"That`s why I love this story about Jesus and the woman at the well, because in it he just shatters any stereotype we might have that what he wants is perfect people.

To begin with I think what this story shows us is that far from avoiding sinful people, Jesus will go out of his way to find them and restore them through a relationship with him. As you probably know, according to the customs of the day, Jesus should have nothing to do with this woman. It is bad enough that she is a Samaritan; Jews had no
dealings with Samaritans because they were considered heretics, traitors and racially impure. Worst yet, she`s a woman in a culture where a Jewish man would regularly pray the prayer, "I thank you, God, that you did not make me a Gentile, a dog, or a woman" in that order. Bad enough she`s a Samaritan, worst yet she is a woman, and worse even still, she is this particular woman; she has had five husbands and the one she has now is not her husband.

Jewish law allowed for a maximum of only three husbands; she is two over her limit, and she is fishing without a license! That`s why she comes to this well alone at noon when most women went in groups in the morning. She comes alone in the middle of the day because she is an outcast and nobody will go with her and she is ashamed. But Jesus reaches beyond all of those barriers; he reaches beyond the barriers of race and religion and gender and even of moral behavior to get to her and to show her and to show us that whose we are is far more important to him than who we are or what we have done. John 4:4 says that in order to get to Galilee, Jesus had to pass through Samaria - geographically speaking that is not true.

There was a route around Samaria and a pious Jew would have taken it to avoid Samaritans. The real reason Jesus had to go through Samaria was to get to her, just like he had to come from heaven to earth to get to you and me. Jesus does not avoid sinful people; on the contrary, he seeks them out, and I believe this woman was hooked the minute Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." Her whole life she had been ostracized as a prostitute, trapped in her own immoral search to feel loved, six separate tries to feel wanted, six separate tries to feel valued, resulting only in a ruined self-esteem and a wrecked reputation. She had been drinking a lot of salt water and it had just left her thirstier. But finally somebody treats her with dignity, finally somebody treats her like a human being and reaches out to her and that changes her. Jesus breaks down every barrier, violates every social taboo, goes out of his way to reach sinful you and sinful me to let us know that we are forgiven and we can have a new start, and that quenches our deep thirst to be valued and wanted; we
are sought after people.

The second way Jesus shatters the stereotype that he only wants perfect people is that he knows the truth about who we really are, and he tells it to us but loves us anyway. In his conversation Jesus talks about living water, the kind that quenches every thirst permanently and the woman says, "Give me some of this water, so I don`t have to come back to this well." Then Jesus says this odd thing, "Go call your husband." It`s kind of an awkward transition, don`t you think? Give me some living water, go call your husband. It`s a non sequitur. As a former English teacher, this drives me crazy. If this had been an essay, I would have circled it in red, and I would have said, "Jesus, your essay though spiritually provocative suffers from a series of awkward non sequiturs, B-minus." Shows you what I know! I think there is actually a very powerful truth in that awkward non sequitur. By turning the focus of the conversation to her five husbands -- to the things she is most ashamed about - what Jesus is saying is the living water you want, the kind that quenches every thirst, well, that means that you have to tell the truth to God about your life so that he can tell the truth back to you that you are forgiven.

Like this woman a lot of us are caught up in a cycle of shame where we are terrified that people are going to find out who we really are, and if they do, we will never be loved so we cover it up and we hide it, which only makes us feel more ashamed and just makes us feel worse. The only way out of that cycle is to fess up to God and at least one other person and say, "I am a sinner." We need to tell the truth about our broken lives so that we can hear God`s truth back to us that we are forgiven. Now, admittedly, that is scary and that`s why this woman hesitates.

If you noticed, after Jesus asked her about her husband she equivocates by saying, "I have no husband." Correct, but only on a technicality. And Jesus calls her on that - the one you have now is not your husband. And then she says this great thing, "I see you are a prophet." Good guess. And then she changes the subject: Jesus, some people say we should worship on this mountain and some say in Jerusalem. What do you think? In other words, enough about me - let`s talk theology. Okay? This is getting too close. So Jesus says, okay, if you want to talk about worship, we`ll talk about worship. If you want to worship, you have to worship in spirit and in truth, and he repeats the word truth over and over and over again. In other words, worship is truth telling; worship is when we come to God and say, "Lord I am a broken sinner, " and he says, I know - that`s why I died to forgive you and that`s why I am going to give you my spirit to change you. Worship isn`t about singing songs, it`s not about hearing sermons, and it`s not even about coming to church.

Worship is when our truth meets God`s truth. Far from wanting only perfect people, Jesus knows the truth of who we really are, loves us anyway, and forgives us and transforms us to be new people. This quenches our deep thirst -- to be fully known and fully loved - two things that go together only in a relationship with Jesus. That doesn`t even happen in marriage, only with Jesus.

The last way I think Jesus shatters the stereotype that he only wants perfect people is he uses even our sin for his glory. After meeting Jesus, this woman runs into the village, and she says, "Come, see a man, who told me everything I ever did." Now that is a big change for a woman who has come to this well in secret and in shame and in hiding, and now she is blabbing her life story to the village, and all the villagers came out to see Jesus because of it. In other words, her sin becomes evangelism. Her sin becomes the pulpit she climbs into to tell the story about Jesus. Her sin and what Jesus does with it becomes the thing that convinces all the villagers that Jesus is the Savior of the world. Her sin isn`t good, but what Jesus does with it is. Jesus can use even our sin for his glory, just like he did on the cross where our sin led us to crucify our Creator, but he used that to forgive us.

Grace is such a nice word. We associate it with the goodness of God, and we like it in theory. But there is another side of grace that this parable highlights. If we look at it closely the grace of Jesus Christ can be a little disturbing. And if we`re honest, grace bothers us - at least a little. This parable scandalizes us. One of the stereotypes we have about being a Christian is that if you`re good, you`ll go to heaven, and that Jesus is fair, and he`ll reward us for our good deeds. I can`t tell you how many times I hear this even from people in the church who say,

"Well, I`ve been good so I know I`m going to go to heaven." But that`s not what Jesus says in this parable. Jesus says we go to heaven because of his grace, not our works, and because we know him. Nowhere does Jesus say he`s fair. He doesn`t say we`ll get what we`ve earned or what we deserve. He says he comes to bring grace, and grace bothers us because it`s not the way we like to do things. Our whole society operates not on grace, but on ungrace or non-grace. As Phillip Yancey points out: Tests come back with WRONG answers circled not the right ones. Corporations have org. charts so everyone knows where everyone else stands. Airlines make us earn frequent flyer miles; they just don`t give them away. The compensation package the landowner in this parable offers his employees wouldn`t fly in a global economy. Our whole culture functions on non-grace. And we like it that way, and if we didn`t, we`d change it. So truth be told as much as we are comforted by the idea of grace, Jesus` Grace also disturbs and challenges us. It does so for these reasons:

1) We don`t like grace because it makes us equal to everybody else, and we don`t want to be equal; we want to be superior. Notice the workers complaint in vs. 12 "you have made them equal to us." Isn`t it interesting that their complaint is NOT that they were underpaid? The wage was a fair wage and everyone was happy with it. Their complaint was that everyone has been made equal. They don`t want to be equal; they want to be superior. A lot of human happiness seems to depend on us having something that someone else doesn`t have.

My kids are a great example of this. If Holly has a toy and Jackson notices that she has something he doesn`t -- he wants that toy. It can be the stupidest toy in the world and he`s got to have it "NOT because the toy is great, but because his sister has something that he doesn`t have, he`s got to fix that terrible wrong. If ever you question original sin have children, and it will cure you of your bad theology. A lot of human happiness depends on us feeling like we have something that someone else doesn`t have so that we can feel superior. That`s why I went to school all those years because I loved getting grades. I thought grades were wonderful. I would work so hard to get an A because it was the highest grade, and by definition that meant I would be better than most people. I would have something that they didn`t have and that would make me feel superior, and I loved to feel superior. What this parable suggests is, that as sick as it sounds, we want heaven to be like school. We don`t want to be equal. We want God to give us grades so that we can compare ourselves to other people. In heaven we could way to each other, "God gave me an A today " what did he give you " ooh

sorry, must have been that thing with the IRS a couple of years ago " guess you`ll have to sit on the B- side of the galaxy. "There`s a part of us that wants God to work that way because then we can feel superior to others. Are there people that you do that to? Are there people that you place yourself above? We all do. We say things like, "I may be a sinner, but at least I don`t " or I may lie sometimes, but at least I`m not like " ''just fill in the blank''.

2) This brings me to the 2nd reason that grace challenges us, and it`s related to the first. Grace is too radical. Grace means that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more. That`s bad news for an overachieving, eldest son, former Stanford student like me because I like to earn things. But the grace of God means something else. It also means that there is nothing we can do to make God love us less ''and for a wretch like me that`s good news''. You see, no one is first and no one is last; we`re all just saved by Jesus. That`s why Jesus uses such confusing language here about first and last. At the end of chapter Matthew 19 before the parable Jesus says, "first will be last, and the last will be first." But at the end of the parable in Matthew 20, he turns that around and says in reverse order "last will be first, and the first will be last." This is very confusing language - all those lasts and firsts; firsts and lasts just blur together as if in the Kingdom of God that was the point. Grace is not about finishing last OR first; it`s about not keeping score at all.

-- That`s radical. Jesus is more radical than Mao or Lenin or any of those revolutionaries. Those guys just wanted to put the workers on the top and capitalists on the bottom, but there`s still a top and there`s still a bottom. Jesus gets rid of top and bottom all together. And he says, "You can stop worrying about being first. You can stop being afraid about being last. Once you`re covered by my grace, you`re free from all of that - you`re free." Where are you competing with others just to feel like
you`re in first place? Jesus says if you know him, you don`t have to prove anything to anyone anymore. You`re loved no matter what you`ve done or haven`t done. That`s radical.

3) A third reason why grace challenges us: Because it`s unfair. The landowner`s grace means that those who worked longest got paid the same as those who worked only an hour - that`s unfair. Did you know this story used to be an old Jewish parable before Jesus picked it up? Only in the ORIGINAL version of the story did it say the workers who came last worked so hard that they were more productive than all the other workers put together. So they earned their wage even though they only worked an hour. Now that`s the parable Jesus SHOULD have told. That`s a good parable. But
he doesn`t, and you can just see the crowd as Jesus told this familiar story saying, "Oh, I love this one " this is a great story about working hard" until Jesus gets to the end and puts his twist on it -- and all the workers get paid the same.

Christ`s grace means that the worst villains in history - Nero, Genghis Kahn, any of those guys - if they had a deathbed conversion they`d go to heaven just like me. I`m not sure I like that. I might be in heaven and Genghis Kahn will come up to me and say, "Hey, Scott, you made it too; what a surprise." That`s going to get on my nerves. Grace has a scandalous, offensive side to it - it levels the playing field; it`s too radical; it`s unfair, which just proves that we didn`t make it up. This is not the kind of thing human beings come up with on their own; we come up with frequent flyer miles. But grace comes from only one place and that`s the heart of Jesus Christ.

Now I`m not saying that there are no consequences to our actions. Galatians 6:7 God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. If we sin, we will reap the consequences of that in this lifetime. If we spend our whole lives not knowing Christ, only to embrace him at the last minute, we`ve missed out on a lifetime of the joy of knowing Jesus, and we`ve ruined our lives with destructive behavior. So there are consequences in this life to what we do. But what this parable does say is that no matter how bad we have been, no matter how late we come, no matter what is in our past, whatever is in our present, we still have a future if we know Jesus Christ. That is the important qualifier - if we know Jesus!