John 4:27-42

 John 4:27-42

Often in the church there is a resistance to outsiders especially those who are notorious. Many churches say they want to grow, but within there is a subconscious desire that all the new people will be like those already in the church. People who seem different from us, especially those of morally questionable past, are a threat. Pimps, drug dealers, strippers, homosexuals, drunks, etc. tend to make us very uncomfortable. We prefer to see the conversion of nice people who, at their worst, would not worry us. That is perhaps one of the reasons that revival has not taken hold of the American Church recently. We don’t want genuine Revival, we only want mildly renewed interest. 

John makes a dramatic and uncomfortable point in versus 28-29. This woman of noteworthy bad moral character goes to the “men”. There has been a tendency, especially in recent times, to paint this woman as a victim. She is pictured as  an oppressed individual who has suffered at the hands of a patriarchal culture through five marriages and a cohabitation. There is some truth to that. But maybe we have downplayed her culpability a bit too much. Maybe she was a woman of failed marriages because she was so promiscuous. Perhaps she is more of a Messalina (Roman Emperor Claudius’ wife whose promiscuity was famous) then she was a victim. We have heard over and over she was at the well at noon to avoid the company of the women. Maybe she was at the well at noon because she was turning tricks to the very late hour the night before. This woman does not go to family or friends but to “the men of the city” and says, “come see a man who told me all the things I have done”. With whom had she done these things?

The church’s resistance to the notorious may have more to do with our desire to protect our own reputation and sense of propriety than anything else. If I'm sitting with the drunk, the whore, the cheat, the liar or any other vice I must either be convicted  by my sin and repent, or be convicted by my sin and made miserable by my guilt. Wanting neither of these we choose not to be with people like that, people like us. Perhaps the greatest indictment for any church is it has no formerly notorious sinners and it's misted.

“Grant to me Lord the grace of repentance, and the grace to love those who need Your grace. AMEN”