Psalm 95; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-15

Last Sunday we heard a lot about Abram, most importantly the news that he was chosen at random to receive a shedload of God’s blessing. In fact, it was far more than a shedload, Abram had to leave his home and travel far away to occupy an entire country to contain the blessing that God was going to pour out upon him and pour out for him to distribute. That’s more than a shedload, that’s many sheds and many loads, with a lot of toing and froing and loading of sheds and carts. Last Sunday we heard from the scriptures in Genesis 12 and John 3, and from Psalm 121, but we did not hear from the Christian Tradition outside the gospels. If we had, we would have heard from Romans 4:1-5, and the story of Abraham as the recipient of a gift from God. Abraham (Paul gives his fuller name) did not earn his blessing as a salary for work completed, says Paul in Romans 4:4, rather he was given the free gift which he freely accepted, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. What was reckoned to him as righteousness was the fact that he received God’s generous gift of grace with an open heart and a willingness to receive. Abram, Abraham did not rely on his own strength, his own wealth, his own status; he did not say “here I am LORD, 85% of the way there from my own hard work, you just top me up and we’ll be tickety-boo”; no. No, when God said “take what you can carry as resource for the journey and follow me to a place where everything that passes through your hand, (and some of it will go into your pockets and most of it into the pockets of others), will come through my hand,” Abram agreed to that. This is why we honour him as a forerunner in our faith, and this is why God reckoned him to be righteous.

So that’s more from last week, and I’m telling you today because it dovetails into what we have heard from Paul in Romans 5 and the story of our justification by faith. Abraham was justified by faith: the Jewish People as the nation promised to Abram in Genesis 12, through the direct line of sons promised in God’s covenant with Abraham (the father of the multitude) found in Genesis 17 and the birth of Isaac in Genesis 18, are a nation saved by grace through faith. The Christians are one people of many nations, who are also saved through faith. No-one is saved by works, no-one is saved by obedience, no-one is saved by any specific task, or prayer, or incantation, or minotaur-slaying saga: salvation is by grace, and all who are saved by God are saved by grace.

Therefore, says Paul in Romans 5:1-2a, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand. This is why one of the key soundbites of our Reformed Protestant strand of Christianity sounds the phrase “saved by grace through faith”. Now we need to be careful, because I have often heard this said incorrectly and to say it incorrectly is to believe an error. Not a lie, but a mistake, which might be accidental but is still not the truth. It is not “salvation by faith”, your faith cannot save you any more than any other human activity can save you. It is salvation by grace through faith. We are saved because of God’s generosity; we access grace through our discipleship to Christ, but we are not saved by our obedience to Christ. To consider yourself saved because you are “an obedient Christian” is just as much an error as to believe yourself to be saved by The Law as an obedient Jew, which Paul has already told us cannot be done. Obedience cannot save you, but by obedience you tap into the wisdom that comes from God because of grace, and grace can save you

This is a statement of confidence. Paul speaks of the grace in which we stand, and the language he uses here points toward a completed action. In other words, Paul is not saying “God is going to do it, and if we believe in God then God will come through for us”. He’s not saying that. What Paul is saying is “it’s done. Already accomplished. A finished work that cannot be shaken. A firm foundation upon which we stand but also upon which we build a life and a ministry, the ministry of living by grace and of boasting about God in public.” Paul wrote in Romans 5:11 that we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Our boast is not “nyah-nyah you’re going to hell unless you’re our type of Protestant”; our boast is “look at the rock-solid promise that God has made to the world, made in the world through Christ. Oh, how wonderful God is, how worthy of our boast, which is our praise, worship and adoration”.

One of the great privileges I once had in ministry was to serve as a volunteer chaplain to the Ambulance community. Over three years of alternate Thursdays I put on a blue uniform and headed along the highway to visit branches of Ambulance Victoria, offering pastoral care to the Ambulance community. Oftentimes I found chocolate in the branch, and with the chocolate was a card, a card written by a former patient. “Thanks, Ambos, for saving my life”, or “thanks Ambos for looking after my mum”. I’ve had those sorts of cards as a pastor. “Thanks for doing mum’s funeral” is the usual theme. I hope you have thank-you cards coming into your life at times. This is the boast that we have in God, that our lives have been saved by God through grace in ways even more profound (even if less obvious) than the work done by my former mates, the Paramedics. Where someone has sent me a thankyou card after a particular act of pastoral care, I am grateful; but I also offer my gratitude to God and my boast is in the LORD who put me in the place to serve that need and tell that news of salvation and hope. This is especially so at or after a funeral, or a visit to a palliative care situation, or even just a house with someone having a bad day. How much more then can I boast in God and say thank you to the LORD who saves me by grace. God does not need a card from me, nor does God need my gift of chocolate, but God deserves my gratitude, and my boast is of God’s love.

One of my frequent conversations with the Paramedics and ACOs was that I liked not being busy around them; I liked that most of what I did was drink coffee and swap banter. I figured that if I was busy in spiritual care or Psychological First Aid then it’s because someone else was having a bad day. A bored pastor means a world where no one is in need. A bored Ambo is the same, and while we don’t use “the Q-word” in case we jinx it, a quiet shift in an Ambulance branch meant that no-one was sick or hurt in the community. That’s a good thing. I boast in the LORD that grace abounds, and I delight in the LORD that sometimes I do get to be that channel of grace when someone is sick or hurt, even as I remember that when I am sick or hurt the same grace abounds to me through others. Thankyou God for abundant grace, salvation grace, and for friends who carry grace and dispense divine love onsite.

In our reading from the Gospel Traditions today we find Jesus sitting beside a well in Samaria. This is one of my favourite stories about Jesus, and it is one of the stories through which I read many of the other stories and teachings of the Bible. Where I find a hard passage, either one that is really convicting or one that is a bit confusing, I task myself to “imagine Jesus explaining this passage to the woman at the well”, and grace flows.

There are many interpretations of this story’s main character, or perhaps “other major character” if you consider Jesus to be the main character:

• Five husbands, six men, what’s that all about? Adulteress? Prostitute? Serial killer? Levitical marriage in a family of sickly brothers?
• Going to the well in the middle of the day, alone, when all of the other women would have gone as a group first thing in the morning, what’s that all about? Shunned by her sisters for the whole serial-killing adultery thing? Chronically shy? Enormously obese and unable to walk as fast as the other women (after all she is “a woman of some area”)?

Do you know what, today that doesn’t matter.

• It doesn’t matter that she was a Samaritan woman, and Jesus was a Jewish man; broadly it matters and there’s a few sermons in that, but that’s not today’s sermon.
• It doesn’t matter than she was there alone and not with the other women; broadly it matters and there’s a few sermons in that, but that’s not today’s sermon.
• It doesn’t matter that she was there in the middle to the day and not the early morning; broadly it matters and there’s a few sermons in that, but that’s not today’s sermon.

Today what matters is that she was there, and Jesus spoke with her. She asked questions, and Jesus spoke with her. She was confused about her identity and his, and Jesus spoke with her. Jesus spoke with her and what Jesus said was gracious and life-giving: the living water was not in his promise of salvation for her if she recited The Sinner’s Prayer after him, line by line; no. No, the living water was in his grace-drenched, abundantly open welcome for her to come and to sit; (whoever she was at home and why-ever she was there at that time of day), and to receive everything she needed from her God.

It’s this last bit that drives me in my Bible reading and sermon preparation, it also empowers my pastoral-care and faith sharing. Regardless of the theology and expertise that I have as someone with university degrees, regardless of my decades of experience in teaching, preaching and pastoral care, regardless even of the authority of the denomination that has appointed me pastor in this community, what helps me most in the moment of speaking with another person is the model of Jesus.

The one who saves by grace through his own death on the cross as the greatest revelation of the generosity and love of the triune God, is the one who spoke and taught and listened with grace whenever he was in conversation. The only times Jesus got sarcastic or shouty in conversation was when the religious leaders, who should have known better, overcomplicated things. Well done on your doctorate in Jewish Law, Nicodemus, but what is the Holy Spirit saying in this moment? And you Teacher of Israel, do you know with all of your rituals and doctrines even how to listen to the wind? Because here in Sychar, with this outcast, is life-giving, abundantly flowing water and the plain confession of “I am he”, which is the answer to all of your questions.

The Samaritan woman had not earned her salvation before Jesus spoke with her. No-one earns salvation, we already know that; but the free gift was already hers because the free gift is already everyone’s, we know that too. Jesus offered it to her in person, the living water which slakes all thirst, all kinds of thirst and hunger. Whatever she was hungry for, hungering after, Jesus offered it to her by grace. He made the same offer to Nicodemus in last week’s reading; Nicodemus wanted “more of the LORD” as we might say, he was not satisfied with the revelation he had been given, and he knew enough about the God of Abraham and Israel to be curious and thirsty. Jesus didn’t offer Nicodemus a simple drink, Jesus offered Nicodemus an academic challenge, and we understand from reading later into the gospels that Nicodemus rose to the challenge just as powerfully as did the woman when she ran back into Sychar to call the population out to meet Jesus at the well.

Today, what is Jesus offering you? To what is he inviting you? Yes, to salvation by grace, and to even deeper salvation by abundant grace as that living water seeps and torrents through your spirit and soul. But is there more? Do you need a challenge, as Nicodemus did? Do you need reassurance, as the woman did? Do you need pulling up, as the Hebrews did at Meribah and Massah? My job in all of that is to point you toward Jesus, just as the woman in Sychar did. It’s not for me to challenge you, or discipline you, or even to comfort you, that’s the work of the LORD, if you will accept it from him. The physical presence may well be mine; it’s my voice you’re hearing this morning and Jesus cannot sit beside your well like he sat beside the well of Jacob; but I can sit beside your well, and I am paid through the Uniting Church to be available if you need a human companion as you seek God. Even if you don’t need me, or you don’t want me, I urge you to seek God.

Seek God, ask God for more grace, more Spirit, more wisdom, more life, more water. And then open your hands and get ready to start loading your biggest shed. Amen.