We’ve all been in situations where we felt like we didn’t belong. I know I’ve periodically felt that way at some Men’s Ministry gatherings, and it’s not because I have gender identity issues. It’s because I grew up in a family with a dad who wasn’t into a number of the stereotypical “guy things” that happen at Men’s Ministry gatherings—hunting and fishing … camping … stock car racing. Our family would go to baseball games and we lived near a YMCA where I played all the team sports—baseball in the summer, football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and soccer in the spring. Going camping or to the gun range or skeet shooting just wasn’t his thing, so I didn’t grow up around it. And … because I do some things left-handed and some things right-handed—the weirdest being I play tennis left-handed and ping-pong right-handed—I’m not sure how to grip a shotgun.
All of us can undoubtedly recall a situation like that. Maybe it was the first day of school after we moved to town where it seemed like everyone was glad to see each other after a long summer and we didn’t know a soul … or that shopping trip with your wife where she asked you to take a seat outside the dressing room while she tried on a few things and you realized you were sitting in the middle of the lingerie section—you became that creepy guy loitering in a place you don’t want to be caught loitering. All of us have experiences etched into our minds with searing detail where we felt badly out of place.
The reality is, for many people, church is that kind of place. Even if they’re open to God and on some kind of spiritual quest, there’s a real discomfort with organized religion and the church.
That is amazing to me for two thousand years ago, people who were far from God felt comfortable having Jesus around. They felt like they belonged. No matter who they were or what their background, they somehow felt they were loved by Him just the way they were.
What made this possible? I think it had to do with how he related to people. In my previous blog post, I looked at John 4 and the story of Jesus’ meeting with the woman at the well and how, in his world, “Everybody’s Welcome.” He conducted himself in a way that enabled him to be received openly by people estranged from God. He didn’t operate with an “us and them” mentality but an “us and hopefully someday us” mentality. In his heart, no one was disqualified or excluded or deemed unfit or barred.
But there’s a second ingredient in how Jesus related to people … an attribute that’s captured in the words “Nobody’s Perfect”—a trait I’m convinced the church must embrace and embody in our day if it’s going to be an agent of Jesus. And to illustrate my point, let me ask you a couple of questions: (1) Have you ever had a performance review in conjunction with your job? (2) Do you love it so much you just can’t wait to get feedback regarding how you’re doing? Most of us hate performance reviews for a very simple reason—the discomfort of someone else highlighting for us those places where we fall short or need to get better. We hate it is because we go to great lengths to govern how other people see us. We try to cover and hide our weaknesses. This is the motivation for much of what we see on social media. We post things on Instagram or Facebook that lead people to believe we’re living the perfect life—we’re the perfect spouse, the perfect parent, the perfect employee, or the perfect student. We have perfect kids, enjoy perfect friendships, take perfect vacations, and eat perfect meals. But there’s an ever-increasing gap between what we put on and what we cover up. There’s an inconsistency between how we present ourselves to the world and who we actually are.
This is very prevalent in society and, quite often, worse in the church. I grew up going to church and spent a lot of Sundays on hard church pews. I heard a lot of messages about how God gave his life for broken, hurting, messed-up people. But what seemed so odd was, at church, everybody seemed so well put together—well-dressed, well behaved, and well spoken. I didn’t see a lot of obviously broken people. Granted—as I got older, I came to realize a lot of those people had some really significant problems—there were marriages breaking down, addictions being masked, and families in crisis. But ironically and tragically, many of these people felt like they had to pretend—like they had to put on.
To a lot of folks, that’s what Christianity is about … living one kind of life on Monday through Saturday and then walking into church and putting on a façade. Nothing agitated Jesus more than this. Nothing riled him up more than people who tried to convey they had it all together when, deep down inside, they didn’t—in fact, his harshest words were reserved for those who pretended to be something they weren’t. Jesus came to create a community where it’s safe to take off the mask—a place where people can be genuine and real and still be loved. He came because nobody’s perfect.
In the story of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well, there are a number of details that help the story make sense that we tend to overlook. An important one is how the Jews and Samaritans despised each other. Another one had to do with how men and women typically didn’t interact with each other in public. But there are some other details in this story that would have stood out to the original audience.
Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food). (John 4:4-8, NIV)
Three things would have jumped out to the original hearers: (1) The well was outside the village—the disciples had “gone into town” to buy food, (2) The woman was alone, and (3) She came to draw water at noon. The reason these things would have stood out was because (1) There were likely wells in the village she could have drawn water from. She intentionally went to one that was remote and inconvenient, (2) Women typically went to draw water in groups rather than alone, and (3) They’d usually do it in the early morning or at dusk to avoid the heat of the day. So—why is this woman outside the city … alone … at noon … drawing water? I believe it’s because she was an outcast—a pariah—one who felt she’d been ostracized and didn’t belong in mainstream society.
But what’s so amazing about Jesus is He didn’t go to the well looking for perfect people. He went to the well, like he went everywhere, looking for the broken … the lost … the struggling. Time and again in the gospels, He reinforces that he didn’t come for the righteous but the unrighteous … not for the found, but the lost … not for the healthy, but the sick. So not only does Jesus not avoid this woman, but he actively engages her. He strikes up a conversation and asks her for a drink.
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” (John 4:9-15, NIV)
You can almost hear the desperation in the woman’s voice. “Sir, will you give me some of this water? Can you give me something so I don’t have to live like this anymore … so I don’t have to keep coming out here in the heat of the day as a shamed outcast? The thought occurs to me—a lot of people we intersect with fit this profile. They are living lives alone … by the well … outside the city. They may put on a mask to where we wouldn’t know it. But on the inside, they’re aching over their past and their story. Like the woman, they’re saying, “Please tell me how I can be free. I don’t want to live like this anymore.”
This is where the story takes a turn and gets really personal and invasive. For Jesus says in v. 16, “Go, call your husband and come back.” This turn of the conversation is where a lot of us want to get off the bus. Jesus sounds really good when he offers us living water. But when he starts prying into our personal stuff, it gets really uncomfortable. We tend to do what this lady did when she replied, “I have no husband” (v. 17a).
That’s a true statement. But it’s also a statement that hides a deeper truth. For listen to what Jesus says: “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” (v. 17b-18). This is one of the techniques some of us Christians are really good at—the ability to share a truth in a way that hides a deeper truth. How many of us have said, “I’m struggling in my thought life” when the fact is we’re hooked on pornography? Or have said, “My marriage has hit a tough patch” when it’s teetering on the brink and we’re wondering if it’ll survive at all? Or have said, “I’m just going through a hard time” when the truth is we’re coping with our pain through the use of alcohol and drugs? Why is it so hard for us to tell the truth? More often than not, I think it boils down to two things—pride and fear. We’re afraid of what someone might think.
This is such an issue in churches—in fact, quite often the longer we’re part of the church, the less freedom we feel to be honest. So we hide. We pretend. We put on. To which Jesus says, “Go, call your husband and come back.” Own up to that part of your life you want to run from. Come clean about that thing from which you want to hide. For Jesus’ purpose is never to condemn; it’s always to redeem. But he can’t do that until we have the courage to acknowledge our brokenness. Like this woman, He wants us to know that our worth isn’t defined by our past. Our worth is defined by how He sees us in spite of our past.
A lot of us struggle because we’re confused about what makes us worthy. We believe we’re loved because of what we’ve done. But our worth has nothing to do with our intelligence or achievements or appearance. It has nothing to do with our behavior or beliefs or bent. We are worth something—we’re valued—because of who and how God is. There’s a word for this—this unremitting acceptance that stems from the fact God loves us. It’s called grace! But for people who’ve made a habit of wearing a mask, grace is hard to get their minds around. But when we can come to the place where we’re OK with not being perfect and comfortable with the fact God loves us anyway, we can drop the façade. We can abandon the mask and give up trying to pretend. We can dare to be real.
That’s what the Samaritan woman did:
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him. (John 4:28-30, NIV).
She’s not bragging about how good she’s doing. She’s bragging about the man who has grace for her in spite of what she’s done. It says people came from all over to check Him out for themselves.
In this day, I believe people are hungry for a church that operates this way—a place where they can check out God and meet Him just as they are. As the familiar cliché goes, “The church is not a museum for saints; it’s a hospital for sinners.” If you’re wrestling with addiction … if your marriage is breaking down … if you feel lost or depressed or have nowhere else to turn, come on. Even if you’re not sure you believe this Jesus stuff, that’s OK. Just come as you are. Lean in and give it time and he’ll help you figure things out.
Now—some of you are probably thinking, “Didn’t Jesus say we’re to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect?” Yes, he did … in the Sermon on the Mount—Matthew 5:48. But the question is, “How do we get there?” I believe the road to perfection isn’t through trying to skirt our brokenness, but by facing up to it. The road to perfection is found in acknowledging it, opening our heart up to God, and allowing Him to change us—change that comes not from faking it or pretending or passing ourselves off as something we’re not, but change that comes through surrendering our life to the One who is perfect and allowing Him to recreate Himself in us. Always remember—the most valuable thing you can ever give God is the person you become—the person you allow Him to transform you into by His grace.
There’s a popular concept in psychology that says people tend to become like what they believe the most important person in their life thinks about them. If the person we deem most important seems to think we have value and worth, we’ll look at ourselves through that prism and act in accordance with that understanding. But if we think that person sees us as worthless and of no use, we’ll not only see ourselves that way, but we’ll also behave in ways that are consistent with that idea.
So here’s a question to think about: How would your life be different, and how would the world be different, if Jesus was the most important person in your life? What would it be like to go through every day and see in ourselves what God sees when He looks at us—someone who is fully loved, fully accepted, and fully worth dying for? I dare say if that’s what we believed deep down inside, we wouldn’t feel like we have to pretend. We could take off the mask and dare to be real.
I grew up in church to where I don’t remember what it felt like the first time I walked in. But I have never forgotten what it felt like when I first had the courage to own my imperfections and take off the mask. And the reason I haven’t forgotten is because that’s where I met Jesus. That’s the place we can find grace, encounter love, and experience hope. My hope and prayer is that the church of Jesus Christ will increasingly be a place where everyone who walks in can experience that grace … where every person can realize they don’t have to be perfect, but they are invited and challenged to allow God to lovingly be at work in their lives so that, in time, they can progressively and steadily become the best possible version of themselves.
Folks—Jesus didn’t come for people who acted like they had it all together. He came for folks who knew they didn’t. And he came to create a place where we can each own and work through our stuff. He created the church to be a caring, supportive context where we could come clean, find acceptance, and move forward into becoming the person He wants us to be.