Allow me to set the stage for the story you are about to hear.

Recall that last week we heard the story of a leader of the religious establishment, Nicodemus, and his coming to Jesus at night to check him out. Jesus ends up checking Nicodemus out, for “Jesus himself knew what was in everyone.”

So in Chapter 3 of John’s testimony to God’s good news focuses on Jesus’ challenge of a leader of the religious establishment, who can’t understand why Jesus says he needs to be reborn in order to enjoy that life where everyone lives as God intends.

Now in Chapter 4, Jesus has another encounter and conversation. It’s the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the four gospels. If you were to describe a person who would be the opposite of Nicodemus, you might describe someone like this.

She’s a woman. A nameless Samaritan woman. A nameless Samaritan woman who goes to the village well at high noon to fill her jar with water. The other women in the village would have gone in the morning, when it was cooler.

She was a woman. In their morning prayers, men could be heard saying, “Thank God I am not a woman.” Holy men would not speak with women in public, not even their wives. Some rabbis taught that it was better to bury the torah than entrust it to a woman. There was a group called the “bruised and bleeding Pharisees,” who, when they saw a woman coming toward them on the street would close their eyes and often walk into walls and other obstacles, blooding their noses and skinning their knees.

She was a woman. A Samaritan woman. The origin of the Samaritans is disputed. We become aware of them in biblical history during the conquests of Israel by the Assyrians and Babylonians. Foreigners came and settled in Israel. Intermarriage took place. The result was a mixed-race, viewed as impure, corrupted, unclean – the Samaritans. When the Second Temple was being rebuilt, the Samaritans offered to help. Because they were viewed as unclean, their offer was refused. Animosity resulted. It continued through the time of Jesus.

In Luke 9, Jesus has left Galilee in the north to go south to Jerusalem to observe the Passover. He sends messengers ahead into Samaria to make arrangements for food and lodging. The Samaritans typically refused hospitality to Jews, who were going to Jerusalem for religious holy days. They believed the right place to worship was where they worshiped, on Mt. Gerizim, not Jerusalem. They didn’t want to aid and abet wrong worship. When the messengers reported back, the Sons of Thunder, James and John, asked Jesus if they could call fire down from heaven to consume the inhospitable Samaritans.

She was a woman. She was a Samaritan woman. And she came at high noon to the community well to fill her jar with water. Why didn’t she go when all the other women in the village went – when it was cooler?

Hear the verse that precedes the story you are about to hear (verse 4): “But he had to go through Samaria.” He had to go through Samaria. Why?

(The text is read dramatically.)

I believe Jesus models for us how to do evangelism. He demonstrates for us what the good news of God’s Redeeming Love entails.

1. First, Jesus crosses boundaries that separate, exclude, and demean. He ventures into Samaria, aware that he is not welcome there. His religion holds that he will be contaminated by the unclean, mixed-race people there.

Jesus sees beyond labels, ancient hostilities, even beyond what his religion said was truth. “He had to go through Samaria.”

2. Second, he practices what he preaches. Recall the good news we heard last week: “God so loved the world….Indeed, God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16).

It is a world that includes women, Samaritan women, Samaritan women who feel unworthy and unwanted.

Jesus asks her for a drink. He demonstrates how he sees her by letting her know he needs what she can give. What better way to convey esteem for a person than to receive what they have to offer? “Give me a drink.”

3. Third, Jesus offers her himself. He hears her confession and even protest, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” She expresses what those who heard this story were thinking.

Jesus responds by offering himself, by offering what he has to give – living water. Like Nicodemus, she takes Jesus literally. “But you have no water and the well is deep.” Whatever it is Jesus is talking about, the woman wants it.

4. Fourth, Jesus is going to give her more than she can imagine, because he’s willing to wade into the deep water with her. He will face her truth with her.

Jesus, who knew what is in everyone, knew that the living water of God’s love has to be experienced in order to be real, to be powerful, to be life-redeeming, life-changing. So he embraces who she is in her entirety: the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good news of God is not a concept, an idea, a proposition, a doctrine. It’s an experience of Holy Communion. Of being broken and poured out for the sake of God’s beloved children.

“Go, call your husband and come back.” “I have no husband.” And how she must have wished this would be the end of it. That Jesus would drop it – this awkward, embarrassing, shameful, condemning truth of who she is.

Jesus knew what is in everyone. “You’ve had five husbands and the man you’re now living with is not your husband.” We’ve tended to jump to the conclusion that is an immoral woman. It could be her husbands have died. It could be the Leverite law has forced the closest relatives of her husbands to assume responsibility for the widow. It could be she has been treated as unwanted property by one resentful man after another. Now she’s with a man who doesn’t want to marry her. It could be that her life has been like of an orphan, passed from one unhappy home to another. No man wants her. And everyone knows it, including the other women in the village. The women who look down their noses at her. No wonder she goes to the well in the heat of the day to avoid them.

5. Fifth, Jesus connects her experience of his love for her with God’s love for the world.

What do you do when someone has ventured into truth you find unbearable to acknowledge? You change the subject. “You Jews worship in Jerusalem. We worship on Mt. Gerizim. Who’s right?”

Jesus responds, “The day is coming when we won’t worship separately, because location, ethnicity, race, ritual, and style won’t matter. Traditional and contemporary won’t matter. Organ or guitar won’t matter. Immersion or sprinkling won’t matter. One cup or many won’t matter. For the worship God desires is in spirit and truth.

In spirit, because you can’t worship the God of Life apart from the essence of your own life. In truth, because pretense and hypocrisy are contrary to God. In truth, which means we don’t substitute worship of ourselves for worship of God.

The woman replies, “When the Messiah comes, he’ll straighten all this out.” Jesus responds, “I am,” echoing the name the voice from the burning bush gave to Moses.

6. Sixth, evangelism breeds itself.

This Samaritan woman, who had avoided people, is now emboldened. She goes to the village proclaiming, “Come and see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done.” Of course, it was an exaggeration. “He can’t be the Messiah, can he?”

No arrogance here. No dogmatism here. No my way or the highway here. “Come and see for yourself. He can’t be the Messiah, can he?” The best evangelism always respects the freedom of persons to answer that question for themselves.

They went. They believed. They invited Jesus to stay two more days. And the kingdom of God was realized. Barriers came down. Enemies became friends. Holy Communion was enjoyed. They worshiped God together in spirit and truth. God was glorified.