SCRIPTURE: 1 John 5:9-13
TEXT: 10bThose who do not believe in God have made him a liar THEME: Our faith is informed by God’s testimony of Jesus. INTRODUCTION This passage is about the incarnation of Christ. We cannot read this passage without the preceding verse which talk about belief in Jesus as the Christ, Born of God, love and conquering the world. We used Nicodemus’s story of being born again as way to illustrate those passages. Today we are using Jesus’ meeting of Samaritan woman at the well to open up the second part of this passage. SCRIPTURE Jesus waits at the well, while the disciples go into town for food. He waits to see if someone would come to draw him a cup of water from the well. A Samaritan woman arrives. She is sassy in her surprise, as Jesus’ thirst would cross cultural lines of an ancient prejudice between Samaritans and Jews. She testifies about what she knows about God from her ancestors. But Jesus testifies to a greater truth, to worship in spirit and to live life. The testimony of the Samaritan woman was good, but the testimony of Jesus was greater. What she had been taught, what she practiced, and what she believed, was enough for her to believe in even greater things, concerning the Son, God’s Gift and life eternal. If we receive human testimony, the God’s testimony is greater. God testifies that Jesus is his son. Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe, call God a liar. God gives us eternal life, God’s Son, Jesus, lives this, teaches this, embodies this. Testifies to this. Whoever has the Son has life. The incarnation of God in Jesus, is God’s way of testifying. APPLICATION Our faith is confirmed with God’s testimony of Jesus. How are our experiences of faith informed by God and become a testimony to eternal life? We read an article for the CTEL (Certificate of Theological Education for Leadership) Preaching class from PSR (Pacific School of Religion) entitled, “Asking the Beautiful Questions” It described a Bible study that was held in a Central American prison, for the women of gang members were also incarcerated there. They looked at the story of Hagar, from Genesis 16, Sarah’s slave, who Abraham sired his first-born Ishmael with. This is not Sara’s finest moment as she asks Abraham to dismiss her handmaiden and her son. These women identified with Hagar when the angel appears and calls her by name, and asks her the Beautiful Question, “Where have you come from and where are you going?” This empowered Hagar to tell her story. Hagar incarnated their story of being un-named, used as property, never bothered to asked about their stories, living in a desert of loneliness, rejected and marginalized. In Hagar these women found their story. Then when Hagar renames God, “El Roi” the God who sees me, they also had a God who saw them. The Scriptures became alive for them. The words of God intersected their lives and told their stories. This was an incarnational moment when the word of God became real in their lives. This is like Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well. This is the testimony of our experience, when God’s testimony of Jesus breaks into our world. Lina Thompson, our Preaching professor for CTEL did a preaching series on the beautiful questions that Jesus asks. On all of those places in the gospel where Jesus intersects our lives and asks for our story to be told as an entrance way for the Bible to be taken seriously, as truth, as God’s words, so that if we don’t do it, then we are calling God a liar. The Incarnational Jesus, is, God for real. It is approaching our humanity as something beautiful, wonderful, amazing, marvelous and good. You can almost hear these words being spoken as God creates us from out of the dust of the ground. beautiful, wonderful, amazing, marvelous and good. And again, as God is being emptied into flesh and blood, human likeness and form, as baby Jesus; beautiful, wonderful, amazing, marvelous and good. (Phil 2:6-7) Jesus is our connecting point with God. What we have experienced of the divine, through those thin places, mountain tops, and deep valleys are given greater testimony by God in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus knows our pain and suffering. Our hunger and thirst, our joy and our beauty. Being passionate, full of emotion and laughing until we cry, and crying until our sorrow turns to dancing. Jesus knows our loneness, what it feels like to be abandoned, and to grieve a loss to death. Through the incarnation of Jesus, God knows us, and we get to know God. It matters. God for real. So then like the woman at the well, we are known by God, who testifies to Jesus as our truth. The ‘I am’ who is speaking to us. CONCLUSION We have an incarnational God who wants to be discovered and is revealing revelations of Glory, compassion, love, power, healing, forgiveness, reconciliation, and family all of the time. The goodness we see in is us is an incarnation of the goodness of God. God or real. Then when we read the Bible, it asks us to tell our story, this incarnation of the scripture brings God to us and testifies of a God who see good in us. This is NOT a we are broken and need to be fixed gospel. But this is a you are GOOD and loved by God Gospel! This is a, “Come, let’s get to live life with each other” Gospel. God for real.
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