Meeting God
at a Dead End
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,
but whoever drinks the
water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water
I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal
life.” John 4:13-14
Scene 1: The Road to Konigswinter
When I was in my early twenties, my late wife and I made trip to Holland
to visit her birthplace and see all the relatives I had only heard of. We
planned to rent a car in Holland and travel down the Rhine into Switzerland
and Italy. The family were a bit disconcerted at our plan, especially that
I would take a young bride to Italy. You know the reputation of Italian
men!
But since we would not be deterred, we were told, "you must got to Konigswinter".
"Oh yes, Konigswinter is a must."
So we looked it up on a map, saw it was just south of Bonn and headed
out. To get to Konigswinter, we had to leave the autobahn and head along
a secondary route that took us in and out of one town after another. Well
in this one town, the highway disappeared in the middle of the town, with
no apparent route markings, or if there were, we missed them.
After driving round and round, we saw a fellow who seemed like he knew
where he was going and decided to follow him.
I was driving an Opel Kadet and he was in his VW beetle. Despite giving
away about twenty horsepower, I managed to keep up to him, but as we wheeled
around corners, changed lanes and seemed to pick up speed as we went along,
I stuck to his bumper like glue. He seemed to be leading us away from the
main center of town, but I was determined to stay with him. I was committed
and he knew where he was going. He did. He was going home for lunch and I
followed him right up into his driveway. He leapt from the car and ran in
the house. I imagine the conversation once he got inside.
"Hilda. Hilda, call the police! Some crazy guy with Dutch license plates
chased me all the way home."
We quickly found out way out of town and back onto the autobahn.
We never did find Konigswinter.
I think its like Shangri-La or El Dorado: a place to tantalize the imagination,
beckoning the unsuspecting.
And from that experience here is one definition of a dead end.
A dead end is where you end up when
you run out of roads to where you want to go.
That's also a definition of sin...missing the mark.
Scene 2: A deserted well outside a Samaritan town called Sychar. It's
near noon.
Jesus and his disciples leave Judea headed back home to Galilee. Normally
Jews did not go through Samaria which lay between Galilee and Judea. That's
because Samaria was a dead end territory filled with dead end people, and
Jews avoided them like the plague.
Samaria is what was left of the ancient kingdom of Israel after the Assyrians
were done with them.
Even before Israel fell to Assyria, it had been badly led by kings and
queens who turned their back on God and their faith and brought in all manner
of unclean and pagan elements...Kings like Ahab and Queens like Jezebel.
Finally God was done with them and crushed them like you crush a cracker
into your soup.
The Assyrians deported the leaders of the nation and brought in people
from all around to settle the territory.
The northern tribes of Israel were no more. The Samaritans were people
partly of Jewish background and partly pagan background, but their national
and religious identity was such a scrambled egg that they really were hardly
a people at all.
There was no "Samaritan" history to speak of. They had memories of being
Jewish but only bits and pieces.
They were like if you took the bits and pieces of several broken pictures
and then glued them all together.
Whatever the original was was lost even if a familiar image here and there
might be recognized.
They were a dead end society because they had no real identity and did
not survive the Roman diaspora when Rome crushed Judea and Galilee in 70 AD.
The Jews survived as a culture and religion. The Samaritans did not. They
blended and were forgotten.
And so here is Jesus where few Jews cared to be.
He is tired and at mid day he is thirsty and alone. His friends have gone
into town to buy some food to eat.
But he is not alone for long.
Along comes a lone woman to draw water from the well.
Countless writers have commented on the fact she comes alone at mid-day
to draw water when it would be normal for the women to come together in the
cool of the morning or evening to draw water.
What we learn about her tips us off that she is likely a bit of an outcast
in her own town.
And so she comes alone.
She is a dead ended woman in a dead end society.
But she is not alone. Unknown to her, the Lord of the Universe is with
her at the well.
She sees Jesus, but is not the first to speak.
He says to her, "May I have a drink of water?"
She looks at him in astonishment and says, "You are asking me for water?
What's this, Jews don't talk to Samaritans"
Not only that, but no Jew would ever drink from the same cup as a Samaritan.
Besides that, Jewish men were warned about talking much to women in the
first place let alone a Samaritan woman.
She may have wondered a lot of things about this man, but whatever she
thought, Jesus speaks again.
He says, "If you knew who was asking you for water, you would ask me for
living water instead"
She replies incredulously, "Living water? Our father Jacob gave us this
well. Are you greater than Jacob, besides the well is very deep and you have
no bucket."
Jesus responds, "Anyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. Whoever
drinks the water I give will never be thirsty again, in fact a spring of
living water will well up from within."
Does she begin to understand he is not talking about H2O? We are not sure.
But she does ask. She says, "Please let me have some of your living water,
so I won't be thirsty and I won't have to come here and draw water again."
Can you feel the pathos?
So I won't have to come out here and draw water alone, or worse come when
the other women are here and be the town outcast.
Jesus moves to the heart of her issue, her dead end.
He says, "Bring your husband."
She replies "I have no husband". It is true but only half the story.
Jesus finishes the story for her.
He says, "true you have no husband now, but you have had five husbands,
though the man you are with now is not your rightful husband."
Now you know the reason for her isolation.
You can imagine in a small community why none of the other women want
to have anything to do with her.
THEY have husbands and they probably do everything in their power to keep
her away.
Ask any woman who has been divorced or a widow what its like being around
other women's husbands.
You want to be as welcome as the fox at a chicken round up, try being
in those shoes.
What's her issue? We don't know what its about for her. Some would label
as co-dependent or addicted to destructive relationships, and so forth.
One group I was in asked the question and out of my mouth came the word
"optimism".
She was looking for love in all the wrong places but she hadn't given
up believing it was possible.
She reminds me of Ponce De Leon riding all over Florida in search of the
Fountain of Youth.
Futile but you have to admire the determination.
When she hears Jesus the penny begins to drop.
She says, you are surely a prophet, but if we are talking about God, what
am I to do?
Samaritans believe we worship here on Gerizim, but you Jews insist Jerusalem
is the only place.
Jesus doesn't even begin to try to unscramble that egg. Its too far down
the road and besides it would not help her anyway.
He does acknowledge however that her religious history is also a dead
end.
He says, salvation comes from the Jews and we know who we worship.
In other words, you can't get there from here. The road to the mountain
or the road to Jerusalem aren't going to help you.
What you need is something totally transforming.
It is similar to what he said to a good Jewish teacher. You can't get
there from here. You need to be reborn.
To the woman at the well, you need a different kind of water.
He does answer her question, however.
He says the road to God is not through your mountain or Jerusalem.
'The time is coming when all who come to God will do so in spirit and
in truth."
It is not about racial purity, or religious history.
If you want to know God, ask honestly and really mean it.
Just then, perhaps on prompting by the Holy Spirit or some common memory
pops to the surface.
She remembers the promise of Messiah, the Christ.
That much they share in common.
It is enough.
He says to her "That is me"
And she believes him.
I find this woman absolutely incredible.
Here she is, someone who has seen all kinds of men, and paid the price
of isolation for it.
Now she is approached by a Jewish man for water.
A cynic would have thought, "Oh sure, it's water you want, isn't it?"
But regardless of what veneer or toughness or cynicism she might have
carried, there is an amazing openness to her.
And her dead ended heart that has refused to give up hoping or looking,
recognizes the real thing when she sees it.
Scene 3 Back in Town
Just then Jesus disciples turn up and question him about why he is talking
to this woman. They are maybe a bit scandalized.
But she just leaves her water jar behind and heads back into town to tell
everyone who she has just met.
"A prophet who told me everything I had ever done!"
You know in the presence of God there is an advantage to having no reputation
at all.
There is nothing left to lose and you can just be yourself.
Isn't that what Janis Joplin sang...
freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.1.
And guess what...they believe her.
Something must have happened for her to behave like this, and she is putting
it all on the line.
How wonderful too.
No matter that the community has likely shut her out.
She is inviting them in.
A definition of evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where
to find bread.
Her shame is gone and all she can do is share her good fortune.
You have to love her for that.
And so, this dead ended woman in this dead ended society has found the
way out.
And in sharing the way out she has become a doorway to her dead ended
friends.
John writes that the community does come and meet Jesus. They invite him
to stay and he does, for two days.
Their hunger for a way out of their spiritual isolation and their thirst
for an authentic encounter with a God they have only heard about is all
Jesus needs to be the Way, the Truth and the Life for them.
And so we see what it means to be at a dead end in life.
The truth of the matter is that it doesn't actually have to mean that
much, when Jesus is with you at the well.
When Jesus is with you at the well, a dead end is just a doorway you hadn't
seen before.
It is a new window into the ways of God.
Because isn't that the place where God is most likely to meet us anyway?
What are our enduring symbols?
The cross, primarily.
Talk about a dead end.
But where else does God supremely meet us but at the cross?
And the communion table.
What God is telling us is that it is not when we are good, when we are
strong, when we are right that God approves of us and meets us. It is when
we come to his table, to his cross and acknowledge that we are weak, poor,
miserable and in the wrong.
That's when our dead ends turn into doorways to the heart of God.
And curiously enough the truth of that was right there in front of the
people of Sychar, but they could not see it.
I don't mean Jesus specifically.
I mean that mountain the woman talked about. Mount Gerizim by Jacob's
well.
When Joshua came into the land he was instructed by God to come to Gerizim
and its neighboring mountain, Ebal.
Gerizim was the mountain of blessing.
Ebal was the mountain of curse.
He was to build the altar of worship, not on Gerizim, but on Ebal, the
mountain of curse.
That is totally counter intuitive and the Samaritans knew something was
special about the mountain but got it all mixed up and built their worship
site on Gerizim the mountain of blessing. Who wouldn't?
But the scripture says come to the cross first. The place of the curse.
Because we do not come in our strength or our goodness.
We come in our sin. As he said to the woman, in Spirit and in Truth.
I heard someone say you don't come to church once you've got your life
all together and squared up anymore than you wait to clean up before you take
a bath. That's what its for.
And so a dead end is the most likely of all places for you to find God
because that is probably the time when you are most ready to put aside pretense
and acknowledge, He showed me everything I ever did.
And he forgave it and gave me living water.
I could read you dozens of stories of people who found God and new life
not just at their dead end, but specifically because of their dead end. The
same is true for you too.
You feel like you are at a dead end in life?
You may be closer to finding the pathway than you ever were if you turn
to the one who is there with you at the well.
Why not spend some time in truth and Spirit. Be honest. Ask him for his
Living Water.
Ask for a new plan, His plan.
Are you ready for a new definition of a dead end?
A dead end is just a doorway you have not opened yet.
Remember Jesus says in Revelation 3:20.
Behold I stand at the door and knock. To anyone who opens,
I will come in and feast with them.
A dead end woman became a doorway to a community that had rejected her.
But then she had Jesus to talk to.
Oh yes, so do you.
Lets talk to him now.
Preached February 24, 2008
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian
Church
Victoria, British Columbia
Notes
1. Kris Kristopherson and Fred Foster "Me and Bobby
McGee"
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