“Do you want to get well?”

What a stupid question to ask someone who’s had a debilitating illness for 38 years…!

And yet, when it’s Jesus who’s doing the asking, we might rightly suspect that it’s not a stupid question. It might be exactly the one that the man needs to be asked.

What does it mean to be well? What happens when you get locked into a negative way of viewing your life that you can’t escape from?

These are the waters we’re swimming in this morning. Come and join us.

https://youtu.be/MWDEnVYNfx4

“When the restaurant door swung open and John Blanchard stood there in his military uniform, bemusedly scanning the room for the woman in the green suit, she knew all that she needed to know about him. This was a man who was worthy of her trust. This one would be with her, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, through all the thick and thin of living. This one really meant it.”

That’s how the sermon ended today, and the point I was trying to get across – through a lovely human story - is that none of us want to be half-loved, partly known or vaguely appreciated.

We mean everything to God. So when we profess faith, God wants us to mean it just as much in return.

You can catch the service at –

https://youtu.be/3sUe6rwLE6o

One of the best things about Jesus is that he takes people as he finds them rather than going with the herd and accepting the labels that we all-too-readily slap on one another.

He doesn’t judge the woman at the well for her choices, as her neighbours do. ‘Five husbands and now onto her sixth!” they say, scapegoating her. Instead, he helps her begin to see that she’s thirsty for something  the world can’t give her. A pure, genuine, unconditional love that wills only the best for her. Knowing that you’re loved that way changes everything. It did for her – and it can for you and me.

Ever been overlooked? Mis-judged? Caricatured? Talked down to?

Then you’ll know how significant a thing it is when someone actually takes the time to treat you as a person, and dignifies you by dealing with you as a fellow human being.

The woman in today’s story was used to being ignored or gossiped about. She wasn’t used to being asked for help – especially not by a male stranger from a different, hostile culture. But that simple, humane request for help opened up possibilities she would never have dreamed of. And we’re still telling her story two thousand years later.

Part two of a series on the Woman at the Well today, using resources from my friend and colleague Paul Grant.

https://youtu.be/eblelWcEQWM

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When she moved through the crowd she could feel the weight of people’s eyes on her; judging her. They had her boxed and labelled. ‘Trouble. Wanton. Worthless’. After a while she’d only go out at the times when everyone else wasn’t around.

None of them bothered to see beyond the facts to try and understand the reasons her life had turned out the way it had. None of them made any effort to get to know the person behind the caricature they had of her in their minds.

None, until that day by the well when he gently confronted her with the painful truth of her life, but didn’t condemn her for it. He met her exactly where she was in the mess that life had become, but from there he led her somewhere new. And he wants to do the same for us in the places where we’re finding life hard too.

Lessons from Foetini – the woman at the well – as we read about her in John chapter 4.

If you pay attention to yourself and to the people around you, it isn’t long before you start noticing what seems to be a universal truth about human beings. We’re wistful.

We go on holiday, and we come back a little sad that it’s over and wistful for our next one.

Or we find ourselves reminiscing about the past and being wistful for better times and a more simple life.

Or we find ourselves wondering what our lives might have been if we’d made other choices, or things had turned out differently in our lives. What would that future have looked like, we wonder.

If we allow it to, that wistfulness can tell us something. It tells us that we were made for more than we’ve yet known. And today, in John’s gospel, Jesus puts a name to our longing. He calls it ‘eternal life’. And it’s not about harps and clouds and pearly gates, but about a vital connection to the source of all life – God himself – which can begin now, for anyone.

Part of life in the world is knowing that one day our life is going to end.

How do we deal with that – our ‘perishing’? Is this the natural state of things, or is this not how things are meant to be?

What hope is there in the face of our own mortality?

Some answers, and reasons to hope today, from John 3:16.

https://youtu.be/hzirUDQSPiM

This morning's service with Rev. Anthony Craig.