Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

I wonder how the Samaritan woman

really felt, at first,

when Jesus started telling her about her life.

Her response is very calm and controlled:

"Sir," she says,

"I perceive that you are a prophet."

But I wonder how she felt

beneath that calm exterior.

I wonder how I would feel

if a stranger came up to me in a public place

and proceeded to tell me

some pretty personal details about my life.

A little curious, maybe:

wonder how they found that out?

Probably a little angry, too:

how dare they go snooping around in my life,

and who betrayed my trust

by telling them those things?

But I think the primary emotion would be fear:

how much more do they know,

and what could they do with this information,

and how could anybody

know the truth about me, and still like me?

I might be able to give the impression

of being calm and unruffled,

like the Samaritan woman,

but I don’t think I’d feel that way on the inside!

And I wonder if she did …

At any rate, the question that this raises for me in this time of Lent

is this: What will Jesus do with what he knows?

We don’t have to take much time over the prior question,

what does he know?

Of course, there are people who know us,

and some of them know us pretty well;

some that we’ve trusted with important secrets.

But there is only one of whom we can say,

as did the Samaritan woman,

"He told me all that I ever did."

And that is Jesus.

So the prior question is mostly unnecessary:

What does Jesus know about my life?

Everything.

The hard part comes in figuring out

what we’re going to do about that.

Basically, the options boil down to two:

We can accept it, and rejoice;

or we can run away and hide.

And what choice we make

depends, I think, in large part

on what we think Jesus is going to do with the knowledge he has.

I want us to look at option two first,

because it’s the one that most of us begin with,

and it’s also where, sadly,

many of us stay stuck

for most if not all of our life.

In one sense, it seems crazy to suggest

that we have the option of

running and hiding ourselves from God.

After all, God is God!

And part of that job description is,

that God knows everything about everything and everyone.

So hiding from God seems like a contradiction.

We already know that

there’s no way we can keep God

from knowing things about us,

good, bad, or indifferent.

But if we hide,

perhaps we can at least keep God from

revealing those things which God knows,

and forcing us to acknowledge

and to deal with them.

And that way we can go on

laboring under our own delusions

and believing our own excuses.

So often,

when we believe we are hiding from God,

what we are really hiding from

is painful knowledge about ourself.

We avoid God because we don’t want to hear

or aren’t ready to hear

what God has to say to us.

What compounds the difficulty is that the fact that,

once we do elect to come out of hiding,

and allow God to introduce us to our own darker side …

once that happens,

we start to become aware that

everyone around us already knew our shadow side;

we were the only one from whom it was hidden.

A fairly simple example would be

the person who has a drinking problem.

He or she is often the last person to discover

that they do indeed have a problem.

The family knows it,

co-workers know it,

friends can see it.

And when the person finally becomes aware

that she or he is an alcoholic,

the pain of that discovery is increased by

the awareness that everyone around them

already had it figured out.

Now happily,

sometimes we will discover

good things about ourself

that everyone but us seemed to know.

But it’s the possibility of those painful discoveries

that keeps most of us in hiding for so long.

Of course, many of us are fearful also

because we’ve been taught somewhere along the way

that God is mean, and harsh,

and stands waiting to punish us for being bad

if and when we ever do come out of hiding.

But what did Jesus do when he spoke with this woman at the well?

Did he say that she was a bad girl

and should be ashamed for having all those husbands,

and especially for living with someone she was not married to?

He did no such thing.

He taught her,

just like he did with everyone else.

In fact, he took her far more seriously

than most men of his day would have done.

Remember, when the disciples returned,

they didn’t freak out over the fact that he was talking to a Samaritan,

but that he was talking to a woman!

So in her case, what did Jesus do with his knowledge about her?

He told it to her,

made it clear that he knew all there was to know,

but then he went on as if it didn’t matter.

She was a person worthy of his time and attention

regardless of how others viewed her,

and how convoluted the path of her life had been.

She may have had to hide from others in her village

by going to fetch her water in the heat of the day,

but she didn’t have to hide from Jesus.

He knew her truth,

and it didn’t matter.

So perhaps the second option,

while it starts out being more difficult,

ends up much more pleasant.

The second option is,

we can accept that God knows the truth about our life,

and then decide how we will respond

to the fact that God is merciful to us!

At first, that may sound strange

after we’ve talked about it being difficult and painful

to let ourselves out of hiding.

Wouldn’t it be more honest to say,

accept that God knows our life,

and just bear it?!

It may feel that way at first,

but the response seems to come

of its own accord.

At first,

there is perhaps guilt or embarrassment.

God knows about the time I .

God knows what I said when .

God knows how I feel about .

God knows I’d like to kill .

We can all fill in the blanks from our own life.

When we first come out of hiding,

it is uncomfortable to think of

all the things God knows about our life.

But after that, perhaps,

comes a time of rejoicing.

First …

because the fact that God knows my life

means that God knows my needs.

Whether it’s the living water

that Jesus knew the Samaritan woman needed,

whether it’s the literal H2O water

that the grumbling children of Israel needed in the wilderness …

God provided,

and God will provide.

While our sins are not hidden from God,

our needs are not hidden, either.

And because of this, we rejoice.

But we also rejoice for a second reason.

To me, this is the real miracle …

God knows all there is to know about our life;

the good, the bad, and the ugly;

and yet, God still chooses to love us.

Not because of what we’ve done,

but because of who we are:

God’s own precious children.

What Jesus does with what he knows

is to bring it out into the light

so that it can be healed.

What he does is to never stop loving us,

even when we are least lovable.

What he does is to forgive us,

whether our sins are against him, or one another, or something else entirely.

With the knowledge of God’s love, I – and you –

can live the lives we’ve been given,

warts and all.

We can make mistakes and not hide them,

but clean them up and start again.

We can love others,

not because they’re perfect,

but because God loves them.

We can forgive,

because we have been forgiven.

We can rejoice,

because our sin is not the end of the story.

What will Jesus do with what he knows?

Invite you to examine it and change it if need be …

and go on loving you regardless.

How will we live, now that we know this about him?

Amen.

© 2008 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)