John 4. 4-30 Faith-sharing – the Jesus way
Over the past few months I have been teaching from time to time about “mission”: what it means to be a missional church in our society and how we share our faith in Jesus with other people. We’ve thought about what the Gospel is, and about how to share it, how to be witnesses. We’ve realised the importance of having our own story to share; of waiting for the opportunity, of being prepared to be vulnerable, generosity, and of the power of the Holy Spirit I want to top that teaching off today by looking at the example of Jesus and how he actually engaged in sharing the Good News with an individual. Because it is as individuals with other individuals that we have the best hope of communicating the Good News with other people.
So here we have Jesus, sat beside a well in the town of Sychar, in the fairly inhospitable territory called Samaria: the original “Israel” that had broken away from Judah hundreds of years before, and had often seemed worse than Judah for worshipping false gods. But many Samaritans continued to worship the Lord although they did so in a way that the Jews thought was a watered-down, less-than-the-real-thing kind of religion. And the Samaritans hated the Jews in return. Not the greatest place to be trying to tell people the Good News. The problems are similar to those we have in sharing the good News: (1) “They” might not like me”! (2) I’m not too sure I like “them”!
We fear that sometimes the people around us will somehow eat us up. We feel, maybe, that a family member or a work colleague is always watching us, always a bit antagonistic towards us… And we feel, too, that some of the humour, some of the lifestyle, is not what it should be. There are huge gulfs of difference between how we think and how people at work, and even family members, think and react. I guess a lot of Church people will have to admit that even before we open our mouths to talk about Jesus, we are out of our comfort zone – maybe even among our families. Jesus must have known all of that, sitting by a well in Samaria; yet that is exactly where we find him – sitting by a well in Samaria…
And along comes someone – a woman, with a water jar. But it’s midday: the sun is at its highest; it's the hottest part of the day. So there’s something wrong. Nobody in their right mind comes to draw water from the well at the hottest hour of the day – unless they have a good reason for wanting to avoid being seen: a criminal record, a creditor, an angry mob. For this woman it was the flyting (a Scots word that means sharp criticism) of the other women from the town, the looks, the wagging heads and wagging tongues, the gossip. Because this woman had a reputation as one of the loose women of the area.
Jesus takes the initiative. He begins a conversation with this lady. “Give me a drink”, he asks. We already noted a long time ago that one of the key principles in sharing our faith with other people is to make ourselves vulnerable. We don’t go to people as those who have all the answers but as those who have human weakness and who need something from the other person. Isn’t it encouraging that Jesus was prepared to put his ideas into practise… he who told his friends, “take no money, eat what they set before you…” was prepared to make himself vulnerable and put himself in the debt of someone to who he knew needed to hear the Good News. “Give me a drink”.
Well, this request got an immediate, prickly response from the woman. It was as if he had hit her in the pit of the stomach, because she recognised the accent: he wasn’t just a man and a stranger; he was a foreigner, a Jew. “Wait a minute. What’s going on here? How come you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink? You lot never have any dealings with us Samaritans.” Sometimes we will get the prickly response. What do we do? Let’s not assume that we are always right and the prickly responses are automatically evidence of how ungodly and sinful people are. Sometimes they can be the result of our insensitivity: we may have come over judgmental or harsh, in which case we need to be prepared to say we are sorry. Sometimes a prickly response can be the result of another person’s pain. We need to respond to the prickly response with a generous attitude that is based in a sense of God’s authority. That is what Jesus did next. 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.” (v10) He knew who he was; he knew what the Good News was and he knew how to apply it in a relevant way to the situation he was in.
There’s an amazing mix in this ministry of Jesus, of authority, knowledge, and relevance. Pray for the ability to bring all of these together. Jesus speaks with the authority of knowing who he is.people may ask you, “Who or what gives you the right to come to me telling me I need Jesus in my life?” The answer at one level is that your heavenly father has given you that authority. But, when someone asks you that question, the answer, “Sir, I am a child of the King!” is probably going to get a few laughs and that’s all. I'm not talking about an external, imposed authority, a matter of "rank", like Captain Mainwaring from the TV series "Dad's Army," but real, internal authority, a sense of God-given confidence.
It is important that we know in our hearts who we are, and that the activity we call “witness” flows out of that knowledge, not out of a sense of obligation to do this evangelism thing because we are supposed to, or because the Church needs new recruits or because if my neighbour doesn’t get to heaven it will be my fault. Once we know who we are, once we understand our authority at a deep level, we are released to share the Good News as Jesus directs.
Then there is the knowledge. The Good news of the Kingdom of God, is something that can refresh, and cleanse, like living water. The ability to present the Good News in an appropriate and relevant way is rooted in a depth of knowledge of what that Good News actually is. And there is that relevance thing. Jesus is at a well; he is obviously thirsty. He is talking to a woman who has come to draw water: if she isn’t physically thirsty, she knows that in the southern Mediterranean thirst will come along pretty quickly if she doesn’t have that water jar filled; and as a mid-day visitor to the well, there’s obviously something wrong, so she is spiritually and emotionally thirsty. To talk about “living water” is a highly relevant and appropriate way of opening up a conversation about spiritual things. The woman immediately responds positively: “I want some of that!”
Then comes a challenge: “go and call your husband.” This is where it gets embarrassing. At that moment the woman thought, “I’m quite interested in what he’s saying but I don’t want some religious type criticising my private lifestyle; I mean, can I just tell a Bible teacher, ‘well, I’m actually living with a guy’" … So she said she hadn’t a husband. Jesus knows exactly what’s going on, though. It’s kind of scary: “Too right you haven’t a husband: you’ve had five and you’re now living with a guy you’re not married to”: or maybe “you’re now living with someone else’s husband.” Jesus knew all about it. That’s scary. But that is the dimension of the power of the Holy Spirit in evangelism. Now I cannot promise that every time you talk about Jesus you are going to know all about their secret inner lives. But I can tell you that in some way, the Holy Spirit wants to empower you in sharing the Good News with other people. That may be in praying for someone: maybe in praying for healing, or peace in some situation. It may be in having some supernatural insight into their needs. It may be in being prompted to visit just when they need to see someone. Evangelism is the task of the Holy Spirit within us. He comes to equip us to be witnesses. Jesus models for us one way in which the Holy Spirit can make that witness possible.
The woman recognises that supernatural power: She says, “Hey, I see you are a prophet…” then, desperate to change the subject, she goes on: “... So where’s the right place to worship: in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem or here in Samaria?” But Jesus is able to cut through all that with good theology and the word of God. “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers 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 worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” No big arguments. Of course Jesus could have gone into why “salvation is from the Jews”. He was himself the final proof of that… Instead he gets back to the all-important inner realities of worshipping God in Spirit and in truth. That makes the woman cry out in longing for the day when the messiah will come: and Jesus announces “You’re talking to him right now!” Back to basics; back to the central truths: Jesus, the Kingdom…
And as the disciples come along and interrupt the conversation – before Jesus has got the woman to pray the prayer – she rushes off, leaving her water-jar behind. But this isn’t embarrassment at being seen in public; this is sheer excitement, a sense of discovery; she has met someone who told her all she ever did, and in the process he has changed her on the inside, because now she doesn’t mind seeing people. She had a new confidence. She needed to talk, to share this event, to bring the whole neighbourhood out to meet Jesus. When he shares the Good News, lives are changed. If all this message does is put you under pressure to "do evangelism" then it will have failed. I believe Jesus wants us to work with him, to know him working with and in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. And there is mystery and miracle in the transformation that happened in the woman's life: Her faith was real even if we don't know how and at what point she actually trusted Jesus. I believe God wants us to know that he is at work among our friends and families, even if we can't see it happening: it's mystery and miracle.
© Gilmour Lilly January 2011
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