John 4. Jesus stops in the town of Samaria on his way to Galilee. Jesus asks a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. They then have a conversation about spirituality. In an apparent show of subtle disapproval, the disciples ask him why he talked to her…
It is a simple story of a converstion between two people yet not unlike much of the bible, there are so many intricate details in this story that speak volumes to Jesus’ character and in turn our faith. In my mind, the story underlies an attitude of intentionality. It is about being intentional with our choices and not just sitting back and waiting for God to work. It is about having an intentionality that allows God to create encounters and opportunities to live out our faith. It is about choosing to go out of our way in spite of inconvenience and in spite of disapproval in order to show authentic love to those who don’t expect to receive it. It is ultimately about putting ourselves out there.
Here in John 4, it seems to boil down to this: Had Jesus not decided to travel through Samaria on his way, he would not have been present and available to meet anyone out of Samaria. According to my understanding, by going through Samaria, Jesus was going out of his way to get to Galilee. This was not exactly a first choice destination if you will. It could probably be somewhat likened to spending time in small town mid-USA, which at least in my mind, conjures up scenes from the 70’s, with a main street, a post office, and gas station all within a 2-minute drive through the town and a total of 100 people in town none of whom are visible minorities and none of whom have personally known many visible minorities… And in spite of this, Jesus travels here and stops here and in so doing, opens up the possibility of encountering people from Samaria.
This is a call to go out of our way and make ourselves available to encounter those whom the church might not normally go to. At least in the modern Asian church context, which is where most of my personal experiences are drawn from, I can see potential ‘Samaria’s’ in night clubs, bars, friendship circles that involve more ‘alternative’ types and ‘blue collar’ types, single mothers, the homeless, and others who might not normally befriend, and co-workers in some cases depending on the context of your job. Essentially, anyone outside our comfortable church circles. If we never step outside of the church, we will never meet people outside of the church.
Had Jesus not asked the Samaritan woman for water, they would likely not have continued on to have an actual conversation. I should point out that Samaria was a region that most religious Jews of that time would probably have avoided and naturally, most Rabbis would probably not normally have talked to people in this region. Yet there he was not only talking to the Samaritan woman but actually asking her for something and in so doing, humbling himself in a sense. Given her identity as a Samaritan woman and his as a Jewish man, she would not have been the one initiating any type of conversation. It seems she might barely dare to glance his way. Yet Jesus chose to not only talk to her but to ask her for something and allow the tables to be turned so that he was the one who needed something from her.
This is a call out to humble ourselves when we talk to those who don’t know Christ yet. We often approach anyone and everyone outside the church with an attitude of superiority, thinking that we are doing them a favour and that we know so much that they can’t possibly understand. The reality is we are all sinners. That is why we all need Jesus. And the even greater reality is we are all saved by God’s grace and not by our own doing so there really shouldn’t be a whole lot of pride and self righteousness standing between us and the next person. If anything, we should simply be grateful that we know Jesus and humbled in that knowledge. If we don’t have conversations in humility, they will never lead to anything more.
Had Jesus not moved the conversation into the spiritual realm, the Samaritan woman would not have been changed. After Jesus asks the woman for water, she says to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” What Jesus says next changes the course of this conversation: “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.” Jesus intentionally draws the parallel between drinking actual water and the metaphor of tasting living water. He takes the normal course of a conversation into the spiritual realm. In so doing, He changes her knowledge of Him forever.
Essentially, if we never take the conversation to the next level, it will never go to the next level. This, I find, is the toughest call. The first two, making ourselves available and chaing our attitudes, are seeminly easy and straightforward since they involve our own hearts and minds. In a sense, there is no tangible measure of one’s intentionality and availability in the context of your own mind and your own heart. However, this third call seems to be one of action. It is one of seizing the opportunity and putting ourselves out there. It is about acting on the opportunity that being intentional and showing humility in attitude can bring. So we hang out with old friends and develop new friends in unchurched circles. We open our lives up to them and talk about our daily woes at work, at home and on the news. But then what? I’ve come to realize that this is often where it stops. This is the point at which many of us stay for a long while as we don’t want to break the comfort. We don’t want to be the Christian, the evangelical, the Jesus freak if you will, the killjoy in peoples’ minds. We fear being misunderstood and know that our entire faith is sadly largely misunderstood. The voice somewhere in the back of our minds tells us we are the ones who need to break the misconceptions one by one. The voice never quite gets too loud before it is snuffed out by the laughter that comes from mimicking characters from the latest Judd Apatow movie…..
In reality though, isn’t this the point everything has been building up to? Don’t we make ourselves available and go to places commonly known as untread church waters in order to be open to these forms of dialogues? Don’t we humble ourselves in attitude and open up ourselves to our friends who don’t know Jesus in order to bridge that gap between us and those outside of church in order to be able to dialogue about the one man that signifies the only essential difference between us – Jesus? The call is a simple one but it is a difficult one and one that I wrestle with everyday and will continue to as long as I am human and live with pride and desire for acceptance and approval as we all do. Still, the simple fact remains: If we never take the conversation to the next level, it will never go to the next level.
“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirt.”
Faith Things 