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"About Fear and Truth"
Pastor Andries Coetzee
November 22, 2009
Oak Grove Presbyterian Church
John 4: 5-42 and John 18: 33-37

Scripture Readings:

John 18: 33-37
33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters - again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ ³⁴Jesus answered, ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ ³⁵Pilate replied, ‘I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?’ ³⁶Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ ³⁷Pilate asked him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’ ³⁸Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’

John 4: 1-6, 7-19, 27-30, 39-42
(Jesus) left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’  Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet.

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ They left the city and were on their way to him.

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.’

Sermon:     “About Fear and Truth”1

This past week after dinner we as a family were in the living room with Beth and I talking and the boys lying on the floor reading their books.  All of a sudden, and with a lot of excitement, Endalkachew told us that he felt like he became part of the book, Charoltte’sWeb, that he was reading.  Very animatedly he told us that he feels that he is Wilbur, a pig that was saved by an eight year old girl named Fern after being born a runt and which her father wanted to kill.  As a pet Wilbur was hyperactive and always exploring new things and was then sold to her uncle. Fern then visits him as often as she can, but Wilbur gets lonelier day after day till a warm and soothing voice tells him that she is going to be his friend. The next day, he wakes up and meets his new friend: Charlotte, the grey spider.  Once again Wilbur is saved, this time by Charlotte from becoming the Christmas meal, by going to the county fair where he wins a prize.

Here Endalkachew said he could hear the crowd at the fair applauding him as he wins the prize.  “I am like Wilber”, he said “as my mother in Ethiopia could not take care of me anymore, but then I came to America and found a new mother like Charlotte who is taking care of me now”.  Is this not what life is about? Belonging! Family and Being Loved!

I must say that I really liked the analogy until he started to compare me with the gluttonous rat Templeton, that assisted Charlotte the spider in helping him…. that was just all to close to home for me.

Like Charoltte’s Web, Christ the King Sunday and our Gospel readings of the day invite, in fact beckon us, to become part of the story.  A story and a Sunday that cap the Christian Year by boldly professing that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, and that all who “belong to the truth listen to his voice”.  It is as if we are called to testify and perhaps, even to be on trial ourselves.

We know all too well that to belong to Jesus, to this “truth”, is not an idea, or a concept, a fact or a formula, but rather a way of being in the world in suffering, in hope2 and in faith.  This “truth” or “way of life” is of deep personal conviction for believers, in which we try to give expression to our faith in Christ in every way of our being.  It is then this “way of life”, that makes this statement of Jesus, that all who “belong to the truth listen to his voice” hard for us to stomach, as “to belong” is so important to us.   

So many of us struggle with deep-seated doubt about our belonging and if we are really listening to the voice of our Savior?  So many of us struggle from a constant nagging “fear that someday someone will unmask the illusion and show that we are not as smart, as good and as loveable as the world was made to believe3.”   So many believers live with fear and trepidation that when everything is said and done we will fall short of God’s salvation. 

This spirituality of fear and doubt is still common among believers today as it is based on a theology that is deeply rooted in our upbringing with an image of a condemning God.   The reality is that these nagging questions are part of who we are.  The problem is that we allow them to have a corroding effect on our lives so they prevent community, honesty, and creative sharing among believers.  Sometimes it is so difficult for us to be vulnerable, to be real, to reveal who we truly are and how we feel about things, because we are so afraid we might be rejected.

This fear makes us possessive and defensive and we tend to look at our fellow human beings more as enemies to be kept at a distance than as friends with whom we share the gifts of life.  We are afraid to talk about our differences because it might change the nature of our relationships. We are afraid to feed the hungry, because we might have to sacrifice too much. We are afraid to deal with environmental problems, because they might cost too much. We are afraid to embrace disarmament because someone else might have a gun.

It is on this Christ the King Sunday then, that we are invited to face the truth about Jesus, and about ourselves.  In both our readings of the day Jesus portrays God as a God of love and grace, who wills the blessings of creation for all people.  Both the woman at the well and Pilate are invited by Jesus, the good shepherding king, to face the truth about their lives, to be transparent, to utter the vulnerable reality of their own lives.

The woman at the well who was a despised foreigner with an irregular marital history had her life transformed by this invitation. In her vulnerability she then creates community by bearing witness to Jesus, and as a result a whole village comes to faith. 

In contrast Pilate who was a man of lower Roman nobility lives in a world of the illusion of power and is mocked in this reading by his ultimate lack of it.  In the trial Pilate seems befuddled about what to do with Jesus as he acts out of fear of the crowds and his superiors.  Unlike the woman at the well who has so little to lose, Pilate, we suspect, who seemingly has so much to lose, will remain trapped by his worldly power.

The reality is that the woman at the well in all her vulnerability, stripped from all pretence and control could hear the Shepherd's voice assuring her…and us…that no matter what, the revelation of God in Christ is for us.  This is a voice that spoke to us before we could speak a word, that healed us before we could make any gesture for help, that set us free long before we could give love to anyone.  This is the voice that we have witnessed and heard today as we baptized baby Jacob Daniel Deters.

It is when we realize with the woman at the well, that we ourselves are judged by the Gospel we proclaim and not just others, that we discover life as a gift to be shared and not a possession to be defended.

It is then within this community of brokenness and imperfection that we realize our “belonging” becomes less and less individual and more and more about a family that does not belong to a certain parcel of land or a particular race of people, but a family that belongs to a truth. 

When Jesus was before Pilate he said that “all who listen to Jesus' voice belong to the truth and are part of his kingdom”, not just some, but all who listen to his voice belong.

Amen