Introduction: Thinking back on the events that were a part of our Christmas celebration, one that sticks in my mind came during our Christmas Eve children’s pageant. It came when the children playing the role of shepherds, after arriving in Bethlehem to see the Christ child, bounded off the stage and ran around the aisles of our sanctuary shouting, “The Savior is born, the Savior is born!” What they were acting out, of course, is what Luke records as having happened: “When the angels had left them and gone into heaven . . . [the shepherds] hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word . . .” (2:17).

 

It’s a poignant moment in my mind because these shepherds had witnessed something that was too good not to share. It’s a poignant moment in my mind because I know it’s not easy for the kids to come off the stage and come into the crowd, yet they did it and I sensed that everyone sat up a little straighter because of it. Above all, it’s a poignant moment in my mind because deep down, we know that somehow, in some way, all who follow Jesus are to be about the business of “spreading the word.” Yet, if we’re honest, we’d rather stay up on the stage; it’s too petrifying to come into the crowd.

 

The fact is that it’s hard to read the NT and not run into the word “go.” It appears 233 times and is usually linked with some sort of command to share the good news about Jesus with those who haven’t heard. And yet, instead of going, we remain stuck in place. Why is that? Why are we so hesitant to share such good news? Based on my experience, here are some of the reasons.

 

1. Fear. We are afraid that if we start talking about Jesus, we’ll either be ridiculed, or asked questions for which we don’t know the answer.

 

2. Not gifted. We read Paul’s ministry list in Ephesians 4 that Christ gave some the gift to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, and conclude that the some to be evangelists definitely does not include us!

 

3. Faith is private and personal. What we believe is our business and what someone else believes is their business, so we should all just leave each other alone.

 

4. Deeds Doers. We’ll speak with our actions, thank you very much. And it’s biblical, we reason, for doesn’t James say that faith without deeds is dead?

 

5. Confrontational. Our impression of sharing the good news goes something like this: “You’re all screwed up and you’d better clean up your act or you’re going to hell!” Put a little more civilly, it’s asking the question: “If you were going to die tonight, where would you go, and why?” (As someone said, if that’s our best approach, our pickup lines need some serious work!)

 

Do you recognize yourself anywhere? As you think about it, let’s go to a well in Samaria with Jesus. There, we meet a woman who met Jesus. What can we learn about spreading the word from this encounter that might help us get “off the stage” and into the crowd?

 

 

 

I. A conversation at the well

            A. Luke tells us that Jesus “had to go through Samaria” (v. 4).  He is on his way from south to north, from Judea to Galilee. The fastest way to get there is through Samaria, which lies in the middle. It’s like going from CT to VT. You could go around MA, but by far the shortest way is to go right through it. The problem with Samaria, the reason many devout Jews would go around, is that Samaritans and Jews did not get along. Samaritans were the descendants of Jews who had intermarried with foreigners. Therefore, they were considered half-breeds, unclean, and people to be avoided. But Jesus wasn’t about avoidance. He knew he had to go through Samaria because he knew that if he wanted to reach the Samaritan people with the love of God, they were not going to come to him. In fact, the woman even said to him, “Why should I go to church in Jerusalem? My people worship God in the mountains.”

 

            B. If that sounds eerily familiar, kind of like the many who say that they’re spiritual but not religious, it also highlights the fact that in our own day and age, for more and more people in North America, church is becoming less and less relevant. A major study, “The American Religious Identification Survey” (ARIS), bears this out. To the question, “What is your religious preference?” more and more people simply checked “none.” Overall, from 1990 to 2008, “nones” in America as a whole doubled, from 8 to 15%, increasing in numbers and proportion in every state. New England is the stronghold of “nones,” at 25%, having increased from 13 to 34% in VT, 9 to 29% in NH, 11 to 25% in ME, and 8 to 22% in MA. What this reveals, and what Jesus models, is that a “come and get it” approach to those not in church will not cut it. We must “go.”

 

C. Now, in going, what we also learn from Jesus is that we need no fancy programs. In fact, when Jesus commanded his disciples to go and make other disciples, he uses a word which has the sense, “as you go,” meaning, as you live and work and play, keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to share the love of God. It’s great if you’re called to Papua New Guinea, or India to be a missionary. But I would wager that you can find plenty of people who do not know Jesus at your school, place of work, health club, or grocery store. Jesus found one such person at a well. And while the conversation didn’t start out being “spiritual,” Jesus used his need for a simple cup of water to listen to this woman’s story, and bring his own life into contact with hers. What he does, in the end, is meet her at her deepest, relational need. What she discovers is that there is a different, more sustaining kind of water than that found in a well, living water, which offers sustenance to her the kind of which she’s never before experienced. So, what does she do?

 

II. The response of the woman   

            A. For starters, she runs to the people in the town. What she has experienced in Jesus is too fantastic not to share. To be sure, it is personal; Jesus has touched her in a personal way. But there is nothing private about it. She didn’t consider Jesus’ entry into her life to be a private matter, but wanted everyone to hear about it.

 

            B. Second, she bears witness to what she has experienced. “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” She does not have, we can say, the gift of evangelism. She does not, as, for instance, Philip did with the Ethiopian eunuch, begin with a passage in the prophet Isaiah and give her hearers a synopsis of a theology 101 class that demonstrated how Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham (Ac. 8:26-40). She simply told about her experience. She was not yet even entirely sure about who Jesus was; she simply knew that he had changed her life forever. That, I suggest to you, is our call as well. We’re not all gifted as evangelists. And we may still have many questions. But we are all called to bear witness to our experience of Jesus, to share about the Jesus we know and then invite others to come and see, to come and check him out.

 

Illustration: As Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). How has God loved you? How has he given you comfort? To be a witness is not to give a theological exposition of the 66 books of the Bible, it’s not to have two illustrations of the trinity and three answers to the problem of suffering in your pocket, it’s simply to share the comfort – the love and mercy – you have received from God, through Jesus, with others. You don’t have to be a theologian, or a seminary student. All you have to be is a person whose life story has intersected with the story of Jesus.

 

C. In this regard, you might want to stop and consider what that point of intersection is. What was your life like before you met Jesus? How did you meet him? What difference has knowing him made in your life? Without a doubt, deeds are important, especially in this day and age when words seem plentiful and cheap. But it is still important to be able to describe the context, and reason for, your deeds. So, spend a few minutes thinking about how you might describe the Jesus you know, in non-technical language, to someone who is illiterate of Christianity. What would you say? How hard, really, is it to talk about someone who loves us? As she bore witness to Jesus, that’s really all this woman did. She didn’t go to her neighbors and tell them they were all going to hell. What brought them out of the town to make their way toward Jesus, on their way to discovering that he really was the Savior of the world was that this woman had told them about One who had come to bring them life, who had come to quench an eternal thirst. Incomplete and still theologically developing as it was, this woman’s witness, her willingness just to share her experience of Jesus, was used by God to bring new life to others.

 

Conclusion: A few years ago, I was over at the “Field of Dreams” watching a little league game. Iela was playing on a big dirt pile that was between the first base dugout and the parking lot. Went I went over to her to tell her it was time to leave, another child playing there, one from our Sunday school, said, “There’s Pastor Tim.” A third child, whom I did not know, said, “What’s a pastor?” I’ve had that question before and usually I answer, “A Pastor is someone whose job it is to help people learn about Jesus.” To which this same little girl said, “Jesus, who is that?”

 

Imagine not knowing who Jesus is! Someone who doesn’t know Jesus doesn’t really know who God is, for it is through Jesus, the word made flesh, that we come to know and understand God (Jn. 1:14-18). Someone who doesn’t know Jesus doesn’t know how much God loves them, for Jesus, by dying for our sins, shows us the depth of God’s love (1Jn. 4:7-10). Someone who doesn’t know Jesus doesn’t know how, or that, we can be forgiven and look forward to eternal life (Jn. 3:16; Jn. 1:8f), because it is through Jesus that forgiveness and eternity is made possible. Someone who doesn’t know Jesus doesn’t know that Jesus offers us help to live in the meantime, beginning to experience eternal life even as we live today (Jn. 8:12). Someone who doesn’t know Jesus doesn’t know the one who can quench the spiritual thirst that is inside each of us, for Jesus truly is “living water” (Jn. 4:13-14).

 

Not knowing God, not knowing God’s love, not knowing forgiveness, not knowing heaven, not knowing the power of the Holy Spirit, not knowing our spiritual thirst quencher – it is incredibly sad for someone, young or old, not to know these things!  So, what can we do?  Well, we don’t need to be afraid, we don’t need to have a unique gift, we don’t need to screw up our courage to engage in confrontation; we simply need to begin by telling our story.