The first Evangelist

If you think that Jesus was an uncontroversial character, if the only image of Jesus is the meek and mild Jesus, then John chapter 4 turns this image on its head.

The early part of this passage is controversial in itself, Jesus meeting a woman, on his own, in public, a woman who has such a bad reputation that she had to go get water during the hottest part of the day, a woman who had admitted she had slept around a bit. Yet Jesus meets her, spends time with her and ultimately allows her to know exactly who he is (John 4:25-26)

But it does not end there Jesus sends her off, and bearing in mind how little she knows, she goes to tell the people of her village who Jesus was, and they come, meet with him and they too seem to enter into a relationship with him. Meanwhile, those that have followed Jesus for awhile Jesus seems to rebuke, as they seem to preoccupied with other things, rather than getting on with the important work of harvesting.

This seems to ring all sorts of bells with me. I have spent the morning with a group of homeless guys, on several occasions they had conversations about Jesus. One of them is having some problems, but the answer according to a number of the others was for him to turn to Jesus, and to pray. In fact their simplicity is at odds with so many established church goers, who would of course suggest prayer, but they may not have been sold bold, and in some cases so rude in the way they said it.

Sometimes we build up evangelism into something it isn't, we make it into an activity, we design programmes, we rehearse what we are going to say, we make "strategic friendships" none of which actually do any good. We also make it into something that we need to be expert in, we need to know all the scriptures, we need to have every answer, we need read complicated books on apologetics, we need to win the argument. In many cases we give up and like the disciples, we allow our focus to shift into other areas.

But the woman at the well just met Jesus, and told people, she then introduced people to him, and they met him for themselves. That is all we need to do, to tell people about the Jesus we know.

So where is the controversy in the last bit, Jesus spokesperson was a woman, an adulterous woman, he revealed to her a truth about himself that would get him crucified. The people she went to were the Samaritans, Jews would rather take a detour miles out there way than go through Samaria, they came to Jesus and became his followers, Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, the Jewish Saviour, being followed by a group hated by the Jews. Wow!!

The full passage is here - John 4:25-42 why not spend sometime reading and ask the question "who am I in this story?"