Called to Deep Hope (Hope Against Hope)

We have been considering variations on the theme of “deeper with God”. As the old hymn puts it, “Deeper, deeper in the love of Jesus/ Daily let me go;/ Higher, higher in the school of wisdom,/ More of grace to know. Oh, deeper yet, I pray,/ And higher every day,/ And wiser, blessed Lord,/ In Thy precious, holy word.”  

 

We began with “deep relationships” and progressed to “deep commitments”. We have sought “deep wisdom” and “deep healing”, leading to “deep growth”. Today, we seek a deep hope, deeper than the problems and struggles of our lives, deep enough to bring joy when griefs surround us. 

 

Isaiah 50 

Our passage from Isaiah is titled, “The Servant’s Humiliation and Vindication”. This is the third of four servant songs contained between Isaiah 40 and 53. Isaiah 53 is perhaps best known to many Christians – a clear reference to the trial and execution of Jesus, which we remember this coming Friday. Isaiah 50 is also a song that refers to the life and death of Jesus. Read this way, Jesus is the servant of the Lord, who is first humiliated and then vindicated. [Note: Jewish interpretation of these passages sees the servant of the Lord as the People of Israel; Christian interpretation as Jesus, the Messiah. It would be worth exploring these two interpretations in dialogue in another setting.] 

• Verse 4 portrays the ministry of Jesus as the teacher who brings understanding of God’s Word to the people. 
• In verse 5, the servant obeys God in his ministry and experiences the consequences of faithful service. 
• Verse 6 is quoted in Handel’s Messiah, referring to the trial of Jesus, in which he is stripped and beaten and prepared for execution. 
• Verses 7 to 9 then speaks words of hope in the darkness of the moment. In the experience of Jesus, these verses proclaim hope when hope is least evident. He maintains confidence in God’s goodness as he enters the worst time of his life on earth.

In the Servant’s Song, we hear this note: God is good, and we can hope in God even as we enter the darkness of difficult times in our lives. 

 

John 12 

We read the account of the Triumphal Entry from John’s gospel. Matthew, Mark, and Luke give similar accounts of Palm Sunday. John tells his own story – clearly the same event, but he was looking at it from a different perspective. We follow his view through the verses we read. 

• “The next day” in verse 12 locates the event just after Mary (sister of Martha and Lazarus) anoints Jesus’ feet in their home in Bethany, just after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Jesus uses this anointing to speak of his coming death, and the entry into Jerusalem leads to that death. 
• We read that a large crowd of people were in Jerusalem for the Passover, now less than a week away. Apparently, they had heard of the way that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11), so when they heard that Jesus was coming into the city, they went to meet him. 
• Verse 13 records them picking up palm branches as part of their celebration, which gives today its name of “Palm Sunday”. [Where the people get the branches is a matter of some scholarly discussion.] They also start cheering for Jesus, calling him “the King of Israel”. 
• In verse 14, Jesus sits on a donkey to enter the city, and John explains that this action fulfilled the prophecy quoted in verse 15. 
• Jesus’ disciples only recognized the significance of this action after he had been executed and then raised from the dead. This last point is important: They did not recognize what Jesus was doing until later, when they had time to put the whole picture together.

In the next few verses, the Pharisees (and of course the other leaders who were threatened by Jesus’ ministry) realize that they are in trouble of being overwhelmed by the popular response to Jesus, and they set in motion the actions that lead to Jesus’ arrest and execution. The night is getting dark, and the shadows are gathering. 

 

Called to Deep Hope 

These events are familiar. Usually, we would have started our service this morning with the children acting out the “triumphal entry” (as we call it). We do this every year, and we know this story well. We know it so well that we may not realize how completely backwards the whole story is. Look at it again. 

 

“The Triumphal Entry” bears a name that suggests triumph and success and joy. The event leaves the Pharisees themselves saying, “The whole world has gone after him!” (verse 19). In fact, this parade is the beginning of the darkest hour. It ushers in the full weight of the religious authorities acting against Jesus, leading to his execution. Jesus himself knows well that this apparent triumph is the beginning of trouble. This upside-down series of events mirrors what we read in Isaiah 50, where the faithful action of the servant leads to punishment and scourging, a whip laid across the servant’s back. 

 

In the same way, this beginning of trouble is God’s call to deep hope in our lives. Isaiah reminds us that God is good, and we can hope in God even as we enter the darkness of difficult times in our lives. The application of this truth to Jesus adds a special dimension to the experience of entering life’s shadows. Jesus did not need to be purified, but we do. Jesus did not need to enter into darkness, but we do. Jesus could have stayed with the trinity of persons within the Godhead, but we cannot. To enter the presence of God, we need radical purification. Without entering the shadows of this life, we cannot enter into the light of God’s presence. Jesus goes first to open the path for us and to light the path for us as we follow him into the shadows. 

 

This is a theme we have dug into often over the past weeks, so often that we might wonder why we need to say it again. We say it again because we have trouble really believing it. We return to this theme because it is a constant theme in our lives. I have reminded you before of the Friday prayer in the Anglican Prayer Book:

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

Why does the prayer book give this prayer for each Friday of the year? Because we can pray the words easily without internalizing them. Repeated use helps to bring us to the point that we discover the truth of these words in our own lives. 

 

Finding Hope in the Shadows 

In last week’s bulletin, we saw some questions to help us think about the passages for today: Are you a glass half-full or a glass half-empty person? Are you a realist who hopes against hope or an optimist who thinks everything is fine as the boat sinks beneath the waves? What do you think Jesus wants you to be? 

 

I don’t know if you thought about these questions or not, but we can think about them now. Are you a realist or an optimist? Do you see possibilities or trouble when something starts to go wrong? I used to be an optimist – at least, I think I was. Now, I can see the problems ahead more easily than the possibilities. The answer to this question is probably more a matter of personality than anything else. I don’t think Jesus wants us to be one or the other. I do think that Jesus wants to do something in us and through us as we enter into the shadows of life. 

 

Some of us face hardships cheerfully; some of us face hardships fearfully. Some of us see clearly the possible problems that may come; some of us see clearly the possibilities for joy. All of us can rest in Jesus and follow him into the shadows. When we walk with Jesus, we begin to find something of what God wants to do in our lives. 

 

I think of my grandfather. He was a singer and teacher, a missionary and a minister. He and my grandmother went to Zimbabwe with BIC Missions in 1921. They came home in 1929 for a furlough. Their oldest son was then 13, and they made the decision to leave him with my grandfather’s brother, a teacher at Messiah College. But that brother and his wife refused to take responsibility for their nephew, and my grandparents found that their missionary career was over. Their belongings in Zimbabwe stayed there. Their relationship with the church and people in Zimbabwe ended without a chance to say goodbye. I don’t know how they processed the events, but I am sure it was a time of walking in the shadows. 

 

Why did these things happen to them? I don’t know, and I don’t need to know. I do know that Jesus had gone before them, entering into Jerusalem and facing his own death. I do know that Jesus provided for them as they processed a difficult change of plans. Grandfather was then 45 years old. Within a few years he had moved to Oklahoma, where he was superintendent of our church bible school in Jabbok, Oklahoma and then to California, where he taught Bible at our church college in Upland. 

 

Upland College was the scene of another time of darkness. When he was about 55, the college went through a financial crisis. In order to meet their budget, they cut the benefit that instructors had, allowing their children to attend the classes for no tuition. When they gave my grandfather a contract, he handed it back to the board chair and asked them to reconsider the child tuition benefit. The board chair simply kept the contract, and grandfather was out of a job. My Dad has told me how grandfather drove into the hills around Upland and sat under a bridge by the road, dwelling on what had happened to him. 

 

He was, I suppose, experiencing depression, brought on by the combination of financial hardship in the college and a personality clash with the board chair. Unemployed, in his mid-50s, wondering how he would provide for his family or do the work God had called him to do. For the moment, he and grandmother took a mission church in Pennsylvania. Eventually, she began teaching art at Messiah College, where they had started their lives together some 40 years before. Grandfather gradually lost his sight, and when I knew him, he could only distinguish light and darkness; he could not see me when we visited him. 

 

Again, I don’t know how they processed these events, and I don’t need to know. I do know that Jesus had gone before them, entering into Jerusalem and facing his own death. I do know that Jesus provided for them as they dealt with the loss of job and status and moved into their retirement years. The truth is that they had a hope that was deeper than the shadows in which they sometimes lived. Their hope was in Jesus, and they lived and died knowing that God cared for them. 

 

Grandfather lived his last years at a place called Messiah Home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a retirement home run by our church. The board chair, whose actions led to his loss of a job 20 or so years before, had fallen ill and lay near death. Those with him asked if they could do anything for him. He asked them to bring John Climenhaga to pray with him. I don’t know what exactly was behind that request or what grandfather thought of it, but he went and prayed with the board chair. Two old ministers in the Brethren in Christ Church, both near the end of their days, knowing that they had hurt each other, approaching the end of their lives in the hope of their common Lord. 

 

Conclusion 

You notice that I am being careful not to say that Jesus’ example sets us free from pain or hardships. I have told a piece of my grandparent’s story. I could have told other parts as well. I cannot say what exactly God was doing in their story, but I am confident that they discovered a deep hope that went deeper in their lives than the loss of job or dreams, deeper than anything that can happen in this life. 

 

Palm Sunday. A reminder that great triumph often precedes great hardship. Next Sunday, Easter Sunday reminds us that great hardship also leads to great triumph. We will not anticipate that triumph yet. Instead, we live in the space where Isaiah acknowledges the pain that the servant of the Lord feels. We live in the moment where clouds gather on the horizon, telling of the storm about to break around us. 

 

I have used a simple story of my grandparents’ lives. I could have used a story of systemic distress and injustice, something perhaps that those who work with the SCO could tell us. I could have used stories from the political world or from our own history of fleeing from Russia. In all these stories, the same truth holds: Jesus has gone before us, entering into Jerusalem and facing his own death. Jesus provides for us as we face the darkness of our own lives and times. Our hope is deeper than our fears, and God is stronger than death. “Why are you downcast, O my soul, and why so disquieted within me? Put your trust in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.”

 

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Palm Sunday, 28 March 2021

 

Isaiah 50:4-9a

The Servant’s Humiliation and Vindication

⁴ The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens—wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. 

⁵ The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. ⁶ I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. 

⁷ The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; ⁸ he who vindicates me is near. 

Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. ⁹ It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?

John 12:12-16

Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem

¹² The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. ¹³ So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!” 

¹⁴ Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: ¹⁵ “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!” ¹⁶ His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.

Focus 

As we follow Jesus into Holy Week, we sense the rush of the crowds and seek the deep, steady current of God’s steadfast love, calling us to deep hope in the One who comes in the name of the Lord. 

 

Thinking Ahead Questions 

Are you a glass half-full or a glass half-empty person? Are you a realist who hopes against hope or an optimist who things everything is fine as the boat sinks beneath the waves? What do you think Jesus wants you to be? 

 

Going Deeper Questions 

1. In the sermon, I said that God is good, and we can hope in God even as we enter the darkness of difficult times in our lives. How does God’s goodness “fix” the problems that we face in life? 

2. We have heard many times now the theme of trusting God in times of trouble. What benefit is there in hearing this theme more than once? 

3. Do you think optimists or pessimists are closer to the way God wants us to be? 

4. What is “deep hope” anyway? How does deep hope work in our lives when we’re experiencing the problems of this world?

Pentecost—Do we need to speak in tongues?

Introduction

One Hundred and Eleven years ago this past April, a revival began in a church on Azusa Street, Los Angeles, California. Reports at the time said that Pentecost had come again, and the movement that grew out of the revival has spread around the world. David Barrett’s research into global Christianity shows that Pentecostals have grown from less than one percent of Christians around the world at that time to about 25% of the worldwide church today.

Some people evaluate Pentecostalism positively. In many parts of the world Pentecostalism has reached into conditions of poverty and helped people to transform their lives spiritually and economically. We call this phenomenon “redemption and lift”. In Chile the Pentecostal Church transformed the lives of the poorest people, who had been abandoned by the church as a whole. [I did not find the reference for this observation, which comes from missiological writings on Chile, but did find another helpful article on the Chilean Pentecostal Church here.]

I have seen and studied Pentecostalism primarily in Zimbabwe. There, what we sometimes call “the prosperity gospel” has functioned to give people hope. As one Pentecostal preacher said to me, “prosperity means you will always have an idea of what to do.” Such hope helps people to survive in Zimbabwe’s failed economy.

Some people evaluate Pentecostalism negatively. Sometimes it has encouraged enthusiasm to the border of hysteria. I have also seen an almost artificial enthusiasm in Zimbabwe. Our family went one Sunday to a church called Victory Fellowship. At one point in the service the organ played a chord, the percussionist signalled on the cymbals, and everyone started praying in tongues. Another chord signalled the end of the Spirit’s intervention, and everyone stopped. I was just glad that the Holy Spirit had read the bulletin.

A friend of mine told me about a Pentecostal preacher he went to hear in Bulawayo. When the preacher started to pray, his friends fell on the ground as the preacher pushed “power” at them. Finally my friend also fell, not because he felt the power, but because he didn’t want to stand out in the crowd.

So how do we evaluate Pentecostalism today? Should we all seek the gift of speaking in tongues? Or is there something else going on that is more basic, more important for us to grasp and to hold on to this morning. Listen to the Scriptures we read this morning.

The Texts

Acts 2:1-21: At that first Pentecost, the giving of the Spirit led to speaking in tongues, the proclamation of the gospel, clear evidence that the end of time is here, and an invitation to salvation.

Jesus had told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the promised Holy Spirit. They did so, spending time gathered together in prayer (Acts 1:12-14). The Day of Pentecost (Feast of Weeks) came 50 days after the Passover. Jews from around the world had gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover and for the Feast of Weeks. The Holy Spirit fell on the disciples and they began speaking praises to God loudly, using the languages of the people gathered for the feast. Since these Jews heard them speaking in tongues, we can guess that they had been gathered near the temple, where the assembled Jews were meeting. They responded to what they heard with amazement, some scoffing and some praising.

Their response gave Peter the opportunity to preach to the people, and he took it. Peter gave a straightforward sermon with these main points:

Verses 1-21:

·         What you see is God’s Spirit moving in God’s people. God has intervened in the world, as the prophet Joel told us we should expect.

·         This intervention means that God’s Spirit is ready to fall on all who open themselves to the Spirit, leading to even greater wonders than you have seen this morning and leading to the salvation of all who so open themselves.

Verses 22-41

·         Peter then told the people that Jesus, whom they had killed, is indeed the Messiah, and that Jesus had been raised by the dead.

·         He called the people to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus.

·         As a result of Peter’s sermon, many people repented and accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

So, must we speak in tongues? Luke describes what happened here as a great turning to God—what we sometimes call a revival. I see no evidence that he lays out a prescription for how revivals are supposed to take place. When Peter preaches to the people, he calls them to repent. He does not call them to manifest any particular behaviour, such as speaking in tongues, but to repent and be baptized. So Acts 2 is an invitation to turn to God in Christ.

1 Corinthians 12:1-13: Paul’s concern in 1 Corinthians 11 to 14 has to do with the way that the Corinthian church worshipped God. Corinth was a city with a background in various religions, and the people in the church were used to seeing spiritual phenomena. They were, if you will, an early example of the kind of enthusiasm found at the Azusa Street Mission in 1906.

In this chapter Paul makes a series of statements, thus:

·         You (Corinthians) are used to spiritual phenomena, but you need to understand what is truly of God’s Spirit. His comment reminds me of a Zimbabwean friend’s critique of the Toronto Airport Church: “You Americans are funny. You’re not used to spiritual things, so when you see people barking like a dog or roaring like a lion, you get all excited. We have seen these things in Africa, and we know they are not all from God!”

·         The first characteristic of spiritual phenomena that come from God is that they lead people to say, “Jesus is Lord.” Charismatic gifts lift up Jesus.

·         Charismatic gifts also build up the body of Christ: “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”

·         In fact, we can say that the presence of the Spirit (through the gifts of the Spirit) is the presence of Christ, more basic to our identity than anything else, even more basic than being a Jew or a Gentile.

Just as the presence of tongues in Acts 2 was intended to bring people to faith in Jesus, so also the gifts of the Spirit in the Corinthian church were intended to strengthen people’s faith in Christ.

John 7:37-39: In this brief excerpt from a larger sermon, Jesus says that the Spirit refreshes us and strengthens us, a river of life flowing from within [to water all those around us]. You see the same basic point in all three passages: God gives the Holy Spirit to draw us to a closer walk with Jesus and to build up the body of Christ. There is no room in spiritual gifting for anyone to boast of their own spiritual progress. The point is always to come closer to Jesus.

Synthesis

The answer to the question in our sermon title, “Do we need to speak in tongues?” is simple: No. Then why do Luke and Paul say so much about spiritual gifts?

God gives spiritual gifts to draw us to God. The point in all of this is not that God wants us to speak in tongues—whether unknown languages or ecstatic speech; the point is that God wants us to find life in Christ.

This same purpose is behind revivals such as the Pentecostal movement that began at the Azusa Street Mission. Consider with me a few such revivals that took place in the early 20^th Century.

1) The Welsh Revival: There was a remarkable revival in Wales in 1904-5. It was marked by extensive Bible reading and constant prayer, leading to repentance and new life. The services in which people met were emotional, and they were similar to the Pentecost of Los Angeles in 1906. Reports of the revival note that individuals and whole communities were radically changed, so that the police and courts found themselves underemployed.

2) The Indian Revival: The Welsh Revival spread to India in 1906, taking in much of the country in a revival remarkable for its depth and influence. I found an article online from the MB Journal Direction (Fall 1991, 135-142) by Peter Penner, describing the shape that the revival took within the Mennonite Brethren Mission. It spread from national Indian Christians to the MB missionaries, who at first resisted it because it was too emotional. In the end, all joined in a time of deep joy and new life.

The revival was characterized by prayer and repentance. Missionaries confessed their faults, as did Indian Christians. The result was an awareness of God’s presence in every part of their lives. Missionary Abram Friesen characterized the sins revealed and confessed like this: “judgmental and unforgiving attitudes, carelessness in word and deed, lack of family and personal worship, unedifying reading, avarice and failure to tithe, lukewarmness toward God’s cause and people, conceit and spiritual pride, and resistance to complete submission to God.”

3) The Korean Revival: In 1907 revival spread to Korea. A prayer meeting in Pyongyang was the flashpoint. I remember one of my Korean students telling me the story 10 years ago, during the 100^th anniversary of the revival—how a Canadian missionary confessed to his Korean colleagues the racism with which he treated them. As the Korean Christians saw their missionary brother broken before God’s Spirit, they in turn began to confess their sins and revival spread across the country. Today Pyongyang is the capital of North Korea; in 1907 it was known as “the Jerusalem of the East”. Again the revival was characterised by repentance and confession, and by intense prayer. Prayer has remained central to life in Korea, as people hold mass prayer meetings in which they seek God’s presence and direction.

Do we need revival today? Of course we do, but revival by its nature is an in-breaking of God’s Spirit. We cannot manufacture it. We cannot make it come. We can have a “Revival Service” or even a series of “Revival Services”, but we cannot make God’s Spirit fall on people any more than the organist at Victory Fellowship could actually control the Holy Spirit by playing the right chord on the organ.

What Should We Do?

What then should we do as we read these texts? We don’t need to speak in tongues (although if God gives the gift for God’s own purposes, we may), but what should we actually do? I believe that we need revival, but, as I said, we cannot manufacture it. So we prepare the soil, waiting for God to sow the seed. We read and study the Bible. We spend time in prayer—extended time in extended prayer. We search our own hearts and lives for anything that would hinder God’s Spirit. Then, like the disciples in Acts 1 and 2, we “wait for the promised Holy Spirit.”

We continue do God’s work as we are already. We keep living our lives, going to work, going to school, spending time with our families and friends. And we wait for God to show up. “Wait” in this context means “expect”. This is not a fruitless “waiting for Godot”. This is an expectant waiting, which God rewards in God’s time.

I think of a friend of mine who this past week described his own experiences of God’s Spirit this year. I think of the way that God revealed the Spirit to me in a time of darkness nine years ago. We don’t control this process; we prepare for it, and when God is ready, Pentecost comes.

Closing Thoughts

I have wondered why the Pentecostal revivals of the early 1900s occurred at that time. There have been other “awakenings”, in which people turn to God, and we can look back and ask: Why at that time? Consider what followed the revivals on the larger human stage: World War One. Within 10 years Europe found itself engulfed by “the war to end all wars”, and the rest of the world found itself deeply affected by the conflict. I wonder if God was preparing people to go through deep waters. I don’t know that, but it matches what we have seen God do at other times in other places.

I have told you my own story of being filled the Holy Spirit—in a series of messages on the infilling of the Holy Spirit brought to the General Conference of the BIC in Zimbabwe in August 1974. I remember well how people pressed forward on the closing night singing “Woza Moya oyiNgcwele” (“Come, Holy Spirit”). I remember well how people sought and received the Spirit even after the meetings were over.

Within a year the country of Zimbabwe was deeply involved in a bush war between nationalist forces (ZIPRA and ZANLA) and the Rhodesian government of the day. The people gathered at that conference were entering a dark time lasting for the next five years. And God gave them the strength that they needed to survive as God’s people. Stephen Ndlovu (later Bishop of the BIC in Zimbabwe and Vice President of MWC) has told many stories of God’s preserving presence in his own life living in the centre of the bush war.

We need revival—but be aware, if God sends the Holy Spirit on us here today, or throughout the churches of Canada and the United States, you can expect that there is a reason. We don’t know what it is; we know only that God cares for us and for the whole of God’s world and does for us what is best. In the meantime we prepare the soil of our lives and wait for God to sow the seed.

Grace Bible Church, 4 June 2017 

Texts

Acts 2:1-21

The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost

2 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.² Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. ³ They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

⁵ Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶ When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. ⁷ Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome¹¹ (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” ¹² Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

¹³ Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

Peter Addresses the Crowd

¹⁴ Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. ¹⁵ These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! ¹⁶ No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ¹⁷ “‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.¹⁸ Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.

¹⁹ I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. ²⁰ The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. ²¹ And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

1 Corinthians 12:1-13:

Concerning Spiritual Gifts

12 Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. ² You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. ³ Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. ⁴ There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them.⁵ There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. ⁶ There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

⁷ Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. ⁸ To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, ⁹ to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, ¹⁰ to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. ¹¹ All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

Unity and Diversity in the Body

¹² Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³ For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

John 7:37-39:

³⁷ On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. ³⁸ Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” ³⁹ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

We Thirst

We know the story well. Jesus was travelling from Judea back north to Galilee. He and his disciples passed through Samaria, where their outcast cousins, the Samaritans, lived. You remember that the Samaritans were the descendants of the people that Ezra and Nehemiah pushed out of the faithful community, because they had intermarried with the surrounding people while the faithful were carried off into exile. When the faithful remnant returned, they sought a pure community and would not accept those who had compromised their worship of the true God during the exile. [This is an over-simplified statement. The roots of the two communities go back to the Twelve Tribes and continue today, but this is enough to begin with. Research into the two communities is a fascinating project.]

So Jews and Samaritans had a centuries-old rivalry: Cousins (almost, one would say, brothers and sisters) who really could not get along. Why Jesus chose to go through rather than around Samaria the story doesn’t say. It was the most direct route, but the story just tells us they had to go that way. They stopped at a place called Sychar, where Jacob their mutual ancestor [the ancestor of the Jews and of the Samaritans] had built a well. The disciples went into town to get supplies, and Jesus rested by the well. The stage is set for a memorable encounter.

A Samaritan woman comes out from the city to draw water. She is alone in the middle of the day, which suggests that she is not welcome in the city—a bad character. Jesus asks her for water, an amazing request given that he is a Jewish male. I have wondered if he might have been able to order her to give him water, so that the surprise came in his courtesy. I don’t know.

In any case the request leads to conversation, in which she reveals her outcast state and Jesus reveals his true identity as the Messiah. Jesus shows himself as one who is greater than Jacob, their mutual ancestor, and as one who can satisfy the deepest human needs, not just the immediate need for food and drink. As the conversation moves into matters of the Spirit, Jesus points beyond human worship [this mountain, Mount Gerizim, or Mount Zion—in which exchange Jesus affirms himself as a Jew, with the true worship of God in Jerusalem, verse 22] to worshipping God in spirit and in truth.

In this last exchange Jesus makes it clear that the answer to her question of where they should worship God is a secondary issue—verses 21 and 23—and that the real issue is how they worship God. The real issue is their relationship with the true God, who comes in the Messiah. The woman affirms her belief in the Messiah, and Jesus reveals himself to her in his closing words, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

There are so many things going on this passage that we cannot deal with, so we confine ourselves to our Lenten theme. The movement between human thirst and divine thirst (verses 7-15) gives the theme for this Sunday of Lent: “We thirst.” The woman thirsted for food and drink, physical needs. She thirsted for relationships, a stable family life, for emotional needs. She thirsted most of all for someone who understood her to the core and accepted her as she was, for spiritual needs.

We also thirst. We thirst for physical security, for relational fulfillment, and for communion with God.

Baptism

The passage begins with a comment on baptism: “Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John—although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples.” These baptisms were the cause of his trip from Judea north. Somehow the whole episode is connected to baptisms.

The connection is chronological, rather than logical. Jesus was not ready for the full-blown confrontation that he knew was coming, so he left the area. But baptism is still the precipitating factor: baptisms of repentance, which would lead to the baptism of the Spirit. Further, Jesus’ disciples baptized with water, and water links the baptisms with the woman at the well. Water from the well satisfied physical thirst. Jesus the living water satisfies our thirst for God. We are baptized with water, symbolizing our union with Jesus in his death and resurrection.

So baptism stands as a continuing symbol of Jesus the living water who meets all of our needs—physical, emotional, and spiritual. But there is a question: How to we receive this living water? The Samaritan woman clearly received Jesus. How do we do this? How do we receive this inner well that springs up into eternal life (verse 14)? A passage that may give us some help is found in Psalm 1.

Two Thoughts

First thought: Psalm 1 was one of the first passages of Scripture I learned as a young boy.

¹ Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, ² but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. ³ That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.

Verse two answers our question by saying that the righteous person is one who mediates on God’s law continually. In New Testament terms, we could quote Jesus telling the disciples to “abide in me as I abide in you.” Verse three adds that such abiding makes us “like a tree planted by streams of water, blossoming and bearing fruit, and prospering in all he or she does.”

So we become this person by meditating on God’s Law and God’s Son so that we are planted [the word means “transplanted”—taken from a place without water and re-planted] beside the river of water that is Christ. The Samaritan woman moved from desolation to a life of joy and fulfillment when she met Jesus. She was planted by the river, drawing on the living water in all of her life.

But verse 3 contains a continuing problem. We all know someone who has walked with God and suffered greatly. “Whatever that person does will prosper”—these are hollow words when we look at the heartache that many in our own church family have experienced. Taken the wrong way, they suggest that our misfortune is our own fault, which is I believe a misreading of what Scripture says.

I first preached on this passage about 35 years ago. I was a young pastor in Pennsylvania, and I remember sitting in my study wrestling with this third verse. I believe that sometimes misfortunes are our own fault. We make bad choices, and suffer the consequences. I believe that sometimes they are not our fault. We are in the wrong place at the wrong time and something happens to devastate our lives. I do not believe that the righteous person simply has a good and easy life. Reality is just not that way.

As I worked on the sermon, I was unable to resolve the problem this verse gave me, especially in light of the lives of the people in my church—people who loved the Lord, but were struggling with the hardships of life. I left my desk and sat down in an armchair close by to think and to pray. I don’t know what happened then, but the next thing I remember is finding myself beside a hillside—it was not a vision in the sense of a dream; I was simply there. Looking up at the hill I saw three crosses with three men on them. I came to myself again in my room, lying on the floor. I don’t remember lying down. I just remember waking up with the sight of three crosses on a hillside in my mind.

I have never received any other answer to the dilemma of Psalm 1:3—only the cross. It reminds me of what the Samaritan woman experienced. She had problems she might have wanted solved, and instead she met a man who understood her inside and out, and who invited her to worship God in spirit and in truth. Recognizing him as the Messiah, the anointed one sent by God, was all that she needed. Her problems may have remained, but she was a new person.

Similarly, when I stood at the cross with the problems of my congregation and the words of Psalm 1, I needed only to be there. It was, if you will, a reminder of my baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ. We meet Jesus, and Jesus meets our thirst for life and meaning. Our problems remain, but we are different and can deal with our problems.

Second thought: Embracing life on the margins

Like the Samaritan woman we come to church looking for what we need. Maybe we come in confidently, sure of our place. Maybe we hope no one notices us. Someone might look for a time that the doors are open so they can sit and pray without worrying about who might say something to them. We thirst for a renewal of our baptism. We thirst for God’s Spirit to be poured out in our lives, for the living water of Christ.

Something that impresses me in the story of the woman at the well is the way in which God was present with two people who were so marginalized by the larger society around them. On the one side was the woman, coming out in the heat of the day to avoid causing more scandal. On the other side was a Jewish man, who (if she had known it) was avoiding trouble with the authorities in Jerusalem—the son of a carpenter heading home to Galilee. And God was there.

I teach World Religions. Consider the founders of the great religions.

·        The Buddha was a prince turned religious leader.

·        The Mahavira (found of the Jain religion) was also from a royal family.

·        Muhammad came from the family of a clan leader in Mecca (although he was an orphan from the age of two).

Only Judaism and Christianity have founders with slave or servant origins. Moses was a slave raised as the son of Pharaoh, and Jesus was the son (so people thought) of a carpenter in the northern backwater of Galilee. [Jesus was also of the line of David, but from a branch of the family far outside the city of David, Bethlehem.]

I am not arguing for the distinctiveness and truth of Christianity, but observing something simpler and more important. Christian faith comes from the marginalized and for the marginalized of the world. The woman asked if the true centre of worship was Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim—the centres of power as she knew them. Jesus pointed her directly to God, outside the structures of power.

We are accustomed to looking to the centres of power and to influential people for help. God normally comes to us through marginalized people. Alfred Neufeld tells the story of a Frist Nations people in the Chaco of South America (What We Believe Together, 104f). The Guidai-Gosode people are part of a war-loving group known as the Ayoreos. Through missionary contact, they became Christians. When they began reading the New Testament in their own language they discovered the Sermon on the Mount and concluded that they must make peace with their cousins, the Totobie-Gosode, with whom they had had many conflicts. They located them with the help of bush pilots, and then walked into their territory as an unarmed delegation. They decided before they left that some of them would die, because they had killed many of the Totobie-Gosode. Neufeld describes the contact thus: “The first minutes of the encounter were very violent. The Totobie-Gosode killed five of the visitors and badly injured four others  from the Guidai-Gosode peace delegation. But when they noticed that their visitors behaved in a completely nonviolent way, the killing stopped, they made peace, and together they returned to the village … to live and learn with their former enemies.”

I did a bit of checking in secular sources and found the incident described, but without any awareness of the gospel of peace. The missionaries simply “sedentarized” the nomadic Gosode peoples, who in turn fought with each other when one group tried to make contact. Both the missionaries and the Gosode were seen as of little worth in the eyes of the writer. But they brought peace where there had been conflict and life where there had been death. For us also, as we embrace those on the margins, indeed, those whom we ourselves have marginalized, God brings us life springing up within us.

We thirst, and we turn to God, and God meets us and transforms us. God comes to us through people we might look down on and meets us and changes us. God makes us people who pursue peace. God makes us people who invite other people into a radical re-orientation of our lives that does not seek to win, but seeks rather to be reconciled with God and with each other.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

19 March 2017

John 4:1-26

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.)

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.”

¹⁶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” ¹⁷ “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband.¹⁸ The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” ¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” 

²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” ²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”