Here is the Scripture lesson and sermon from Feb 4.

Sermon title, “Sadly, There Are No Elevators in Sharon”

 20180204a for download

When listening to the sermon it might help to know that it was Scout Sunday and we had our troop of Boy Scouts in worship. Our minister would like you to believe that they were a bad influence on him. Those who were there know full well Mark egged them on to make faces for the camera. 

John 4:1-30, 39-42 In Three Voices

Reader 1: Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John”

Reader 2 although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized—

Reader 1: he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through

Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

Reader 1: A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her,

Reader 3: “Give me a drink.”

Reader 2 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)

Reader 1: The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

Reader 2 (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)

Reader 3: Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

Reader 1: “Sir, …you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”

Reader 3: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

Reader 1: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Reader 3: “Go, call your husband, and come back.”

Reader 1: “I have no husband.”

Reader 3: “You are right in saying, “I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”

Reader 1: “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. …Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but Jews say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Reader 3: “Woman,

Reader 2 You might remember that Jesus called his mother this at the wedding in Cana.

Reader 3: Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Reader 1: “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”

Reader 3: “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

Reader 2 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people,

Reader 1: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”

Reader 2 They left the city and were on their way to him. Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony,

Reader 1: “He told me everything I have ever done.”

Reader 2: So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days.

Reader 3: And many more believed because of his word.

Reader 2 The other Samaritans said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”