Well it’s good to be back.
We all had a fun time at Disney World in Florida. I took some family
pictures - with Chip, of Chip and Dale, with Mickey Mouse, the guys from
Monster’s Inc., Pluto and Goofy. Of course all of this was a great deal of
fun. But as we spent several days there and saw so many little kids I began
to feel sorry for these people who have to be these characters day in and
day out. Sure, they are popular and the kids love them, but you will notice
that they never are able to show any expression except what their plastic
faces project. I mean, no one ever knows if what is on the inside of Pluto
– whether he is sad, or mad – he’s always got the same smiley face. Every
day no matter how that person who plays the part of Pluto feels they have to
don the costume, put up with little Jimmy pulling his ears, listen to the
same old jokes, and do the same old poses and never let out a peep. Pluto’s
face is always the same.
Of course the whole idea of
wearing a mask, of putting on a face has become a picture of how we often
act in our culture. No matter how we feel on in the inside there are some
people who put on the proverbial mask and refuse to show people how they are
truly feeling.
And we know this to be true
especially in the church. There is a perception out there that the church
is filled with perfect people and so when you come to worship there is a
feeling that you have to put on your best face, your “victory in Jesus
face”, to act any other way it seems would betray the truth of the glorious
gospel we proclaim and follow. If we let people know our true feelings, our
doubts, our questions, our insecurities, our failures, well, that would be
letting the cause down, and we would be seen as less than truly Christian.
Other times we wear masks
because we think that is what we should do – certainly my parents never
allowed their true emotions to show at church. That wasn’t proper.
Sometimes we wear masks
because we have this projected image of what a Christian should be like.
During my holiday I read one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, the
Biography of Elizabeth Sherrill called “All the Way to Heaven”. She is a
gifted writer who has co-written such Christian classics as The Hiding
Place, God’s Smuggler, and The Cross and the Switchblade.
And in her book she tells of how for years and years and years she had to go
to therapy for issues from her childhood – her break downs were debilitating
and devastating. But she was never ever able to tell anyone about it,
because after all Christians shouldn’t have issues, should they?
Very often we get this
picture from a distorted view of Scripture that focuses on the all the good
qualities of the saints that have gone on before us - Abraham, Moses, David,
the disciples, Paul, - all great people of faith - but fails to focus on all
the poor qualities. They were human with human failings as Scripture makes
clear, but we often forget when it comes to evaluating ourselves.
Sometimes we wear these
masks to protect ourselves from hurt. After all, if we were truly show
people how we feel, we may be ridiculed or rejected. Who wants to
experience any of that? It would seem better to put on a mask and play a
role rather than show any true feelings.
Sometimes we wear these
masks to win people’s approval. We think, “If people knew what we were
really like, they would never accept me.” So I will project what I think
they want and I will be part of the group.
Whatever the reason, we
often wear emotional masks, personality masks, masks with fixed expressions,
never allowing people to see how we truly feel on the inside.
And after awhile wearing
these masks can be emotionally, spiritually, physically, exhausting. Like
those characters at Disney, always having to project an image can be
exhausting. And I think as painful as it is sometimes to let our masks down
and allow people to see our true selves, it is what we long for. We thirst
for transparency, we long for a genuine relationship – for someone who will
love us as we are. We long to be able to be genuine without being ridiculed
or rejected.
This morning I would like to
suggest to you that in Jesus is one with whom we can be genuine – and not
fear rejection, being ridiculed – in fact we will find healing.
I don’t know if you have
noticed through your reading of the gospel of John or not, but Jesus has an
amazing ability to get behind the mask that people wear. Last week Colin
preached on the John chapter 3, Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. This
man, part of the religious elite comes under the cloak of darkness – talk
about a mask - and before the learned, powerful, respected, orthodox,
theologically trained, Nicodemus can say any more than a word of
introduction, Jesus says, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is
born again.” Jesus just cuts right to the issue. He gets behind the
mask of religosity, of tradition and gets to the heart of Nicodemus’ need.
And as you read that
conversation, it seems so disjointed because Nicodemus is all about this
mask of superficial religion and Jesus doesn’t allow this religious ruler to
wear his mask but gets to the essential issue immediately.
In the encounter we read of
today, Jesus gets behind the mask. Jesus meets a woman at the well. Now
here is a woman who knows how to wear a mask. She comes to the well at the
sixth hour (verse 6). If we start counting the hours from 6 in the morning,
as the people of that time did, that would make the sixth hour 12 noon. In
the heat of the day. For a woman to come to the local well at this time of
day is unusual – traditionally women would come to the well either early or
late in the day – anything to avoid the melting Mediterranean heat. Clearly
this woman has not come to the well to socialize – in fact just the
opposite, to hide.
On other days I’m sure she
was able to draw the water in complete isolation, no one to bother her, no
one to accuse her, no one to question her or talk to her. She could simply
get her water and go home.
You see, this woman has
issues. She has a past. She has had five husbands. Even in our day of
liberal-thinking people would raise their eyebrows at someone who had gone
through five husbands. Those of you who have been divorced know the pain of
one divorce – but five? In those days it was paramount to prostitution.
And the man she was with at this moment wasn’t even her husband. While she
may wear a brave face on the outside, guilt and shame are her constant
companions.
No doubt people are
talking. So she wears a mask, trying desperately to live as ordinary a life
as possible, without allowing anyone in, without allowing anyone to see the
true broken, hurting person she is.
But I would suggest that
she’s thirsty. She thirsts for transparency, for a genuine relationship –
for someone who will love her as she is. She longs to be able to be genuine
without being ridiculed or rejected. Do you have that thirst?
Well, on this day – she
meets Jesus, the one who has this ability to get underneath the mask. The
one who with whom she can be genuine and not fear rejection, being ridiculed
– in fact she will find healing.
You know, Jesus has this
unsettling ability to perceive what is going on in people’s hearts. He
knows that our deepest need lies beyond what we will eat and what we will
wear and what we will drink. Don’t misunderstand, it’s not that’s he not
interested in these things – no, He knows that we need these things, after
all He instructs us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” But
He knows that this is not our essential need. No, there is a deeper thirst
that must be addressed especially when are wearing masks to cover our pain,
our sorrow, our hurts, our failures, our sin.
A woman who had come to the
well in hiding meets the very person who can get underneath the mask that
she is projecting – seeking to protect herself from further rejection and
pain, but she meets the one who can get underneath the mask, but who can
heal the pain, the brokenness the sin, underneath the mask.
It’s that Jesus I want us to
discover this morning. Have you met that Jesus? Let’s just trace the
progress of their discussion for a moment – I think it is a discussion that
is replayed over and over again in our own individual lives as we interact
with Jesus. You will notice at verse 7 that Jesus begins the conversation.
He says, “Will you give me a drink?” He starts the process. He knocks at
the door. He begins the dialogue.
And I think this is the way
He is with us all. From the beginning of time, that’s the way God has been
with us, His creation. Adam and Eve sin and God comes looking for them as
He walks in the cool of the garden and asks, “Adam, where are you?” He
starts the conversation. He is always knocking at the door of our heart,
always calling us, always providing us with the means to begin a dialogue
with Him.
Scripture says that Jesus
came full of grace and truth. This is a part of His grace. He comes to us,
He doesn’t wait for us to come to Him. Like the father in the story that is
often called The Prodigal Son the father is searching for the son, and while
the son was still along way off the father runs to the son. Jesus begins
the conversation. I wonder what kind of dialogue Jesus is looking to begin
with you and me today?
Then notice what the woman
says at verse 9, “Yeah, right! What are you doing talking to me? I am a
Samaritan woman. And you are talking to me?” John the author helps us out
and whispers from stage right, “Jews do not associate with Samaritans”.
I don’t have time to examine
all the reasons, but suffice it say that there were huge religious and
social reasons that Jews did not associate with Samaritans. And if being a
Samaritan wasn’t enough of a block for Jesus, she is a Samaritan WOMAN. And
again, it just wasn’t done in that day for a man to engage a woman in
conversation. And so she says, “You can’t be talking to me, can you?”
I think this is sometimes
the way we react to Jesus. He comes to us perhaps through the words of a
friend, or a piece of Scripture, or an inclination in our spirit, or in the
midst of worship, or in the experience of the beauty of nature and we react,
“You can’t be talking to me are you?” And we throw up all sorts of reasons
why he couldn’t be talking to us, “I’m this, or this, or this I don’t go to
church regularly I don’t think you want to be talking to me. Or, I’ve got
some sin in my past you may not know about – and I would really like to keep
it that way – but I don’t think you want to be talking to me. Or I have
sinful thoughts, I don’t pray regularly. You can’t be talking to me.”
And we know Him, and we know
ourselves and we say, “You are so holy, and we are so unholy.” It’s as if
we are trying to protect Him – don’t talk to us, you’ll mess up your
holiness, God. Don’t hang around us – you’ll become unclean.
But what we fail to remember
is that Jesus is one who is never defiled by what He touches or by those
around Him. Others touch lepers and they become unclean – they catch the
very disease – Jesus touches lepers and brings healing.
Jesus begins the
conversation and He begins the conversation knowing who we are and does not
hesitate to approach us. And like His conversation with the Samaritan woman
He persists - showing that the masks that we throw up to keep Him at arms
length mean nothing to Him. He is deeply interested in you, He is deeply
interested in the Samaritan woman.
Jesus says to her at verse
10, “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.” And
again, we see Jesus’ ability to get to the heart of the matter. He offers
her first of all a gift – a present. Free, unmerited, a gift.
What’s the gift? Living
water. That’s an interesting phrase. On one level it speaks of water that
is bubbling up from the ground – unlike stagnant pools, living water is that
which is fresh and running, alive with nutrients and goodness. This is the
level that the woman understands Jesus to mean.
On another level the Old
Testament prophets, Jeremiah in particular (Jeremiah 2:3) would speak of
living water comparing it to God and His goodness. Other Old Testament
prophets speak of a time when living water would flow out of Jerusalem
(Zechariah 14:8; Ezekiel 47:9). It speaks of God’s grace and the
transforming power of the God’s own Spirit.
So what Jesus offers the
woman is a complete new life. He offers to take those stagnant pools of
pain and sorrow and failure and sin and replace it with His own living
water, His life. And this is what He offers us. He offers us living water,
His own life.
The woman doesn’t understand
it all – she doesn’t understand who Jesus is, she doesn’t understand the
full nature of what Jesus is offering her, but she wants the living water so
she doesn’t have to keep coming to the well. “Sir,” she says, “give me this
water.”
And at verse 16 Jesus says,
wait a minute – you don’t understand your true need. And it is here that He
begins to gently take off the masks that this woman hides behind and he
says, “Go, call you husband and come back.”
What’s He doing? Why is He
opening this wound? He obviously knows the woman’s state – with prophetic
insight He tells her she’s had five husbands – her past and present state,
the man you are now with is not your husband. Why?
I believe Jesus is bringing
her to the place where she can admit her brokenness. To her credit she
truthfully says, “I have no husband.” And there’s the issue. It’s
brought out in the open.
Isn’t that way that Jesus
deals with us all? He begins the conversation – He offers us newness of
life, but we must admit our brokenness. We have to take off the mask and
say, this is where I’m at Jesus. This is my bitterness, this is my failure,
this is my sin, this is my brokenness.
Why can’t Jesus just zap us
and heal our brokenness? Why do I have to admit my pain, failures and sin
to Him? I don’t think it has anything to do with Him. He can zap us and
heal us, if He wanted to, I’m sure. I think this has everything to do with
us. It’s not until I am willing to admit that there’s something wrong.
It’s not until I’m willing to lower my mask and admit that I’m broken that
I’m able to receive the new life that Jesus offers to give to us.
Long ago King David
experienced this very thing. He said in Psalm 32 that when he kept his
brokenness to himself, his sin, his strength was sapped, as in the heat of
summer, but then when he acknowledged his sin he experienced the forgiveness
of God, the healing of God.
And do you know we don’t
need to fear doing this, we do not need to fear admitting our brokenness to
Jesus Christ? I think one of the loveliest pictures of Jesus our Lord is
given to us in the Old Testament, Isaiah 42 – with prophetic insight looks
to the time of God’s Anointed coming and He states that “a bruised reed
he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.”
Sometimes I feel like a
bruised reed – I don’t like to admit it and I don’t like to share it with
others – but I need not fear to share it with Jesus because He will not
break a bruised reed with ridicule or sarcasm or condemnation. For those of
you who feel that you life is simply a smoldering wick of mistakes and
failures, you need to know that He will not snuff you out.
No, as we admit our
brokenness to Him He is able to bring His new life into us.
This past week I read about
the Abba tribute band, Bijorn Again was paid a little more than $30,000
dollars to fly to Moscow, then driven 9 hours to a remote chalet and perform
in a room all of Abba’s greatest hits before a crowd of only 8 people.
And if that’s not intriguing
enough they were told they could not talk to the audience or interact with
them what so ever. And on top of that between themselves and the audience
of 8 was a veil – a screen – that made the audience seem like a haze, so the
band wassn’t a hundred percent sure who was there, but they were pretty
certain that Vladimir Putin, now Prime Minister of Russia was there – I
wonder what he has to hide? Perhaps, as the speculation goes, he was there
with a young woman, who was not his wife.
I read that story and I
thought of how we need to fear approaching Jesus Christ. We need not hide
our brokenness, because it is then that He is able to heal.
There is this question that remains. What
does that life look like? What is it exactly that Jesus offers to give us
in place of whatever we have behind our masks?
We look at the text, after
Jesus puts His finger on an obvious place of pain in the woman’s life it
appears that the woman seeks to change the subject at verse 19 and 20 – it
would make sense - she is embarrassed and wants to talk about something
else, so she brings up the whole controversial idea of worship.
That may be true. But it
could be read differently. Instead of embarrassed silence between verse 18
and 19 put in there a sigh of relief as she realizes that here is one who
understands her, with whom she can let down her mask and know that she will
not be ridiculed, will not be rejected, in fact she will be helped. Here is
one who understands her and who can help her connect with God.
And in effect she says at verse 20, “Sir I can
see that you are a prophet. Can you help me find the one for whom my soul
thirsts? Can you help me find this life? Our people say it is here on this
mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in
Jerusalem. Can you help me find this life?”
And Jesus gently responds –
This life is not about where. It’s about relationship – a relationship with
God our Creator, deep within us, who is spirit and truth – a relationship.
So Jesus will say, in John
17:3, “This is eternal life that we know the only true God and Jesus
Christ.” What is this life? It is the very life of God himself. This
is what our Lord offers us in place of the pain, the failure, the sin, the
bitterness, the anger, the grief, whatever it is that we seek to cover up
and hide from everyone – including Him.
A number of years ago,
Robert Fulghum had a best seller entitled, “All I Ever Needed to Know I
Learned in Kindergarten.” It’s filled with folksy stories, and in one of
these stories he tells of a time when he was watching the kids in his
neighbourhood play hide and seek. It reminded him of a time when he would
play hide and seek as a kid and there would always be this one kid in their
neighbourhood who hid so well no one could find him. After searching for
the kid for awhile the kids would simply give up, go home and leave the kid
to rot. Sooner or later he would show up all mad because they didn’t keep
looking for him.
Fulghum says that they would
get all mad back and say, “There’s hiding and there’s finding.” As he
reflected on this he was watching the neighbourhood game out his study
window. He had been watching one kid who hid under a pile of leaves just
under his window. He was hiding so well that the other kids couldn’t find
him and Fulghum could tell that they were about to give up. He was tempted
to go out and rat the kid out, he thought of setting the leaves on fire to
flush him out. Finally though he says, “I just opened my study window stuck
my head out and yelled down at the pile of leaves, ‘GET FOUND, KID!’ ”1
Some of us hide our pain and
our sorrow and our brokenness too well. We don’t let God get at it. But
Jesus comes to us – He doesn’t yell, He invites us, He beckons us to get
found – to share with Him our brokenness and allow Him to give us His life
in return.
Copyright MBC and Rev. Dr. Tom Cullen -
February 2009
-
Robert Fulghum, 
