Jesus was nothing short of amazing. The way he taught. The things he did. The life he lived. The fact that he came back to life after being put to death.

Amazing.

Thousands of people came from far and wide to see him. Sometimes he sent them away disappointed (Jesus does not take requests very often), but mostly they were amazed at some story he told or some way in which he confounded the religious and/or political leaders of his time.

There is amazing grace, but it’s important to remember that this amazing grace came from amazing Jesus.

And yet….

The Bible tells us a story about a man who amazed Jesus once. Just once. Well…actually twice Jesus was amazed, but we’ll get talk about that next time. This guy — a Roman soldier — actually amazed Jesus. He came to see Jesus because he had a servant who was suffering, and he knew that Jesus could heal him. In fact, this guy knew that Jesus could heal the servant without even seeing him. This servant whom Jesus had never met, laid up in a house Jesus had never visited, suffering from some disorder Jesus did not know about could be healed if Jesus just gave the word.

Hearing the guy explain his confidence in Jesus’ ability and authority amazed Jesus. The idea that a Roman soldier could have figured out enough to know that Jesus really was who he said he was and could really do what he said he could do — Jesus found that amazing.

Imagine being the guy walking around heaven who actually amazed Jesus! That’s a pretty exclusive club!

Before we move on to the one other time Jesus was amazed (look for that on Monday), I want you to notice again what it was that amazed Jesus. It wasn’t the guy’s knowledge. It wasn’t even the guy’s obedience. It was just his level of confidence in Jesus’ ability to do what he said he could do. This guy did not know anything about a virgin birth. He did not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. He did not know a thing about the gifts of the Spirit or the role of women. He probably didn’t attend church — certainly not in the way we think about attending church. As far as we know he’d never been baptized or prayed any kind of sinner’s prayer.

He just believed that Jesus could do what he said he could do because Jesus had some kind of authority that came from some higher power. He had complete confidence in Jesus, and — according to Jesus — that was enough.

Maybe that’s what faith really is. Maybe faith has less to do with all the finer points of doctrine (though God himself knows how much I love to study and teach good, sound doctrine). Maybe faith is simply being confident that Jesus is who he says he is and can do what he says he can do.

That’s the kind of faith I want.

I’m sort of a traditionalist in many respects. I don’t like the Designated Hitter. I prefer acoustic instruments. We open our presents on Christmas morning. And summer is three months long — not the 10 weeks schools are out.

So, I’m reluctant to say summer is over. But I will admit that the whole “back to school” thing means the end of summer vacation. And that means families everywhere are struggling to adapt to the routine required for early morning drop offs and mid-afternoon pick ups.

As a church leader, I’m grateful for summertime and the chance to relax a little (obviously, I’m not in student ministry!). As a church leader, though, I’m also glad to see the approach of fall and the excitement a new school year brings. September and October mean a little more stability in our attendance and giving — meaning we can budget wisely and appropriately. It also means a time when we can dig in a little deeper than we could over the past couple of months, pausing a little to examine where we are spiritually and how we can get to that next level.

That’s why I’m so excited about the sermon series we’re kicking off this Sunday. It’s called “Miracle Grow”, and it discusses how our faith grows.

Right from the start, I want to make something clear: This isn’t about how our knowledge grows or how our obedience grows. As important as knowledge and obedience are, it’s a really big faith that we’re after. It’s a really big faith that pleases God. It’s a really big faith that impresses Jesus. It’s a really big faith that gets us through tough times. It’s a really big faith that keeps us from pushing the panic button. When the Apostle Paul wanted to brag about one of his favorite churches, it was their faith that he bragged about (cf. 2 Thessalonians 1:3-4).

But how does our faith grow like that?

Most churches assume that faith increases with knowledge, so they schedule Bible classes as their primary way of growing a person’s faith. But knowledge doesn’t always lead to faith. In fact, the Bible says knowledge can make you arrogant sometimes. That’s the opposite of what we’re after.

Other churches seem to think that faith comes through obedience. Just do what God asks, and your faith will grow. But obedience like that can sometimes make a person judgmental — which, again, is not the direction we want to go.

So, how does your faith grow? How can a church help transform your faith from something the size of a mustard seed into a tree where birds can come and perch in its branches?

Maybe we could begin by asking what faith is exactly? Maybe once we understand what faith is we can better understand how it grows?

There are so few things that are a sure thing — so few things you know you can count on — so few things that are absolute non-debatable universally agreed upon truths. But here’s one:

We’re all gonna die!

I know. You don’t like thinking about this. Who does? Who wants to sit around and ponder their own mortality? It’s…morose. It’s depressing.

And yet…it’s foolish to ignore truth in any arena of life. Ignore truth and its consequences in your marriage, your business, your finances and you’ll end up regretting it. Bury your head in the sand at your own risk. It won’t be long before you collide with the truth you’ve been trying to pretend doesn’t exist, and you’ll probably end up on the short end of that bargain.

Now, it’s possible to ignore some things or pretend you don’t know them. It’s even possible to actually be blissfully ignorant of certain truths. Sure, some truths are intuitive, but there are some things you could never figure out on your own without some outside help.

This one, though, is undeniable, inevitable and obvious to absolutely everyone. You are going to die. I am going to die. We’re all gonna die!

So, help me understand why there’s this one iron-clad truth you can take to the bank, and no one wants to embrace it or live with its consequences.

Pontius Pilate is known for one thing: He played a minor role in Jesus’ story. If you knew anything about him, you’d know how that idea would have driven him absolutely mad!

See, Pilate wanted to be the star of the show — the center of attention. If anything, he’d want to think that we know about Jesus because Jesus was a minor character in Pilate’s story!

Pilate was the Roman governor of roughly three-quarters of what we now know as modern Israel. He had two jobs: (1) keep the peace; (2) collect the taxes. From his perspective, this meant one big goal: Stay in control.

To maintain control, Pilate would do things periodically — flex his muscles — show his power. If he suspected an uprising, he’d dispatch soldiers to randomly kill a handful of folks. Once, he wanted to build an aqueduct, but he didn’t have enough money. No problem — he sent some men into the Temple to steal money out of the treasury to make up the difference.

He did everything he could to make sure people knew he was in charge.

But the sad irony is that most people who demand to be in charge, rarely ever are.

Take his collision with Jesus, for example. The Jewish leaders wanted Jesus dead, but they weren’t authorized to pull the trigger. They needed Pilate’s approval, and that played right into his ego. Trouble is, Pilate couldn’t figure out what in the world Jesus had done to irritate these Jewish leaders so badly.

It wasn’t for a lack of trying or a lack of investigating. Pilate questioned Jesus and just couldn’t see how Jesus had done anything that would merit the death penalty.

Still, Pilate’s job was to keep the peace. When he told the people he was thinking about letting Jesus go, they started making noise like they might riot.

So, even though he believed Jesus was innocent, Pilate had Jesus flogged. No care for justice. No thought as to whether this was morally right or wrong.

See, it’s a lot easier to do the wrong thing — to compromise your integrity — when maintaining control is your ultimate goal.

He thinks this punishment will appease the crowds, but it doesn’t. They don’t just want Jesus to suffer; they want him dead.

Pilate stubbornly insists that he is in charge. He even says to Jesus, “I have the power to kill you or let you go.”

Truth be told, Pilate tries unsuccessfully to let Jesus go 10 different times.

It’s as if he assumes that since Jesus’ hands are physically bound, Jesus cannot be in control. Pilate learns that Jesus is not a man to be trifled with. When Jesus says a thing is going to happen, you can try to stop it, but you’ll soon see that resistance is futile. Jesus had said he was going to die this way. Not even the Roman governor who would have to sign the death warrant was able to stop it.

The Bible also says that one day every knee will bow and acknowledge Jesus’ authority and power. You can try to stop that from happening, but you won’t be able to. You can insist and demand and flex your muscles and cry all you want to. You can stubbornly refuse to admit your lack of control over the universe, but in the end you’ll see who’s really in charge around here.

There’s a great story in Mark 2 that I learned back when flannel graph was PowerPoint. It’s the story of a paralyzed man whose friends lower him down through the roof while Jesus is teaching a house full of people.

As I’ve thought through this story, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a really funny scene — with a bittersweet ending.

The backstory goes like this: Jesus appears on the scene with a flourish of miraculous activity. In Mark 1 he drives out an evil spirit and heals Peter’s mother-in-law (note: do not confuse the two). Then the whole town brings every sick person they can find. Jesus leaves town to spread the message, driving out more evil spirits as he goes. Then, Jesus heals a man with leprosy. By the beginning of chapter 2, Jesus is finding it difficult to leave the house because the crowds mob him everywhere he goes.

Now, when he comes back to his home base, the people crowd the house so badly the Fire Marshall should have shut them down.

Meanwhile, four guys have a friend who needs help. He’s paralyzed. We don’t know why. We don’t know how long he’s been like this. We only know that these four guys figure if they can get their friend to Jesus, Jesus will heal him. That’s a perfectly reasonable expectation on their part, right?

They get to the house, but they can’t get in. Somehow they figure out how to get up on the roof above where Jesus is…teaching?

Now, I do not for one minute believe the crowds were there to hear Jesus teach. They wanted a show — More miracles, please. Drive a demon out or something, please!

The four guys are undaunted and refuse to let something as flimsy as a first-century roof stand in their way. They start digging.

Cut to Jesus teaching. The people are tolerating him, anxiously wondering when the main event is going to start. Then bits of dust begin filtering down from above. Jesus looks up and a clump of plaster dumps on his face.

No one is listening to Jesus anymore (if they ever were to begin with). Everyone’s wondering what in the world is going on up there. How long did it take until the hole was large enough for them to fit the cot and the paralyzed guy through it? How hard was it for them to get the paralyzed guy up there in the first place? The dead weight of a full-grown man is not easy to carry up stairs!

Now they begin the process of lowering this guy. Did they rig up some kind of rope-and-pulley system, or did they each just tie a scarf to one corner of the mat he’s lying on? What happens when he gets eye-level with Jesus?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say Jesus probably started laughing. It’s a ridiculous situation, isn’t it?

Finally, the guy is there on the floor. Everyone knows what happens next, right? The Bible says, “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man…”.

How’s that sentence supposed to end?

It’s supposed to end with some variation of “You are healed,” isn’t it?

Nope. Not this time. This time Jesus says, “Son [because Jesus was from their version of the Dirty South], your sins are forgiven.”

Note: No one yells, “Woo-hoo! His sins are forgiven! Hallelujah!” No applause erupts. People are not amazed at this. What’s the paralyzed guy supposed to say? “Alright, guys. I guess you can pull me back up now. I still can’t walk, but my sins are forgiven, so I’ve got that going for me now.” What are the guys on the roof thinking? “We did not drag his butt up here and dig a hole in the roof so his sins could be forgiven!”

I imagine everyone felt at least a little bit letdown — disappointed. “We were hoping for something…more…something sexier…something dramatic…we wanted a healing.”

Eventually, Jesus does heal the guy, and the crowd goes nuts — shouting and slapping each other on the back and saying things like, “Can you believe that? How awesome was that?”

Jesus took care of a guy’s eternal destiny and everybody yawned. He temporarily made a guy’s body work and they were ecstatic.

And maybe Jesus was the one left feeling letdown.

In Matthew 22, three groups of people come to Jesus — three really different groups with three radically different agendas: the Herodians, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. All of them are up to no good, having failed to recruit Jesus into endorsing their agenda, and they’re all just trying to trap him into saying something incriminating.

The Pharisees and the Herodians take the first crack at him. I imagine they spent hours coming up with the perfect question. No matter how Jesus answers, he’ll have to choose one side over the other. Whichever group Jesus sides against will no doubt go and tattle to some authority or another. They’ve got him trapped. They’ve outfoxed him this time for sure!

“Hey, Jesus,” they begin, “Is it acceptable to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

Some folks thought paying taxes to Caesar was like saying Caesar had become their Master instead of God. Others believed God was using Caesar to punish Israel, so refusing to pay would be like rejected the discipline of God. They’ve got him now!

Hey, Jesus, heads or tails? Either way, we’ve got you cornered!

But Jesus, like a good Jewish rabbi, responds to their question with another question: Whose picture is on the coin?

Just answer heads or tails!

Whose picture is that?

You’re not playing along with our little game here!

I know.

Next, the Sadducees step up with a word problem for Jesus to solve. Since they didn’t believe in the afterlife, they wanted to demonstrate how dumb Jesus is for telling people about the resurrection and what happens after you die. They have this scenario where a woman’s husband dies. She remarries, but husband #2 dies as well. She goes through seven husbands before she dies. When she gets to heaven, whose wife will she be?

It’s like a bad version of three-card monte or a shell game. See the little lady under the walnut shell? Round and round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows! Now, Jesus, which shell is she under?

Jesus, being the only one there who had actually been to heaven, knows something they don’t know: There is no marriage in heaven.

Pick one, Jesus. Where is she?

There’s no marriage in heaven.

Would you just pick one?

But there’s no marriage in heaven.

Jesus! You’re not playing the game right!

I know.

Finally, Pharisees try one more time. They send in a ringer, an expert in the Law to ask Jesus which of the 613 laws is the most important one. Rabbis had debated this for centuries, and there were arguments and counter-arguments which this expert had probably memorized and was prepared to recite. No matter which law Jesus picked, this guy was ready to tell Jesus why he had picked the wrong one.

Pick a card. Any card.

When someone says that, you know what’s going to happen, right? You know they’re going to make your card — no matter which one you pick — re-appear somehow. When they reach into their breast pocket and pull out an envelope, you’re not surprised to see your card in there, are you? You may not understand how they did it, but you’re not surprised that they do!

Jesus picks his card: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”

Then, just as the guy is taking a deep breath and preparing to launch into his explanation, Jesus picks a second card: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Pick a card. Any card.

I’ll take this one and that one.

But you’re only supposed to take one.

I’ll take two instead.

But now you’re ruined my whole trick.

I know.

The chapter ends with this punchline: “From that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.”

Here’s the moral of this whole long story: Jesus is smarter than you think he is. He sees through all the games you try to play, all the times you try to sneak something past him, all the fast ones you try to pull. You can’t snooker Jesus. You can’t trick him. You can’t pull the wool over his eyes. He wasn’t born yesterday. He’s God in a body, so how about we all just stop trying to hustle God?

As I mentioned yesterday, the Gospel of John is very precise with its words. And, because he uses a relatively simple vocabulary, John’s Gospel is often referred to as “the simple Gospel”.

If by “simple” we mean “easy to read”, that’s an appropriate moniker. If, however, we mean “easy to understand”, we’re way off base. John’s Gospel contains some of the more confusing passages of the New Testament. Jesus, talking to his Father in Heaven, says, “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

Now, I know what each of those words mean individually: You. Are. In. Me. And. I. Am. In. You.

But strung together like that — “You are in me and I am in you” — I’ve been pondering that sentence for 15 years, and I’m still not exactly sure what all it means.

There’s a depth to John’s Gospel that begs to be explored, and I’ve done my best to dive deeply. Still, for all my best efforts, there are things that sometimes rise up to slap me in the face — words or phrases that seem to leap off the page and shout at me — sentences that I feel like I’ve never read before and make me wonder how on earth I could have missed them. That just happened.

In Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman, there’s a short sentence that gets a lot of press. John writes, “It was about noon” (John 4:6b). Preachers and teachers seize on this phrase to let us know that this woman must have been some kind of outcast. No one would come to draw water in the heat of the day like this. The fact that it’s noon tells us something about the power of her physical thirst and the shame of her social standing.

But as I read that sentence this morning, something occurred to me that I’d never thought of before.

See, that phrase appears one other time in John’s Gospel — word-for-word. It’s in John 19 — towards the end of Jesus’ life. We read, “It was the day of Preparation for the Passover; it was about noon. ‘Here is your king,’ Pilate said to the Jews. But they shouted, ‘Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!’”

I’m convinced this is not a coincidence. John wants us to read this and remember the time Jesus sat down, physically exhausted in the heat of the day and asked a woman living in sin for a drink, offering her the promise that he had water that would satisfy her desires forever.

Later in John 19, as Jesus hangs on the cross, having taken upon himself the sins of the world, he says, “I am thirsty.”

He took our sin upon himself. He took our shame. He took our thirst. It was about noon.

John’s Gospel is very intentional in the way it uses words. Not just intentional — precise.

But there’s a bit at the beginning of the 4th chapter that seems confusing. It says that Jesus “had to go through Samaria” (v. 4).

I’m not usually one to quibble about small details…well…okay…I am…but this isn’t a small detail. I’m not sure it’s true. Jesus didn’t have to go through Samaria. It’s not like there wasn’t another route. Jewish people routinely walked that road north from Judea to Galilee. They would approach the border of Samaria, take a hard left and go west, then cut back north and walk around the place.

The text even explains, “For Jews do not associate with Samaritans” (v. 9). So, why in the world would the Bible say that he had to go there?

Well, there was a woman.

She had baggage. There was no avoiding that. She’d been married five times and was now living with a man to whom she was not married. That’s odd in our day and age. We can only imagine how deviant it must have seemed to people 2,000 years ago.

We don’t know why she’d had five different husbands. Maybe they all died. Maybe they all left her. Maybe she left some of them, and some of them left her and one of them died. We don’t know, but there are several combinations, and they all lead to the same outcome: She’d had her heart broken more than once.

Once upon a time she was a little girl. She had dreams. She had hopes. She probably thought about what it would be like to get married, what she would wear that day, who would be invited, what the party would be like, how long it would last. She may have played that scenario out in her mind over and over as the day drew closer and closer.

I doubt very seriously that she ever stopped to think that it might not last forever.

The end of a marriage is like a death in the family. Nothing prepares a person for it. And, to some extent, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is; when a marriage ends, a heart breaks. Maybe it was her fault — maybe it wasn’t — maybe it wasn’t anyone’s fault — maybe it just happened. Regardless, when it ended, she must have been devastated.

Now, can you imagine what she must have thought and felt when someone — after what they considered a proper amount of time had passed — asked her to do it again?

“I know your first marriage didn’t end up the way you had hoped, but would you marry me?”

Maybe she jumped at it and said, “Sure!” Or maybe she thought she wasn’t ready. Maybe she felt the icy grip of fear leap into her throat. Maybe every fiber of her being screamed out how there was no way in the world she would ever put herself in a position to go through that nightmarish hell again.

But somehow she managed to wrestle down the fear, put her past behind her and get on with her life. She says, “Yes.”

And how long was it before her worst possible case scenario began to play out in front of her very eyes?

It happened again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Five times she gave her heart away. Five times she’d had it broken. Now she’s only willing to go halfway — she’ll live with the guy, but they’re not married.

Angry? Bitter? Frustrated? Probably.

Thirsty? No doubt.

Maybe that’s why he had to go there.

The only thing more conspicuous than a woman going to get water from a well at high noon would be a Jewish rabbi actually talking to a Samaritan woman who had been married several times and was currently shacked up with a guy. That’s exactly what we find in John 4, and it gets even stranger! Jesus asks her for a drink, but she notices he doesn’t have anything to drink with — no cup, no bucket, nothing. Does he intend to drink from her water jar?

Doesn’t he know how gross that is?! She’s a Samaritan. She’s a woman. She’s living in sin. She’s practically wearing a scarlet “A” on her chest. You couldn’t get any further “outside” for a typical Jewish rabbi.

Ah, but Jesus is far from typical.

The story of the Samaritan woman at the well is remarkable on its own merits. But read alongside the previous chapter — the bit where Jesus has his encounter with Nicodemus — it’s earth-shattering. Here’s a Messiah who comes to the upper-uppers and the lower-lowers, the high and mighty as well as the down and out, in the penthouse and in the trailer park.

Men and women, wealthy and poor, moral and immoral, proud and ashamed — no matter where you’ve been or what you’ve been up to — Jesus is comfortable on both sides of the tracks.

I’m free to do what I want any old time.

Who knew the Rolling Stones’ song from 1965 would come to resonate so deeply with people? Who would have imagined they would sing if for more than 40 years and that it would eventually become the tune for an advertising campaign for a credit card company?

But is that really freedom? Or is that just egocentric individualism run amuck?

We live in a free society, but are we free to do whatever we want whenever we want? The answer is, in one sense, yes. We are free to hurl obscenities at the driver who cuts us off. We are free to steal from our offices. We are free to cheat on our spouses and on our taxes. Sort of.

But there are consequences.

You may get caught. Your spouse may divorce you. Your boss may fire you. The IRS may audit you, and the driver in front of you may get out of his car and punch you in the nose.

Worse, no one may ever find out. You may never get caught, but there will still be consequences. You’ll become an even more impatient, untrustworthy, self-indulgent person who lives isolated and alienated from others.

In other words, if you allow your freedom to become license for over-indulgence, you’ll end up enslaved to your appetites. Freedom without limits leads — eventually — to a loss of freedom. The choice, then, isn’t between limitation and freedom. Rather, the choice is whom you will allow to set your limits.

The apostle Paul says that you can set the limits for yourself. You can use your freedom in that way, to indulge yourself. However, that approach is disastrous when you try to live it out — especially when you try to live it out in the context of community with others (see Galatians 5:13-15).

His solution is not to give up your freedom; his solution is to concentrate less on what you’ve been set free from and more on what you’ve been set free for. If Jesus has set you free, you’re free to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit now rather than your own selfish interests. And if you follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, you have no need for the Law to tell you what’s right and wrong. The Holy Spirit can be trusted to guide you wisely and well (see Galatians 5:18).

Selfish living sounds good for a while, but it always leads to boring repetition. It cheapens love and life. It’s characterized by frenzied activity with diminishing returns, momentary but fleeting fits of happiness. It inevitably leads to loneliness and jealousy and an increasing inability to love or receive love from others. It always promises more than it can deliver.

You’re now free to live like that, if you like.

But you’re also free now to live a different way, a better way. You’re free to live life in the Spirit. You can live a life of affection and enthusiasm. You can have a peace that defies your circumstances. You can endure hardships with joy. You can stand up for your convictions fearlessly and show compassion to others. You can keep your commitments and enjoy relationships without manipulation.

You’re now free to live like that, if you like.

You’re free to do what you want any old time.