Would you say you’re a good conversationalist? If you were plunked down in a room full of strangers, how quickly could you start up a conversation with someone? Would it all be chitchat, or are you better at meaningful conversations? Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science, studies communication and human interaction. In his studies on conversation, he and his colleagues compiled a list of “shallow” vs. “intimate” conversation starters. Some of the shallow conversation starters are:
- What do you think about the weather today?
- What is the best TV show you’ve seen in the last month?
- Do you have anything planned for later today?
Some of the more intimate or meaningful conversation starters are:
- What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
- For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
- What is one of your most meaningful memories? Why is it meaningful for you?
Epley’s work has shown him that even short, meaningful conversations with strangers improve our sense of well-being and make us feel more connected with others. He and his research partners studied 1,800 people as they went through 12 conversational experiments and recorded their reactions afterwards. He concluded that there are two primary reasons why we avoid starting a conversation with strangers. As he says, “People greatly overestimate how awkward it will be to hold a ‘deep’ conversation with someone they don’t know well, and routinely underestimate how much other people care about us and what’s on our minds.” (1)
Isn’t that interesting? We overestimate the “awkwardness factor” of starting up a conversation with strangers, and we underestimate how much other people care about us and what’s on our minds. Those conclusions give me a lot of encouragement about the goodness of people. And I think this research is especially appropriate when we read about the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4.
Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Galilee, and they chose to go through the land of Samaria, the shortest route to get there. But not the most common route. Many devout Jews took the longer route around Samaria to avoid coming into contact with the Samaritan people. The antagonism between the Jews and Samaritans had been ongoing for generations. If we look back at Second Kings 17, it records the Assyrian invasion of Israel. The Assyrians conquered Israel and drove out almost 28,000 Israeli citizens. The few who were left behind in Israel intermarried with the pagan Assyrians and added some of their religious practices and superstitions to their practice of Judaism. These were the Samaritans. So began a schism between the religious practices of the exiled Israelites and the Samaritans. By Jesus’ day, the two groups had no dealings with each other. (2)
The idea of traveling the long way around Samaria reminds me of an article I read about a rural village in Italy called Colobraro that is considered so unlucky that locals refer to it as “That Town.” Even saying its name is considered bad luck. It is also referred to as the “town of misfortune.” The town has had a bad reputation for a long time, but locals believe the bad luck intensified around the turn of the 20th century.
As the story goes, an expert lawyer who had never lost a case was arguing a case before the local judge. The lawyer claimed that if his statements on behalf of his client were false, then the courthouse chandelier would come crashing down. A moment later, the chandelier suddenly broke from the ceiling and crashed to the floor. Word spread through the town of Colobraro, and it became known as a bad omen.
There were also rumors that some of the women in That Town were witches. Supposedly, anthropologists who came to Colobraro to study the witches soon fell victim to bad luck, such as strange illnesses and unfortunate accidents.
Although That Town may have been avoided in the early part of the 20th century, the citizens of Colobraro soon found a way to turn their bad luck into a profit. They built a tourism campaign around the theme of bad omens and witches. Today, thousands of people come to Colobraro every year to participate in festivals that celebrate the supposedly dark history of That Town. (3)
It would take a lot more than a good tourism campaign to get devout Jews to travel through Samaria. So the fact that Jesus chose this route is not incidental. It’s not random. It’s part of Jesus’ plan to reveal his identity as Messiah, the Anointed One who would restore the nation of Israel and offer salvation to the world. And as evidence of the grace of God, Jesus went straight to “That Town” to share his identity with the unlikeliest of people: a Samaritan woman.
Today marks the third Sunday in the season of Lent, a period of 40 days set aside specifically for Christians to reflect on the events leading up to the death of Jesus. For the month of March, we are studying four people and their encounters with Jesus. Each person came to him with a different need. Each person came to him with a different question. To each person, Jesus revealed some part of his mission as the Messiah, the Savior of the world. And each person walked away with a second chance at life, a chance to live a new life because they had met God face-to-face. I pray that in this season leading up to Easter every single person here will also get a second chance at a new life.
We read in our Bible passage that Jesus was tired and was sitting by Jacob’s well when the Samaritan woman approached. He bypassed the chitchat pretty quickly when he asked her for a drink of water. Devout rabbis in Jesus’ day did not even speak to their own wives in public. So she was quick to question him. In her mind, Jesus was crossing two boundaries here: speaking to a Samaritan and a woman.
Jesus responded, “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.” That’s the central issue of this Lenten season: do you know the gift of God and who Jesus is? In our Bible passage last week, we see that Nicodemus, a leader of the Pharisees, didn’t know the answer to these two questions. Jesus offered him new life, and he walked away without fully understanding or accepting that gift. At first, the Samaritan woman also misunderstood, thinking Jesus was offering her literal water to drink. But when she finally realized who Jesus was and the gift he was offering her, she received new life. And she made sure to share this new life with everyone in her city.
Of these two questions Jesus poses, let’s answer the second question first: Who is Jesus? To the Samaritan woman, he was a prophet. She believed he was sent to reveal some truth from God. But she tried to avoid a deeper conversation with him by saying, “I know that the Messiah is coming (who is called Christ). When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” (vs. 25)
And this next moment takes my breath away. Jesus says to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” “I am he.” In Exodus 3:14, when Moses asks God’s name, God replies, “I AM WHO I AM . . . Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” Throughout much of his ministry, Jesus reserved the knowledge of his identity for his closest followers alone. In fact, he sometimes prevented them from revealing his identity and his deity to others. Even though Nicodemus was a prominent leader of the Pharisees, Jesus didn’t reveal his identity to him. But in this most unlikely place and to this most unlikely person, Jesus chooses to reveal himself as the Eternal God. He is the Messiah. He is the fulfillment of prophecy. He is the Truth. What the Samaritan people have been waiting for, what all of humanity has been waiting for, is now here.
In March 1987, a ferry crossing the English Channel from Belgium to England capsized and quickly took on water, and parts of the ship began to collapse. At one point, a walkway collapsed, leaving an almost six-foot gap that trapped passengers on the sinking ferry. A 6-foot, 4-inch passenger named Andrew Parker did the only thing he knew to do to help: he stretched his body across the gap and commanded the passengers to cross over his back to safety. He made himself into a human bridge between the sinking ship and the rescuers. (4)
In this moment, Jesus is telling the Samaritan woman that he is the Messiah, the bridge between humanity and God. So it’s absolutely essential to understand what he is offering her. And that brings us to our next question: What is the gift of God he has come to bring? It is salvation and eternal life for any and all who believe in Jesus as Lord. And that salvation and eternal life include the promise of God’s Spirit living in us, restoring and encouraging us, and shaping us into the image of Jesus Christ until the day we see God face-to-face. That is the spring of living water that gushes up to eternal life (vs. 14). Many of us spend our lives trying to intellectualize our faith. We study our Bible and participate in worship and small groups. We collect as much knowledge about God as possible. But we never move beyond that intellectual realm to let the Spirit of God transform our lives.
Fortunately, that’s not the case with the Samaritan woman. She was so moved by Jesus’ words that she left her water jar at the well and went back to the city to tell others of her meeting with Jesus.
And that bring us to our final question from this Bible story: “Who needs to hear the message of Jesus from you?” Because of the Samaritan woman’s excited testimony, others left the city and went out to the well to meet Jesus. He stayed two days in Samaria, and his teaching caused many more Samaritans to become his followers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” (vs. 42) They moved from waiting for truth, to discovering the truth and finding new life through Jesus Christ.
There is a man named Joe Avila who demonstrates what it’s like to find new life in Jesus and to share that new life with as many people as possible. In 1992, while driving drunk, Joe Avila caused an accident that killed a young woman named Amy Wall. In the days following his arrest and incarceration, Joe says he was angry, sad and looking for a way to kill himself. While awaiting trial on second-degree murder charges, Joe enrolled in a sobriety program run by the Salvation Army. Through their influence, he became a follower of Jesus and decided to take full responsibility for his mistakes. He plead guilty to all charges at his trial. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison. While serving his time, Joe volunteered in the prison hospice program and with Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree program, and he shared his faith with his fellow inmates in the prison chapel programs.
He was released in January, 1999. Joe had prayed regularly over the years for the opportunity to be reconciled with the Wall family. He wanted to apologize for his crime and show them that he was dedicating the rest of his life to helping others. He couldn’t have imagined how God would make a way for that to happen. As each member of the Wall family asked for a meeting with Joe, he was able to apologize and seek forgiveness from them. His meeting with Amy’s father, Rick, was especially meaningful. Rick Wall shared that he had been following Joe’s ministries in prison and had already forgiven him for the death of his daughter. As Joe said, “Rick Wall, Amy's father, forgave me before I even asked him to forgive me.”
Joe became area director of Prison Fellowship in Fresno County. He runs numerous programs and ministries inside the local prisons and coordinates the Angel Tree program for the families of inmates. His work touches thousands of lives in his community. He is determined to help as many inmates as possible to find the new life that he received through Jesus Christ. (5)
We will never have the answers to all our questions about God, not in this lifetime. But this Lenten season I hope you seriously consider these two questions: who is Jesus, and what is the gift of God he came to bring? And if you conclude, as so many people around the world for the past 2,000 years have concluded, that he is God in the flesh and that he came to bring you salvation and eternal life, then I hope you will let those two answers guide you into giving your life to him. And if you have already believed in Jesus as the Savior of the world, there’s only one question left: who needs to hear the message of Jesus from you? I hope that we have the same conviction and excitement of the Samaritan woman to bring the truth of Jesus to others and let them find new life in him.
1. “The secret to having more meaningful conversations” by Lila MacLellan Quartz at Work December 26, 2021. https://qz.com/work/2106144/how-to-have-better-conversations-with-people-you-barely-know/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=quartz-at-work&utm_content=b922ddb7-6da4-11ec-8ac9-8628a8bc08f7.
2. Holman Bible Dictionary https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hbd/s/samaria-samaritans.html.
3. Atlas Obscura "Colobraro" by Step Yoshi. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/colobraro.
4. United Press International. Cited by Jon Johnston, WALLS OR BRIDGES, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988). Some information from “The Capsize of the Herald of Free Enterprise: Humanity Amid the Seas” by Dr. Cheryl McFadden, sermon delivered a Christ Church Greenwich March 7, 2021. https://christchurchgreenwich.org/sermons/humanity-amid-the-seas/.
5. “A Story of Reconciliation” by Emily Harris Greene https://www.prisonfellowship.org/2021/07/joe-amy-story-reconciliation/.