Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany February 15-16, 2025
“One Life Can Make a Difference” John 4:1-14, 4:39-45
(Ecc. 12:1-5, Phil 3:12-14)
Rev. Dr. Michael E. Paulison / Ascension Lutheran Church / Littleton, CO
I was listening to this week to a podcast with an interview of Jason Alexander (George from Seinfeld fame). Jason Alexander isn’t even his real name. He was talking about how three events when he was 6 years old changed his life. One was his beloved uncle died. Second was that his father had a heart attack that took months to recover. And third was the day he came home, as a latch key kid with his parents at work, and everything was gone including the appliances. He thought he was abandoned and sat alone in the NYC until his parents came home from work. What he found out was that someone had cased his apartment and followed their schedule, and while they were gone to work one day men came dressed as a moving company and took everything. This deeply impacted his life.
I remember one summer as a counselor at Camp Pioneer (An LCMS Camp) outside of Buffalo NY. During one of the youth weeks, a teenager and I were sitting outside of cottage talking about life. He was a disenfranchised youth who was forced to go by his parents. He was struggling with his faith and about 17 years old. During that conversation, he said that he did not believe that one life could make a difference in this world. He said that the world was too big and there was no way that one life could really affect a change in the world. I remember to this day the feeling I got inside as he was speaking. It was as if my stomach was convulsing. It was challenging everything that I was saying at the time. I have to admit to you today that my whole life and ministry have been lived in response to that one conversation. I set out to prove with all my energy and my life that he was wrong. I still believe that one life can make a difference. I am not just talking about Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King Jr. I am talking about those of you sitting in those seats today.
We get one life. If you ever go with me on a short-term mission trip during training you will hear me safe, “My goal is to wreck your life for the ordinary.” (Let’s be honest, I stole that from the late Bill Bright). When I say that a lot of people laugh at first. But this is no simple mantra. This is not said to illicit laughs. I am serious. My burning goal is to wreck you. I want to take you to a broken part of the world and spend a week with you so when you come back your life will be changed forever. You cannot go back to just living a nice safe life.
Let me explain a little further. I don’t want you wrecked like I am. My calling is not your calling. I have no desire for any of you to have to see the images and faces that I see when I close my eyes at night. But I want the calling of God in Jesus Christ to stir you; to wreck you for the ordinary. I want to stretch you to a point where you can never go back to normal. This is not to guilt you into something, but by the Holy Spirit to propel you into something.
One thing that is very important to us at Mission Experience is to show you different images than you see of Haiti in the media. In the media you will see images of starving children and suffering people. We show you none of that. In our pictures we show you pictures of laughing kids and joy filled moments. We don’t want to deny the suffering. One child dies of starvation every 8 minutes, but we do not want to guilt you into anything. In our training teams, I will tell people not to take every photo that you want. Before you take that picture of a suffering child on the street, ask yourself if you would like the same picture to be shown of someone you love or your own child.
We have another mantra, “Give us your volunteers and I will give you back missionaries.” We train you to think and act like a missionary. My job is to help you realize that your life is short. Peter says that we are aliens and strangers in foreign land. Paul in Philippians says that “Our citizenship is in Heaven.” I want to convince you that your life is a short-term mission trip and you and I need to be about the father’s business. This is not just on a short-term mission trip. This should be our lives.
One of the first things I need to do by the power of the Holy Spirit is to convince you that your life matters. I have to convince you, that no matter what stage you are in life right now the God of the Universe is moving and wants to use you to transform the life journey of people your life touches.
This passion began when I was young. But passion does not belong to the young. It is not youthfulness. It is the burning inner desire to make a difference in this world, or in the lives of he people around you. It is that one thing in your life that you would be willing to give all you have to see come to life. It stirs your heart.
Let’s look briefly at John 4 and the story of the woman at the well. Let me set this up for you. Jesus and his disciples come to the end of long weary day of travel. In fact, in John 4:6, it reads that “Jesus, being wearied from his journey…” This is one of the most human images of Jesus. This word means physically exhausted. This is a perfect active participle. All that means is that he is perfectly exhausted! He rests and sends the disciples into town to get dinner.
Now I believe that Jesus was here on purpose. I believe that God had a divine appointment for him. Some of you know exactly what I am talking about, because you have been caught in a conversation with someone and they for a moment pull back the veil of their souls and you have felt like God has set up this moment for they and you to be here together.
There are a lot of questions around this scene. Why at the sixth hour of the day (About 6:00 PM) is this woman coming for water? And why isn’t she going to a well that is closer to the city? As the story unfolds, we can deduce the reasons. Most woman go to the well early in the morning when it is cool to have fresh cool water for their families for the rest of the day; however, this woman doesn’t want to run into the rest of the woman. She has a history. She has a past. She has made bad decisions that she doesn’t want people reminding her of them, and she most likely doesn’t want to deal with people whispering about her and judging her. Her hope was to arrive when no one was at the well. So, why doesn’t see turn around when she sees Jesus there? Why? Because it is the end of the day. You can’t come back in the dark. Her husband, or more precisely, the man she was living with needs water for the evening. She didn’t have a choice. And it looked as if this man where a Jew, and they didn’t talk to Samaritans, so she might be able to simply get her water and leave.
Now there is a lot to discuss in this conversation between Jesus and this woman. They discuss worship. They discuss proper worship locations. They discuss this woman’s life and her bad choices, and her four previously failed marriages. Nothing is hidden before the creator of this world. The writes of Hebrews says that all is laid bare before God. Jesus pulls back the veil of this woman’s life. Why? To condemn her? No, to let her know that in spite of her bad decisions God knew her. He knew her condition. He loved her. The most important discussion was not where or how you should worship. The most important thing is that Jesus was offering her water of life that would fill her soul.
I love the way Jesus describes it. It is water that will well up inside springing up to eternal life. The word here used in John 4:14 is used in only two other places in the New Testament. It is in Acts 3:8 and Acts 14:10. (read them) In verse 3:8, the lame man after being healed leaps to praise God. In 14:10, another lame man leaps in the air after being healed by Paul. Jesus is saying that the water of life that Jesus was given you will burst forth inside of your hungry thirsting souls and give you new life. (Invitation for those there to drink of this well who have never drunk, and to be baptized.)
Did you know that most corporations put a value on your life? Coca Cola has placed a value on your life. With 7.3 billion humans on the planet, They say that each one of them will consume at least 1 Coca-Cola product every 4 days. Coca-Cola has put just over a $6,000 value on you over your lifetime. Next time you drink a coke, don’t think of it as costing you a dollar…but think of it as a down payment of $6,000. Chevrolet has determined that you are worth about $276,000 to General Motors if you are a lifetime costumer. Computer companies estimate that the lifetime value of a sophisticated computer user is about $45,000. If you are a non-technical user your value drops to $20,000. Companies consistently place a numerical value upon your life. How much more should we consider that the story we tell of the mercy, kindness and grace of Jesus changes eternities and not just lives.
The amazing end to this story in found starting John 4:39. This non-theologically trained admitted sinner (and please don’t miss the point that it is a woman in this age where woman did not have rights) who God now uses to transform and entire village. This begs the question. How does an outcast with a bad reputation tell a story so powerful that the whole town, who would not allow her to testify in a court of lay, now allow her to drive them to go seek Jesus out. You know how?
Have you ever been so enthralled in someone’s story because it was so powerful and life changing that were on the edge of you seek because you saw the sparkle in their eye and the way the tone of their voice changed when they began to talk? This woman simply went and told others her story. She went and told others about how her life changed when she met Jesus, and the history of that town’s population changed. One life made a difference for those people. It wasn’t her, but the story of Jesus she had to tell. Jesus’ grace impacted her that the power of meeting Jesus compelled her to tell others.
One life. The story of Jesus, and lives were changed for eternity.
You want to hear some stories of lives you have changed with your support of our ministry.
You and I have a story to share. It is a loving God hung spread eagle on a cross. A God impaled to a Roman cross hanging with our sins weighed upon Him. Jesus dying because God came to reconcile our hearts. He came for us, not us for Him. This is the message of the value of each life in the world to the heart of God.
The Holy Spirit of the Living God may be piercing your heart right now. Don’t let this moment pass. What is God breathing into your heart? What is He asking you to do? How is He asking you to step out in faith? This is not about you. This is about what God wants to do through your life.
There is a story about The Roman Emperor Julian (332-363 AD), and how he wanted to breathe new life into the ancient religion but he saw more and more people drawn to Christianity. He wrote with frustration against those who he called the atheists (those who did not believe in the Roman gods, but in Christ):
“Atheism, (the Christian faith) has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal there is not a single Jew who is a beggar, and the godless Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.”
They “understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). Their first skill was the ability to decipher the important political, economic, and spiritual currents of the time in which they lived. Their second skill was the ability to produce a strategy that made the best use of their time (or season). They hoped for a positive outcome in the future, but it depended on their insight, decisions, and actions within the present. (The End of the World…As We Know It , By Chuck Smith Jr. p.42)
You and get one life. Make it count. My call is to challenge you to view your entire life as a short term mission trip.
Your life. Your gifts. Your passions matter. Step out in faith. Make that Call. Volunteer for the position. Step up to be a leader. Say you will go on that mission trip. That organization that you have been wanting to call for a while to get involved- call. You have been scared to risk telling someone ow much God loves them- have that conversation.
You get one life and if it didn’t matter to God, you would not be here right now.
God is actively inviting you to participate in what He is doing in the world through the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For many of you it began in your baptism. Now you and I must live out of our baptismal grace in Jesus. You don’t have to live through anyone else’s story. You have your own story. God is moving on your hearts. You want your life. Your story to count.
“Allow your passions to die with you, but don’t let them die before you” (McManus)
