Elinor Thornton

Scripture: John 4:1-42

Video Link: https://youtu.be/Al3mm5Bfiow

Structure:

• Introduction
• The woman at the well
• Elinor Thornton
• Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Today is Baptist Women’s History Day. Last year we learned about New Zealand’s first overseas missionary, Rosalie Macgeorge. This year we feature Elinor Thornton, a pioneering preacher and evangelist.

In stereo with Elinor’s story is the gospel story of another pioneering evangelist, the Samaritan woman who encountered Jesus at the well, in John 4.

Although Elinor led a very different lifestyle from the Samaritan woman, they did share at least two things in common: they were both hungry for something more in this life and they both became unlikely evangelists.   

The woman at the well:

Let’s begin with a reading from John 4, to remind us of Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well…

⁴ Now he [Jesus] had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.  ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. ⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) ⁹ 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.) ¹⁰ 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.” ¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?  ¹² 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?” ¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ 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.” ¹⁵ 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.” ¹⁶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” ¹⁷ “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸ 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.”

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

One of these kids is doing their own thing? It was an iconic scene from the TV show Sesame Street. Three kids doing the same thing and one kid doing their own thing, being different.

Sometimes doing your own thing can be selfish or harmful, but not always, and never on Sesame Street. There is a time and place when doing your own thing, standing out from the crowd, being different, is life giving and necessary for the well-being of the wider community.     

The Samaritan woman is not like the other women of her village. She is doing her own thing. Most women in her culture would go to the well at the beginning or the end of the day, in a group together. But this woman chooses to go in the middle of the day, alone.

Jesus is doing his own thing too. Most men in that culture would step aside and put a distance between themselves and another woman. They certainly wouldn’t speak to a woman in public, much less ask her for a drink.

This is a very unusual interaction indeed, made even more extraordinary by the fact that Jesus is Jewish and, historically, Jews and Samaritans hated each other. Lots of bad blood and chilly silences between them.

But Jesus is not interested in holding a grudge. Who has the time and energy for that? He engages in a conversation with this woman from a position of weakness and need. He is thirsty and asks her for some water.

We aren’t actually told whether Jesus gets a drink but I guess that’s not the point. The banter goes back and forth and the woman is, quite understandably, a bit cynical at first. Jesus goes to on talk about living water and how he is the source of a water supply that will quench her thirst for good.

The woman can’t begin to imagine what Jesus means. For her, living water probably meant spring water, fresh water that bubbles to the surface by itself, as opposed to well water which has to be drawn out by hand.

She may be thinking literally but the living water Jesus has in mind is most likely the Holy Spirit. Those who are filled with the Spirit of Jesus not only stand to have their own thirst for intimacy with God met, they also become a spring for others.

As the conversation carries on it becomes clear that this woman has a thirst in her soul which no man (so far) has been able to quench. She has been married five times and now she is in a de facto relationship.

We are not told the back story with these six relationships but it is pretty clear this woman has been through the mill. Whether she is a widow or a divorcee or an adulterer or all three, she is first and foremost a person and she has suffered. Jesus sees her loneliness and hunger and he cares for her.    

As they continue talking about God and worship the woman begins to soften. From verse 24 we pick up the thread of the conversation, where Jesus says…

²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” ²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Jesus reveals to her that he is the Messiah. In him she will find the salvation of living water.

Ephrem the Syrian sums up the movement of this chat nicely when he writes…

At the beginning of the conversation Jesus did not make himself known to her; …first she caught sight of a thirsty man, then a Jew, then a Rabbi, afterwards a prophet, last of all the Messiah. She tried to get the better of the thirsty man, she showed dislike of the Jew, she heckled the Rabbi, she was swept off her feet by the prophet and she adored the Christ.  

The conversation finishes when the disciples return…

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 Messiah?” ³⁰ They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

This most unlikely person, a Samaritan woman with a fifty shades darker reputation, becomes one of the first Christian evangelists, telling the people of her town about her experience of Jesus.    

Jesus enjoyed the hospitality of that town for two days and by the end of his stay people were saying, “…this man really is the Saviour of the world.”  

Elinor Thornton (nee Wilson):

I quite like the poetry of Bruce Springsteen. He has a song called Hungry Heart. There’s a verse towards the end of the song where he sings…

Everybody needs a place to rest

Everybody wants to have a home

Don’t make no difference what nobody says

Ain’t nobody like to be alone

Everybody’s got a hungry heart…                                                                     

What makes the Boss so good is his understanding of people. Each of us has a hunger deep in our soul which no amount of steak and chips can satisfy. That hunger moves us; it shapes and influences the choices we make in life.

The woman at the well knew all about that hunger and so did Elinor Thornton.

Elinor Thornton was born Elinor Wilson, in Ireland, in 1867. She was one of six children. Her father was a farmer. The Wilson family arrived in New Zealand to start a new life in 1875. Elinor was around eight years old at the time. [1]

Elinor’s family believed in education, which was just as well because Elinor loved to read. Books were her friends. Her family were church goers and Elinor excelled in Scripture, coming first in her class. Even from an early age Elinor felt a hunger for God. I imagine reading the Bible was one way she fed that hunger.

When asked which is the greatest commandment in the Law, Jesus said: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. Reading the gospel, and reflecting on what we read, cleans the inside of the cup. It is one of the ways we love God with our mind.

When we read we deepen and widen our understanding and our ability to think. Reading can transport us to different worlds. Reading quality books makes us the beneficiaries of the wisdom of other people’s experience.

For some people reading is hard work and for others it is a pleasure. Either way, reading good content is a wonderful antidote to ignorance. And, as followers of Jesus, we can’t afford to be ignorant because ignorance causes harm. In short, reading helps us to know how to love God and our neighbour and ourselves.

So why not check out our church library, over in the church office. Elaine has selected some great books, which are there to help us love God with our mind.  

When Elinor turned 14, she confirmed her baptism and remembered feeling ‘strangely moved’. Spiritual experiences like this tend to be the exception, not the rule. The routine and demands of life took over and, at the age of 15, Elinor took her first teaching position in a school. She rode six miles each way on horseback.

Teaching is a meaningful profession and yet, after three years, Elinor’s hunger for something more remained. Restless she moved to Thames to take up a teaching position there.

While in Thames, Elinor was stirred by a message she heard from the Salvation Army. After re-reading the Scriptures and seeing them in a new light, Elinor stood in a public prayer meeting and admitted to trusting in Christ. This was the start of something new.

Perhaps like Elinor you have had a similar experience. Maybe, if you grew up in a Christian family, you saw God and Jesus through the lens of your parents’ point of view. It was like piggy backing off your parents’ faith. You simply accepted what they told you. There is nothing wrong with this. It is what a child naturally does.

But then, as you became an adult and started to think more for yourself, you saw God through a different lens, the lens of your own experience. Something shifted inside you, so it was like you owned the Christian faith for yourself, rather than just borrowing it from others.

Whatever our upbringing, God puts a hunger in our heart to know him, a longing to be close to him and enjoy him. Part of that hunger includes the desire to serve him, to use the gifts he has given us for his purpose.

Elinor’s gift was with words. At the age of 18 she started a small meeting in the Thames village and another one in the school after teaching for the day. I’m not sure exactly what the format of the meeting was but I imagine it included prayer, preaching and singing hymns. 

God blessed the work and made it fruitful. A boy of 18 became a Christian through one of these meetings and later went on to missionary work in Africa. 

Returning to John 4 for a moment. After the woman at the well had gone back to the village, Jesus’ disciples urged him to eat something…       

³² But he [Jesus] said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” …My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

The thing that fed and nourished Jesus’ soul was doing the work God had sent him to do.

Perhaps we too have a hunger in our soul to participate in the creative, redemptive work of God. Something in us wants, or more precisely needs, to serve God’s greater purpose. For it is in serving God, in the specific way he has prepared for us, that our life finds its meaning.

The work of God that Elinor needed to do was evangelistic preaching. But that won’t necessarily be the work God has prepared for you to do. Yes, we must all be prepared to give account of our faith to those who ask, but we are not all called to be preachers.

It’s like what Paul says in Romans 12…

⁶ We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with yourfaith; ⁷ if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; ⁸ if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead,do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

This is not an exhaustive list of the gifts, just a sample. The question is: what grace (or gift) has God given you to share? How does God want us (both individually and collectively) to serve his purpose of salvation? Knowing that, and doing it, go a long way to satisfying our soul’s hunger for meaning.

From Thames, Elinor moved to Remuera to work as a school teacher. She was there for three years, during which time she also taught Bible class, Christian Endeavour and helped with the Sailors’ Mission.

The job in Remuera was great. Elinor loved her time in Auckland. It was the centre of Christian activity. She might have stayed, except for a call to the back and beyond. It seems God was leading her away from the centre, to people on the edges.  

Ewen McGregor, a land and saw mill owner from the Rangitikei, in the heart of the New Zealand bush, invited Elinor to teach school for 40 children and lead a worship service every Sunday.

Elinor wrote afterwards that: ‘Mr and Mrs McGregor were as astonished as I myself when a girl was suggested. But I prayed over the matter for a month or two, then realised that the call was from God.’

In 1897, at the age of 30, Elinor left the desirable Remuera teaching position and accepted the job in the bush. She spent two years there. Nearly the whole village came to her Sunday services. During this time men and women were led to Christ. Elinor recalls one such meeting…

I sought to preach Christ in my own very simple fashion hardly looking for or expecting any definite or immediate results, for I knew nothing of evangelistic methods… I was about to close the meeting in the usual way… when a member of the congregation rose to his feet and asked if he might say something.

He was Mr Alexander, a man of splendid character, respected by everyone. I said we would be glad to hear what he had to say. Mr Alexander spoke…

‘I want to say that, until I began to attend these services a few months ago, I never realised that it was for me that Christ had died. Now I know it, I want everybody else to know it and I am so glad to acknowledge myself as his follower. By his grace I will follow him and serve him as long as I live.’  

No sooner had Mr Alexander sat down and another man jumped to his feet to make a similar declaration of faith. This began what can only be described as a revival. We experienced continually days of the right hand of the Most High. In almost every home there were those who openly identified themselves with Christ.

There was something about Elinor’s preaching which opened people’s hearts and minds to God’s love for them personally. Ultimately it is God’s love that satisfies the hunger in our soul.

Elinor’s preaching reminds us of Paul’s words to the Corinthians, where he says…

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. ² For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³ I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. ⁴ My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, ⁵ so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

In many ways, Elinor was an unlikely evangelist. She was a relatively young, bookish woman speaking to tough burly men, for the most part, at a time in history when equal opportunity wasn’t really a thing. And yet God used Elinor to bring many to a personal faith in Jesus.

After two years Mr McGregor encouraged Elinor to give up school teaching and devote all her time to evangelism. She commenced her work in Mangaweka, renting out the town hall for mission meetings. All sorts came to listen to the gospel. She continued for about two years travelling and preaching, not unlike Jesus’ ministry.

Then, in 1902 at the age of 35, Elinor Wilson married the Rev Guy Thornton. They had known each other from seven years earlier. They would have two daughters.

For the next 12 years they joined in itinerant mission work and brief pastorates in Otahuhu, Christchurch, Ohakune, Morrinsville and Whangarei.

Some of these places (particularly Ohakune) were quite remote and the accommodation wasn’t that flash. Guy’s health suffered and there were weeks when he was laid up in bed. Which is when Elinor stepped in to maintain his work. She was described as a person of great saintliness and a fine preacher.

Elinor kept up her preaching ministry in New Zealand when Guy went to serve (as a chaplain) in World War One.  When Guy became ill in hospital, in London, Elinor and their daughters sailed across the world to be with him.

For a while, between 1916 and 1919, Elinor and Guy served as missioners in England under the YMCA. Elinor preached in some quite large venues and people accepted Jesus as their Saviour.

Elinor and Guy ministered in England during the great flu pandemic which followed on the heels of the First World War. It was, in some ways, like our Covid pandemic, except without the vaccines.

Preaching the gospel at that time, in the wake of so much human tragedy and loss, must have been hard graft. Many people had become disillusioned and struggled to reconcile the God of love with the vicissitudes of recent experience. But Elinor and Guy remained faithful to their calling, continuing in good times and bad.

Elinor, who by now you realise was very capable, returned to New Zealand before Guy. Not one to sit around idle, she started services in Lyall Bay, here in Wellington. Then, when Guy followed, they moved to South Dunedin Baptist in 1922 to serve there.

Guy died in 1934, during the Great Depression. Not an easy time for Elinor who was 67 by that stage. But still Elinor remained fruitful. Her love of reading had inevitably led to a love of writing. By the time she died Elinor had published five books.

Elinor went to be with the Lord in 1946, not long after the Second World War ended. She was 79 years old.

Conclusion:

Like I said at the beginning of this message, Elinor led a very different lifestyle from the Samaritan woman in John 4. But they did share at least two things in common: they were both hungry for something more in this life and they both became unlikely evangelists.

The other thing they share in common is courage. Both women had the courage to be different and to speak up for Jesus.

In both their stories we see the hand of God at work. The woman at the well was not willing to help Jesus at first. She was cynical to begin with. But something shifted in her as she spoke with Jesus. Then she couldn’t help but tell everyone about the Messiah. And people believed in Jesus because of her testimony.   

In contrast, Elinor was willing, even from a young age. Willing to leave home. Willing to stand in a public meeting to declare her faith in Jesus. Willing to leave the comfort of Remuera to serve God in Rangitikei. Willing to sail to the other side of the world. Willing to be different; to lead missions and preach at a time when women didn’t often get the opportunity. And people believed in Jesus because of her testimony.  

Today’s message is more than just a history lesson or an inspiring story.

The point is that God can use you too. Are you willing?

Let us pray…

Father God, we thank you for your wisdom and grace. Satisfy the hunger in our soul with your Spirit. Help each one here to discover the gifts you have given them, so that we might serve your purpose of salvation. Give us willing hearts, informed minds and courage to share your love. Through Jesus we pray. Amen. 

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

• Why do you think Jesus crossed social and cultural boundaries to have a conversation with the woman at the well in John 4? How does Jesus approach this woman?

• What do you think Jesus has in mind when he talks about ‘living water’ in John 4?

• How might we love God with our mind? What practical things can we do? Do you have regular practices of spiritual reading to develop your faith? If not, how might you incorporate a regular rhythm of sacred reading into your weekly schedule?

• Are you aware of the hunger in your soul? How does this hunger influence the decisions you make? Do you know God’s love for you personally?  

• In what ways were the woman at the well (in John 4) and Elinor similar? In what ways were they different?

• What grace (or gift) has God given you to share?  How are you (or how could you) share this gift?

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[1] https://www.bwnz.org.nz/womens-history-day-and-woman-of-the-month-elinor-thornton-1867-1946/