Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – Feb 11

11 February 2020

Text: John 4:7-26

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Look at all the brokenness in this passage!  First, there is the division between the children of Abraham: Jews and the Samaritans (“for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans”).  Next, there is the fact that the Samaritans are spiritually lost, whose religion has some elements of the truth, but has gone terribly astray (“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but You say Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship”).  Third, this woman has made a mess of her life with promiscuity and a shredding of Holy Matrimony. 

But in spite of dysfunction upon dysfunction, look at the magnificence of our Lord coming to her as her Savior!  Our Lord neither tolerates her sin and the discord of the world, nor does He berate, scold, and condemn.  He does not look the other way and excuse the devastation wrought by the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, nor does He call down fire and brimstone.  Jesus is a preacher of Law and Gospel, and He has come to call people to repent and believe the Gospel, to take part in the “spring of water welling up to eternal life,” and to heal and restore the brokenness of our fallen world.

Our Lord proclaims to this broken woman, and all of the broken world, that “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.”  Notice the baptismal and Trinitarian nature of this seeking out of “people to worship Him!”  We see the Father, we see the Son: the Truth (“I am the way, the truth, and the life”), and we see the Spirit.  We see the “living water” by which the Father calls us to worship Him, having been reborn and healed of our sins.  And we see that this is both now and not yet (“The hour is coming, and is now here”).

Our Lord’s proclamation of Law and Gospel is pastoral care – from the Good Shepherd Himself.  His preaching is baptismal, and is both incarnational in time, and eschatological in eternity.  In other words, the Father calls sinners to Himself to save them, by sending the Son to them, who preaches and baptizes, who gives them the Spirit, who remains with them in the present, and promises them everlasting in eternity!

This is the pattern of the Church’s preaching, dear friends.  This is the “order of salvation.”  This is why our Lord sent preachers equipped with the living water of baptism to go out into the world – to the broken and the sinful, to the lost and the weary, to call them to a more excellent way, and to give them life!

And even as our Lord revealed Himself as the Messiah, as the fulfillment of the prophets, so too do we confess Him who said to the woman at the well: “I who speak to you am He.”  Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.