Lent 3A

LENT 3A    February 19, 2017                                                     

SCRIPTURES     

• Exodus 17:1-7. The Israelites are grumbling in the desert. God tells Moses to strike the rock so they will have water.

• Psalm response: 95

• Romans 5:1-11. Paul expounds on the consequences of justification by faith.

• John 4:5-42. John tells of Jesus' meeting with the Samaritan woman.

SCRIPTURES (John 4:5-42)

- Jacob's well. 

-Jesus’ longest-recorded conversation with anyone is the one he has with the Samaritan woman  Craddock

-She is a Samaritan, he a Jew; between the two there was enormous historical enmity. At least four centuries before, the Jews of Samaria had intermarried with their captors, losing their religious and racial purity. They could not be forgiven for their impurity and were held in contempt by most Jews in Judea and Galilee. That's why the woman asks, "how can you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?"

-"There is more grace in God than sin in us."

-It's a story about being dry and dried up, parched and brittle and all used up by life. De Jong

-We should not ‘cast our pearls before swine’ by forcing an unwanted discussion. Rather, like Jesus, we should pursue spiritual conversation as deeply as the unbeliever wants to carry it.

-What John would have us see here is that there are certain truths we cannot merely accept, but have to discover for ourselves and that Jesus is constantly asking people to face these truths for themselves.

- In leaving behind our false gods, we also leave behind our false selves. 

-What if each of those marriages ended when the husband died. She would have buried five husbands.

(P, pastor; C, congregation)

P: Like worships like.

C: But who can be like God?

P: What if God became like us?

C: Then we could be like God.

P: Then we could worship God.  Bob Bertra

SERMONS

1. Jesus confronts  racial prejudice and gender issues, religious issues (Samaritan). (wrong race, wrong gender, wrong religion)  Sound familiar?

 2.  Jesus comes to ordinary people doing ordinary tasks, on an ordinary day. Jesus reached out in ordinary ways.  

3.One sows, another reaps. Spirit sows, Flesh reaps. Prophets sow, you reap. You sow, others reap.

QUOTES

- Have church will travel.  (We are temples of God's spirit)

-At Jewish weddings, rabbis often remind the couple that they are as earth and water to each other. Without earth, water flows without direction, while earth without water dries up and blows away. Together they make clay from which are made bricks, from which are made houses, which become homes.

- God is waiting at the well for each of us.

- Sustenance

- Repentance is not for sinners only.  

- Let's not forget, tears are another form of water.

- Shall we gather at the river...

- Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable unto us and humble and precious and clean.   St. Francis of Assisi.

-But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream  Amos 5:34

-Not "What will make our church grow ?"  but, "What is keeping our church from growing?"  Stoffregen

- Quench thirst!

- Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. Coleridge   The rime of the Ancient Mariner

- I've got peace like a river.  African American spiritual

-  Only one  who loves you  can know you as you are and not as you pretend to be. Only one who love you knows your deepest desires. Only one who loves you can look at your past with out blinking. 

-"Mystical moxie"

ILLUSTRATIONS

1.  Willimon tells about his grandmother who was the first female Methodist preacher in S.C.  Someone said to her after he ordination,"I think it's remarkable that the S.C. Methodists ordained a woman and were among the first to do it."  "It is remarkable, and it only took them 1,956 years to do it."  (said the ordained woman)

2 There are two and a half quarts of water in my blood. There are fifteen quarts of water in the extra plasma in my body. There are thirty quarts of water in the cells of my body, allowing all those little cells to grow. It always amazes me that (your weight) pounds of water are standing before you today at this moment. Truly, I am living water.

3. During the tenure of the great orator Henry Ward Beecher, a visiting minister (Beecher's brother) once substituted for the popular pastor. A large audience had already assembled to hear Beecher, and when the substitute pastor stepped into the pulpit, several disappointed listeners began to move toward the exits. That's when the minister stood and said loudly, "All who have come here today to worship Henry Ward Beecher may now withdraw from the church. All who have come to worship God keep your seats!"

4.Rabbis forbade rabbis to greet any woman in public, even a wife or a sister. There were, in those days, Pharisees who shut their eyes when they saw any woman on the street. With their eyes shut, they walked into so many walls and tripped over so many cracks in the street that they were called the "bruised and bleeding Pharisees." They were the same ones who prayed:

Blessed art thou,

O Lord our God,

king of the universe,

who hast not made me a woman.

HUMOR

- Some people say that I am a bag of wind or a bag of hot air.  But I am really a bag of water. (60%)   A a great big bag of water.  Standing before you today is walking , breathing, living water,  I am truly living water.  Illustrate what 60% of something is.

- He needs a faith lift.

CHILDREN

  - Talk about being hungry and thirsty.  Then talk about ways we fill our spiritual hunger and thirst.  Talk about bread of life and living water.

  -   Have the children compare how they'd take care of there teddy bear compared to taking care of their dog.   

-Jesus talks with ANYONE!  What “anyones” would Jesus talk to today?  (Jews, Muslims, Blacks, )

PRAYER PHRASE

- Lord make us eager, expectant, ever ready to meet you when you sneak up on our lives.  Lord speak to us, intrude upon us. Amen  Willimon

- God of your goodness give me yourself for you are sufficient for me.  I cannot ask for anything less.  If I were to ask less, I should always be in want.  In you alone do I have all.  Julian of Norwich.

Comments to:   lindyblack@me.com