What's Under Your Bed Message

by Pastor Gina Johnson

So, last Sunday my congregation showed up to service and they did not expect to see a bed on the chancel. Thank you, Travis, for helping me and any family that I took something from. Thank you.

But the thing is, I was not going to take a nap. I did have someone ask me if I was feeling a little tired and I know some of them would’ve been very envious if I took a nap right then. And I told them that at about 11:25, I would pull back the blanket if they wanted to come and nap during the last five minutes. But you know, beds are funny, because beds are supposed to be where we get a good night's sleep.

You know, that place where we can go and cozy in. It's not even just about a good night's sleep. What about those rainy days where we cuddle up with our favorite blanket and a book, maybe we have our hot cup of tea there? Or how many times have we been in our bed and it's the place where those little things, what are they called, children! They come and they jump in bed with you and they need you to comfort them or they just need to be in your presence. And how many times have we laid in our bed with our significant other and just felt that peace, or maybe had that pillow talk about the next big decision or the challenges we were facing and just reminded each other of how you're going to persevere. And what about those times we've crawled into a bed next to someone who was going to be transitioning on soon, but there was something so special about being next to them in that bed.

Our bed is supposed to be a place where we find rest. But how many times have you been maybe having company over, whether it was friends or whether it was family, and you had to shove something under the bed quickly, right? It's either under the bed or in the closet or... You guys, truth be told, I've put dirty dishes in the oven before and let's just be thankful we never went to preheat the oven without checking it.

You know, where do we shove those things? Under the bed. Or what about those times when you were younger? I don't know how many of you had siblings, but it's like you can't find your sibling and you know they're always trying to torture you in some way and so you don't know if they might be hiding under your bed. Or better yet, those times you might have laid awake in bed at night, you just couldn't sleep for some reason.

It's like, what is under my bed? And yes, we can play boogeyman and scary things, but you know, sometimes it's just the fact that we can't rest because we don't actually know what's under our bed. Because over time, we have put some things under there that we've forgotten about. Over time, we chose to hide things under there. And over time, you know, some things just drifted under our bed.

So I'm going to go ahead and see what's under my bed here that I haven't paid much attention to.

I got a letter here. Oh, that's funny. That's a rejection letter. Why do I have that under here?

Oh man, this is the book. This is the book I read when I was going to revitalize that other church that I was in. This has got some great meaning to it.

Oh, one of my favorite journals of all time. That's a good one.

Christmas. Hey, I'm ahead of the game. I am ready for this upcoming holiday. Christmas ornaments, decorations. Perfect, perfect.

What else do we have? It's a picture of me and Isabella when she was really young. Oh, it's a little dusty. It's our mother-daughter relationship. It means a lot to me. She's my oldest, you know, so. Okay.

Oh, a little Air Force ducky. That's in honor of my dad, you know.

Oh, what? Books, salt, letter.

Oh, yeah, that plant I forgot about. Hey now, if you're laughing, that means you better have the greenest thumb that I have ever seen or else you can just hold that laughter.

You know, this is all great. Maybe some of it's not so great, but you know, the point is, if you don't know what's under there, how are you gonna deal with it, right?

So, it's interesting. A lot of times something that is talked about in psychology, in religion, in any kind of spiritual growth is the lower mind, the subconscious, and that's very much like under our bed. It's those things that get put down there, that get tucked away, that get slipped in, and we don't even recognize it's happening, and then we can't sleep at night, and then we have stories circling in our mind, and then we have fears and doubts from things that we could have let go of quite some time ago.

In today's Bible story, we're going to look at an encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman, and you're gonna see there's quite a few things that she had under her bed. Now, he had to go through Samaria. This is in John 4:4-30.

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 from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When the Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, Will you give me a drink? His disciples had gone into town to buy food.

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, 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 be 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. He told her, Go call your husband and come back. I have no husband, she replied.

Jesus said to her, 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.

Sir, the woman said, I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. Woman, Jesus replied, Believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worship will worship the father in the spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the father seeks.

God is spirit and his worshippers must worship in the spirit and in truth. The woman said, I know the Messiah is coming, and when he comes, he will explain everything to us. And then Jesus declared, I, the one speaking to you, I am he.

I've heard that story many times and I would always think how embarrassing for that woman. And once I learned the context, I understood where her attitude came from because Jews and Samaritans didn't mix that way.

But how embarrassing to stand there and for Jesus to basically read her mail to her, call her out on all of these things and he didn't even do it in an accusatory way. He just basically said to her, yes, you are speaking the truth, but let me tell you exactly what you are saying. And it's interesting because she had many things under her bed, many things that she had believed over the years from the way she was raised, perhaps from the things that she had done in her lifetime, things she might have accumulated from others.

Sometimes what's under our bed isn't actually a bad thing. I bet she had all sorts of beautiful memories and experiences that we could hear wonderful stories about.

You know, when I was bringing things out from under my bed earlier, it's like, yeah, I don't even remember where we were, but when I saw this little Air Force duck, I thought, “I have to have it,” because I have some old pictures of my dad in his dress blues, even one with his hat on. A lot of times he didn't have his hat on because he was indoors, so he wouldn't have cover. But, you know, my dad is forever going to be one of my heroes.

And, you know, having this bag with these Christmas ornaments, and actually there's a variety of them, but one came from a church I served in and another from another church I served in and I have these little ornaments that just remind me of where God has taken me along my beautiful journey. One of the things in that bag was something that was carved for me from one of my congregation members in the past. It says, “Be my Valentine, Pastor Gina. God loves you.”

It's wonderful, you know, to see that and to feel that. But then I recognize that there are times in my life where I've been called to something, where I bet you've been called to something, but some of the things under my bed, some of the things that I've held on to over time have kept me from wanting to try it again.

You know, I'm not such a great gardener when it comes to indoor plants, and it's funny because outdoor I usually just stick to vegetables and back when I had yards, I did fairly well. But now, you know, that's not even going that well when I try to do plants on the deck. So I just throw that out altogether. But does that mean I should never try to grow anything again?

I mean, gosh, if I go and look at some of the beautiful sculptures that my children made me when they were younger, I'd probably say, “Please don't take up sculpting and find another job,” because they were beautiful at that moment and I'll cherish them forever, but that definitely is a unique piece of artwork.

Or what else has it been? Has anyone ever taken the time to tap into their talents? Maybe it's singing, maybe it's writing, and perhaps you received a rejection of some sort, you know, like this letter here that says, thank you for your submission, but we're not interested in publishing it that at this time.

So, do I throw out all my pens and all my journals and just say the heck with it? Do I hear God calling me into something, but I'm too afraid because something else in the past shut me down? And so I just store all that stuff.

“I wasn't very good at this. I didn't have any luck with that. You know, I did try and help that congregation grow and it's not going well.”

Maybe the fact that I'm carrying this around is feeding into the job I'm doing here. It's amazing when we store these things in our subconscious, under our bed, in that broken record that though we may have it on very quietly, it's still going.

When we do that, we are not allowing ourselves to come and meet the living water. We're not allowing ourselves to hear the voice of God. We are too busy hiding. And not only are we hiding, we are hiding the gifts and the talents that God gave us to use, to minister with, to be his kingdom growers, to be his kingdom workers. We bury some of the greatest gifts we have. We don't take up opportunities. We don't try new activities or do ministries because we have this fear.

When we keep that from others, we're keeping that transformation from occurring. We're keeping those new experiences from occurring. These are things that could end up taking on a whole new meaning, a whole new chapter.

I don't know how many of you, when different things pop up in the church, say, “I'm going to go check that out. I'm going to try that.”

Did you see a post about a planting event at the church? That may be an opportunity. Maybe the next community Prayer Walk is that something. Are you looking for exercise? Are you looking for community? Are you looking for a place to spiritually connect? What if you go to that Prayer Walk and then you find, “Wow, why haven't I gone all these other months?” Or maybe there's something stirring in your heart that you just know, if this were taking place, if I could help bring this to fruition…

Even if you don't have the time and energy to be the one that makes it all happen, don't keep those ideas in. Don't keep those nudges. Don't keep those spiritual calls tucked under the bed. Allow them to come to fruition.

And you know what? There is not only stuff under our bed that we've hidden away, but there's stuff under our bed that we should have let go of. And all of us know that all too well.

You know, I have a trusty notebook of how-to's that keep me from fully living.

·       How to cling on to every time I disappointed my parents so I can replay it in my mind.

·       How to cling on to every failed relationship I've had so as I embark on new relationships, I can understand what to do and what not to do.

·        How to tell myself story after story so instead of living the fullness, the highest version of myself, I can live afraid and scared.

And I bet if I flip further, there's ones I haven't got to.

·        How to look at all the loss and sickness and grief around myself and trap myself in fear.

·        How to get caught up in the political climate of my world so I start growing angry and hurtful with my words and losing sight of people I love.

I don't think I really do need to go any further. I think we all have our own list of how-to's. You know, sometimes in life, things are going to take place and things are going to happen and they're not going to be the way that we thought they would go.

And from then on, we're going to have a label. We're going to have a memory. We're going to have something that we either took for ourselves or that was given to us, and it's going to bury us.

I hope not literally, but I'll tell you, when you hold on to these things, when you hold on to grudges, when you hold on to hurts, when you don't pick up the phone, even though that family member, that friend, that individual who's been on your mind week after week, when we hold on to these toxic experiences, whether we are the one that started them or just felt like we ended them, they do not help us. They don't help us physically. They don't help us emotionally. They don't help us spiritually.

When we go back to the woman at the well, you know, she had rehearsed her story for so long. She knew who she was based on who her community told her she was, based on all of the experiences she engaged in: five husbands, shame, outcast, everything she did formed who she is.

She thought that it was behind her as she stood there and spoke to Jesus and said, “I'm not married.” And he said, “Oh, oh, but wait, that's right, you don't have one husband.” She didn't realize the thing she was still carrying, but when he named them, when he brought them to light for her, then it changed everything.

If we have things hidden under our bed, how does the light of Christ get to it? If we're so locked into the stories and the labels and the things that didn't go our way and the things that someone or something or the world did to us, how do we allow the Christ light into it? The reason Jesus brought these things up wasn't to shame her, wasn't to say this is who you are and this is where you're trapped and that's why you need to get me water there, Samaritan woman.

Not at all. It was his way of saying, “You don't have to ignore these things. Let's bring them into the light and let's release them because in the shadows, they're not doing you any good.”

You know, Jesus tells us in another part of the book that you can't put new wine into old skins and here, he's saying to her you have the opportunity to be a new creation. You can drink the living water and you can bring things to fruition, to bloom. You can step into the fullness of you. So, let's bring them into the light. But if you try to put this new wine into this old skin, if you try and keep drinking that same old water instead of the living water, it's not going to happen. The wine skin will burst. You will forever be thirsty.

Remembering that there are going to be some things under that bed that need to be cleared out, can you imagine trying to shove something under your bed when there's already so much clutter under there? Have you ever had a new opportunity, perhaps a new friendship, a new relationship, a new idea come in and you didn't even have the room to take it in? Sometimes you might meet a new guest even in the church and you only have but a minute to say hello because you're so caught up in the busyness of everything that's already there.

Well, that's just in your active conscious mind. Imagine when it has to compete with everything you've stored away. And the truth is, you know, for many of us, it's not that we're hiding anything under our bed as much as we ourselves are stuck there.

Sometimes we can sit and say, this particular situation is keeping me there. This is happening, but it's really us. We are still beating ourselves up. We are still looking for the other shoe to drop. We are still clinging to those old versions of us. We might as well crawl under the bed ourselves and hide if we're not going to come to seeing who we really are in Christ Jesus.

Last but not least, when you do have these things under your bed, the things you've tried to hide away, the things that you should have gotten rid of a long time ago, you know what else is going to collect under there? Dust. Lots and lots of dust.

As I pulled out this picture of when Isabella and I were traveling in Wisconsin, and there was a place on the side of the road that had all these big statues and cool things and we climbed up to sit on this massive big piece of cheese. She was only a couple years old, and in the picture she's giving her mommy a kiss. And it's funny because when brought it out and I looked at it, there's all this dust on it. I think it's that dust that every time I look at a picture of me as a mother, I think, I didn't have a mother like that.

My relationship with my mother was a lot different. But when I clear that dust off of here, and I see the love expressed between Isabella and I, and I see that I was always doing the very best I could with my children, and that you cannot touch that unique gift of a mother and a child, I wipe that dust away and I say, “Thanks, Mom. Thanks for pouring into me the way you did that's made me turn out this way.”

I might have to slip my kids 20 bucks later to agree, but I’d say I'm a pretty good mom. And that's what I'm saying. Sometimes we tuck these things under our bed, and they collect things. Stories. I never sat there and doomed my motherhood over my mom, but I bet I heard it enough in the world.

“Oh, if you're raised with bad parenting, you know, it's going to affect you. If you're raised in poverty, you're going to become a hoarder. If you're raised in this...” Right?

The dust, guys. The dust. Those things that are like, “Well, I was a part of this group, and those three got upset, and so they left the group and I went with them. But I didn't even know why. And now I miss that group, and I want this group to come back, but I don't know what to do. So I'll just ignore this group, and I'll cling to this group, and I'll always be in between.”

The dust, guys. The dust.

As I close, I want to ask you guys, if you finish the rest of that story, in the very end, the woman is so excited, she leaves her jar, and runs back to tell everyone of her encounter with Jesus, and then they get excited, because they want to go and see him as well. So, let me ask you, what's hiding under your bed? What are some of those things that you've been carrying around, and you never have really put down? Or perhaps there's just some dust under there, that once you clear it out, you can see more clearly what's gathered, and how to transform that into something greater.

It's time to stop carrying around that jar with all the meaning that you gave it, and leave it, and go and embrace what you have, here and now. The sooner you get it cleared out under your bed, the better night's rest you're going to get, and then you can not only awaken to the transformation that's waiting for you, but you can be that for others.

Please pray with me.

Almighty God, we are so grateful for your word. We are so grateful for the opportunity to be together with the Spirit and hear the message that you have sent to us. God, as I am only a conduit to you, I pray that the words that you have spoken today will be heard, that we can know that with you there's nothing to hide, nothing to label, nothing to hold on to, except for the truth, that we are your children, we are created in your image, we are vessels in the embodiment of Christ.

And for that, we are thankful. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.