A couple of years ago, Jim Parsons on his blog, “adventures in revland,” told about a most unusual battle that was going on in Warsaw, Ohio between New Beginnings Ministries Church and the Foxhole Club, which is a club that provides adult entertainment featuring women gifted in a certain form of dance.
It seems for years the church has protested the club. Church members had stood outside it with bullhorns, banners and cameras to take pictures of people’s license plates as they arrived at the club. The club owner got tired of this and he and the girls started a counter-protest at the church . . . on Sunday mornings. Girls from the club stood outside the church in bikinis, holding up their own signs with Bible quotes on them talking about “false prophets.”
After the story rolled out about the girls and club owners protesting the church, some different kinds of evangelists showed up. JC’s Girls is a ministry from the Rock Church in San Diego, CA. JC’s Girls reaches out to women in the adult entertainment industry. The girls in this ministry use to be part of that industry and now spend their free time reaching out to women still in the industry to show them that they are loved by God.
This group of JC’s Girls flew out to Ohio and talked with the girls of the Foxhole Club. They shared their testimony and how their lives were changed by the love of God. Then JC’s Girls went to the church and did the same thing. As the church service was getting ready to start, protesters from the club were outside as usual. Inside, the people of the church were asked by the JC’s Girls if they were willing to “change the face of Christianity by standing with [them] and truly loving God’s Beautiful Girls just as Jesus would. The entire church stood with [them]…” They left the building and went out to meet the girls protesting. They prayed together, tears flowed, and lives were changed on both sides of the protest lines. (1)
I was moved by this story because a friend of mine tells a similar story about a new friend of his, a young woman who we will call Susan. Not quite two years ago Susan was living the best she could on the streets of New Orleans. She was addicted to cocaine and her life was in a downward spiral. But somehow Christ touched her life and today she is living a new life in Christ.
Recently she came to her church and solicited some friends in her Bible study for some financial help. It seems that Susan was headed back to New Orleans on a mission. Susan had it in her heart to make up some gift bags to distribute to the girls working in New Orleans strip clubs. She didn’t need help making the trip. She was only asking for a few dollars toward preparing the gift bags. Inside the gift bags would be such things as a bottle of bubble bath, a sleep mask, and other thoughtful gifts that she felt these girls would appreciate.
And, inside each gift bag there would be a personal note from Susan telling her personal story of how she once was where these girls are, and how Christ had touched her and healed her of her destructive tendencies. She wrote such things as, “As you enjoy the bubble bath, let it remind you that Christ can cleanse you of all your sins . . .” This was expressed not in judgment, but in a pure message of love.
“Pray for me,” Susan said. “I don’t know what kind of reception I will get.”
When she returned from New Orleans, my friend asked her about the reception she got. “It was wonderful,” Susan said while tears suddenly started flowing down her face. “It was miraculous almost,” she said. “I had just enough gift bags, and all the girls were so appreciative.”
The manager of the strip club even halted the evening’s entertainment until Susan and a missionary friend completed distributing the bags, 20 of them in all.
My friend says, “I thank God for what He has done for Susan, and for what I know God will do in the years through her. Hers is a genuine picture of grace received and grace passed on to others.” (2)
In our lesson for today Jesus is in a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?”
Jews, notes John, do not associate with Samaritans. Later in the story it is suggested that this was also a woman of questionable morals.
And yet Jesus answered her, “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.”
As they talk something real begins to happen in this woman’s life. Meanwhile Jesus’ disciples return from shopping for supplies in the nearby town. They are surprised to find him talking with a woman. If they had only known what kind of woman she was, they would have been more surprised. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
But the ending to the story is what is fascinating. John tells us that, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” Then, John tells us the people she talked to came out of the town and made their way toward Jesus.
A few verses later we read, “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I ever did.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, ‘We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.’”
Can there be a more beautiful statement of the grace of God than this one? A woman with a somewhat checkered past had become a cheerful purveyor of the Good News of Jesus Christ.
However, I believe there are some additional things we need to say about this story.
First of all, this is not a story of cheap grace. What is cheap grace? Let me give you an example.
A man had been working for a lumber yard for twenty-five years. During that time, whenever he wanted any lumber, he helped himself to it. In fact, he had stolen so much lumber that he became one of the richest men in town. He became so rich and prominent, in fact, that he was made a deacon in his local Baptist church.
This worried him because he felt he should not serve as a deacon with this terrible sin on his conscience. One night as he pitched and tossed in the bed, the thought occurred to him that he could go to the local priest about it. The priest said it was a bit unusual for a Baptist to come to confession, but he would be glad to hear him.
After the man had told the priest about stealing all of the lumber, he said, “You know, this thing they say about confession being good for the soul is right. I never felt so relieved in my life . . . and that’s all there is to it?”
“Why no,” said the priest. “You can’t lie and steal and lead a life of sin for twenty-five years and come down here and talk to me for thirty minutes and wipe the slate clean. You’ve got to do something to make it right with the Lord. Did you ever make amends?”
“No, I never did make one of those,” said the man, but if you’ve got the plans, I can get the lumber.” (2)
That’s cheap grace, wanting to have your sins forgiven, but not wanting to give up the lumber you have stolen.
It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who made the phrase “cheap grace” popular. Here is how he defined it: “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”
I fear that cheap grace is the grace that has become somewhat the norm in many churches today.
When Jesus encountered people their lives were radically changed. Zaccheus the tax collector shared a meal with the Master and he cried out, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Mary Magdalene, possessed by demons, becomes such a devoted follower that she is privileged to be the primary witness to Christ’s resurrection.
The apostle Paul constantly reminded his hearers of what they had been before Christ touched their lives. Referring to the sexually immoral, idolaters, thieves, drunkards, swindlers etc. he says, “And that is what some of you were.” (1 Cor. 6:10-11).
The apostle Paul also reminds his hearers of what he had been before Christ touched him an intolerant persecutor of Christians.
In the military, we might hear the command, “As you were.” We never hear, “As you were” as a follower of Christ. Following Christ is about real change.
It is said that St. Augustine, shortly after his conversion, was accosted on the street by a former mistress. Augustine turned and walked in the opposite direction.
Surprised, the woman cried out, “Augustine, it is I.”
But Augustine, proceeding on his way, cried back to her, “Yes, but it is not I.” (3)
An amazing change had taken place in Augustine’s life. We’re not talking about adopting a few new resolutions. We are talking about the conversion that accompanies a changed heart.
As someone has wisely said, “If you were to see a butterfly, it would never occur to you to say, ‘Hey, everybody! Come look at this good-looking converted worm!’ Why not? After all, it was a worm. And it was ‘converted.’ No, now it is a new creature, and you don’t think of it in terms of what it was. You see it as it is now a butterfly.”
The woman at the well became a butterfly. From a woman shunned by her neighbors, she became a person who pointed others to the Lord.
Would you like to have that kind of change take place in your life? There is only one place it can be found. That is at the feet of our Savior.
One day Henry Drummond was preparing to leave the home of some friends in the hills of Scotland. They offered him the use of their coach to drive him to the village where he would catch the train for his next appointment.
“Our coachman is a very wonderful man and quite an unusual scholar,” they told Mr. Drummond, “but he has been defeated by drink. We were hoping that you might have an opportunity to say something to him that will help him.”
So when the time came to go, Henry Drummond climbed up onto the seat next to the coachman, and before the driver realized what was happening, Mr. Drummond had engaged the coachman in an in-depth conversation about his spiritual life. The coachman began confessing his failures and expressing regret for the collapse which had so tragically torn his life.
“Suppose, that as we rode along these curves and hills,” said Mr. Drummond, “the horses you are driving somehow got out of control, and you realized that you could not manage them. However, you suddenly remembered that the man sitting next to you was the finest horseman in Scotland and that there has never been a span of horses which he could not control. What would you do?”
“Oh,” exclaimed the coachman, “is that what Christ expects me to do?” (4) “Exactly!” replied Henry Drummond. “Turn the reins of your life over to him!”
That’s the kind of experience this woman at the well had the day she encountered Jesus. Someone has captured the longing in her soul in a song that most of you are familiar with:
“Fill my cup Lord, I lift it up, Lord!
Come and quench this thirsting of my soul;
Bread of heaven, Feed me till I want no more
Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole!”
Is that longing in your soul? Jesus said to this woman, “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.” Do you desire that living water? Lift your cup to Christ today.
1. Jim Parsons, http://www.adventuresinrevland.com/2011/03/john-45-42-sermon-truly-thirsty.html.
2. A recent experience of King Duncan, Dynamic Preaching (the name of the young woman has been changed; otherwise all details are accurate). Please attribute the story simply to “a friend.” Thanks.
3. Quote magazine. Date unknown.
4. Steve McVey, Grace Walk (Kindle Edition).
5. G. Ray Jordan, Religion That Is Eternal (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1960).