Monday 26 October 2009

Great fun with a woman... who is not my wife!

Yesterday's preach in the morning was slightly different: We were using the Tearfund material on Water, and the text was John 4, the woman at the well. I considered doing a narrative sermon based on the woman but as I reflected on this I felt it was not right for me (not least cos I'm a bloke) so I decided to tell the story from the perspective of the woman's 6th 'husband.'

Having taken the precaution of warning my own good wife as to what was coming up I proceeded to tell a story of how I had got rid of my first wife and taken up with Betty, having met her myself one hot afternoon down by the well, from where she offered me a drink but we settled on so much more. So imagine how I felt when she told me she'd met another bloke at the same well, the sort of mood i was in when I went off to meet this man who told her all she'd ever done. Anyway we went on from there reviewing her and his encounters with Jesus, linking his dreams of Jesus Kingdom of Shalom with the unfinished business of social justice today.

We ended with the thorny question of personal reconciliation too: as having introduced his sons to Jesus when he stayed in the village, the boys then want to go and bring the Christ to their mother, my ex wife ... and they want to bring Betty along.
What would Jesus do!

You can't preach this kind of stuff every week, it would loose the impact but as a piece of Lectio for me it was personally very revealing and I hope helpful for the congregation. Certainly I got more feedback than usual.

1 comment:

Louise Polhill said...

Loved it - more please!