Gateway Church Australia
Rick Paynter - Woman at the Well
Well, good morning. Gateway is part of the A-to-A church movement in Australia, and we recently hosted our 2024 annual church conference. The theme was "The Jesus Way," and we looked into who he is and how he can follow his ministry footsteps. As following Jesus is the direction in which all Christians are called to live, it seems important also to find out more about what he is like. So let me ask you, how do you picture Jesus? In your mind's eye, who do you imagine him to be? Well, my prayer is that we'll get insights into his life today, for I believe all my heart, soul, and strength that he is the most remarkable man who ever lived. Jesus is described in the New Testament section of the Bible in this way. Christ is the divine portrait, the true likeness of the invisible God. So in Christ, we get a picture of what God is truly like. In the gospel biographies of his life, Jesus met many different people from many walks of life, different nationalities and religions. But he showed particular concern for imperfect people, poor people, marginalised people, rejected people, people that the social elites of the day had judged unacceptable, people who were excluded from normal social life. But when people met Jesus, everything in their lives changed for the good. Well, Saul of Tarsus was one such man, a legalistic Jewish Pharisee, a persecutor and executioner of Christians in the first century AD. But after having a vision of the resurrected Christ as he travelled to Damascus, he was radically changed beyond anything he could have imagined. And he was included by Jesus in his mission. He later said, Christ's love has moved me to such extremes that his love has the first and last word in everything I do. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own. Well, he's now known in history as the apostle Paul. Perhaps the greatest apostle of Christ with half of the New Testament's 27 books attributed to his writing. On another occasion, Jesus met a woman at a well who was a religious and social outcast yet Jesus had compassion for her situation and welcomed her into the Christian faith. How did this happen? Well, he's a bit of background to give context. She was a Samaritan and Samaritans are Jews who intermarried with Canaanites who are a mixed race of people. Their new religion was also considered by Jews to be inferior for they worshipped in their own temple, not the one in Jerusalem. Well, obviously she's also a woman. A Jewish man like Jesus was forbidden from talking to women on their own. She's also someone her own people had judged unworthy. As we'll see later, she'd had five husbands and is now in a de facto relationship. So to the story which we can find in the gospel of John 4. The woman comes to draw water in the heat of the day, not only mourning with other women to avoid contact and presumably to avoid more judgment about her life choices. She is a marginalised person within her own marginalised town. Enter Jesus, who not only acknowledges her, he asks her for help. Then engages her in a discussion about what it means to be acceptable to God. In so doing, Jesus reaches across barriers of race, culture, gender, and faith. See, he meets her alone at the well of Jacob. It's an outrageous thing for him to do, a Jewish rabbi and the woman knows it. He is tired and thirsty and has travelled into an arid country. So he asks her for a drink and she calls out the scandal of it. He tells her if she knew who he was, she'd ask him for a drink of living water and she scoffs her, are you better than our ancestor Jacob who dug this well? He says for her to go and get her husband. So he can explain it to them both. And she says she has no husband. And Jesus replies, you've had five husbands and you're not married to the man you now live with. This shows Jesus has extraordinary prophetic insight and it's also a fascinating exchange about God, worship and religion. But it also shows that she was a curious, bold and intelligent person, aware of her spiritual heritage and flaws. So what is Jesus helping her understand by asking gently for this drink? That he has something as basic and necessary to her spiritual life as water is vital to her physical life. It's living water that only God can provide. Jesus promises that this living water will satisfy from the inside and last for eternity and is unrelated to the external practice of religion and ritual that divides the Jews and Samaritans. Jesus talks to her about soul satisfaction, contentment and joy, about acceptance by God, about the inclusiveness of true Christian faith and of the eventual removal of barriers to true worship for all who would believe. What Jesus says is very confusing to her and doesn't fit her lived experience. So she tells him that when the Messiah comes, he'll explain it all to her. Jesus then reveals his identity as being the Messiah she hopes for. The woman overjoyed, leaves her water jar and runs into town to tell everyone. She says, come and see a man who knows everything about me, yet it accepts me. Could he possibly be the Messiah? The Apostle John records that as a result of her testimony, many, many Samaritans believed in Jesus. Here's an interesting side note. John's gospel tells us that Jesus was going from Judea to Galilee, but not by the usual Eastern trade route by the Jordan River that avoids Samaria. Instead, he went directly via a village of Saika in Samaria, an arid and dangerous area. Why? Scholars suggest Jesus deliberately did this just to meet this woman. So what happened to her after meeting Jesus? While the Bible does not name her, the Eastern Orthodox Church tradition has preserved her story in the biographies of the early Christian Saints. Now I was in that area last year on a tour and it's quite extraordinary how the Eastern Orthodox Church has preserved much of our Christian heritage. In the stories they preserved, she is given the name Fatini, which means Enlighten One. So she is the first person to be told by Jesus that he is the Messiah. He enlightens her. And her testimony brought many, many Samaritans to faith. So she is revered in Eastern Orthodox faith as the mother of all evangelists. Well, we don't really know what she looked like, but he's an artist's impression of her, notice she's surrounded by a halo of living water and water droplets radiate from her as the symbol of her evangelistic gift. What more do we know from scripture and church tradition about Fatini? She is a misunderstood character. Contrary to popular commentary on her life, Jesus never called her a sinner, nor did he ever ask her to repent. Now, scholars assume she was an adulterer or a divorcee, but yet as you read the text that doesn't support this view, what is true is she was in what we'd call today a de facto relationship and unmarried. Her marital history is mixed. Her historical context may help explain her situation. She wouldn't be accepted in marriage if she'd been an adulterous or divorcee. So the previous five husbands didn't end that way. She possibly was cast aside for other reasons or she left in shame, maybe being unable to give her husband's children. And in that culture, women were not allowed a life independent of men. So her many marriages were her way of surviving, literally. Or she may simply have outlived her husbands. That's actually the more popular view. Some scholars believe it's possible Jesus tells her marital history to show how hard her life was and the barriers that she had to faith, not to shame her, but to reveal to her insights of her life that only God and she would know. We also know she's a seeker of truth. Her story is one of the longest in the Bible about a woman. And scholars say it's the longest recorded conversation Jesus has with anyone, man or woman. Even so, she was not just a passive listener, but an engaged, questioner and thinker. And she's honest with Jesus about who she is. We also know she is a credible witness. When she returned to her community, she spoke publicly about her shame. She then told them of the Messiah and how he had accepted her. And she excitedly told them of how God now accepted Jews and Samaritans equally. That it was the heart of faith and worship, not the place that mattered to God. Spirit and truth, Jesus called her. The town accepted her testimony because of the obvious change in her. And they believed her enough to go en masse out to see Jesus for themselves. And we know she's considered the mother of evangelists. Church tradition records, she was baptized by the disciples during that two day stay Jesus had in that town. And she spent the rest of her life sharing the good news of Jesus throughout Samaria. She possibly travels as far as Carthage, now Tunisia in North Africa. And she's also said to have gone to Rome to witness to Emperor Nero, who eventually martyred her for her faith in around AD 60. So, that's for teeny. What do we learn about Jesus for this story? First, there's no barrier Jesus won't cross. Race, culture, gender, faith, sexuality, even death, to reach us with his love. In her book inspired, Christian author the late Rachel held Evans once said, "What makes the gospel offensive to many people? isn't who it keeps out, but who it lets in." So, what about you? Are there things in your life, things you have done that you think keep you from a full relationship with God? Give Jesus the opportunity and He'll meet you anywhere, anytime. He crossed the universe to come to earth because He loves us. Secondly, God uses any willing and humble heart, not perfect people, to include all men and women in His Kingdom. Now, God is not blind to sin in our lives, and how we separate ourselves from His love. But Jesus doesn't wait for our perfection. He lovingly moves towards us, and it only requires our faith and trust in Him to see the barriers come down. Do you want to see how this story played out? There is a remarkable portrait of this woman in the video series that shows which I love and I highly recommend. It's a beautiful portrayal of Christ and His gospel and the early church. In it, you'll see for Teeny Discover, Jesus is the Messiah, and we can discover that too. For to know Him is to know God, and that my friends, changes everything. 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