Creekside Church Sermon of March 3, 2002 "He Can't Be The Messiah, Can He?" John 4:5-30	Rev. David Bibbee
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On Labor Day weekend in 1973, I packed my car full of clothes, records, and my guitar. 3 ½ hours later I arrived at Manchester College to begin a four-year adventure that changed my life. At the time I thought my beliefs were firmly established. I began college with the naïve assumption that my views would remain fixed. Maybe minor alterations here and there, but as I saw it at the time, I thought all I learn would be icing on the cake I had already baked. It did not take long to realize my foundation was not as firm as I thought. It crumbled into rubble at my feet.

My view of the world was shaped in a white, little Church of the Brethren on the corner of Church Street and Reed Avenue in Marion, Ohio. There I learned the lessons of faith and life from beloved Sunday school teachers like Beulah Graham and Junior Ballinger. But in college I was challenged to question and re-examine my views while wrestling with other views that were foreign and sometimes threatening to me. At first I thought the religion department was out to shred my faith. In time, however, I came to realize that beneath my surface understanding were many levels of insight and understanding. God was bigger than I knew. The implications of Christianity were greater than I knew. My foundation wasn't wrecked…it was renovated. I was given a deeper, broader foundation to grow upon. The professors wrapped my brain in Spandex and helped stretch my thinking of what can and can't be.

Today we continue our study of John's Gospel, focusing on a woman whose mind and soul were stretched, leading to unexpected changes in her life. As she did every day at noon, this woman came to Jacob's well to fetch a pail of water. There she met an unusual man named Jesus. He did and said forbidden things like talking with a woman in public. Even worse she was a Samaritan woman who reminded Jesus that Jewish men and Samaritan women were forbidden contact. Jesus, however, despised rules, especially those that brought burden and not blessing and kept distance between people and God.

Last Sunday, Nicodemus couldn't distinguish between birth and birth from above. Now the Samaritan woman can't distinguish the difference between water and living water. Her mind was encased in titanium, not enveloped in Spandex. It never occurred to her that anyone could possibly be greater than her ancestor, Jacob. Jesus informed her that he already knew about her revolving door marriages. It never occurred to her that worship could take place anywhere except on the mountain where her people had worshipped. The nails that held everything in place were loosening. Returning to town, she told as many people as she could about Jesus. "He told me everything I have done." Her profession of faith was a declaration. It voiced a question. "He can't be the Messiah, can he?"

There is both hope and reservation in her question. What Jesus said was so different from everything she had learned. She told her story and asked the question to all who would listen. It struck a responsive chord. As a result, many Samaritans believed in Jesus. The Messiah came in a way no one expected.

A long time has passed since the meeting at Jacob's well. We know so much more today about Jesus through the Bible and history and personal experience, but we are also like the Samaritan woman. We take what we know and believe and put a fence around it. We act as though we know all that is necessary to know.

There is something else that keeps Jesus from stretching us. We look down upon people who have simple approaches to the Bible and faith. They take what the Bible says at face value. "It says what it says and that's what I believe." We are too enlightened and sophisticated for that. We are well versed in the workings of the world. Today, second graders know about cause and effect. We know what can and can't be; what is possible and impossible. We believe that given time, we can find an explanation for everything. What some say is evidence of the presence and power of God can be explained by physics or psychology. Technology reigns supreme and as a result the spiritual dimension of life is pushed further and further to the back of the closet.

I read that Thomas Jefferson took a pair of scissors to the Bible and cut out everything he considered unreasonable. With a snip, snip here, and a snip, snip there, he cut out passages which had anything to do with mystery, miracles, or mysticism. After he finished cutting there wasn't much left…only some of Jesus' teachings and I Corinthians 13. And the cutting continues. We cut out what doesn't jibe with our take on reality.

People don't know what to do with those who talk about the things that God has done in their lives. When people who face mountains of difficulties say they trust that God will not let them down, and will see them through their struggles, our first thought is not, "What faith!" it is, "It's okay to believe what you want, but it's going to take more than God to see you through this. You can't afford to be naïve, get real!" The song, "Gimmie That Old Time Religion," doesn't resonate with people today. We've been taught to sing instead, "Gimmie what is understandable. Gimmie something that can be measured and replicated in the lab. Gimmie something I can swallow without choking. Gimmie something reasonable and relevant to my needs."

We have led ourselves into believing that our intellect is so broad. We think we know more than we don't know. But what does it cost us?

Mark Twain knew the Mississippi River like an old friend. When he became a steamboat pilot he said: "Now when I mastered the language of this water, and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the river as familiar as I knew the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I lost something, too…something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace and beauty and poetry had gone out of the majestic river. All the value any features of it had for me now was the usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat."

The capacity Mark Twain had to see the beauty and wonder of the river became dulled by standing at the helm. When we learn a little, we overlook a lot. When we are no longer aware of the strong, invisible undercurrents of God's spirit at work around us, we end up with life that is mechanical, not permeated with the mystery of God; one-dimensional, flat, and boring and not a life of good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.

Over 800 years ago in England, an anonymous author wrote a Christian spiritual classic. It is called, The Cloud of Unknowing. As the title implies, a spiritual life that controls all of life requires that we unlearn some of what we know, and be delivered from those things which prevents us from listening, trusting, and responding to God; to seek a deeper relationship with Jesus so we may learn more, love more, and serve more. But this requires humility to be able to acknowledge what we don't know.

Sir William Osler was a legendary surgeon. One of the stories about Hosler related to making rounds at the hospital. As we moved from patient to patient, a group of medical students followed him, observing his every move to learn all they could. Sometimes after examining a patient he would write on the chart the initials "G.O.K." One day a student worked up the courage to ask the renowned doctor what G.O.K. stood for. Osler smiled and shrugged, "G.O.K. means God only knows." Afterward, speaking to all the students he said one of the ongoing challenges in every medical school is to get the interns to recognize it is okay not to know an answer; that in spite of expensive, time consuming study, all of us must live with the recognition that there is a vast sea of truth that is ever beyond our grasp.

In May 1977 I packed my car and left Manchester College with diploma in hand. Most of what I studied I had forgotten. Things I learned became a part of me. Education gave an awareness of what I don't know. I learned there's a Presence on life greater than the knowledge we possess.

Keith Miller said it's like swinging on a trapeze…awkward at first, settling into a comfortable rhythm. Just when we think we have achieved mastery, SWOOSH! God throws us another trapeze. Hang on to what we've got? Pretend not to see? Take risk, let go, grasp?

The woman at the well discovered a deep well from which she could draw living water from a source that would never be depleted.

President Teddy Roosevelt, better known as a Rough Rider, was a successful man. Though he was decidedly tough, he was also devout. He wasn't enamored with all that was said about him. He was humble about his abilities and a believer. This fueled a habit which he repeated every night during his presidency. He would call his valet wherever they were and they would step outside and gaze up at the heavens. Then they would recite these words in unison:

"That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It consists of 100 billion suns, each larger than our own sun."

Roosevelt would then put his arm around the valet's shoulder and say, "There, now, I think we are small enough. Let's go to bed."

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