SPEAKER_04: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_04: Together we say, All my God.
unknown: All of the stars.
unknown: And from the Spirit's heart.
SPEAKER_04: The Lord be with you.
SPEAKER_04: And also with you.
SPEAKER_04: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_04: O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity.
SPEAKER_04: Grant us the fullness of your grace that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure.
SPEAKER_04: Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.
SPEAKER_04: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_04: I now invite all of our children, fifth grade and under, to meet Father Mike in the back, to head off for godly play.
SPEAKER_04: If you are interested, it'll see for fun.
SPEAKER_04: Fifth grade and under.
SPEAKER_04: Thanks, Beck.
SPEAKER_01: A reading from Isaiah.
unknown: Listen to me, all you that pursue righteousness, all you that seek the offer of life.
unknown: Look to the rock from which you were here, and to the query from which you are God.
SPEAKER_01: Look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, I did labor for you all.
SPEAKER_01: He was just one when I called him.
SPEAKER_01: But I blessed him and made him mean.
SPEAKER_01: She has comforted all her waste places.
SPEAKER_01: She shall make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Creator of all.
SPEAKER_01: Joy and gladness will be found in her.
unknown: Thanksgiving and the sound of sorrow.
unknown: Sorrow and mourning will flee away.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to me, my people and my nation, and give me thee.
SPEAKER_01: Your teaching shall be to me shall go forth, and my justice shall right to the people.
unknown: My deliverance is near, my salvation is coming forth, and my arm shall be governed to be.
unknown: Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and the light to the earth will low.
SPEAKER_01: And my salvation will be forever.
SPEAKER_01: It is good to give thanks to the angel of God.
SPEAKER_01: To say praise to your angel of God.
unknown: To declare your faithful love in the morning.
SPEAKER_01: And your hand.
SPEAKER_01: Upon the ten strings and the heart.
SPEAKER_01: You have made me glad, wellspring of life, by your work.
SPEAKER_01: And of the works of your hands.
SPEAKER_01: How greater your works, womb of creation.
SPEAKER_01: Your design is searching.
SPEAKER_01: A righteous woman or man flourishes like a palm tree.
SPEAKER_01: And grows like a cedar in the world.
SPEAKER_01: They are planted in the house of she who is holy.
SPEAKER_01: Still producing fruit in their elder years.
SPEAKER_04: A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.
SPEAKER_04: Now his disciples had gone to the city to buy food.
SPEAKER_04: And the Samaritan woman said to him, How are you, a Judean, asking a drink of me, O woman of Samaria?
SPEAKER_04: Judeans do not share things in common with Samaritans.
SPEAKER_04: Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who is the one telling to you give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.
SPEAKER_04: And the woman said to him, Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.
SPEAKER_04: From where do you get that living water?
SPEAKER_04: Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, the one who gave us the well, and with his daughters and his sons and his flock drank from it?
SPEAKER_04: And Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but the one who drinks of the water that I will give will never thirst.
SPEAKER_04: The water that I will give will become in them a fount of water, springing up into eternal life.
SPEAKER_04: And the woman said to him, Sir, give me this water that I may never thirst, or keep coming here to draw water.
SPEAKER_04: And Jesus said to her, Well, go, call your husband and come back to this place.
SPEAKER_04: And the woman answered and said to him, I have no husband.
SPEAKER_04: And Jesus said to her, You said rightly, I have no husband.
SPEAKER_04: For five husbands have you had, and now the one you have is not your husband.
SPEAKER_04: But what you have said is true, the woman said to him, Sir, I see that you are a prophet.
SPEAKER_04: Our mothers and fathers worshiped on this mountain, yet you say in Jerusalem is where the place, where the mountain, where the place that we must worship.
SPEAKER_04: And Jesus said to her, Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the sovereign God.
SPEAKER_04: You all worship what you do not know, but we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Judeans.
SPEAKER_04: But the hour is coming, and now is when the true worshipers will worship the sovereign God in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_04: For these are the worshipers the sovereign God seeks.
SPEAKER_04: God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_04: The woman said to Jesus, I know that the Messiah is coming, the one who is called the Christ.
SPEAKER_04: And when he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.
SPEAKER_04: And Jesus said to her, I am the one who is speaking to you.
SPEAKER_02: This is the gospel.
SPEAKER_02: Praise you the Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_04: Good morning, friends.
SPEAKER_04: I had good news and I had bad news.
SPEAKER_04: So it was such a hit last time when I did my little song and dance about the kids.
SPEAKER_04: Like the little vaudeville guy.
SPEAKER_04: And so I thought, well, I'm going to find another song and dance for you.
SPEAKER_04: But alas, there is no song about John Ford, the Samaritan woman at the well, for me to sing.
SPEAKER_04: Evidently, like Peter, Paul, and Mary have a song about this out of school.
SPEAKER_04: So I'm going to look that up.
SPEAKER_04: I'm not sure what the dancing is going to be like.
SPEAKER_04: But I do have a story to tell you regarding this.
SPEAKER_04: And it's a pretty private story.
SPEAKER_04: I thought it might be a good time to share a little bit about my faith journey because it has directly to do with this story we have this morning.
SPEAKER_04: So, like most of you, I became aware at an early age that there seemed to be this lack, this lack that lived inside of me that felt like it needed to get filled.
SPEAKER_04: And I think it does.
SPEAKER_04: I think it needs to get filled.
SPEAKER_04: I didn't have a lot of great language in my family system about what that lack was.
SPEAKER_04: I just knew it was real and I saw it in other people.
SPEAKER_04: Like people seem to have this thing inside of them.
SPEAKER_04: And the common narrative, and the one that I got in particular, was that to fill that lack, you need achievement and you need accolades.
SPEAKER_04: And it doesn't hurt if you make yourself a lot of money and get yourself a lot of power, because then that will be impressive to people, and you'll get honor and maybe some celebrity, right?
SPEAKER_04: You get likes, so we didn't have those when I was a kid, but metaphorical likes in the community.
SPEAKER_04: And so I went down that narrative road, like so many of us, and dedicated my life to it.
SPEAKER_04: And I thought I was doing a pretty good job.
SPEAKER_04: You know, I was in the top business school in the country.
SPEAKER_04: I was in a specialized investment ranking program at the University of Texas with five undergraduates.
SPEAKER_04: I was on my way to New York to make my fortune and to fill that hole.
SPEAKER_04: Now, on the side, I really liked philosophy.
SPEAKER_04: I really did.
SPEAKER_04: I read a ton of philosophy and I read a lot about religion and religious traditions.
SPEAKER_04: It was like a little hobby of mine, mostly because I thought that the people who believed it were dumb.
SPEAKER_04: Like the classic opiate of the masses type of thing, right?
SPEAKER_04: Like, oh, you know, this is just all stories that we created to dumb ourselves from the fact that we're all going to die.
SPEAKER_04: You know, the classic things like that.
SPEAKER_04: There's nothing there.
SPEAKER_04: I'm past that, right?
SPEAKER_04: I realize it's money that we really need.
SPEAKER_04: Um, and so, you know, I would every now and then go out and I would love to debate people and, you know, reveal to them their stupidity, um, which uh I thought I was pretty good at.
SPEAKER_04: And um then I had this series of events happen to me.
SPEAKER_04: Um and I'm not going to go into all of them because that startup would be very long, but essentially I had a series of conversations, dialogues with folks.
SPEAKER_04: Um, and in one of them, like I just got this overwhelming experiential awareness that, whoa, I think I'm missing something.
SPEAKER_04: Like, I am missing something.
SPEAKER_04: Like, I experienced this genuine love and beauty in this conversation with a couple of people, and I walked away thinking, like, wow, they they have something that I don't.
SPEAKER_04: Um, and I didn't know what it was.
SPEAKER_04: Um, but it got me thinking and wondering.
SPEAKER_04: And then I started uh to head to class one day, and I'm walking up the little side alley that gets to the South Mall.
SPEAKER_04: Like anybody knows what this is.
SPEAKER_04: Some of you went to UT.
SPEAKER_04: So I'm on the South Mall and I'm going up the stairs to go to the tower, and uh there's some evangelicals handing out the pamphlets, the tracks, you know, uh, that normally I would like either take and fall up in front of them and throw on the ground because I was quite antagonistic.
SPEAKER_04: And uh, but this time I took it, and I'm like, oh well, let's see.
SPEAKER_04: And so I start reading it, and I'm reading this, and I'm walking up the stairs, and in big bull print, it's the story of the woman at the well in John chapter 4.
SPEAKER_04: And it says, if you drink from the well, right, that well, you will thirst again.
SPEAKER_04: But if you drink from the well I have to offer, it will well up inside, and it will become a spring unto eternal life.
SPEAKER_04: And I'm reading this, I'm in dialogue with this ancient scripture, and like it hits me so hard, I have to sit down.
SPEAKER_04: Like, I turn.
SPEAKER_04: And every now and then we'll go back to UT and like I walk by that spot because I still remember where I hit the ground.
SPEAKER_04: Like I fell to the ground, and I just sat there, like, wow, I think that's it.
SPEAKER_04: Like, no matter how much money I make, no matter how many weights I lift, no matter how many achievements I you know notch on my belt, like it seems like an insatiable hunger that will never be satisfied.
SPEAKER_04: And is it true that there's another way?
SPEAKER_04: Like, is this even possible?
SPEAKER_04: Uh, because ultimately all those things were about me trying to make myself worthy of love.
SPEAKER_04: Can I get an amen?
SPEAKER_04: Amen, right?
SPEAKER_04: I mean, the end of that, that's what I'm trying to do.
SPEAKER_04: I'm trying to fill that cup.
SPEAKER_04: So I thought, is it possible to just believe that?
SPEAKER_04: And so I sat there for about 10 minutes and just wondered, and uh, and that was a turning point in my life.
SPEAKER_04: That was where I that was a hinge moment, right?
SPEAKER_04: Uh unfortunately I chose to read the rest of the pamphlet.
SPEAKER_04: Thanks for that trouble.
SPEAKER_04: Because I quickly went into all the violence and the threat and the condemnation and the burning in hell, and that's when I like rumbled up doing on the side.
SPEAKER_04: But but I did still have that moment, right?
SPEAKER_04: And so I wondered, like, what was it?
SPEAKER_04: Like, what's the theme that's here?
SPEAKER_04: And I think um I want to explore that.
SPEAKER_04: That's what I want to explore.
SPEAKER_04: Um, so the story has had you know tens of thousands of pages that are expilled about it.
SPEAKER_04: Okay?
SPEAKER_04: So like there are so many interpretations.
SPEAKER_04: And so many thoughts on the story of Jesus' encounter with a woman at the well, the unnamed Samaritan woman.
SPEAKER_04: But what we know is that this interaction was, for lack of a better word, just like pregnant with tension.
SPEAKER_04: It was just full of incredible tension.
SPEAKER_04: Here you have this woman, who I don't think was the black widow, by the way.
SPEAKER_04: Like I don't think she's just recycling through husbands to get their wealth, right?
SPEAKER_04: She's not this horrible person.
SPEAKER_04: I think probably she was unable to have children.
SPEAKER_04: And so she's being ostracized by the community because they're saying, well, you or your parents must have done something horrible to deserve this.
SPEAKER_04: So she's having to come by herself, right, to get the water.
SPEAKER_04: And so she's there and she has an interaction with a man who is not a Samaritan, which is not supposed to happen.
SPEAKER_04: They make it clear.
SPEAKER_04: It is hard for me to overestimate how contentious this Samaritan-Judean relationship was.
SPEAKER_04: Very, very contentious.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, it made it into the sprint.
SPEAKER_04: When something makes it into the story, it's not because they had a ton of ink and paper.
SPEAKER_04: They weren't like, well, we got more ink, let's just write more stuff.
SPEAKER_04: It makes it into the story because it's critical.
SPEAKER_04: And so they point out Samaritans and Judeans do not interact.
SPEAKER_04: And in the story, Jesus intentionally goes to Samaria.
SPEAKER_04: He could have gone around like everybody else.
SPEAKER_04: He intentionally goes there.
SPEAKER_04: And he, a man, has an interaction with a woman at a well.
SPEAKER_04: And when men and women get at wells, like new things get burst, right?
SPEAKER_04: And so he comes to this place and he's talking to her, and there is a transformation that happens.
SPEAKER_04: So much so that she leaves and goes and tells her community, I want to tell you about this person that saw me for who I am.
SPEAKER_04: Now, Mike pointed that out this morning.
SPEAKER_04: I want to tell you about this person that saw me for who I am, and I experienced love.
SPEAKER_04: And this is the one, this is the Messiah for the Samaritans.
SPEAKER_04: The Messiah was the one who was going to restore truth and worship.
SPEAKER_04: It wasn't the military one that the Judeans had.
SPEAKER_04: The person that spoke truth and saw me for who I am and loved me and met my needs, filled that gap, as it were.
SPEAKER_04: And then those people come and they dialogue with Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: And then Jesus stays in Samaria for two more days.
SPEAKER_04: And then he heads off home.
SPEAKER_04: So that's the story.
SPEAKER_04: And so, like, I can't help but thinking how different this interaction is from so many interactions that I'm seeing happening in my own life and in other people's lives.
SPEAKER_04: Like, every part of me thinks that she was waiting for a debate.
SPEAKER_04: So what's interesting about the word debate is that it comes from the same word as battle or bat.
SPEAKER_04: It literally means to bludget somebody.
SPEAKER_04: And up until the 15th century, it meant physically bludget somebody.
SPEAKER_04: So for most of the word's history, if you debated somebody, you physically beat them up.
SPEAKER_04: And then you see a twist.
SPEAKER_04: So now a debate is just verbally beating each other up.
SPEAKER_04: Just verbally attacking each other.
SPEAKER_04: And so, how many of us, right, come into conversation?
SPEAKER_04: Pretty much, I think, like this woman at the well, who, right, has no power and authority, who is probably coming in her shame, and she's ready for a fight from this Jewish person.
SPEAKER_04: She's got to stand her holy ground.
SPEAKER_04: You say that your holy ground is over in Jerusalem, but we say the holy ground is here on Mount Gerizeth.
SPEAKER_04: That was really one of the things that was at the core of the differences between the two, where the holy ground in worship was.
SPEAKER_04: We say that.
SPEAKER_04: She was ready for a debate, for a battle.
SPEAKER_04: And what Jesus offered her was a dialogue.
SPEAKER_04: Do you know what the word dialogue means?
SPEAKER_04: It means to travel together through language or words.
SPEAKER_04: There's no battle, it's just a team.
SPEAKER_04: Daya across logos, words.
SPEAKER_04: We come together as a community and we travel across words on a journey together, hopefully arriving somewhere where we're more healed and participating more in love than when we started.
SPEAKER_04: Dialogue is very different from debate.
SPEAKER_04: And I will say that I think right now, because I'm, you know, I get a lot of intellectual stuff in conversation on my social media feeds, I will tell you that there is a ton of debate being masked as dialogue.
SPEAKER_04: And all it is is gotcha moments, and all it is is perfectly edited clips where people are coming together and waiting to make the other person look stupid.
SPEAKER_04: I got you.
SPEAKER_04: I see people coming together, standing their holy ground, ready for battle.
SPEAKER_04: I just don't think that's what that's the place transformation happens.
SPEAKER_04: It wasn't for me.
SPEAKER_04: So I wonder, like, what's the thing that's happening here that is different?
SPEAKER_04: And I think I think there's a few things.
SPEAKER_04: I think the first is like this vulnerability.
SPEAKER_04: Do you notice that Jesus was vulnerable first?
SPEAKER_04: I mean, he's literally by himself sitting in a well, and he asks for some water for a bucket.
SPEAKER_04: He says, I mean, water, y'all, is like the most essential thing that we need to live.
SPEAKER_04: Well, air.
SPEAKER_04: We don't know how thirsty he was.
SPEAKER_04: He could have been super parsed.
SPEAKER_04: We have no idea.
SPEAKER_04: But he has a vulnerable need, and he asks for that need to be met.
SPEAKER_04: He expresses that I have this need.
SPEAKER_04: And then you see uncovered a vulnerability that she opens up herself when he talks to her, when he sees her, and shares about herself and her life.
SPEAKER_04: There is a vulnerability that is inside this conversation.
SPEAKER_04: And then I notice that there was a curiosity.
SPEAKER_04: There was a genuine curiosity.
SPEAKER_04: Asking questions in the midst of confusion.
SPEAKER_04: See, right before this, Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, right?
SPEAKER_04: We get a story about Jesus and Nicodemus, and Nicodemus gets confused, and then the story ends.
SPEAKER_04: How can I be reborn again?
SPEAKER_04: Can I go back into my this doesn't make any sense?
SPEAKER_04: I'm out.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: But there's like a curiosity here where this woman is seeking to understand more and to try to figure out what's there by asking questions, and there seems to be a posture of curiosity.
SPEAKER_04: And then this interesting thing happens that I call the moment of surprise.
SPEAKER_04: The moment of surprise that it's coupled with this expectation of change, right?
SPEAKER_04: So she's asking questions, and she says, Well, you say the Messiah, right?
SPEAKER_04: Like we know that the Messiah is going to come, and he says, I am, which is the first and only declaration in the Gospel of John where Jesus calls himself the Messiah.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: The one for her that is revealing truth, right?
SPEAKER_04: The one that is restoring worship.
SPEAKER_04: That's why, you know, you'll worship in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_04: The one that is helping invite her into the restoration of her life and the light and the lives of everybody and of all creation.
SPEAKER_04: But there's this moment of surprise that she accepted, that she allowed to happen.
SPEAKER_04: Because I think there was an expectation of change.
SPEAKER_04: I think, I think Jesus was changed.
SPEAKER_04: Like, there are smallers that believe for the Gospel of John, this is akin to Jesus' interaction with the Seraphimician women and the other gospels.
SPEAKER_04: Seraphonician women, right?
SPEAKER_04: About the scraps and the dogs and all of that where Jesus seems to have this movement.
SPEAKER_04: And I think Jesus was changed by that.
SPEAKER_04: And I think he went into the conversation expecting change.
SPEAKER_04: I think he went to Samaria expecting God to reveal God's self in a new way and for him to get more clarity on his call and the work he was supposed to be doing.
SPEAKER_04: I think both people were coming with vulnerability, with curiosity.
SPEAKER_04: And I think that's how transformation occurred.
SPEAKER_04: So I just wonder like how many of us right now are standing our holding ground, and God is inviting us to leave it to see the other as holding ground.
SPEAKER_04: What relationships and areas of our life are we just digging in and we've lost vulnerability, we've lost curiosity, we've lost expectation of change, we're unwilling to be surprised.
SPEAKER_04: We're just battling and debating because we want to win, and boy, does it feel good to win and be right.
SPEAKER_04: Debate is about winning.
SPEAKER_04: Dialogue is about transformation and journey together.
SPEAKER_04: So I think that we are called to be witness.
unknown: We are called to tell our stories, we are called to witness.
SPEAKER_04: We are called to go out into the world and I think proclaim through our actions and our words that there's a different way of doing things, that there's a way that we can be together in a relationship that leads to health and healing and transformation and wholeness.
SPEAKER_04: There's a way for us to experience the well that builds up inside of us, the spring, that leads to eternal life, that does satiate in a way that all the money and the power and the accolades and the celebrity never will.
SPEAKER_04: But I think to do that, we have to be committed to dialogue, to traveling together through words, looking for transformation in ourselves, not looking to win and beat somebody else.