Vince Vitale [00:00:41] Hi friends, welcome back to Ask Away. So grateful to have you with us. And if you have a burning question about life and faith or one you want to ask for a friend, stick around at the end of the episode to hear how you can submit your question for a future show. This week on Ask Away, we'll be listening to a talk that Joe gave two weeks ago at a church in Silicon Valley as part of their Why Jesus Evangelistic series. You'll hear Jo reflect on what it means for us personally that Jesus would go so far out of his way to personally interact with a woman who everyone else in his circles would have written off as the wrong religion, the wrong ethnicity, the wrong gender, the long story in just about every respect. But before Jo gets into it, I wanted to just draw attention to a couple of questions that are in the background for us when we think about this remarkable interaction that Jesus has with a Samaritan woman in John four. Because it is so relevant for us specifically in today's cultural and political climate. 

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[00:01:50] Thanksgiving is right around the corner. And I'm sure most of us have experienced the awkwardness of suddenly and unexpectedly winding up in that conversation with someone who begins to strongly express their political and perhaps religious views in ways that we deeply disagree with. It happens with family at Thanksgiving, it happens with colleagues, friends, strangers, even unknown people online, and it's extremely stressful as we wrestle with how much to say, how real to be, whether to come in hard or respond gently all the while looking for any excuse to exit the conversation and run from the party. As you listen to Jo, keep in mind that this is the experience that Jesus is having in John. Perhaps he wasn't surprised by it, but the Samaritan woman certainly was and in this conversation, his longest recorded conversation, Jesus is modeling how to disagree with someone who in almost every respect is on the other side of the aisle. And so as you listen, we hope you'll be encouraged by how radically differently Jesus approaches his conversation partner compared to what we so often see in our polarized world. We also hope it begins to give you a vision for the kind of difference it would make if all of us treated these situations less like the world tells us to and more like Jesus shows us to. Thanks for joining us. Here's Jo. 

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Jo Vitale [00:03:23] It's really hard to feel safe enough to let your guard down with somebody when you're not sure of how they feel about you or what their intentions are towards you. So how then am I supposed to figure out what to make of Jesus before I first know what Jesus makes of me? And that's the question that I really want us to engage with this morning. One of the wonderful things about having such accurate and well-preserved eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life, is that actually, even though it's nearly 2000 years later, this is a question this morning that we can not only ask about Jesus, we can actually gain a deep understanding of not only how he saw people then, but even how he would see us today. We're in John chapter four this morning, and this particular account from Jesus' life, it begins with some surprising words. As the author of John, he tells us in John chapter four, verse three, if you're wondering where we are, Jesus left Judea and returned to Galilee. And Jesus needed to go through Samaria on the way. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the world's most gifted map reader. It's not my fault. Google Maps just hates me. But even I can tell you that Jesus' route planning in this story is highly unusual. You see, the land of Palestine that Jesus lived in, it was actually really small. To give you a sense of scale, it could fit into the state of California about 20 times over. And so this small region of the world that Jesus lived in it was divided into three sections. So you have Galilee, where Jesus lived up in the north. And then you have Judea with the capital city of Jerusalem in the south. And then lying between these two Jewish populated areas was a region called Samaria. 

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[00:05:14] But the thing was even though technically this is a shortcut to get there, anybody who was listening to this story in the first century would immediately be caught out by this first sentence. Jesus needed to go through Samaria because to them it would have made absolutely no sense. What do you mean Jesus needed to go to Samaria? What good Jewish boy ever needed to go through the Samaria? Because Samaria is where the Samaritans live. And the history of this family feud between the Jews and the Samaritans, it's long, it's bloody, it's bitter, as is so often the case between two people groups who originally started out as one, and then they spent generations locked in these squabbles over land and race and religion. And sadly, those tensions between them they span centuries and centuries, so much so that 400 years before Jesus was born, Jewish scribes were already proclaiming, may I never set eyes on a Samaritan, may I be never thrown into the company of one. And then even 200 years after Jesus lived, rabbis are still condemning marriage between Jews and Samaritans by claiming that from their birth all Samaritan women are ritually unclean. In fact, just 20 years after the death of the Roman historian Josephus, he notes that actually violence erupted in this region in very similar circumstances to the ones that we're reading about in this passage of Scripture today, because a group of Samaritans actually killed a Galilean who was traveling through Samaria to get to a religious festival in Jerusalem. 

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[00:06:51] And in response to this act of violence, the Jews in Jerusalem marched into Samaria. They slayed loads of Samaritans and they set their villages on fire. This is the kind of dynamics that we're talking about at this time. And we can even see some of these racial tensions playing out in the gospel of Luke, chapter nine, when Jesus's own disciples take offense because the Samaritans refused to show Jesus hospitality by letting them come and stay in their village when they're traveling through one time. And so James and John, two of Jesus' disciples, they get so worked up that they want to call fire down from heaven to destroy the village. Like that is how mad these guys are. What a volatile reaction, but it shows how quickly this spark could just burn into hatred. It's so intense. Jesus has to shut them down real quick in that scenario. And yet despite all of these simmering cultural tensions, rather than doing what every Jew should do, take the long way around to avoid the very real danger to his life, we're told that not only does Jesus make this unexpected detour through Samaria, but that he needed to. He needed to. Why? Because God had arranged a divine appointment for Jesus to keep it. 

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[00:08:10] And so Jesus and his disciples, they traveled into the foothills of Samaria to a city called Sicar. And then once they get there, Jesus sends off his disciples to scout for provisions, apparently totally unbothered by the fact that this leaves him completely alone and vulnerable in a hostile territory. And Jacob's well was there. And Jesus, tired as he was in the journey, sat down by the well. And it was about noon. Now, this next sentence is where things get really interesting. A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Any first century Jew hearing those words would have immediately tensed up at the huge potential for scandal that this situation poses. Not only because she's one of these impure Samaritans, but even worse, she's a woman. She's a woman. And from the perspective of any Jewish male, that is a serious problem because in the culture of their day, women were stereotyped as both weak-willed and as sexual predators. They even had this prayer they prayed at the time. Jewish men would thank God that he didn't make them a Gentile, a slave, or a woman. Thank God that I'm not female. And so these men at the time, they even believe that actually to find yourself alone with an attractive woman was to be in grave danger. As one Jewish law code even goes so far as to warn, it is more dangerous to walk behind a woman than it is to walk behind a lion. Amazing. 

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[00:09:39] If these social rules were strict for men in jail, they were actually even tighter for religious leaders to the extent that a rabbi would never be seen talking to a woman in public, not even his own wife. And if being a Samaritan and being a woman weren't bad enough, signs also point to the fact that this woman is a shamed woman. She's shunned not only by the Jews, but even by her own community. It's certainly unusual that while most women collected water early in the morning to avoid the extreme heat of the day, she's visiting the well by herself at noon. It's also strange that she would choose to visit a well over half a mile away from the town. That is a long way to carry water when there were other wells much closer to the city center. And both of these actions, they give us reason to infer that this woman may well be a social outcast even within her own community. And so what does Jesus do when he finds himself in this really awkward social situation? Well, he asks her for a drink of water. And maybe that seems kind of disrespectful to you. Maybe you're thinking, hang on, Jesus, you've only just met this woman and you're already bossing her around. If we think that, we've actually completely missed the point. The point is that he speaks to her. And simply through this act of speaking, Jesus shows that he has no problem smashing through centuries of culturally reinforced racism, sexism and social stigmatization to engage with women on her own terms and not according to all of the labels that other people have put on her. 

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[00:11:24] The passage later on tells us that even Jesus' own disciples were surprised to find him talking to a woman. They're so surprised. And yet here's Jesus having the longest recorded conversation in the Gospels with her. Jesus' behavior also flies in the face of Jewish custom which taught let no Israelite eat one mouthful of anything that is a Samaritan. So if he eats but a little mouthful, it's as if he ate swine's flesh. That's how unclean it is to share food, share anything with a Samaritan. But then here's Jesus specifically asking this woman for water to drink from her own water jar. And in that moment, he's shattering these assumptions that he sees her as unclean from the very minute that he opens his mouth. First line, he smashed it all. One moment in his presence and this woman experiences Jesus as someone who sees her first and foremost as a human being and one who is welcome in his presence. And in this day and age that we're in, where it just feels often like ability is increasingly being lost in our public discourse and our social interactions, we could learn so much from Jesus here. Someone who sees the person before the politics, someone who treats an individual as distinct from their social identity. And it also begs the challenging question, what about us? Like, what impression are we leaving people with? What do the people who live on the other side of our man-made cultural or social boundaries walk away thinking after they have encountered us? 

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[00:13:06] For the woman at the well, Jesus' words come as a complete shock. The Samaritan woman said to him, "You're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans." And 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." Notice how gentle Jesus is in his approach to conversation with this woman. He doesn't give it away at once. He doesn't whack her over the head with his first century edition of the King James Bible because he intuitively knows that she's not yet ready. She's not ready. First, Jesus has to move this conversation from this kind of mundane talk about a glass of water to the spiritually significant, and he does it in this beautifully natural way. Not by telling her what to believe, but instead by piquing her curiosity. Curiosity, first of all, about God, if you knew the gift of God. And then curiosity about himself, if you knew who it is who says to you. And lastly, curiosity about what he has to offer her. He would have given you living water. It's kind of like Jesus is going fishing. He's throwing in the bait and then he's waiting to see if she will bite. "Sir, the woman said, 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 also did 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 become in them a spring of water, welling up to eternal life." And 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." 

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[00:15:00] One of the things I find really fascinating about this exchange between the two of them is that there's a lot of subtexts here. On the one hand, we have Jesus making this clear contrast between the literal water of the well and the kind of water that can quench a thirst that goes far deeper than our physical needs. And yet, despite this obvious spiritual undertone to what he's saying, twice in the conversation we see the woman actually refusing to take the bait here. Instead, she's kind of deflecting Jesus' offer with some deliberately obtuse humor by pretending that he's still talking about literal rather than spiritual water. Oh yeah, it'd be so great if I didn't have to walk to the well anymore. Let me see this water that you have. It's kind a sarcasm to it. Her skepticism is completely natural, isn't it? Because let's be honest, most normal people don't go around making promises like the one that Jesus is making to her here. I'm sure we've all had phone calls or random pop-up messages that say, hey, congratulations, you've won an all-expenses paid vacation to Hawaii. To collect, just submit your name and bank details here. Perhaps she's a woman who's been given empty promises by men before. And she's learned the hard way not to fall for them again. You may be like some of us here today, the offer that Jesus is making, it actually just seems too good to be true. Heaven's just a fairy tale for those who are afraid of the dark. Unconditional love, you say, funny that's what my husband promised me before he ran off with his colleague. Love is a joke. Everlasting life? Seriously, I'm having a hard enough time getting through this one life I have. Why on earth would I want to live forever? 

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[00:16:50] Satisfaction? Are you kidding me? Don't you know how thirsty I am? There's so much emptiness in me. You could drain the ocean dry and it still wouldn't fill me up. Seeing how she is deflecting, Jesus decides to let her know that he's serious. And so he gently presses her further by saying, "Go, call your husband and come back." "I have no husband," she replied. And Jesus said to her, "You're right when you say that you have no husband. The fact is you have had five husbands. And the man you now have is not your husband. What you've said is quite true." One of the hardest things about getting to know anybody is that if you want to be fully loved, then you have to let yourself be fully known. But letting our guard down and showing all of our flaws and vulnerabilities, that can be terrifying, can't it? What if you show somebody who you really are and they don't like what they see? Back when I was getting to my husband Vince, that was a fear that I really struggled with. And so I had this genius idea of just getting it all over with at once, just like rip the band aid off. And so I actually, one day when we were dating, I gave him a list of 40 things that nobody else knew about me. And then we sat down and I talked him through the list. Poor man. He's since called the experience beautiful, but traumatizing. I think he still has nightmares about it. It actually dawned on me a while ago Vince never gave me his list of 40 things that nobody else knew about him. And when I asked him about it, he said, "Well, Jo, I actually wanted you to marry me.". 

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[00:18:33] Some of the things on my list, they were pretty small and silly, but others of them were serious. And I've never been more nervous in my life than when I had to sit down and give him that list because once I did, there was no going back. Like then he would really know me. Jesus' words here to the Samaritan women, they must have felt even more terrifying than that because there she is thinking her walls are up, her guard's up, she's safe. And then suddenly he shockingly tears them all down by just these words coming out of his mouth and she suddenly discovers that this stranger before her who she's just met at a random well outside of town knows her whole life story. People often make a lot of assumptions about this woman based on the fact that she's been married five times, assumptions about her faithlessness, or what kind of wife she must have been to have driven all of those men away. Before we throw stones, let's remember that while a man at that time was allowed to divorce his wife over something as trivial as her cooking, I'd be in trouble. A woman couldn't even initiate divorce without a man to represent her case. And if she'd been unfaithful, the consequences for her would have been deadly. Stoning kind of deadly. Consequently, although it's possible that she is divorced, it's actually far more likely in a time when people often died young that she's a widow several times over. This isn't to say that she doesn't have her own baggage that needs dealing with. Jesus himself points out she's now living with a man who isn't her husband. But it does make you wonder, what desperation got her there? 

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[00:20:07] It's important to remember that beneath the headlines of this story, she's the woman who's carrying a lot of pain. Aren't we all? Along with the social shame of whatever rumors people have been spreading about her. And so can you imagine the fear she's feeling, wondering if he knows this much about me, what else might he know? Is there anything left for me to hide? Does he see everything? And there'll be some of us here who've been having that same ongoing struggle with God, kind of torn between wanting to be seen by him, desperate not to be overlooked, and yet at the same time, terrified of what he might make of what he sees. And understandably, feeling raw, the woman said to him, "Sir, I can see that you're a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place that we must worship is in Jerusalem." Now, I don't know what you make of her words here. At first glance, it might seem like, oh, here she goes. She's deflecting again, right? She's trying to divert the conversation away from this extremely personal turn that it's taken and back onto some kind of random, safe theological topic of debate. As if she's saying, nothing to see here. Look. Look at that lovely mountain over there. Let's talk about that. Actually, I don't think that's what's going on here. Why not? Because by now it's become painfully obvious there's no talking her way out of this conversation, right? Not with a man who sees through her so completely that he's just laid bare every vulnerable reality of her life. And instead, rather than trying to distract Jesus away from her problems, I actually think she's now scrambling to fix them. Perhaps so she can prove to him and to herself that, you know what? 

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[00:21:49] Despite her history, despite all the disasters, she's still worth something, that her life can amount to more than the sum of her failures, or all of the ways that other people have failed her. You see, back in first century Palestine, the way that you proved yourself, or the way you made your problems go away was by going straight to the altar to offer a costly animal sacrifice to God so that he wouldn't be angry anymore and so that he might find you worthy again. But in ancient times, they also believed you couldn't just expect to come to God anywhere. Instead, if you wanted to make a sacrifice, you had to go up the mountain. You had to ascend the hill of the Lord. And everybody knew that just picking any old mountain wouldn't do. It has to be the place that God Himself has anointed, the place he has chosen. Otherwise, how do you even know if he'll find your sacrifice pleasing and show up? And so all of a sudden this long running, drawn out religious debate between the Samaritans and the Jews about which mountain to worship God on that's been running for centuries, it suddenly takes on this whole new urgency for her because what if she picks the wrong mountain and her sacrifice isn't counted? What if she can't make it right? Far from deflecting, I think this is a woman who's now intensely engaged. Jesus has all of her attention and her question about mountains it's really just another way of asking him, "where can I go to find God? If you're a prophet, if you see all of me so clearly, then I beg of you, tell me, how do I do it right? How do I meet with God?". 

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[00:23:25] Maybe that's a question that some of you have been asking recently as well. God, how do I make this right? If it's really true that God exists, if this whole Christianity thing is actually real, then where do I find Him? Jesus' response to her question is astonishing. "Women, Jesus replied, believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, yet a time is coming and has come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." Today, people often compare the search for God kind of like a journey up a mountain. In fact, many people would say it doesn't even really matter which religious path you take because we're all headed in the same direction, right? You just live your own truth, write your own story. It'll all shake out in the end. There's one ancient Japanese proverb that says, there are many paths up the mountain, but the view from the top is the same. Doesn't matter how you get there, we're headed the same way. What baffles me about that perspective is people talk about this mountain as if it's going to be an easy climb. As if we're just like a small foothill. But what if it was a steep, difficult mountain? What if it is like Mount Everest? Any climber would tell you; you can't just pick any old route up Mount Everest and start walking. That is a sure way to get yourself killed quick. But how much more difficult should we expect it to be then to climb our way to God? A God who is infinitely greater than Mount Everest. 

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[00:25:11] No matter how hard we try, I actually think the task is beyond us. The hard reality for this woman, and indeed for all of us, is that by herself, there is no fixing this. And yet Jesus stuns this woman by telling her that actually a time is only coming, but has now come when the question about which mountain to sacrifice on, the question of how to find God, it's not actually really going to matter anymore because it's no longer relevant. Why? Because people don't need to try and scramble their way up the mountain to find God. Instead, God is coming down the mountain to find us. And in fact, the God who created the universe and who breathed life into all of it has actually already come down the Mountain. He's come all the way down from heaven to earth to be with us and he himself is sitting beside some random well in the foothills of the mountains right in front of her face to face answering her questions. Like how wild is that? Here she is asking, how can I find God when she's already in the presence of the living God? She just doesn't I know it, yet. And how many of us might that be true of this morning? Perhaps you've been searching for a while, looking for answers, and all the while the God of the universe right is here. You're in his presence this morning. You just might not know it yet. Not only has God himself come down the mountain to us through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, but actually just as importantly, it's God himself who will also go up that mountain for us. 

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[00:26:57] And when Jesus, God, comes down the mountain to draw near to us, and in Jesus God also goes up the mountain sacrifice for us, which means never again is she going to need to go and offer sacrifices because the ultimate sacrifice, the Son of God, is already preparing, he's already readying himself. He's setting his face towards Jerusalem to go up that mountain for her all the way to the cross to become the only sacrifice that she could ever need. When that moment finally comes, not only are we told that the curtain in the temple in Jerusalem is torn in two, this symbol that actually now everybody has access to God everywhere. But the Spirit of God himself will be poured out from Jesus, running down the mountains to come and dwell among his people in the very places where we live, in the foothills, in the valley, in the bay, right into the sanctuaries of our own hearts, saturating those places within us of true worship where God draws close to us in spirit and in truth. Those of us who've been around church for a while, it's so easy to take this life for granted that Jesus is offering to us. But how stunning these words must have been to a woman who's only ever been able to worship God from a distance, to be told that now she will be given personal, direct access to him. And yet this shock is nothing compared to Jesus' final revelation to her. The woman said, "I know that the Messiah called Christ is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us." And then Jesus declared, "I the one speaking to you, am he." 

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[00:28:37] Can you imagine the man who asked you for a drink by a dusty well on a day like any other turns out to be your long for a savior and the hope of the whole world. What a moment for her. And yet somehow despite how overwhelming this must have been, despite this being the most outrageous statement in a series of outrageous statements that Jesus has been making, she actually doesn't doubt him any longer. On account of both the claims that he's making and this inexplicable knowledge that he seems to have about her, the woman is compelled to believe that he is actually telling her the truth. And yet I wonder if even more than all of that, what ultimately persuades her heart isn't just that he knows the truth about her, it's that even when he knows it, he doesn't hold it against her or put her to shame. It's that even knowing her fully, somehow, this man who she's just met, loves her more than anybody else that she has ever known. Just when Vince was getting to the end of my long list of 40 things that no one else knew about me, he reached number 37, and number 37 was one of the ones that I was absolutely dreading telling him about. It was only four words, but these were four words that I'd hoped I'd never have to share with anybody. And number 37 said this. I am a Trekkie. Yeah, that's right. I grew up watching Star Trek, and I was a total sci-fi geek. I feel like in the Bay that's allowed, actually. That's okay around here. It wasn't where I was growing up. It was something that my friends at school used to relentlessly tease me about because this was back in the day, before the TV show The Big Bang Theory had come out and made geek chic like a thing again, and before Star Wars had come out and sci-Fi was cool once more. 

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[00:30:28] I'll be honest, I'm not sure I would ever have shared this embarrassing fact with Vince if it weren't for the fact that a new Star Trek movie was coming out and I wanted him to take me to see it because I think I figured that only thing more embarrassing than being a Trekkie would be going to see a Star Trek movie by myself. And so I plucked up the courage to tell Vince. Deep down, I was dreading his reaction. I even felt kind of ashamed. I genuinely thought he will think less of me for this. He'll finally realize I'm not as cool as I've been pretending to be. Vince, after I told him that, he didn't say much. In fact, he was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. So you can imagine my astonishment one week later when I arrived at the movie theater to watch this Star Trek movie, and I immediately saw Vince standing outside, wearing a t-shirt with Mr. Spock's face on it, which said, "Live long and prosper." And then he was holding up this massive Star Trek poster which said, "To boldly go where no man has gone before." At which point, I ran to him and I gave him the biggest hug. And I'll be honest; I actually burst into tears because I just couldn't believe that he was willing to embarrass himself that much just for me. Then Vince said to me, "Jo, I will never be ashamed of you, so you never need to be ashamed of yourself." One week before, I had revealed to Vince the truth of who I was in all of my vulnerability, but it was in that moment that Vince showed me the beautiful truth of who he was- a man who was for me. And as we stood there outside that movie theater, I suddenly realized that, astonishingly, I actually didn't feel ashamed or embarrassed anymore. It was as if I literally liberally wearing my shame and my embarrassment so publicly, Vince's actions had freed me from having to feel ashamed about it anymore. And I never have since, clearly, since I'm telling you all about it this morning. 

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[00:32:44] In wearing that t-shirt, Vince, he took the shame that I felt about this trivial thing and he completely transformed it into a symbol of his love for me. Vince would be the first person to tell you that the person who taught him to love like that was Jesus Christ. At the cross, this is exactly what Jesus Christ does for us, just on a cosmic scale. Although he himself never had cause to feel ashamed, although he had never done anything wrong, when the Son of God comes down from heaven and takes on human flesh, he literally clothes himself in all of it. All of our brokenness, all of our failures, all of our disgrace. And then by choosing to die in our place, he publicly exposes himself to the ridicule and the judgment of the world. And in that moment, he takes all of those failures, all of our mess, all of our shame, and he bears it himself and he nails it to the cross and it is no longer ours to carry anymore. And it's that very same Jesus, full of grace and truth, who the Samaritan woman encountered at that well. Jesus Christ, he says to her as he says to every single one of us here this morning, no matter what, you don't need to be ashamed of whatever you've been through because I've been though it too. Jesus who says, I will never be ashamed of you. So you never need to be ashamed of yourself. No more hiding. You're safe here with me. You're fully seen and fully loved. 

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[00:34:23] One encounter with Jesus and it changes everything. We can immediately see the transformation on her, can't we? Because the difference between somebody who's living in shame and someone who's living in love is this, that those who know they are loved are unashamed to be seen. I see this demonstrated so clearly in the life of my goddaughter, Charis, whose name actually means grace in Welsh. And when Charis was two years old, she would enter every room that she walked into by enthusiastically throwing her hands up in the air and yelling, I'm here! I'm here! Charis wasn't afraid for anybody to see her. Quite the opposite. So secure was Charis in the way that she's loved, that it never even crossed her mind that people would be anything but thrilled to know that she had showed up. And can you imagine if we all entered rooms like that, with no imposter syndrome, no question of acceptance or belonging, no feeling like we have to prove that we're worthy to be there, no wondering what will people think of me or are they going to notice me? Charis has no reason to hide because she knows she's loved in her entirety for exactly who she is. And that has freed her to be herself. And when we first meet Jesus, when she meets him, we can see how the Samaritan woman, she is in hiding. Her defenses are so high. But after this conversation, she starts to walk in the same freedom of being loved that Charis has always known. The same freedom that I truly hope we will all walk up from here with this morning. 

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[00:36:03] Instead, she becomes an impassioned evangelist. This is the first ever evangelist recorded in the Gospel of John, and she is a woman. It's like she burst into town yelling, I'm here! Come and see a man who told me all the things that I ever did. Yes, I am talking about them now. Could this be the Christ? Could he be the one? Forget about running from her past. This is a woman so liberated by her experience of Jesus that she's now totally unashamed of drawing public attention to all the things that she ever did that everybody has been talking about. Because the very things that previously were her source of shame and disgrace have been transformed by Jesus into the very symbol of God's love for her. I wonder what it was that they saw on her face when she ran into town to share about who she just met. What did she look like in that moment? Whatever the case was, it must have been one stunning transformation. She must have be radiant. Because on the basis of her witness alone, we're told many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified he told me all that I ever did. I know she started out so suspicious, but now this is a woman who knows exactly what to make of Jesus. Because just look at what he has made of her. Look at her now. 

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[00:37:38] Meanwhile, back by the well Jesus tells his disciples, "Do you not say there are still four months and then comes the harvest? Well, behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields. They're already white for harvest." I wonder if he's saying these words even as he's watching this woman returning in the distance with her whole town following behind her. Just look at the harvest. Look at the harvests in this place you didn't want to go among these people that you wanted to send fire down upon. Look at the harvest. Revival has come to the Samaritans of all people. And it began with one woman at a well encountering God when she was at the very end of herself and in the very last place that she would ever have expected to find him. Which, as it so happens, is exactly the place where God loves to meet us as well. Perhaps you came here not expecting much this morning. You know what? God came expecting you. God was expectant this morning. God was excited that you were showing up. Why Jesus? Because he is the God who goes way out of his way to be with us, so far that he literally steps down from heaven to earth, from a throne to a cross just to put himself in our path. 

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[00:39:05] A God committed to crossing every line that we draw to keep each other out. A God who spends his days showing up for the very people who one way or another, we consistently write off as the wrong race, the wrong gender, the wrong status, the wrong beliefs, the wrong story. In other words, people just like you and me. Jesus takes one look at us and he doesn't see any of those labels. All he sees is the person that he came for. He sees the one that he loves. My sons this morning when they saw me heading out the door, they asked where I was going and what I was going to be talking about this morning. And so, I told them that I was going to be taking about a woman that nobody else wanted, but Jesus did. Then my five-year-old son, JJ, he went running into his room. He put out his treasure chest (he has a treasure chest) and he went to his special box in the treasure chest and then he pulled this out and he said, "Mom, when you go and tell people about Jesus this morning, you should bring this precious treasure." It's his geode. His National Geographic Geode. On the one side just looks like a rock, but JJ has discovered that on the inside is crystal, and that is his most precious treasure. 

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[00:40:24] And he said, "When you tell them about Jesus, you should tell them that they are more precious to Jesus even than this geode." And I was like, you're right, buddy, I should. I should tell them that. I should tell them. You may have come in here wondering, a little skeptical maybe, what's in it for you, Jesus? Like, what is in it for you? What is this really all about? Jesus' answer to that question is very straightforward. You. I'm in it for you. For me, it's not about faceless followers, it's about relationship. Not looking for somebody to influence, I'm looking for someone to love. I'm not here to sell you fake life hacks. I'm here to set you free. Free from spending your days rushing from one well to another, just endlessly trying to fill up that jar only to find that nothing and nobody ever fills it up. Nothing else ever satisfies. Nothing quenches the thirst. This was never ever about what Jesus could get out of us or what we could do for him. It's only ever been about what he is offering us back at that well. And again, this morning, a life so abundant that we can finally just throw down those water jars because we don't need it anymore. You and him will find a spring, a living water that never runs dry. And that is Jesus' invitation for every single one of us this morning. Come to me for life. Just come to me. Let me make much of you. 

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