Neil R's sermon

A number of people have asked for a transcript of Neil R's sermon from our Passion for Life guest service. Neil has kindly agreed, so here it is:


Bible stories often come in pairs:

Two creation narratives
Joseph and Potiphar’s wife: Judah and Tamar.
Dry ground in the Red Sea: water gushing from a rock in the desert.
David and Absalom: David and Ittai.
Paired parables, sometimes parables and miracles together
Herod’s banquet, Jesus feeding the 5,000.

In our readings today we have a couplet of stories in which two conversations are recorded side by side.

A Pharisee and a Samaritan Woman:

The Pharisees get a bad press as an elite of hypocritical, self-righteous bigots. They were certainly in constant conflict with Jesus and before St Paul got converted, he was a Pharisee busy stoning Stephen and breathing threats and murder against the believers. But in their culture they were well respected as devout, pious and godly men. Nicodemas, a member of the ruling elite, a man of power (although subject to Rome), influence and reputation comes to Jesus in the middle of the night, doubtless to protect his reputation.

The nameless woman, a Samaritan woman, meets him at mid-day. She has no reputation to protect; on husband number 5, her name was already shredded. She is an outcast among a despised caste of society. The exact origin of the Samaritans is obscure, but it seems that after the Assyrians conquered the northern tribes in about 720BC and took them captive, that other subjugated people were brought in. They felt the need to placate what they thought were the gods of their new land and mixed Judaism with a variety of other pagan practices and produced a hybrid religion. This was then a half-caste people with a half baked religion.

If you were to try and see the two ends of near-eastern society these would be it. The hostility between Jews and Samaritans had been going on for centuries; pure bred and half-cast, orthodox and heterodox. Just a few years before these conversations the relations between Jews and Samaritans had been further soured by the destruction of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerazim by John Hyrcanus and the desecration of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem by Samaritans spreading human bones.

The Jews and the Samaritans really hated each other and their spite was legendary. When the Jewish authorities wanted to insult Jesus they called him demon possessed, a Samaritan. When Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan, His audience could not even bring themselves to use the word. These two stories form a pair; Jesus in conversation with the devout and the down and out, at the Garrick and at a Greasy Spoon, Harrods and Mencap, the Ritz and a Night Shelter, Mother Teresa and Paris Hilton, Norman Tebbit and Arthur Scargill.

A man at mid-night and a woman at mid-day

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night

He came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.  Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

No street lights, Roman curfews, robbers at large and Jesus meets up with a senior politician who does not want to be seen with Him. Jesus is not offended, by the implicit insult. Jesus does not say, “So, you chicken, afraid to come and see me in day light eh? You would not want to find your picture in the Jerusalem Post with me now, would you?” No, Jesus enters into a deep discussion about the nature of identity, life and birth. A midnight encounter with His political opponent and He seeks no humiliating political capital, but treats him fairly and squarely.

No shade and the noon-day sun is beating down at the town well. Why does this woman come at such a crazy time? Her domestic disarray means she would not dare show her face at the well when respectable women would be there in the cool of the morning or the evening. She is the easy girl of Sychar and by the well stands a Jewish rabbi. Don’t miss the cultural innuendo here; Moses met his wife at a well, Isaac’s wife Rebecca was courted and found at the well. Let me read you P53 from Essad Bey:

Jesus is putting Himself in a very compromised situation here, open to all kinds of misinterpretation, but He does not send her away with any insults, nor does He abuse her in any way, but rather speaks to her with the deepest respect. This catches her quite off balance. The Mishnah says; “Engage not in too much conversation with women. They said this with regard to one's own wife, how much more [does the rule apply] with regard to another man's wife. Hence have the sages said: As long as a man engages in too much conversation with women, he causes evil to Himself, [for] he goes idle from [the study of] the words of the torah, so that his end will be that he will inherit gehinnom.”

Just observe His careful respect for the politician and the party girl. There is no side to this Saviour, just a deep longing for people of all parts of the social spectrum to come to salvation. Both desire it, both are deeply in need of this saviour.

Both recognised Jesus was someone special

Nicodemas said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”

“Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.”

Somewhere, deep down inside they both perceived that this Jesus was someone special. They had observed His actions and His words and recognised at least something divine about Him. When you look at the Gospel records, it is very hard to escape CS Lewis’s conclusion that He was either a lunatic, a liar or really was the Lord He claimed to be. You may have a sneaking admiration for Jesus, but do not damn Him with faint praise. Look at the evidence.

A lunatic might claim to be God, but does not generally win the deep affection and devotion of personal friends and large crowds. A lunatic might claim to be immortal, but cannot convince his family of his psychosis. A fraudster and a liar may trick a few people into allegiance, but not those who have been his daily companions for three years and who have seen him in all the situations life can throw up, including death. No-one is willing to die for a con artist. No man is a hero to his valet.

No, this Pharisee and this floozy both knew they had met someone very special.

New life within

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

He talks to one of new birth and to the other of a new source of life. He is not contradicting Himself, simply presenting the same truth in different ways. What you call life now, for one power for the other promiscuity, needs to be replaced with something new and eternal. When we seek meaning in the passing things of this life, prestige and passion, we find out so very quickly how they turn to dust and ashes in our hands, smoke in our eyes and to grit in our teeth. We need new birth, because we are all too well aware of the transience of this life. We need fresh water, because we all know how stagnant and bitter is the ditch we are drinking from.

In these conversations, Jesus only makes an oblique reference to His impending death; “like Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness”. But from this side of the cross we see that it is by His death and in His resurrection that God’s justice is satisfied, God’s love is declared, our sins are removed, our debt is cancelled, our slavery is abolished, death is broken, Satan is defeated and we find eternal life, new birth in the One that death could not hold. It is by His Holy Spirit that springs of living water bubble up from inside us. No more lowering the bucket of our soul into some stagnant well, but rather an insuppressible soul spring, fed by eternal currents of holiness, spills over into eternal life that starts now.

Literalist misunderstanding

Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?”

“Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

Was it just an obtuse misunderstanding, or were they doing what we all do when we hear something we do not want to engage with, find some fault with the apparent logic and take a detour. I can’t follow a Messiah who demands I pluck out my eye or cut off my hand. I can’t believe in a Saviour who tells me to hate my parents. I can’t put my trust in a God-man who says I must pick up my cross. And we hide behind deliberate misunderstandings and literalist readings so that we do not allow the truth to penetrate our defences.

What obstacles we pick up and place in front of the gate of heaven to trip us up and bar our way in. Jesus, cuts right to the chase with both of them.

Jesus points out their ignorance

Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?
You worship what you do not know;

You might be a banker and He says, “Can’t you figure this out?” You might be a doctor and He says, “Wrong diagnosis, sir!” You might be the life and soul of every party and He says, “Are you really enjoying this?” You might have won the lottery and He asks, “Where have you left your soul?” You might have written the Kama Sutra and He says, “The position of true love is washing the feet of those who will betray you.”

Spiritual worship

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth”

When I got married to Lucy, I said “with my body, I thee worship”. I was giving up my claim to physical, financial, emotional and every other form of autonomy. I was giving up my rights, I was being willingly captured and putting myself at the disposal of this person whom I adore. I was saying that I wanted there to be no veils of decency or deception behind which to hide. I was inviting her to mutual, covenanted disclosure.

Worship is the total giving of one person to another. When we come into a relationship with God, He sees everything, there are no secrets. We pray this prayer; “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden”

Psalms 139
O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.

Proverbs 15:11
Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the LORD;
how much more the hearts of the children of man!

Hebrews 4:13
And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

He sees everything. God wants the worship of our hearts and He wants it to be true devotion; objectively and subjectively true. What do I mean by that?

Objective truth means that He wants accurate, right and verifiable truth to be the source of our worship. Aaron made a golden calf and said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” It was worship, but the object of their worship was not based in truth. How easy it is for us to exchange the God who made heaven and earth, the eternal Spirit, with some material counterfeit. He says to this woman at the well, “you worship what you do not know” and the common substitutes are people, prosperity, pleasure and power. How easy it is to exchange the truth for a lie.

Subjective truth means a right and accurate self-appraisal. Jesus told the story of a Pharisee and a tax-collector going up to the temple to pray. The Pharisee full of self-addicted conceit praised God that He was not like other men. The tax-collector would not lift his eyes to heaven, but rather groaned out that the Lord would have mercy on him a sinner. The taxman’s worship arose out of truth, an accurate self-assessment; the Pharisee’s out of a lie.

Our worship must come out of a true perception of God and a true assessment of ourselves, but it must also be in spirit. It is difficult to know whether this is spirit with a capital S or a small s. But probably both are true. God is deeply concerned about the orientation of our hearts, not the orientation of our prayer mat. God is deeply concerned about the purity of your soul, not the cut of your suit, the state of your heart, not the length of your skirt, your spiritual account rather than your bank account. He wants to infuse our spirits with His Holy Spirit so that our worship can be pure and holy and acceptable and what He wants it to be.

When God created humankind, He made them in His own likeness and breathed His Spirit into them. When God recreates us, He turns us ever more into the likeness of the Lord Jesus and breathes His Spirit into us

This Saviour meets people at all points of the social spectrum with respect
This Saviour offers new birth, He offers living water.
This Saviour confronts our ignorance and confusion
This Saviour sees right into the deep recesses of our beings
This Saviour offers eternal life
This Saviour demands true and spiritual worship

I don’t know where you are between these two stories, between midnight and mid-day, between the Pharisee and the floozy, between respectability and disgrace. But Jesus knows, Jesus sees right through your disguises, Jesus meets you with respect and with devastating and penetrating truth, Jesus invites you to new life and to receive from Him inner spring of eternal life, Jesus wants you to worship the Father in Spirit and truth.

There is a beautiful old prayer of David and it goes like this:

Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my anxious thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!

If you want this new birth, this spring of eternal life, then pray it after me and come and see Mike or me and tell us what you have done. If you are not yet ready to pray this prayer, then sign up for Simply Christianity and dig deeper. If you know the Lord, but have been hiding behind a few fig-leaves of late, then let Him back in; you haven’t fooled Him one bit.

Thank you for inviting us to be with you this weekend. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as we have.