John 4: 34-40                                                                                                             Epiphany 2

Rev. Charles F. Degner                                                                                          January 15, 2012

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”   28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.  31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”  32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”  33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”  34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”  39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.

What do we picture in our minds when we hear the word “servant?”   Maybe you think of one of those slaves before the Civil War, working under the hot sun picking cotton for the master in the big white house.  If that is the case then you probably don’t have a very good picture in your mind of what the Bible means when it calls Jesus the “servant of God.”

Maybe instead you have a picture in your mind of an English butler dressed in a black tuxedo bringing tea and crumpets to an old duke with white hair and his very proper wife.  Again, if that’s the picture that the word “servant” brings to mind, then it probably isn’t a very helpful to understanding Jesus’ role as the SERVANT.

 Our text puts another picture in our minds as we think of what it meant for Jesus to be God’s servant and to do the will of his heavenly Father.  Jesus was a missionary.  In fact, I can’t think of anyone anywhere in all of history who had a greater passion for doing mission work than Jesus did.  It was this passion to save that sent him to the cross.  There could be no mission and there would be nothing for missionaries to do without his death for our sins.   

We see that passion of Jesus at work in so many stories.  He wept over the city of Jerusalem because so many didn’t believe.   He stopped to chat with Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree and invited himself into his house.  Today we see Jesus stopping at the well to proclaim the gospel to one very unlikely prospect.  We see the Servant of God in his role as the greatest missionary ever.

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