"-- Jesus doesn`t avoid the outsider, he goes out of his way to find them and invite them in. That is why religious folk of his day didn`t like Jesus. He ate with rich people who extorted money from their fellow Jews, he hung out with prostitutes, and worst of all he talked with non-religious people. Religious people hate it when you do that. That`s why they were always trying to kill him. Jesus turned all the social conventions inside out. The outsiders, like lepers and prostitutes, were brought in, and the insiders, the pious, religious folk were left out - not because Jesus didn`t love them, but because they didn`t like who he hung out with.

And that`s what Jesus invites us to do - turn our world and our church inside out. We do that in two ways:

1) Jesus calls us to invite the outsiders in. Jesus` church is meant to be open to everybody. Unfortunately it doesn`t seem that way to a lot of people who don`t go to church. If you were here last Monday during the Martin Luther King celebration, you will remember that our alarm went off in the middle of worship. Here we had all these guests from Mt. Calvary, we were talking about racial reconciliation and being together, and then the alarm goes off. And it`s a talking alarm - I didn`t know we had a talking alarm - and it said: "You have entered a secure area, please leave immediately." I thought, okay, as a metaphor, this isn`t good. "Get out of our church. Go. Get out!" Now, it was an accident, nobody`s to blame. In fact, I was grateful for it. I was thinking: "This is a perfect sermon illustration, thank you Jesus." And fair or unfair, true or not, for a lot of people that is the perception they have of the church -- if you`re not one of us, please leave immediately.

-- Whenever someone asks me what I do for a living, and I kill the conversation by answering truthfully ''I mean really " I`m going to start saying I`m a lawyer - I think it would be better received'' invariably someone will say, "Church, if I came to church I`d get hit by lightning." I`ve even had people say, "I don`t have the right clothes to go to church." To which I can say, "at least you don`t have toothpaste on your shirt." Those answers break my heart. That image that the church is for moral insiders, people whose lives are spotless and put together and completely perfect, you know, just like yours are. That`s not the church. The church is not a museum to display the victorious life-style; it is a rehab ward for recovering sinners. And the church is not a country club for the socially connected; it is a community that is open to everybody. And the church is not a secret society complete with secret handshakes and secret rituals. Although again, if you have never been to church it might feel that way. Remember, most people in King County don`t go to church. I know a lot of people who have never been to church in their entire life, not once. When I taught college, I had a lot of students who didn`t know what Easter was. That`s how unfamiliar what we do is to some people. So you can imagine how strange it would be for someone to walk off the street into one of our four services. They would have lots of questions: "Why do these people stand and sing together?" That never happens in our culture, except at a baseball game. "Is this the seventh inning stretch? What`s going on?" And "Why does the pastor talk so much?" And "Why do they listen, or seem to?" "And after the sermon, `Why do they pass a basket around and charge money for this experience - it wasn`t that great." Now, none of those things are bad to do, they are just unfamiliar to some people and can make them feel like outsiders. That`s why Jesus wants us to be an inviting community that welcomes people with open arms, and you guys are so good at this. You guys do this better than I have ever seen it done before.

2) The real way we invite the outside in is if we, the insiders, go out. Most people have all kinds of stereotypes about who Jesus is: He`s mean, nasty, judgmental, boring, irrelevant. The only way those people are going to know him is if we hand deliver the invitation ourselves. The insiders have to go out and show who Jesus really is. That`s what Jesus is doing in this story. In the text it says that he had to pass through Samaria. Geographically speaking, that`s not true; there was another route around - and a pious Jew would have taken it to avoid contacting Samaritans. The real reason Jesus had to go through Samaria was to get to this woman - just like he had to come from Heaven to earth to get to you and me. Jesus went outside his comfort zone, outside the temple, outside his race and class, and outside his religion, to reach out to this woman who feels excluded from God`s community. And I believe that this woman was converted the minute Jesus said to her "give me a drink." Ostracized as a prostitute, six desperate tries to feel valued resulting only in a ruined reputation and a wrecked self-esteem, but finally somebody reaches out to her and treats her with dignity. And that changed everything for her. That is what Jesus calls us to do. We who are inside the church are called to go outside and show people who Jesus really is.

-- Jesus wants to turn us inside out. The outsiders need to be invited in. The best way to do that is if the insiders go out and serve. That`s how God got to us, right? He came to us in the person of Jesus. God Himself, the creator of all that is, the second person of the Trinity, how much more inside can you get? The trinity - that`s an inside club! He went outside of that, outside of the comforts of heaven, became the ultimate outsider for our sake, became poor and oppressed, to pul us inside God`s community.

And Jesus said to me(ht), "Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men."

(And close to Jesus. Amen)

God created you. Not only that, he loves you so much that he wants you to know him now and spend eternity with him. Jesus said, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."1

Jesus came so that each of us could know and understand God in a personal way. Jesus alone can bring meaning and purpose to life.