Ecclesia Princeton
Ecclesia Princeton
Fountains: Life In The Spirit- Ian Graham: Worship
Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well invites us to become worshippers who worship in Spirit and in Truth.
Good morning friends. My name is Ian. I have the joy of leading alongside several of the folks that you've seen up this way. It's really a gift to be together this morning.
Speaker 1:David Foster Wallace, in a famous commencement speech at Kenyon College some 25 years ago, stood up in front of a bunch of graduating seniors which some of you will be walking that path very soon, and he told them in no uncertain terms terms that there was no such thing as a person who doesn't worship, much like there's not a person who doesn't eat or drink. That worship is just encoded into what it means to be human. We all worship. The question is not do we worship? But the question is what or who? And for many of us in here today, even that idea that our hearts worship may find a block. There You're like no, I'm not spiritual, I'm not thinking about all those things. The world is very simple. It's simple in that it kind of is what it is. It's on its face. I see it, you know stuff happens, I respond to it, that's it. And I think, a lot of times, even for those of us who follow Christ and would say, yes, we worship, we worshiped just now together in various languages, declaring who God is. I think for a lot of us, the shortcoming in our lives comes to how we define worship, what counts as worship. And so today, as we continue our series on the Holy Spirit, my hope is that we can expand our perspective on what worship is, that we will see that it's all centered around Jesus. My hope also is, for some of you in here who would say, yeah, that's not me, I'm not a worshiping type person that you would actually see that thing in your heart. That happens Because you think about a time where you were in nature, you were standing staring across a beautiful vista, or you were at a meal with a loved one, a dear friend or a spouse, and you just had that sense that everything was in its right place. Or, for those of you who are parents, you've seen glimpses of something that you can't explain in the lives of your children. Or for those of you who study, there's something so beautiful, almost like an epiphany. That happens. You see the thing that you are giving your attention to start to click and start to make sense, something that looks like worship. And my hope is not just to say, okay, I think we all, as David Foster, wallace, and my hope is not just to say, okay, I think we all, as David Foster Wallace implores us, we all are worshipers, but to then see where is the proper ordering of that worship? Where does it go? What does it mean?
Speaker 1:We're going to pick up in John 4 as Jesus encounters a woman, and he encounters her at a well that was famously built by the patriarch Jacob. And through the course of the conversation that Jesus has with this woman, the woman recognizes something powerful, something prophetic about Jesus. This recognition comes as Jesus has named the culturally shameful realities of divorce and remarriage and fornication that this woman has been living out. This, coupled with the woman's appearance at the well, by herself would suggest that she is a bit of a social outcast. You see, john tells us in the details of the story that the woman has come to draw water at the well, but he tells us and again, as readers of scripture, I always want to invite us as a people to see that there are no unnecessary details. The editors of the story, the writers that were inspired by the Spirit of God, tell us things so that we will slow down and pay attention, and so John has no reason to tell us the exact hour that these events took place, but he makes sure that we see that the time where Jesus is coming to gather water is noon.
Speaker 1:Now, culturally for people in this society, it was culturally normative for women to gather water on behalf of the household. They would usually do that at the very beginning of the day, and there's a couple reasons for that. First, you need water for the house, so to start the day people would go and gather water. The second was this is an ancient Near Eastern climate, like the Middle East today. It's hot, right, and so, as much as we might welcome that right now, like take some 100 degree days, it was not culturally normative for people to go and gather water. It's why in many cultures today there's still a nap in the middle of the day, because the work that the day demanded had to stop because of the weather, and so culturally the women would gather water, but they would do it first thing in the morning.
Speaker 1:We find this woman gathering water at the well at noon. And also the well, as I told you a couple weeks ago, was kind of the initial original workplace water cooler. It was a place where the women, whose tasks were largely defined by the broader household, and again it wasn't a nuclear family like we conceive of today, but the broader household they were a part of. They could gather together with other women from other households and just talk about stuff, and so all of these things are true at the well first thing in the morning. But here we find this woman by herself at the well at noon, and again John's just trying to say, ask questions. Why is she here at noon by herself during the middle of the day?
Speaker 1:Through the course of Jesus's conversation with this woman, it is revealed that she has been divorced several times. And again, this is a largely patriarchal culture. So Jesus talks about with the Jewish people being given permission to offer certificates of divorce by Moses, and so Jesus says, yeah, moses gave you that because your hearts were hardened. But that was largely the men who were initiating divorces in those culture. But here we have a Samaritan woman and, for whatever reason, it seems that this woman has had some part in the consequences, the story that has befallen her, and so it seems that Jesus is revealing her sin and her shame, and we're going to focus on that here in just a minute.
Speaker 1:Let's look at verse 16. Jesus said to her John 4, the words will be on the screen behind me or you can turn in your Bible. Go, call your husband and come back. The woman answered him I have no husband. Jesus said to her you are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands and the one you would have now is not your husband. What you have said is true. The woman said to him then sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:Now, I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but for me, I've had this experience. A lot is I will be experiencing something resembling conviction in my life, and then I had this little artful way of being like huh, is that really what God is like Like? What is God like? What is the nature of God? When God is directly pointing his arrows of conviction at my heart, oftentimes my first move, it's like let's just divert the attention over here, let's philosophize about God a little bit, let's theologize about him. And we see this woman do this exact thing. Jesus says go and get your husband, and it's revealed oh, she doesn't have a husband. The man she lives with now is not her husband. And then, immediately, she says wow, you're a prophet, let's talk about where worship should happen. And so, immediately, as this woman is confronted with Jesus's remarkable insight into her life, she says let's talk about something else. And she says I see, you're a prophet.
Speaker 1:And this woman, in response to the prophet that is naming her sins before her, wants to talk about whether the Jewish story or the Samaritan story is closer to the truth. And look at what Jesus does Verse 21. Jesus said to her Woman believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know. And when he says you, he's talking about you, all you Samaritans. And when he says we, he's talking about us Jewish people. Jesus is a Jewish descendant from the line of David and the tribe of Judah Verse 23. But the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him Verse 24. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. The woman said to him again, I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ, and when he comes he will proclaim all things to us. And Jesus said to her I am he the one who is speaking to you. So this woman brings us into light with these two supposedly competing versions of the story, and Jesus will offer a very different twist. For the woman, the place of worship is definitive. To the truth of it.
Speaker 1:The Jewish people, of which Jesus is a part, venerated the temple in Jerusalem, originally built by Solomon, destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC and reconstructed by Herod the Great For the Samaritans, who were the descendants of the northern kingdom of Israel. All right, we got to do a little bit of Bible history here. Upon the death of Solomon, the kingly line was contested, and so what happens is, because of the contested succession of kings, the kingdom actually splits into two and you have two different kings. So that kingdom, which really reaches its high point with David and Solomon, embodies its splendor and riches, immediately breaks down upon Solomon's death and there's a split kingdom that are often at odds with one another. There's the northern kingdom, which is often called Samaria, or it's called Israel, and then there's the southern kingdom, which is situated in Jerusalem. The northern kingdom goes off.
Speaker 1:They exist for about a century, a little bit like 150 years and then in 722 BC the Assyrians march into the capital, which is Samaria, and completely lay waste to the city and they cart off most of its inhabitants that survive. But they also then bring in as was a common practice of empires, they then bring in a bunch of conquered peoples from other parts of their empire and then settle them there. There was a little bit of cultural erasure that would happen, as empires knew they could dehumanize people to the point where they wouldn't resist as much by resettling them in various parts of the empire. So they moved these people up to Samaria. And so for the Jewish people, they see how the Samaritans kind of mingle Jewish story and practices with the broader practices of other cultures and other religions. They would intermarry. Their practice often becomes compromised in the eyes of the Jewish people.
Speaker 1:In the second century BC, a time called the Maccabean War, the Samaritans aligned themselves with the Jewish enemies, the Seleucids and the Jewish people. The southern kingdom, the line of Judah, took it upon themselves to then attack and retaliate against the people of Samaria. So all of this is subtext, pretext, context for what we find ourselves today. Right, we see similar things that go on when we start tracing the history. You start looking at the conflict that's going on in Gaza right now. It's not just one thing, right, we're talking about an array of dominoes, and so it's very similar. We have a whole history, a whole succession of stories and animosities that have greeted us here in John, chapter four, and this woman brings these stories to the forefront.
Speaker 1:And so the competition is between who has the right version of worship, who's worshiping in the proper place. Is it Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans worship, or is it the Temple Mount at Jerusalem where the Jewish people worship? And Jesus says to all of it the time is coming and is now here, when the worshipers of God, true worshipers, will worship in spirit and in truth. And then she says, yeah, yeah, I know that time's coming. Messiah is coming. Jesus is the one who is talking to you right now. I am he. He is speaking to you.
Speaker 1:Jesus cuts right through all the posturing and all the distancing. Worship is not centered in a specific place. Worship is centered on Jesus, and just as it did then, it does today. It overcomes long-held divisions, different stories, different social locations, socioeconomic, ethnic. Jesus brings them all together under his reign, his lordship. And this morning, what I want to do is just look at Jesus's invitation to all of us to worship in spirit and in truth as we seek, as ecclesia, to be the kind of worshipers that the Father is seeking. So, as Jesus dispels the notion of a proper place of worship, he lifts the veil that physical location was what made for true and proper worship. He's opening our eyes to the reality that all of life, when received as a gift from God, can be offered in return as worship to the God who made everything. Having a robust sense of what worship is is vital.
Speaker 1:Now, perhaps the image of heaven that you have intuited or have been given is that of an eternal church service. Right, and if you're honest and it's okay to be honest the thought of that sounds boring at best. You're like so there's going to be singing forever. Now, I know some of you in here because I know you. Some of you, as Alfredo and the team, were leading us beautifully and it's actually really incredible what they do every week. Some of you just dispositionally, you're like I would really like for the singing to be over the clapping. I can't do it. I can't carry a pitch. I know Now for others of you, right now you're like I would really like for you to stop talking and for us to get back to the singing, and that's okay. That's okay too. But the idea of worship as an eternal church service to you sounds at best boring, and if you've been in church long enough, you realize you can't actually say that. What are you going to say? Heaven sounds boring. It immediately becomes apparent that the problem is perhaps with you and you need to figure it out. It immediately becomes apparent that the problem is perhaps with you and you need to figure it out.
Speaker 1:And certainly in Revelation 4 and 5, we see images of song and prayer. Angels, holy, holy, holy is the Lord, god Almighty, the elders bowing down before the throne of God. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain To receive glory and honor, wisdom and power. Yes, there is singing in heaven and, yes, worship. One of the clearest acts of worship demanded in the scriptures is to sing. But worship is not confined to what we do here on Sunday mornings, just as it was not confined to a specific place, as Jesus meets this woman here at the well. Worship is not less than that, but it is so much more, because if we read the whole of Revelation, we find that the image of heaven that we are given in Revelation 21 and 22 is not disembodied clouds, not an eternal church service with angels and harps and singing. It is a city where death and pain are no more, where the nations bring their splendor in worship to the king.
Speaker 1:If you read Revelation closely, you see that God is not in the business of shaving off the edges of our culture. And this is really beautiful, because you have a story that you come from, just as I do. I'm descended from a line of Scottish warrior poets. We will bring our beauty and our glory into the new Jerusalem. You have a story that has gone before you, that maybe you've seen glimpses of that which you are a part. And the beauty of the gospel is it's not saying, hey, forget all that, just come and be spiritual with Jesus. It's saying all of that can be, just come and be spiritual with Jesus. It's saying all of that can be offered as a gift in this eternal city. And just as we are called to be co-cultivators alongside God, in the beginning, he gives us the command to rule, to have dominion. That's not a command to exploit. It's a command to join with God in his rightful ordering of all things. And just as we're called to do that in the very beginning Genesis 1 and 2, in the very end, or as CS Lewis calls it, the next beginning, the beginning of the story that will never end, we are called to be co-cultivators. And Ecclesia this is good news indeed. And Ecclesia, this is good news indeed.
Speaker 1:Imagine, for those of you who are engaged in great projects of research or trying to build something, if you're undertaking that endeavor without all of the sin, selfishness, brokenness, limits that are present in our world. What could you do? Imagine your relationships no matter how loving we try to be, no matter how honest and selfless we try to be, so often our self and the sinfulness that is the distance between us wedges itself in there. Imagine when that distance is removed and the only distance between us is the Spirit of God, his love for us. What kind of people could we be? You see, yes, we will live our lives in eternal worship to God, but we must expand our vision of what that worship looks like, because God is inviting us to see that all of life that is received as a gift can be offered back as a gift to the world and to the God who made it. Our lives are meant to be present signposts to an eternal reality right now, that everything we do right now, no matter how mundane, no matter how boring, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can be offered in praise to God. Jesus tells us worship is not confined to a time and a space. It's not what happens here, it's not less than that, and this is really important because this is a sign and a wonder. But as we go from here, as we speak words of blessing, as you go from here, you go in the power and the call to worship God.
Speaker 1:Paul says it well in Colossians, chapter 3. He says so if you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated right at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Then we kind of scroll forward to the end of this section, verse 17. And whatever you do in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God, the Father. Through him, does Paul say do most things, do the holy things, do the things that look like they belong in a church service? He says do everything. And I know because I'm in Princeton. This is a great gift to so many of us. This means that that ambition that you often are told to quell and not to feed, perhaps God has something for that, that ambition to build something great, that ambition to do something great. This means that those really insignificant moments, those moments in relationships, those moments that are small and seemingly insignificant, have eternal significance.
Speaker 1:I love what Augustine says. He says what do I love when I love my God? Not physical beauty or the splendor of time, not the radiance of earthly light so pleasant to our eyes, not the sweet melodies of harmony and song, not the fragrant smell of flowers, perfumes and spices, not manna or honey, not limbs such as the flesh delights to embrace. These are not the things that I love when I love my God, and yet love. When I love my God and yet when I love him. I do indeed love a certain kind of light, a voice, a fragrance, a food, an embrace, but this love takes place in my inner person, where my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space, when it listens to sound that time never takes away, when it breathes in a fragrance which no breeze carries away, when it tastes food which no eating can diminish, when it clings to an embrace that is not broken when desire is fulfilled. This is what I love, when I love my God and Ecclesia.
Speaker 1:This is what God is trying to do so subtly in our lives Is to take those desires that we feel on their surface, to probe their depths and to see that they've been God calling to us all along, see that our desires have been given to us by the original desirer, that is, god, that he desires us, our heart, our soul, our mind, our strength, and that he has made a world that he called good in the beginning and he still calls good today, because Jesus has come and redeemed all things. Genesis 1 tells us that the Ruach Elohim, the Spirit of God, hovered over the surface of the deep in the beginning, and the refrain that defines that creative origin story is about God saying let there be light, let there be sons and daughters made in my image, and then him stepping back with each succeeding day and beholding that which he has made and saying it is. And Jesus' incarnation, the word, that word that brought the world to life, taking on flesh, is God's reaffirmation that he is still assessing the world as good, fallen, broken, need of rescue, yes, but beloved by God and he has come to rescue it, but beloved by God and he has come to rescue it.
Speaker 1:Robert Farah Capone talks about the daily moments of our lives, and I love this book. It's a book called the Supper of the Lamb. He points out our daily call to worship. He says why do we marry, why take friends and lovers, why give ourselves to music, painting, chemistry or cooking? Out of simple delight in the resident goodness of creation, of course, but out of more than that too. Half of earth's gorgeousness lies hidden in the glimpsed city it longs to become For all its rooted loveliness. The world has no continuing city here. It is an outlandish place, a foreign home, a session in via to a better version of itself, and it is our glory to see it so. And thirst until Jerusalem comes home at last. We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.
Speaker 1:But, as Fyodor Dostoevsky reminds us, love in action is a harsh and dreadful reality compared to love in dreams. It would be easy for us to worship in spirit, especially in our individualist, consumerist age, if it just meant do everything you like, have a happy, sunny disposition as you enjoy the world. Even a spirituality that is labeled with Jesus can be just another version of what Alan Mann calls project self. But the Holy Spirit empowers us to worship God in spirit and in truth, and just as the greatest commandment that God gives to us is twofold to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength, the second part of that being to love your neighbor as yourself, when we worship in spirit and in truth, we are not only confronted with the reality of God. We are then confronted with the reality of our neighbor. How do we love God well? How do we love our neighbor? Well, and, as Jesus hints out here, with a coming hour one of John's favorite terms of phrase for the Kairos moment that is filled with holy significance because of the newness that Jesus is bringing about the coming hour where Jews and Samaritans will be reconciled in full by the Spirit of God. We see this in a glimpse in John, chapter 4, and we see this in fullness in Paul's describing of what the gospel has brought about.
Speaker 1:And I want to read this extended section of scripture from Ephesians, chapter 2. Because the reality is, worship is not just about our life before God, our individual life. It is about our life before God and what God is doing in knitting us into a body of believers by the power of his spirit. Look at what Paul says in Ephesians 2, verse 13. Extended scripture coming. Read accordingly but now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far have been brought near by the blood of Christ. So when Paul is talking here we'll get back to the scripture in just a sec when he says you, he's talking about you Gentiles, and when he's talking about us, he's talking about we Jewish people. Okay, that's important Because you can lose your orientation in the scripture if you're like well, who's them, who's us?
Speaker 1:Here we go, for he is our peace. In his flesh he is made both into one Again, both Jew, gentile, and is broken down the dividing wall that is the hostility between us, abolishing the law with his commandments and ordinances that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off Gentiles, peace to those who were near Jews, for through him both of us have access in one spirit to the Father. So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundations of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him, the whole structure is joined together and grows into a what Holy temple.
Speaker 1:You see that the discussion about worship starts with the discussion of where it should happen. Is it Mount Gerizim? Is it the Temple Mount in Jerusalem? And Jesus says all of it will be centered on me, because it's not about having proper access and performing the right rituals, it's about accepting the call to be the new humanity that I have won with my very blood. The wall of hostility is not broken down because we suddenly come to a progressive place where we think that everybody has equal value. The wall of hostility is only broken down by the blood of Jesus Christ, but it is an absolute, essential, necessary sign of the gospel that that wall is broken down, that we would be a people that strive, in all of its difficulty, to gather in this room and in rooms like it together and say you are my brother and my sister in Christ. I prefer your preferences. I put down what I want in worship, what I'm after, so that we can be a people together, because we are being built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
Speaker 1:Dr Martin Luther King says the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of understanding, goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men. And here's the powerful reality that the scriptures invite us to.
Speaker 1:Because it's one thing it's hard enough for us in this room if we're honest with all of our preferences, with all of our assumptions, with all of the stories that, with all of our assumptions, with all of the stories that we are bringing into this room, it's one thing for us to allow God to knit us together into a body, knit together by His Spirit. But the story is not just about the people in the room. Our call to be the people of Jesus is not just so that we can gather in larger and larger rooms. Our call to be the people of Jesus is to be a sign of what it looks like in eternity, when death and sin are no more, when there's enough to eat for everyone, when every child is taken care of and looked after. This is our call, and so worship in spirit and in truth is not just about us allowing God to confront us with our preferences. It's about in spirit and in truth, is not just about us allowing God to confront us with our preferences. It's about us turning our attention towards our neighbors and saying how do we be an embassy, a sign, a wonder that God has saved the world and that his love has gone out and is not just an idea but his actual care?
Speaker 1:There is no proper worship to God in truth without an expression of holiness and mercy and justice. Isaiah, chapter 58, says it much more plainly than I can. He says look, is this the fast that I choose A day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord and throughout Isaiah? The people are doing the right thing, they are saying the right words, but God says you say all the right words, you kiss me on the cheek and yet your hearts are oceans away. And he's calling the people to see that, though their ritual looks right and proper, the reality that they live in and among the reality in their city tells a quite different story. He goes on, he says Is not this the fast that I choose? To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house? When? See, worship in spirit and in truth is not just. Are we doing the right things in worship? Are we singing the right kind of songs? Are we, you know, are we saying the right words in prayer? Worship in spirit and truth certainly starts here, has its locus point here, but it moves out, it scatters, and Jesus, in his conversation with this woman, relentlessly centers her attempts at diversion on himself.
Speaker 1:Theology of place and person, temple and Messiah are defined by Jesus. So, just as the Spirit breaks down the walls that we put up, either by assigning God a place in a far-flung temple, which is kind of an ancient way, or in our much more modern ways, we allow God to have those things, those parts of our lives that we have deemed appropriate for him. We compartmentalize our lives and we are experts at it and we say, oh, you know faith and politics. I don't know, I don't know those two things work. Oh, faith in the calling on my life that God has given me. I'm going to go make a lot of money and then I'll figure out the other part of it. We have all these ways of distancing God, keeping him at arm's length.
Speaker 1:The reality is that Jesus is the integrator of our lives, those parts that we try to keep in all their disparate places. Jesus is saying I'm the Lord of everything. Do everything for the glory of God, the Father. Jesus brings integration and congruence into our lives. The Spirit is wanting to integrate and order all things, as it invites us to submit our lives to Christ. So worship to God bears witness to the whole of the human experience because it is offered to the one that has healed the whole of our experience.
Speaker 1:Gregory of Nazianzus, the church father, says that all that Jesus has assumed, all that he has taken on in his incarnation in the crucifixion, as the powers of sin and death are laid upon his shoulders, all that he has embraced by his love for us, he has healed. And that means that everything within us that would tell us that this story is not our story, everything within us that would allow us to distance ourselves and start to divert when God is talking directly to us and saying I love you, I am for you, you are mine, just as Jesus is talking to this woman, Everything within us that responds and reacts that way. He has broken down, he has stepped right into the middle of it and he has met this woman at noon of, and he has met this woman at noon In the absolute low point of her shame, the embodiment of her exile. Jesus comes and he just so happens to be walking through Samaria at noon. And in John 4, there's this interesting little detail it says that he had to go through Samaria. He did not. He decidedly did not. Most Jewish people did not go through Samaria. He did not. He decidedly did not. Most Jewish people did not go through Samaria. It was quicker, but because of the animosity that we've already described, most Jewish people would go the long way. We all know that feeling of people where we're like oh, I don't really know, I don't like that neighborhood, I don't want to be in that place. I'm going to go a long way. Jesus has to go to Samaria because he has to meet with this woman. He has to come to the well at noon and to offer her living water.
Speaker 1:And the woman in John 4, just as it reminds us of proper worship and spirit and truth actually becomes one of the most effective evangelists in the New Testament. She goes and tells the whole city about who Jesus is and what he's done. And isn't it interesting? As Jesus so often does, he calls us to pay attention. You see, jesus not only restores this woman to some sense of herself in light of who God is, he restores her to the village that she's been outcast from. She goes and tells the whole village hey there's, I think I might have met the Messiah. And they all come and they gather and Jesus stays there in Samaria for several days, jesus is reverse engineering by his love for us all, the wiles of sin and shame and death. Jesus said to him. Jesus said to her Give me this water so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water again. Jesus said to her I, am he the one who is speaking to you? I'm going to invite the worship team forward as we move to a time of response.
Speaker 1:You see, ecclesia, worship is about seeing. Our word for worship comes from an old English word, literally meaning worth-ship. Worship is literally to assess value and declare that value. It's not first about us seeing God, it's first about God seeing us. God sees us fully long before we see him.
Speaker 1:And it may seem like Jesus is being overly forthright in bringing this woman's sin and shame right to the fore, like they're just having a conversation around a. Well, jesus is like actually you don't have a husband now, you've had five before and now you live with someone who's not your husband. That may seem like it's full of condemnation, but, as I tell you all the time, ecclesiastes, any time that Jesus reveals our sin, it's not so he can relish in it. It's not so he can tell you oh see, look at the mess you've made of your life, look at the bed that you've made. Now lie in it. Jesus brings the sin in our lives to the fore so that he can invite us to lay all of it down before him, to stop carrying it on our own, to stop trying to mend it and heal it on our own, because everything that Jesus has assumed he has healed, which means the whole of our human experience, our sin, nailed to his hands on the cross. Jesus has overcome and healed by the power of his love for us.
Speaker 1:And as Jesus encounters this woman, she's the first person to have the divine name spoken on the lips of Jesus, revealed to her. Jesus says I am. I am that one. Exodus 3,. Moses asks God who, shall I say, has sent me? And God responds from the burning bush I am that, I am Yahweh. I am who I will be. And throughout John's gospel, john, because he's an expert artist, will have Jesus at various times in the story take those same words upon his lips Ego ami, in the Greek, I am. And the woman is asking for living water. Where do I get this living water? How do I overcome my shame? And Jesus says I am. And for us.
Speaker 1:Worship in spirit and in truth always is about seeing Jesus and, in that reflection, seeing ourselves healed, brought to life by his never-changing love. And in that moment she realizes her great thirst. She catches a glimpse of the one who gives water without price from the only well that will never run dry Jesus on the cross, as he's pierced in John's gospel. Not only blood flows from his side but water, and by his death he invites us to drink from the eternal living spring that will be ours forever. As we worship in spirit and in truth, he breaks down every lie that would suppose that it can keep us from this.
Speaker 1:God. I'm going to pray and then we'll move to a time of response. God, as we've been praying throughout this series, we pray, welcome Holy Spirit. God. I know there are many in here, like this woman that we meet God, who are carrying around stories of shame. God may bear their social scars, lord, and we have joined in the chorus of lies that the story is not for us, that we are somehow exempt from it.
Speaker 1:And, god, I pray that by the power of your Holy Spirit, lord, you would just meet people where they are here this morning. God, you would draw people to yourself, lord, lord, that we would see that all the ways that we've been trying to sate that thirst that is deep within us, god, whether it be through achievement, whether it be through pleasure, any of the small ways that we try to bow down before idols, god, lord, that you confronted them, you've overcome them, lord, lord, and all you ask for us to receive this grace is to repent, god, to change our thinking, lord, to receive you, to trust you. And so, god, would you help us to see you for who you are and to respond accordingly. God, just stop drinking from salt water, hoping that it will fill our thirst, lord, but to come to the living. Well, god, find that there was water that will never fail. God.
Speaker 1:I pray for us as Ecclesia, god, as a people, collectively, lord, that we would not be like those that Isaiah chastises God with proper ritual, proper devotion, lord, a religion that looks devoted and beautiful on its surface but underneath, lord, has a hollow heart for the poor God. God, help us to be a people who are like you in every way, who follow your way, jesus. God, I pray for those, lastly, god, who just long for an experience of you. It's been a theme in people I've been talking to recently, wanting to know what it's like to be near you, god, believing in you to some extent, but just not knowing.
Speaker 1:What does it feel like to know your love, jesus? And often there's not a point we can name in that. It's not shame, it's not some unrepentant of sin, lord, it's just this distance, god, Lord, would you remind us here, in this place, that you are the God who crosses every distance? Jesus, and somehow, by the power of your spirit, lord, would you meet us here, lord, in ways of experiencing your love that are tangible, god, are felt especially among those dear sisters and brothers that long long to see you God, to worship you, jesus, and we thank you for your son, lord. We love you, jesus, we pray that you would just be in this room having your way. We pray all these things in your name, the beautiful name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. I can see I'm gonna invite you to stand.