March 18, 2017
Lenten Devotions – Live Genuinely

When a consumer buys a product that includes the word “genuine” on the label, there is an expectation that what has been purchased is real. Genuine leather brings the expectation that the product is not “faux leather” – but the real deal. To live genuinely, then, means to live in a manner that is real and legitimate. To live a life of genuine faith then means that our faith is real and legitimate. This is the tangible demonstration of what is sincerely on our hearts and where our treasure is, not simply a verbal expression.

“For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who…trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.” Romans 4:3-5

“God’s love sets us free to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Not because we need to earn our salvation, but because everything we do is a response to all that we have been given. Just as our work on behalf of our neighbor is a reflection of our gratitude to God, our financial giving is also a “thank you” to the gift of Jesus in our lives. Through the work of our hands across the globe and through the generosity of our hands in our weekly offerings, we share God’s boundless love with the world together.

Marked with the cross of Christ forever,
we are claimed,
gathered and sent
for the sake of the world.

(Mission statement of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America)

You probably have known someone whose life was or is an expression of genuine faith. We see enough “fake” expressions of gratitude, love and faith in this world that when we see the genuine article, it, or they, really stand out. Abraham is just the perfect example of someone whose life was directed by genuine faith. When G-d asked Abraham to do something, Abraham did not hold back. He left his home town and his father’s land to follow G-d’s call. He had the guts to press G-d on whether G-d would spare the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah if even 10 people of faith were found to live in the midst of the sinful cities. My friends, this Lent, let your love be abundant and unconditional, and your offerings of time, talent and resources be the genuine articles.

Pastor Dave

March 19, 2017
Lent 3A

“So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” John 4:5-26

She is not a prostitute. She doesn’t have a shady past. Yet when millions of Christians listen to her story this coming Sunday in church, they are likely to hear their preachers describe her in just those terms.
Her story is told in the fourth chapter of the Gospel According to John. She is a Samaritan woman who Jesus encounters by a well. Jews and Samaritans don’t get along, and women and men in this culture generally keep a safe social distance from each other. So she is doubly surprised when Jesus asks her for a drink. When she makes a remark to that effect, he offers her living water. Confused, but intrigued, she asks about this miraculous water. He eventually invites her to call her husband, and when she replies that she has no husband, he agrees: “You have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband” (4:18).

And that’s it. That’s the sentence that has branded her a prostitute. Yet there is nothing in the passage that makes this an obvious interpretation. Neither John as narrator nor Jesus as the central character supply that information. Jesus at no point invites repentance or, for that matter, speaks of sin at all. She very easily could have been widowed or have been abandoned or divorced (which in the ancient world was pretty much the same thing for a woman). Five times would be heartbreaking, but not impossible. Further, she could now be living with someone that she was dependent on, or be in what’s called a Levirate marriage (where a childless woman is married to her deceased husband’s brother in order to produce an heir yet is not always technically considered the brother’s wife). There are any number of ways, in fact, that one might imagine this woman’s story as tragic rather than scandalous, yet most preacher’s assume the latter.

The difficulty with that interpretation is that it trips up the rest of the story. Immediately after Jesus describes her past, she says, “I see that you are a prophet” and asks him where one should worship. If you believe the worst of her, this is nothing more than a clumsy attempt to change the topic. But if you can imagine another scenario, things look different. “Seeing” in John, it’s crucial to note, is all-important. “To see” is often connected with belief. When the woman says, “I see you are a prophet,” she is making a confession of faith.  Why? Because Jesus has “seen” her. He has seen her plight — of dependence, not immorality. He has recognized her, spoken with her, offered her something of incomparable worth. He has seen her — she exists for him, has worth, value, significance and all of this is treatment to which she is unaccustomed. And so when he speaks of her past both knowingly and compassionately, she realizes she is in the presence of a prophet.” (David Lose, THE BLOG, March 21, 2011, Misogyny, Moralism and the Woman at the Well).

Jesus also embodied the idea of risk taking – going down the path not well worn. The whole story of the woman at the well from our Gospel lesson today is filled with risks: risks taken by Jesus, and risks taken by the woman. What are the risks Jesus takes? Well, first Jesus approaches a woman, and as we can tell by the reaction of the disciples when they come back from town, this was quite the risk that Jesus is taking. And not only is Jesus talking to a woman, but a woman who has a reputation – who has a lot of baggage. After all, she only comes to the well at noon, at the heat of the day, when no other woman would think of coming to the well. And we will soon learn why – because she has lived a scandalous life. And to top it all off, she is a Samaritan. As the text also tells us, Jew and Samaritans did not associate with one another. This is how Jesus not only teaches with his sermons, but he teaches with his actions. Frederick Bruechner, American writer and Theologian writes this about Jesus: “This is the Gospel that Jesus seems both to have proclaimed with his lips and lived with his life, not just preaching to the dispossessed of his day from a high pulpit, but coming down and acting it out by giving himself to them body and soul as if he actually enjoyed it – horrifying all Jericho by spending the night there with Zaccheus of all people, the crooked tax collector. It is no wonder that from the very start of his ministry the forces of Jewish morality and of Roman law were both out to get him because to him the only morality that mattered was the one that sprang from the forgiven heart like fruit from the well-watered tree…..”

But it is not only Jesus who is taking risks in our text. The woman, this woman who is usually shunned by her community, she approaches her kins-people and challenges them to come, and to see. It doesn’t matter to her what her kins-people think of her, she is so taken by Jesus she shares her experience, and from her testimony the whole community takes the risk to come and see, not knowing what they will encounter, but are compelled by the faith experience the woman shares with them. But this is where our faith should take us – to the tops of mountains, into the middle of raging seas, and into the heat of the day, standing up in the face of persecution, inviting the ones we know and complete strangers to come and see. This is a key lesson that the woman at the well teaches us today – that doing God’s will is not about our comfort zone, our reputation, our agenda – it is about faith – and living out that faith includes taking risks.

Pastor Dave