Opening the Door to Hope: Prayer, John 4:1-15, 3/16/14

Sermon 3-16-14 the woman at the well prayer

4 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— ² although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. ³ So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. ⁴ Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. ⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.^[a]) ¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “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.” ¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² 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?” ¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” ¹⁵ 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.”

The series…..opening a door of hope

Today.  Prayer. 

Certainly if there is anything that would open a door it would be prayer.

 I have read much and thought much about prayer in the past few years. 

I have written about it and talked with you at length about some of my thoughts.

Though I think repetition is good and important for learning, and though I think my prayer stuff is good stuff -  I am not going to give you the same stuff again.

Today I want to talk about the woman in this story and what I think is the pivotal moment of the encounter.

When She says, sir, give me this water.

 I have been thinking about healthy prayer

I am concluding that All healthy prayer is asking for more of God

The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray

          Thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory

The common man in the temple prayed– God be merciful to me a sinner

Thief on the cross- Jesus remember me

Jesus on the cross – Father into thy hands I commit

 I may pray for a sickness to be healed

I may pray for a relationship to be healed

But at the end of every prayer and the heart of all prayer

Is not, give me what I want, it is – I trust you

All prayer should include the line….i trust you.  No matter what.

I am asking for this, but what I need most of all is you

At the root of my life – I want more of you

I want more of you because I sense that you are the real thing

I sense that you are the living water

I sense that you are the ground of my being

If I have more of you, everything will be ok

So here is this encounter w this woman

Jesus is journeying thru Samaria

Samaritans were left behind during the Babylonian captivity

They intermarried and picked a new place to worship

When the remnant returned

They resented the Samaritans

They intermarried, they changed the faith

They don’t look like us.  And they didn’t suffer

They had it easy

There was a great divide. Jew did not eat with Samaritans. 

They did not share a cup.

MAP

On a journey They often took the long way around to avoid them

Not jesus

And so They meet at a well in the middle of the day

Maybe she is a prostitute

She is looking for a job

No self respecting husband would allow his wife to be out there alone

Jesus asks her for a drink……..she questions him

They get into a discussion about water

She asks for water

He asks about her husband

Kind of a non Jesus move

Usually Jesus heals people when they ask.  Gives them the goods.

Not this time.

He asks about her husband.

He is not insulting her, he is not judging her, he is establishing her need

She is still thinking of water as the kind in the well.

She does not understand that Jesus is running a little deeper

He does not get hung up on the fact that she wants to worship somewhere else

Jesus does not get hung up on the fact that she has 5 husbands

[this is the part of the story where I always feel badly for people who actually have been married five time!]

We have made a big deal of this……..how loose she is

Maybe there is something else going on

I apologize for how I have talked about this in the past.

She must be a loose woman……

Maybe there is something else going on

Women in Jesus day did not make decisions regarding marriage and divorce

They were property

When her husband died or kicked her out, she had to find another man to take care of her

She has had to do this five times

The woman is broken

She has settled for this kind of life

Jesus looks past this

But he helps her see the depth of her need.

Before she was shallow……..

Now he has reached more deeply into her life.

Shallow prayers vs deeper prayers

Where does a need hit you?

When life gets ahold of us, we have a great opportunity to get ahold of God

this encounter with jesus  that changes her

He offers her something better

She runs off and tells her friends

It changes the community

³⁹ Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. ⁴¹ And because of his words many more became believers.

⁴² They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

He didn’t just hang w a samaritain woman

He didn’t just eat with them

He didn’t just drag the disciples along for this adventure

He stayed with them for two days!

He treated them like normal people

Because they are

Jesus love changes her and she shares her newfound faith.

She found the people in her sphere of influence

She told them.  I have found someone who has changed my life……..

yesterday She is trying to survive-

recovering from a life of rejection.

Making money the only way that she can

Lost, discouraged, and down.

Is this the story of your life?

Do you ever feel like you are trying to survive?

There is a better way.

Jesus talks about the water.  The living water.

It is the presence of the holy spirit that comes into the life of a person that asks.

It is gods amazing grace.

It is available to anyone who asks

And it will change your life

whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The root of every prayer is “God I want more of you.”

Call upon him.  You will be glad that you did.