I want to ask you a question. What would
you say is the hardest thing about being a Christian?
Well, it could be a lot of things, I suppose. It
could be that whole “love your enemies” thing--a lot of us struggle with that
one. It could be continuing to trust in the Lord when it seems like your
life is falling apart--some of us have been there, and know that it’s not
easy. It could be the struggle of why the Lord allows so many bad things
to happen in the world--that’s really hard for us to understand sometimes. And I’m sure it would not be hard for us to
think of other things, too.
But for a lot of us, one of the hardest things about being
a Christian is sharing the gospel message. The technical word for that is
“evangelism”, and just that word scares us.
It brings to mind images of TV preachers, or someone standing on a
street corner shouting at people to repent and be saved. Evangelism does
not have to be that, of course. As I
said, it’s really just sharing the gospel message. But even so, it scares us.
There are reasons why. Our faith is a very personal
thing. It can be scary to open up about our faith. What if someone
does not like it? What if someone
disagrees? What if I come off as arrogant or
holier-than-thou?
And the world discourages us
from talking about our faith. We hear this idea that the two things you
should never discuss in public are politics and religion. And yet, I hear
people talking about politics all the time any more, so apparently religion is
now the only thing we’re not supposed to talk about in public.
And so we fall back on
clichés. We say, well, that’s just not a talent I have. We say,
well, I share my faith by the way I live my life. We say, well, there are
too many things about faith that I don’t understand myself. How can I
share faith with others?
And yet, we know we’re supposed
to. According to Matthew, the last instructions Jesus gave us before he
ascended to heaven were for us to go and make disciples. And he did not
make it optional. He did not say “do it
if you think you have a talent for it” or “do it if you have everything about
your faith figure out”. He said do it.
Period. It’s our mission as
United Methodists, too. The official
mission statement of the United Methodist church is “to go and make disciples
of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”
We know we’re supposed to do
it. If we believe that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven,
then we know people’s eternal lives depend on us doing it. And yet--we
hesitate. We feel unsure. We feel like we don’t know how to do it. We’re afraid people will think we’re strange
if we do it.
Now, maybe there are some here
who don’t feel that. Maybe there are some here who are really good at
sharing the gospel message. If so, that’s awesome. Thank you.
Please keep it up. In fact,
please help some of the rest of us learn from you. Because I have to be
honest with you: I’m not all that
comfortable doing this, either. I do it
sometimes, but I miss an awful lot of chances, too, and for a lot of the
reasons I’ve already given.
Maybe, if we struggle with
this, our reading for today can help. The story of Jesus and the
Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus and
the disciples are traveling through Samaria on their way to Galilee.
Jesus sends the disciples into town to buy food, and he sits down by this well. The Samaritan woman comes to the well to get
water, and Jesus asks her for a drink. The Samaritan woman basically
says, how are you even talking to me?
You’re a Jewish man and I’m a Samaritan woman. You’re not supposed to have anything to do
with me. And Jesus responds, as you heard, “If
you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would
have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
Now, we don’t
know the mind of Jesus. It’s entirely possible that Jesus planned this
whole thing, that he deliberately timed his trip so that he’d be at the well
when this woman got there, and that he deliberately sent the disciples away on
some pretext so he could talk to this woman alone. After all, he’s Jesus,
the divine Son of God, and he could know things that it would not be possible
for a mere human to know.
But there’s
nothing in the Bible that indicates that. The way this is written, this
appears to be just a chance encounter. Jesus is just resting by the well
because he’s tired. And this woman just
happens to come out at this time. And Jesus, who after all was never too
concerned with social conventions and who talked all the time to people he was
not “supposed” to talk to, just asks her for a drink because he’s thirsty.
Again, we don’t know, but the way the story is written, what happens does not
appear to have been part of some grand plan of Jesus to find this woman and
make her a disciple.
But look at
what happens. They’re having this normal conversation, and the woman
gives him an opening. She says, “How can you ask me for a drink?” And when Jesus gets that opening, he jumps
through it. That’s when he tells her about the living water. And that leads to the entire conversation
about the water that will never let you thirst again, about her husbands, and
about where to worship. And ultimately, it leads to Jesus telling this
woman, this Samaritan woman, straight out that he is the Messiah--something he
rarely said to anyone.
That’s the
example for us. You and I don’t have a grand plan of going out and
spreading the gospel message to anyone and everyone. I mean, some people
are called to do that, and if that’s you, that’s great. I’m not speaking against it. But we
don’t have to do that to spread the gospel.
All we need to do is pay attention.
Pay attention during the normal conversations we have every day.
Look for an opening in the conversation to talk about our faith. And when we get that opening, be ready to
jump through it.
It won’t
happen in every conversation. I mean, I’m not suggesting that we should
start talking about Noah and the flood every time someone says it looks like
rain. But there are times when it will come up naturally. It can be as simple as someone telling us they’re
having a bad day, and us responding, “I’ll pray for you.” It can be as
simple as, instead of saying “Have a nice day”, saying “Have a blessed
day.” It can be as simple as, when
someone asks you why you’re in a good mood, saying that you’re feeling God’s
blessings today.
Now, of
course, we can get deeper than that, too, and we should. We don’t want to
settle for just superficial statements.
But we have to start somewhere, and this is a place to start. If
we’re having trouble talking about our faith, these are simple ways we can get
started doing it. And as we get more
comfortable doing these things, then we can gradually move into the deeper
statements, and the deeper conversations. But if we don’t start
someplace, we’ll never get anywhere.
And the thing
is, we never know where even a superficial statement might lead. After
all, Jesus started by asking someone for a drink of water. He then saw an opening to talk about faith
and took it. That led, not just to this Samaritan woman coming to believe
in Jesus, but to a whole lot of other Samaritans coming to believe in Jesus as
the Savior. All those people were saved, and it all started by Jesus
asking for a drink of water.
Now, I’m not
suggesting that this happened every time Jesus had a conversation with
someone. I’m sure there were many times Jesus just had regular
conversations, with no faith component to them. I’m also sure there were
times when Jesus tried to take advantage of an opening in the conversation and
the person he was talking to did not want to hear it. We’re even told in
the Bible of a few occasions where Jesus was talking to someone and they walked
away, refusing to follow him.
But in an odd
way, I always find that kind of encouraging. If we look at that the right
way, it can take the pressure of us. If even Jesus could not get everyone
to follow him, then you and I cannot expect to, either. So if sometimes
we talk about our faith, and nothing happens, we don’t need to get
discouraged. It happened to Jesus sometimes, too. We’re in good company.
I don’t know
what percentage of the time we’ll make a difference in someone’s life this
way. Maybe not very often. But ask
yourself this: how many people would you
have to bring to Christ to make this worthwhile? How many people would
need to receive eternal life to make this worth the effort? Twenty?
Ten? Five? Maybe, even just one?
Again, I know
that for a lot of us, this is not easy. But Jesus told us to do a lot of
things that are not easy, and this is one of them. Nowhere in the Bible
does Jesus say, “you don’t have to do this if you find it hard” or “you don’t
have to do this if you don’t feel like it.” When Jesus said to do
something, he said to do it.
Period. No exceptions given, and
no excuses allowed.
It’s not easy
for a lot of us. Including me. But
we need to do it anyway. The eternal life of someone we know may depend
on it.
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