“The Many Sides of Jesus: He Invites Us All”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Text: John 4:4-26
It was the day before I was preaching in West Vancouver in early July when the minister of the congregation, the Reverend Ross Lockhart, whom some of you know, thought it would be a good idea for his young son and me, the guest, to spend an afternoon at the Vancouver aquarium. He said: “Andrew, let's go and have some fun and relaxation.”
So we went off to the famous Vancouver aquarium and, as with all aquariums, I suspect, I expected to see some fish, some Beluga whales, maybe splash around a bit and just to have a generally nice time with the fishies in the ocean. But what I encountered there was somewhat more than I had anticipated.
When we entered, there was a huge area - almost a park-like atmosphere - and there were vendors, and sales-people, and clowns, and musicians greeting us as we went into the aquarium. One such character who was working there decided that he would actually grab on to Ross and me and Ross's son and so he came over to us quickly. He was dressed in a clown's suit: he had flippers on his feet, goggles on his face, and a jester's cap on his head - a little weird-looking.
He said: “I was wondering if the child would like me to make something out of balloons. I make animals that are really quite amazing.”
The little boy said: “Yes, I would love to have an animal.”
And so he made a balloon of a monkey with big lips and great big ears. It was a marvellous thing and the child played with it. We were all happy and we thought it was all over. And then this man reached out to me with his snorkel, grabbed my arm and said: “By the way, you wouldn't happen to be English, would you?”
I looked at him and I said: “For heaven's sake, how would you ever gather that?”
He said: “Well, I am just guessing.”
And so I said: “Well yes, I am English.”
He said: “Oh, I've got something I want to show you.”
And so he reached into a bag and pulled out this enormous picture of the Queen. Not only was it of the Queen, but of the Queen with him giving her a great big kiss on the cheek. I looked a little closely at the picture. “May I have a closer look?” I asked.
He said: “By all means. It was the highlight of my life.”
And so I looked a little more closely and realized that the character of the Queen was a somewhat strange facsimile of the original. It was a woman who was probably from East Vancouver. There she was, dressed as the Queen with his great lips pressed against her. At that very moment, I said to him: “Now, is this really the Queen that we are talking about?”
He said: “Oh yes, sir, it is most definitely the Queen. Of that there is absolutely no doubt.”
I said: “You do realise that I am actually from Canada, not the United States, and I haven't forgotten what our real monarch looks like.”
He smiled again and said: “Now, be on your way, man, be on your way.”
And so I went on my way; but before that, he did something else that was really strange and embarrassing… but I'll tell you that at the end of the sermon.
After that, we went in and I got another surprise. And the second surprise was that there was a movie theatre. Ross, my friend, said: “We've got to go in and watch this movie. It's a movie unlike any other movie you have ever seen. It was advertised as being a movie in 4-D.”
There was a warning sign up at the front: “Do not be frightened by anything that might happen to you while you are seeing this movie.”
I thought, I'm in an aquarium; surely they are not going to be showing The Sopranos or something like that. In we went, and sat down in our chairs. Just as if you were to watch a 3-D movie, you would have 3-D goggles, we put the goggles on. It was a lovely movie: there were whales and sharks and marlins and water. It all seemed perfectly lovely in 3-D and very impressive indeed.
But after about a minute, a whale burst onto the scene and in this movie, water goes through the hole in the snout at the top of the whale and all of a sudden, my face was completely covered in water - completely covered. A few seconds later, a Moray Eel swims around and it looks as if the Moray Eel is going around the back of a rock that is in front of us. All of a sudden, I get this kick in the middle of the back and I think that the Moray Eel has come and surrounded me and got me. It was freaky. I had a two-year-old child sitting next to me and I screamed more than she did at this particular activity. I thought no wonder there was a warning.
Well, we had everything from earthquakes to everything short of a shark-bite on the ankle in this four dimensional movie. I left there in awe. Everything I have watched in HD, 3-D since then has just paled in significance. It was one of the most memorable things I have encountered in a long time. It was also a little bit scary as well.
But there was something marvellous about the four dimensions. It was unique. All of the senses were involved. It engaged the whole personality.
Now, this summer, I have been reading as my devotions the book of Ephesians where the Apostle Paul talks about Jesus in four dimensions. He is writing to those early Christians, or someone has penned the epistle on his behalf, and says: “I want you to grasp what is the height and the depth and the breadth and the length of the love of God in Jesus. I hope that you will know and have knowledge of the unsurpassable love and grace of this Jesus. I pray that you will possess all the riches of this grace.”
In this magnificent passage from Ephesians, what we have, then, is a four-dimensional Jesus; what we have are four faces of the life and the ministry of Jesus Christ.
But this summer, not only have I read one of the Epistles, I have been also re-reading the Gospel of John; and as I read the Gospel of John, I realise that the multi dimensional nature of Jesus also manifests itself in many of the encounters and the stories that John records. John has often been dismissed as a Gospel without much history; but in fact, current readings suggest that there is more history in John than we realise. In this magnificent Gospel, we see moments where we picture the height of Jesus' love; we see the depths to which he will go; we see the length and the tenure of his reign; we see the breadth of his grace and of his love. And so over the next four weeks, I want to look at Jesus in four dimensions. I want to look at the many sides of Jesus. I want us to get away from the flat, monochromatic, one-dimensional sense that so many of us have of Jesus Christ and to go deeper into the nature of his grace and his love.
I want to warn you that in this series there are going to be things that you will find shocking; that, just like that Moray Eel that supposedly came and kicked me in the back, there will be moments when you will be caught by surprise by some of the things I am going to say. There are going to be moments when you might be a little embarrassed because you are not quite sure that what you are hearing is in line with what previously you had been thinking; but this I can assure you, you will find that by looking at the many dimensions of Jesus something richer will take place in your life.
My hope is the hope of another person I have been reading this summer. His name is Len Sweet. He has co-authored a book called Jesus Manifesto. It's a really great read. He is a professor of theology at Drew in the United States. In it he writes this (and this is my hope in this series):
He says: “Look again at the craftsman from Nazareth; bow before him; embrace him; adore him and seek to know him. He is available and closer to you than you can imagine. Jesus is your new tabernacle and temple. And if you really want to see God present dwelling among you, if you genuinely want to worship God in all of God's glory, if you truly want to receive the gift of wonder and see glimpses of divine glory, then come to Him. Take your chances with the God of second chances. For Jesus didn't die just to take you out of Hell and into Heaven; he died to take himself out of Heaven and deposit himself in you.”
And so this morning I want to start this exploration by looking at the breadth of the grace and the love of Jesus Christ. I do so in the story, the long story that Barbara so ably read from the Gospel of John, one of those stories. In fact it's not just a story, it is classified by Dr. Westerman, the New Testament scholar, as one of the conversations that Jesus has in the Gospel of John. There aren't many of them but there are a number of significant conversations and these conversations are not just verbatim, a word by word description of everything Jesus said, but rather they are accounts edited to give a sense of what Jesus was trying to convey by this encounter. It wasn't a sort of Socratic encounter with a question and answer, and a back and forth. It was more of a total encounter of an individual with Christ; but in that encounter, something profound is revealed about Jesus, about the woman who was the protagonist, and about us who read it, because essentially it begins with an encounter with a person.
The story of Jesus and and woman at the well has gone down in history and art and in music as one of the great encounters of Jesus' life. It has wriggled its way in so many ways theologically through the systems of theology within the Church. But it is the richness of the encounter that makes all that possible.
Look, for example at the location: We are told that it occurred actually in Samaria. Now you might just on face value say, what's Samaria? Samaria is an area adjacent to Israel. It's not that far away, but it was a big deal. And it's a big deal because a Jew who was faithful would not walk through Samaria. In fact, many would avoid Samaria altogether and go on a detour on the other side of the river to be able to get where they were going rather than cross through Samaria. Samaria was the place of mixed race people; Samaria was the place, as we are going to see, where God was not worshipped authentically and properly. It was a partial place, a place to be avoided. Actually, one could become ritually unclean if one were to travel through that area and therefore be forbidden to worship fully within the temple.
But Jesus is in Samaria. He's there at the very beginning of his ministry, not long after his whole engagement with the world as the itinerant preacher had begun. Samaria. He runs into a woman. This isn't an ordinary thing. This encounter was an amazing thing. Now, to the modern mind we say what's so special about that but in this encounter with Jesus, when women were not having the status within society or religion or theology or the priesthood that would make them a leading figure? But it was during this encounter that Jesus revealed so much of himself. And it wasn't just a woman but probably a promiscuous woman. Jesus encounters her and questions her and finds out that she has had five husbands and the man that she is currently with is not her husband, so she's working on her sixth. This is amazing and was particularly amazing then when the rituals and the rules and the laws were such that to have that number of spouses was unheard of. John even gives us a clue as to precisely how unrighteous she was and that she was probably an outcast by telling us one simple fact: That Jesus encountered her at noon. Why in the middle of the day? Because most of the women would go to the well to pick up water for the day early in the morning before the heat, but this woman was there at noon when no other women would be. Why? She probably didn't want to encounter many of the woman from the community and you could understand why.
This was an encounter with someone who was no righteous by the law. This was a woman who belonged to the wrong religion, who did not worship God properly, who worshipped God on Gerazim, not in Zion, who was not in the temple, but somewhere else, who believed that Moses was the only prophet. This was a woman who, according to Jewish orthodoxy “had a wrong relationship with God.” Still Jesus encountered her. Why? Why would Jesus do this? Why would he risk rejection, criticism, for the sake of this woman? The answer is simple: he wanted to reveal the breadth of the grace of his work. The plan was to bring Gerazim and Zion together, to take these people who had been at enmity and bring them together, that under the sovereignty of his grace to unite people in a common worship of his father. No more the division, no more the segregation, no more the alienation. Now is the time for the son to come and to heal and restore that which was broken. She realized it, she saw in him something prophetic. “You are indeed a prophet,” she said. She saw in him a foretaste of the coming Messiah. She saw in him something special and quietly in that encounter by the well, in the middle of the day in Samaria of all places he says, “I, who am speaking to you, am he.” To a woman of Samaria he reveals himself.
Why? To show that the breadth of his grace and love extends way beyond the boundaries that are often set, to break down the walls between people and his father, to reveal the nature of his messianic ministry. It is one to embrace, to take in, to draw in, to love and to restore. All of this is borne of “a promise that there will come a time where people will worship in spirit and in truth and that time is here right now. The walls have come crumbling down. I am here.” Can you imagine how liberated she must have felt? Can you imagine how her witness must have seemed incredible to anyone else? “I have met the one who will bring the spirit and who will restore the brokenness of the world, the living water, the hope.”
I think my friends that there are many dimensions to this: There is a profound personal dimension to what Jesus did with this woman at the well. In that encounter Jesus is encountering you. When I was waiting in the aquarium I had to sit down. As you gather from my cane I am in need of hip surgery and was in a bit of pain so I sat down in a little chair where the children were sitting, waiting to go in. So me, the great, big, 200 pound oaf sitting down next to the children waiting to go into the theatre. They were looking at me as if I was really odd. The girl sitting next to me was reading nursery rhymes and I can tell that she's struggling a bit but I look and see that what she is reading is Humpty Dumpty. I said to her, “I love Humpty Dumpty. That is one of my favourite nursery rhymes of all time.” And we recited it together:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the King's horses and all the King's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
Fabulous! Now, I wanted to give her a lecture at that moment about the true meaning of Humpty Dumpty and where it came from: You know the war of the 17th century in Britain and the origins of Humpty Dumpty, but I thought: “No, I'll let that pass.” But I'm going to let you know what it is, because the story of Humpty Dumpty is the story of many people in many cultures in many worlds. It's the story of how in the Civil War between the Loyalists and the Roundheads. The loyalists built this great, big cannon and placed it on the wall outside of St. Mary's church in a place that I know very well, Colchester, one of the old Roman towns in Britain. When there was a battle they placed Humpty Dumpty next to the church so that the Roundheads wouldn't bomb it. They clearly didn't understand the Roundheads. The Roundheads attacked the great cannon, Humpty Dumpty and they attacked the wall around to church. So much so that Humpty Dumpty, the great cannon used to defend the Loyalists and the city came crashing down and they sang afterwards:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the King's horses and all the King's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
They tried to build something almost religious and powerful to protect them but when it came crumbling down they couldn't build it up. I think this is a wonderful nursery rhyme about how we build up our Humpty Dumpty's and we do so even in our relationship with God. We do so in a way that hides behind things, so we do not come face to face with the real God. Whether it is our religious systems or our attitudes or our prevarications or our embarrassments, we create so many Humpty Dumpty's and they come crashing down. Who is there to build it up? Who is there to build the woman's Humpty Dumpty up but Jesus. When she was broken he restored her. Can you imagine what she must have felt? I, myself have been rejected, I belong to another religious grouping, I am an outcast and the Messiah loves me so much that he will come and speak with me.
Why is that in the Bible? It's there because this is precisely what Jesus Christ wants to do with us. He does it not only in a personal sense but in a cultural sense. What divided the Jews from the Samaritans was not just religion it was culture, it wasn't just culture, it was race, and Jesus wanted that to disappear for the sake of the worship of the Father. I want to say to you that Jesus of Nazareth today is much more popular than you can ever imagine. I have been astonished and surprised in worshipping in different places this summer, in reading and having emails from Palestinian Christians, in running into Chinese Christians, I have been astonished by my engagement with Nigerian Christians, to see the extent to which Jesus Christ is breaking down the Humpty Dumpty's of this world and building people up with the grace and the love of God.
In an article that was in the Toronto Star this summer about the Chinese church, the underground church, the house church, the church that meets in the gospel shoe factory, as it's called. And even though the government try to bulldoze them, arrest their leaders, consider them persona non grata since Mao Tse Tung took over in China when there were about one million Christians to this day there is now estimated to be more than 100 million Christians in China. You can try to blast the Humpty Dumpty's down but the grace of Christ will touch lives anyway.
Do not misunderstand me, I am not counting numbers and being triumphal, I am simply saying that our culture and its grave concerns about secularism and the Humpty Dumpty cannon of popular respectability does not matter. Across all racial and ethnic lines the power of the grace and the breadth of Jesus Christ reaches way, way beyond anything that we may set up. I know at times, it's easy, even in our love of Christ to be embarrassed to feel: “Oh, I'm not sure I really want to talk about this Jesus. I'm not sure that I really want to engage him, let him get too close, become too involved. Let's keep things religious and at a distance. ”Yet, there is a sense in which the breadth of Christ draws one in and the more you know him the more you love him the more you want to engage him.
On the way out of the zoo the man with the funny suit and the flippers engaged me again. He said, “There is something else I want to do for you, Mr. Englishman. I'd like to do something else that will please you.” He stood on his head, put a kazoo in his mouth, flipped his flippers in the air and did a rendition of “God Save the Queen. ” I stood there, alone, in the square, listening to this man play “God Save the Queen” until people started to come from all around and gather around to listen to this. They were amazed. Canadians started to sing along with him, British people came out of the woodwork, I don't know where they came from. Even Americans joined in and I, the only person in the middle of this, was the only person who was embarrassed by it. I thought: “Why am I embarrassed?” I just didn't want to be singled out. I didn't want everyone to be looking at me with this strange man and his kazoo. But as more people sang and gathered around the more I forgot myself and got carried away with the singing of my former national anthem and felt proud. I thanked him afterwards and he put out his hand. I gave him five dollars. I wanted to give him more.
It was only when others had gathered around to lift up and sing together that I forgot about myself and thought about the glory of the moment. So it is with the breadth of Christ. When we worship in spirit and in truth we get caught up in him and we know him. May you know him. Amen.