Today is the second Sunday in Lent and we are with Jesus as he journeys toward the cross. Our Scripture text from John 4 alerts us to the fact that something BIG is about to happen. The tip off comes in verses 3 and 4 where John writes, "Jesus left Judea and departed again to Galilee." Then he adds, "He had to pass through Samaria."

Now, those of you who are Biblical scholars, and those of you who aren't but who've traveled to Israel, know full well that's not true. Jesus did not have to go through Samaria in order to get to Galilee. While it is true that Judea is in the south of the country, and Galilee is in the north, and Samaria is in between the two, the fact is that nobody traveled directly from Judea to Galilee by way of Samaria. The main highway went to the east, across the Jordan River, and then turned north. And there was a reason for that.

You see, the Jews of Judea and the Jews of Samaria hated each other with a passion. It was a feud that stemmed back to 722 BC when the Assyrians and Babylonians ganged up on Judea. They attacked it. Destroyed the temple. Captured the Judean Jews and brought them back to Babylon as slaves.

Where were their brothers and sisters - the Samaritan Jews - in all this? Well, afraid of being picked off themselves, they capitulated and threw in their lot with the Assyrians and Babylonians. They betrayed their kinfolk.

And when the Judeans returned to the land hundreds of years later, they hadn't forgotten. In fact, when the Samaritans tried to make up for it by offering to help them rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, the Judean Jews refused the offer. So the Samaritans stoked the fire even hotter by going off and building a temple of their own on Mount Gerezeem. They declared it to be the true temple of the people of God.

The Judeans responded by sneaking up to Samaria in 128 BC and burning down the temple on Mount Gerezeem.

These were people who hated each other with a passion! As verse 9 says, "Jews have no dealings with Samaritans."

This makes it all the more fascinating to me that John says Jesus had to go through Samaria. Its not how the highway ran. It was terribly dangerous territory. And no Judean Jew in his right mind ever went that way!

But Jesus did. In fact, the Greek word that's used here is not really correctly translated when it says "Jesus HAD to pass through Samaria." More accurately, it should read, "Jesus INTENTIONALLY passed through Samaria."

So now we know something BIG is about to happen!

Jesus comes to a Samaritan village called Sychar and while the disciples check out the local grocery store, he sits down beside a well. It’s the very well that Jacob used hundreds of years before. And while Jesus is sitting there, exhausted - about noon time - along comes this woman.

Do you see? Among all the things God must do to keep the earth in its proper orbit, the atomic particles of life adhering to the laws of physics, the seasons to change in their time, babies to be born into families and deceased loved ones to be received into Sheol, God quietly arranges this journey that no Jew in his right mind would undertake. And at just the right moment, with the disciples off buying food and Jesus sitting down by Jacob's well at Sychar…

…this woman shows up with her bucket.

God is like this, you see. You can be living a life where long ago you lost yourself - your spirit, your integrity, your direction, your meaning, your joy, your hope, your peace - but God is working quietly in the background to lead you to that person, that place, that moment where you can be found by the love of God!

Jesus sees her coming.

And she just stares at Jesus. Before she can speak, she sort of drops one end of that bucket, and stops in her tracks. Her dismay, John shows us, centers around three important questions:

First, "What do you - a JEW - have to do with ME - a Samaritan?" After all, Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Second, "What do you - a MAN - have to do with ME - a woman?" For it was unlawful for a man to speak in public with a woman who was not his wife.

Third, "What do you - the MESSIAH - have to do with ME - a sinner?" For she was a woman who went from one sexual affair to another, living out of wedlock with man after man, committing a sin so grievous that the Law called for her to be put to death.

And around these questions that puzzle her so, Jesus crafts an answer that he claims can become living water that will well up in her to eternal life!

Isn't this amazing? Jesus is the one who asks for a drink. But in his wonderful way with people, he uncovers the fact that she is, in fact, the thirsty one! And the teaching he gives her in the answers to her questions can lead all of us to the well whose water is living and brings us to eternal life!

First, Jesus shows her, this living water is not found in religion, but in relationship with Christ.

You see, this woman's fundamental question is the one that everyone asks:

Now, some say, "Mine does!"

Others say, "They ALL do!"

But Jesus answers another way.

"None of them."

Now that answer may surprise you, but it really shouldn't. I think one of the amazing revelations the Bible makes about Jesus is that, if there's one thing he disdains more than people hurting other people, its religion! In fact, in one place, Jesus calls religion a whited sepulchre which is a tomb that's painted white and bright but nonetheless is still a dead-end street.

Some time ago, I had a conversation with a beautiful couple about a wedding. She was Protestant, he was Catholic. Both had gone through the heartache of divorce. They'd been to the place where some of us have been - where they never thought they'd love or be loved again. And then they found each other. It was like a miracle! Like living water!

But then a dark cloud floated overhead. He was not willing to get an annulment of his first marriage from the Catholic Church because he did not want his children to feel that they were born out of a non-marriage, and not out of true love. But his family priest made it clear in no uncertain terms that, without an annulment, they could not be married in the church. Not only that, but if they went and were married in a Protestant Church, he would lose admission to the Sacraments, and most especially the Last Rites when he dies. The priest felt badly about all this, but, after all, the rules are the rules.

Oh, how many hundreds of people I've met over the years who've been forced to wrestle with the question, "Have I chosen the right religion? The right church? And what will happen to me when I die if I've made the wrong choice?"

Well, here's what Jesus said to the woman by the well. "Its not whether you worship on Mount Gerezeem or Mount Zion. Its not whether you're a Jew or a Samaritan. Or whether you make the sign of the cross or genuflect. Or whether you go to the First Church of the Pot-Luck Supper or the Community Church in Tellico Village. Or whether you use debts or trespasses. Or whether your altar cloths are purple, green, white or red.

Jesus said, "The hour is coming and now is when true worshipers will worship God in spirit and in truth."

You see, the living well is not located in Jerusalem, or at the Vatican, or at the corner of Chota Road and Tellico Parkway. The living well that Jesus is pointing us toward is found in the depths of your own heart when you let God create a new spirit within it!

Someone once said that the aim of the Gospel is not to get us into heaven, but to get heaven into us!

And that's where the well is. In the conjoining of yourself and God. In letting God into your life. In your living relationship with Jesus Christ.

God is not after a religion for us, but a relationship with us.

Second, this well is not found in pretentiousness, but in true personhood.

The woman at the well is surprised that Jesus speaks with her. It is against the law. In the religion of the day, men are superior to women and hold special standing before God. Women are property to the men of Israel.

But not to Jesus.

Jesus never relates to people on the basis of what they are, but on the basis of who they are!

A woman called me up once, telling me about a certain event she had to attend related to her husband's business. She said she felt like an outsider. No matter how hard she tried to fit herself into the little groups and conversations, she was always left to feel like the odd man out.

And as she spoke, I understood what she was saying. Because I've experienced that, too. There's a part of Marty Singley that very few people know. It’s a part that's very shy, even to the point of sometimes feeling lonely in the midst of a crowd.

Anybody else here ever feel that way?

George Gobel once said, "Sometimes I feel like the world's a tuxedo, and I'm a pair of brown shoes."

Do you know what he's saying?

Now, if you really want to discover living water in your life, here's what you have to do. You have to stop relating to people in terms of titles, distinctions, categories, stereotypes and impressions. Both positive ones and negative ones.

And you have to start relating with people on the basis of what you know about yourself - on the basis of your own humanity. If you know what its like to be lonely, and you see someone standing alone, you can do one of two things. You can stay in your own little group - safe in the friendship that saved you from your loneliness, or you can remember what its like to be lonely. And do what you need to do to open the circle to a stranger.

If you know what its like to lose a loved one, and you come across someone going through the same thing, you can play it safe and remain aloof within the walls of your own healing, or you can remember what its like to experience deep loss and do what you need to do to bring that person support.

Do you see what this is about? The living well is not found in our relationships through pretentiousness, but through re-discovery of who we really are! What made Jesus relationships so rich and healing was that he was able to see in others his own humanity. And so he loved them with a kind of understanding that satisfies the deepest thirst. And so can you drink from the living well.

Finally, this well is found when you accept a new orientation for yourself and others - a life focused not on what you've done, but on what you can become through Christ!

This woman's life was a sad, sordid story.

But that was yesterday! And now the Messiah has come! And tomorrow is yet to be!

The life of faith, you see, is a life in which Jesus stands at the intersection between what you used to be and what you can become by God's grace. Faith looks to the future!

And that's the thought I want to leave with you as we return from Samaria and look out at a new week here in East Tennessee on this second Sunday in Lent.

There is a well whose living water can satisfy your deepest thirst. It can well up within you to eternal life. But it cannot be found in religion. It cannot be found in distinctions made between people. It cannot be found in the failures or success of the past.

The living well is only found…

…within your own spirit when you invite Christ to come and dwell there…

…within your relationships with others when you remember what its like to be a person, and you reach out to others like Jesus did…

…within your every day living, when you let yesterday be yesterday, and relying upon the Savior, live as though tomorrow is a brand new possibility given as a gift from God.

As the Psalmist says, "He turns a desert into pools of water, and a parched land into springs."

Come to the well of God's great love. Let your parched lips drink the cool and living water.