
SPEAKER_00: And so what she'd done is she's almost arranged her entire day around avoiding, it appears, avoiding the other women in the town.
SPEAKER_00: So something about her situation, her history, means she's coming when she could almost guarantee no one else will be there.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where I want to kind of stop for a moment because you know, this is where I often find this is often misread.
SPEAKER_00: I've heard a lot of sermons on this passage, you know, many, many, many men's.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I've heard roughly the same story as that Jesus is a Jewish rabbi, crosses remarkable cultural lines to speak with this Samaritan woman, but then the argument goes is that this woman has had five husbands, so clearly something is up with her.
SPEAKER_00: She must be morally compromised.
SPEAKER_00: She's a serial divorcee, an adulterer, now living with a man who isn't a husband.
SPEAKER_00: And isn't it wonderful that Jesus doesn't even confront her on her sin, he just redeems her.
SPEAKER_00: God's grace is really amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that I would say is a caricature of those sermons, but I think that what those sermons do is they miss critical information and make assumptions about this woman and put her in a really poor light, which I feel, in terms of my reading of it, responsible to set the record straight once you discover these things.
SPEAKER_00: Because her situation, while on the surface of it, does raise eyebrows for us, and also throughout history, it stands more complex when you read it in light of its ancient context.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to explain.
SPEAKER_00: So in the first century, a woman had no independent legal standing, her testimony wasn't valid in court.
SPEAKER_00: So whatever happened in those five marriages, whatever she had did or was done to her, whatever circumstances actually were, she had no way of making her case.
SPEAKER_00: Anywhere that counted.
SPEAKER_00: The account of a woman wasn't taken seriously in the first century in an ancient Eastern context.
SPEAKER_00: That was the norm.
SPEAKER_00: And in an ancient agrarian society, without a man, very often a woman had nothing.
SPEAKER_00: No income, no property, no roof, no future.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage was a contract between families.
SPEAKER_00: So she moved from her father's house to her husband's house.
SPEAKER_00: And then often she would then result in that she would then live in to a live in with her son after, if her husband died, she would live in with her oldest son.
SPEAKER_00: That was the entire world available to her.
SPEAKER_00: Her survival every single day depended entirely on a relationship to a man.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the biggest things as well is in ancient Israel, only the husband could initiate divorce, not the wife, and and almost for any reason as well.
SPEAKER_00: You know, some rabbis in the ancient world taught that a man could issue a divorce if he just found someone more attractive, or because he didn't like her cooking.
SPEAKER_00: And it sounds funny, but it's it's it's not it's it's really sad when you think about it.
SPEAKER_00: He issued a document, she was gone, no appeal, no recourse, no power to resist.
SPEAKER_00: She was just left to fend for herself in a very unforgiving society, it felt like.
SPEAKER_00: Wars kind of just a ruler's whim, men just sent off in a battle, no modern medicine, healthcare, no health and safety, wild dangerous animals roaming around in unpopulated areas.
SPEAKER_00: You know, so if five marriages ended, most likely it isn't a isn't a story that of a woman who kept failing, it's about five men who left or died or a mixture of those things.
SPEAKER_00: So she couldn't leave, she could only be left.
SPEAKER_00: And on top of that, the man she is living with now who hasn't married her, it is it's highly unlikely she is the one refusing the security of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Far more likely he is not choosing her.
SPEAKER_00: And I find what Christian history has done is it's filled the gap with the most damaging reading of her available.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you see the pan five husbands and a regular arrangement now, and a woman at the well at noon, and we can kind of conclude her fault.
SPEAKER_00: But it's more complex than that.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is on a mission to meet her, and he knows it all.
SPEAKER_00: He knows the complexity, he knows what's going on, he knows the truth, and he meets her anyway.
SPEAKER_00: And as he always has been, he is the one who draws near to the broken, the outcast, the mistreated, and the sinner.
SPEAKER_00: And it's likely she is all of the above of those things.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus comes to meet her.
SPEAKER_00: And again, this is a woman whose life has been on in public in the worst possible way.
SPEAKER_00: She lives in a small community.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody knows everything about your life, everyone knows the headlines, five husbands, the arrangement she's in now.
SPEAKER_00: You know, living with a man who doesn't presume again, we presume doesn't want to marry her.
SPEAKER_00: They but they don't know the full story, they might not know all the complexities of it all.
SPEAKER_00: And so she avoids them.
SPEAKER_00: She avoids the morning and evening where the women would gather at the well to again to socialise, to chat, to share their lives, and she either excludes herself or felt excluded by the nature of her story.
SPEAKER_00: And it's likely again she fears the judgment, the the knowing eyes, the atmosphere that shifts the moment she arrives, the looks she might get.
SPEAKER_00: She comes when no one else does.
SPEAKER_00: Again, so she doesn't have to feel to feel rejected.
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if that's ever true for you.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, what we what we what she's carrying has a name.
SPEAKER_00: We call it shame.
SPEAKER_00: Now, shame is different than guilt, and I think the distinction matters.
SPEAKER_00: Guilt says I've done something wrong and I feel bad.
SPEAKER_00: Shame says something is wrong with me and I am bad.
SPEAKER_00: Guilt is about what you've done, shame is about who you are.
SPEAKER_00: And shame whispers if they really knew, if they really knew what was going on in my life, if they really knew the whole story, they'd leave.
SPEAKER_00: And shame is perhaps one of the oldest negative feelings we've ever had.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says it started in the Garden of Eden itself.
SPEAKER_00: The moment Adam and Eve eat the fruit, the first thing they do is hide and cover themselves.
SPEAKER_00: That is the original root meaning of the word, and to in shame in the Bible actually means to cover, to hide one's self.
SPEAKER_00: And so when they appear, actually, as well, Adam and Eve, after they've done this hiding and God calls them out, they actually cover themselves as well with fig leaves, hiding the vulnerabilities, hoping their life goes unseen.
SPEAKER_00: And they hide not from what they did, but they hide again from being seen.
SPEAKER_00: That is shame.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd argue again it's one of the most powerful and destructive forces in the human experience today.
SPEAKER_00: The psychiatrist called Carl Young called it a soul-eating emotion.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what it does.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just hurt, it's isolates you, it eats you from within.
SPEAKER_00: It convinces you that the only safe option is to be less visible, less present, less known.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why she comes at this time.
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder how many of us are have had the same experience or live in the same way in different contexts.
SPEAKER_00: And I know I I know I have my story, I know it's true of me.
SPEAKER_00: I've sat with the voice that.
SPEAKER_00: More times than I can count.
SPEAKER_00: The one that says, but what if they misunderstand?
SPEAKER_00: What if they see me differently?
SPEAKER_00: What if it changes how they feel about me?
SPEAKER_00: What if they don't want me as a result?
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I've learned if you listen to those voices long enough and agree with it, you don't just become cautious.
SPEAKER_00: It creates distance between you and the people you need the most.
SPEAKER_00: And distance is the one thing shame needs to survive.
SPEAKER_00: It feeds on it.
SPEAKER_00: And again, I want to ask you something is what does your noon at the well look like?
SPEAKER_00: What and where are you hiding from others?
SPEAKER_00: You know, most of us have a part of our story that we want to carefully manage, something we create like a photo album or your Instagram profile.
SPEAKER_00: We keep the horrible portraits out of sight.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want those things to be seen.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the marriage that nobody knows is struggling.
SPEAKER_00: A habit you'd know you'd rather no one knew about.
SPEAKER_00: The things you've done or the things done to you, the fear, the doubt, the disappointment you carry, the gap between who you appear to be and who you know you actually are, or who you feel you are.
SPEAKER_00: We'd all have something we'd rather people didn't read too closely.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing about Jesus is he already knows.
SPEAKER_00: He already knows your story, your life, but he also knows this woman's before she says a word.
SPEAKER_00: And so again, they converse, they start talking.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus initiates a Jewish man speaking to a Samaritan woman, already breaking every social rule they had.
SPEAKER_00: And what does he say?
SPEAKER_00: Give me a drink.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds a bit blunt, right?
SPEAKER_00: You know, but it isn't rude, it's just direct, you know, and obviously we're talking, we're looking cross-culturally.
SPEAKER_00: But I think what's fascinating actually is what scholars say, and he's he's not he's actually performing as if he's actually knows her and he relates to her.
SPEAKER_00: He's not performing around social barriers that are that actually exist between them.
SPEAKER_00: He's just acting as if they simply aren't there.
SPEAKER_00: The way I kind of see it is he's like a kind of South London man kind of walking into a new pub, talking to the landlady who just goes up to him and says, Give us a drink, love.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of how I imagine it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not demanding, it's actually quite affectionate, and you know, and it's assuming a connection already exists, that mutual understanding is already there.
SPEAKER_00: And so she replies, she actually is the one that points out the barrier between them.
SPEAKER_00: She's like, How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?
SPEAKER_00: She not to a drink like they're going on a date, just if why.
SPEAKER_00: So she points it out that there's a problem here.
SPEAKER_00: The barrier is between them.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish and Samaritan, a Jewish man and Samaritan woman, a respectable rabbi, at least from her appearance of what he looks like, and he would have no business speaking privately to any woman outside of their his immediate family.
SPEAKER_00: People looking on in an honest shame society as they were would have just thought the worst.
SPEAKER_00: We'd be like, whoa, what dealing has he got with that woman?
SPEAKER_00: Whoa, that's something going on there.
SPEAKER_00: It would have been a huge social cost to this rabbi who's speaking to this woman.
SPEAKER_00: And she makes this observation for him.
SPEAKER_00: She's like, you know, you should, I don't know if you know you should be talking to me, because this could really damage your reputation.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus doesn't really seem to mind when loving someone else is the greatest thing here.
SPEAKER_00: And he says to her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is, he kind of takes it somewhere deeper, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_00: He says, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes on to say, Everyone who drinks of this water, looking, thinking of the well, will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I will give them will never be thirsty again.
SPEAKER_00: The water I give them will be a sp will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what we kind of think there's two things going on.
SPEAKER_00: There's what she's hearing and what he's actually saying.
SPEAKER_00: Because what Jesus is claiming there, actually, in his mind, is not just better water, again, but it's what he's claiming is water that ends thirst permanently.
SPEAKER_00: A spring that rises within you rather than something you have to keep coming back to.
SPEAKER_00: Something that ushers her, and it's speaking widely to us because it's recorded for us, into eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: This is not just a practical offer, it's so much more than that.
SPEAKER_00: And again, she doesn't really fully understand it, but she knows she wants it.
SPEAKER_00: So she says, Sir, she's got, of course, says, Sir, give me this water.
SPEAKER_00: Now she says that, and she means obviously she's thinking about real water.
SPEAKER_00: And if the if she gets this water that satisfies first forever, it'd be great.
SPEAKER_00: You know, she's thinking, no more heavy jars to carry, no more heat in the noon sun, no more making this walk alone.
SPEAKER_00: But actually, underneath that, there's probably more going on to her, that kind of acceptance than we think there is.
SPEAKER_00: She's thinking this could mean more than just the water itself, but no more having to come here.
SPEAKER_00: No more the fear of awkwardness, no more fear of rejection.
SPEAKER_00: This will fix that, and I will be satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: And we understand exactly what she means, that kind of like acceptance of something like that, because we all have thirst, and not just for water, as many of us have experienced this week, but for something deeper.
SPEAKER_00: We have a thirst within us, a longing, a desires that are deeply embedded within us, desires for security, belonging to be known and loved, for a life that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: And we what we do with that thirst, what human beings have always done is it we point it towards something.
SPEAKER_00: We aim it at the something, and we aim at the next thing and think that's gonna fill this.
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna be the thing, the thing that finally satisfies us.
SPEAKER_00: And I think many of us in this in Western cultures, in kind of like you know, like middle class Britain, we just think about if I could just get that house, that extension, that kitchen, that makeover, then I'll feel satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: If I can just get that relationship, that job, the ache will finally stop.
SPEAKER_00: If I could just you fill in the blank.
SPEAKER_00: If I could just get to a place where I feel secure, feel accepted, feel like my life makes sense, then I'll be okay.
SPEAKER_00: Then I'll stop being thirsty.
SPEAKER_00: And then we get it, and we look back in the rearview mirror, and the thirst is still there.
SPEAKER_00: The holiday ends and something deflates in us on the way home.
SPEAKER_00: The car, the house, the extension, whatever it is, becomes familiar.
SPEAKER_00: The achievement comes, the celebration lasts for a week at best, and then you're already looking for the next thing.
SPEAKER_00: We have to keep coming back to a well.
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what Jesus said would happen.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone who drinks from this well will be thirsty again.
SPEAKER_00: The holiday, the relationship, the achievement, the next thing, and the next thing, they run dry and they always will run dry.
SPEAKER_00: But whoever drinks the water I give them, Jesus said, will never thirst.
SPEAKER_00: And again, he isn't just offering a better well, he's offering a spring within us that doesn't run out.
SPEAKER_00: True satisfaction and fulfillment.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, here's what I suggest to us all as well that that restlessness, that ache that nothing in this world has ever fully satisfied, isn't just a sign something's wrong with us.
SPEAKER_00: It's a sign that we were made for more than this.
SPEAKER_00: That we were made for a life that's beyond this.
SPEAKER_00: C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, one of the sharpest minds of the 20th century, puts it this way: he says, Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exist.
SPEAKER_00: A baby feels hungry, well, there is such a thing as food.
SPEAKER_00: A duckling wants to swim, well, there is such a thing as water.
SPEAKER_00: If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
SPEAKER_00: Made for another world.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that longing we carry, the homesickness that feels like it has no address, the reaching for meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis says that's not a malfunction of the human experience.
SPEAKER_00: He says it's a signpost, it's a our souls reaching for something again this world only can gesture towards.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, I know what you're actually thirsty for.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus calls this eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: And uh here's one I just want to be honest with us.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this is something I think the church over, I mean I feel like in my recollection has got half right.
SPEAKER_00: And not this is not me being proud and going, I know the answers.
SPEAKER_00: But I feel like when I've heard eternal life being talked about, it's only a one side of the eternal life kind of angle.
SPEAKER_00: And so what you know, what I've seen, heard, and preached generations have kind of preached before beached in what I've heard is eternal life just as length, as duration, as the paradise that waits for you on the other side of death.
SPEAKER_00: And that's true, Jesus promises us that.
SPEAKER_00: But again, it's half the picture of I think what eternal life actually means.
SPEAKER_00: And half the picture is kind of left again in thinking that eternal life is just something that you have to wait for, something deferred, something that begins only when you die.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus doesn't mean that.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the New Testament talks about it that way.
SPEAKER_00: Eternal life is not just about how long, but it's also about what kind.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just about quantity of life, it's also about quality as well.
SPEAKER_00: That there exists eternal life as length, life forever, but also again as quality, the beautiful, whole living of heaven, of eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Dallas Willard, one of the most respected Christian scholars of the last century, put it this way: he says, eternal life refers not only again to eternal quantity, but a divine quality of life.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what does that quality of life, divine quality of life that he talks about, actually look like?
SPEAKER_00: Because this is what, again, she's been thirsty for, and what all of us are thirsty for.
SPEAKER_00: And what it is when I read the scriptures, it says this it's it's the inner security that it's inner security that doesn't depend on your circumstances, the confident hope that goes beyond wishful thinking, the love that is overwhelming, that sees all the darkest parts of our lives and loves you still, and wants his love to go there, and he doesn't leave.
SPEAKER_00: It's the joy that survives and not only not only that, but sustains you through the harshest pain.
SPEAKER_00: It's peace that holds even when the world outside is in chaos.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, again, you don't have to wait for these things, you just you don't have to die to receive these things.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, he's what he's saying is we have access to these things, the life of eternity now.
SPEAKER_00: The spring is available now, the eternal kind of life is available to us, rising from a source within us that life's trials don't exhaust.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says it this way: he says that while the outer self is wasting away, the inner self is being renewed day by day.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus is offering her at this world, and that's what Jesus offers us as well.
SPEAKER_00: But the thing that holds us back from receiving that, it's never God's ability to deliver, it's our ability to receive.
SPEAKER_00: As the writer Dane Ortland puts it, he says, out of his heart flows mercy, out of ours reluctance to receive it.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the biggest barriers for us receiving and living in the good of the eternal kind of life Jesus offers again is shame.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that kind of works is just want to offer us a couple of pictures of how that actually operates in our life.
SPEAKER_00: So, number one is imagine a little girl hiding from her father on her birthday.
SPEAKER_00: He's got gifts prepared, love he's desperate for her to feel, but she's she stays behind the door.
SPEAKER_00: Not because he doesn't, he doesn't want her, because she doesn't trust the love that is available to her.
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't believe it.
SPEAKER_00: So she hides herself from receiving the good of it.
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't enter into it.
SPEAKER_00: Or imagine another one.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine someone sitting in a doctor's surgery in agony, who describes every symptom except the one that's killing him.
SPEAKER_00: He leaves the pain still, he leaves, sorry, with the pain still inside of him.
SPEAKER_00: Not because the doctor couldn't help, because they couldn't bring themselves to show him where it hurt.
SPEAKER_00: That's shame.
SPEAKER_00: And again, Jesus sees that in this woman, which is why Jesus in this moment goes straight to the point.
SPEAKER_00: Not to expose her, not to humiliate her, but because again, living water he's offering needs to reach all of her.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to go to the places that would call her out of that hiding place.
SPEAKER_00: So he says to her again, go call your husband.
SPEAKER_00: And he knows she can't, but he names it anyway, and he does it gently, privately, in the best way possible.
SPEAKER_00: Because I think the reason he does it is because shame loses its power when it's brought into the presence of love that doesn't leave.
SPEAKER_00: That's what defeats shame.
SPEAKER_00: Love that sees and stays, and what's available to her is what's available for us in Christ still today.
SPEAKER_00: And then following the conversation with Jesus, she does something remarkable.
SPEAKER_00: She runs off.
SPEAKER_00: Which I don't know what that would have been like in the moment, but reading a few verses on, it says this it says, So the woman left her water jar and went into town and said to the people, Come see a man who told me all I ever did.
SPEAKER_00: Can this be the Christ, the Messiah?
SPEAKER_00: And they, the townspeople, went out of town and were all coming to him.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this is extraordinary.
SPEAKER_00: But there is something I think we can often miss when we see this John's record stuff and he kind of just moves on from things quite quickly.
SPEAKER_00: What she does is she leaves her water jar.
SPEAKER_00: She came for water, and that's the entire reason she did this kind of walk in the noon heat absolutely alone, and at the worst possible hour, but she bolts it away as if she didn't even bring it.
SPEAKER_00: She forgets it.
SPEAKER_00: The woman who built her entire day around the well, who organized her life around avoiding people, leaves the vessel behind that she went with.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not because the thirst is gone, but because she's found something that reaches again to a much deeper place than the water ever could.
SPEAKER_00: And so she goes back, back to the town, not back into hiding, not again, but to the townspeople she'd been avoiding.
SPEAKER_00: The people she'd arranged her whole life not to see.
SPEAKER_00: She walks back into it, all of it, and she says, Again, come see a man who told me everything I ever did.
SPEAKER_00: Everything I ever did.
SPEAKER_00: Again, not my highlights, not the version I would choose, everything, even the shameful parts.
SPEAKER_00: And again, so the town came to meet Jesus, and many of them believed.
SPEAKER_00: This was says.
SPEAKER_00: So she almost becomes the most unlikely evangelist in Samaria, coming from the most unlikely of encounters on the most ordinary afternoons.
SPEAKER_00: And she came to the well, I think she came to the well to survive the day, but she left with a reason to live.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Jesus does.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus did for her, that's what Jesus does for us, that's what Jesus did for me.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to paint a picture for you as we just kind of close.
SPEAKER_00: I want to paint a picture for you of what this freedom actually looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Because I think this is what we're all longing for, whether we know it or not.
SPEAKER_00: Just imagine for yourself that just being fully known, every chapter, every detail, the things you're proud of, and the things you're not, your hopes, your fears, the choices and the circumstances, the world, the wounds and the failures, and again, knowing that you're fully loved in those things.
SPEAKER_00: You're loved not despite those things.
SPEAKER_00: You're not loved once they've been sorted and loved in it, through it, fully known and fully wanted.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's not a perfect life, you know.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't she didn't get given a perfect life.
SPEAKER_00: The circumstances were still the same when she walked away from that well.
SPEAKER_00: But again, something inside of her had changed so completely that she walked back towards a town to get into the very people she was hiding from.
SPEAKER_00: That transformation, again, this spring had started to rise within her.
SPEAKER_00: And again, that's not just what her story is, that story is available for us as well.
SPEAKER_00: The life that our souls are reaching for again is not just starting when we die, it's here and now.
SPEAKER_00: And in a moment, I would love us just to respond.
SPEAKER_00: But before I do, I want to say again something to just two different groups of people.
SPEAKER_00: So if again, if you're if you're not a Christian in this room and you're not sure what you believe, you know, I want to say something to you first, is that the fact that you're here kind of curious, searching, not quite sure what you're looking for, you are not alone.
SPEAKER_00: Something is stirring in our culture right now.
SPEAKER_00: We've been raised with the idea that meaning and purpose and fulfillment were available without God.
SPEAKER_00: That the end, I think the the reality is we know that that well keeps running dry.
SPEAKER_00: The anxiety, the emptiness, the sense that something is still missing.
SPEAKER_00: Many ignore it or avoid it or distract themselves from it, but many can't any longer.
SPEAKER_00: That's thirst.
SPEAKER_00: A thirst means, as C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis says, there is something to drink.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says it, he says, Blessed are those who are hungry and thirst for right living, for they will be satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly who Jesus is waiting for.
SPEAKER_00: Not the sorted, not the qualified, the person who just shows up on an ordinary day and wasn't expecting anything.
SPEAKER_00: That was true of me, true for her, and true for you as well.
SPEAKER_00: And again, if you're a Christian, I want to ask you: are there still parts of your life you hide from God?
SPEAKER_00: Are there still areas of your life you decided the living water isn't allowed to reach?
SPEAKER_00: Where shame has built a wall between you and the God who already knows everything and loves you anyway.
SPEAKER_00: The invitation for you days not just to receive for the first time, but also a fresh.
SPEAKER_00: It's for you again who's been running on empty, who's been drawing from wells that keep running dry.
SPEAKER_00: So that is what we're called to.
SPEAKER_00: We're called to receive.
SPEAKER_00: And I love what a writer called Joshua Ryan Butler puts.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Our job is not to discover the light, but to step out of the shadows.
SPEAKER_00: Again, he's not waiting to condemn you, to tell you off, to expose you.
SPEAKER_00: He's waiting for you to come and get water.
SPEAKER_00: You know, for me, I was lying in a tent pretending to have a headache, and he found me there.
SPEAKER_00: She was coming to the well at noon to avoid everyone, and he was waiting there.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he does.
SPEAKER_00: And this is who he is, and today is another ordinary day.
SPEAKER_00: So let's respond.