I’ve been thinking about the woman at the well…
In an age of what I would like to call Christian pop-culture, it’s easy to overlook the true landscape of what revival might look like, in the same way this story is easy to run our eyes over among the many powerful accounts of the gospel.
But for me, this story holds the key to the seeds of revival.
Here is a woman who was not only unknown or forgotten, but deliberately and actively ignored, and most probably cruelly judged. She was a Samaritan, a woman, and let’s face it…one who had not conducted herself in the most honourable ways when it came to men.
She did not have the makings of what we would look for, or recognise as a revival carrier. She did not bear the characteristics of having great influence or appeal. And yet this woman was the seedbed for a move of God in her city.
There was an old man I met in one of my first weeks in Ireland. I was having coffee with some people and I got distracted watching a man outside in the rain using his walking stick to try to rescue something from the fountain. I excused myself and ran out to him and asked if I could help. “The pennies” he said, “I need the pennies”. He was using his stick to drag the coins people had thrown in the fountain, toward himself. Over the next week I happened upon this man in different places more times that I could count, until I just couldn’t ignore it. I went up and spoke to him again, and as I shared with him that he was loved and seen and gave him a gift, he opened a bag and showed me the bottle caps he collects to exchange for cash at the recycling facility. He then looked down at his feet and said something that broke my heart. He said "See I’m not a bad man, I’m a good man…I’m a good man”. It broke me even more because he was the third person in two weeks to say those words to me. I realised that so many people feel so judged and condemned because of their condition. Christians, that was all of us before we encountered the love of Jesus.
Let’s remember that God loves a good pattern, and the true power of the gospel, the compelling nature of Christ’s love was that he chose not men of status or hierarchy to advance his gospel, but men of little or no reputation. And the accounts we are most moved by within that gospel, are the many precious moments where he turned aside to the last, the least, the lost and the left out.
See Jesus was regularly found present where no one else might seek to go. You could find him in the home of a despised tax collector, in the company of a sinful woman, and by the roadside with lepers and beggars. And that’s how he came across this woman. She went to the well in the heat of the day, when no one else would be there. Because just as it is with all of us, our shame catapults us into a life of hiding. And yet in her place of hiding…she finds Jesus waiting there.
He asks her “Will you give me a drink?”. Note well that he did not ask her about her capacity to give him a drink, but her willingness. She automatically disqualifies herself as you’d expect…she’s a Samaritan woman talking to a Jewish man after all. And yet Jesus did not disqualify her from this encounter and continues to reveal himself as the Messiah and points her to the free gift of life on offer.
Funnily enough at the end of this conversation she runs back to her city to tell the very people she has been hiding from, about this life altering experience. And so, a multitude of people from that city came to Jesus because a woman who once had lived hiding in shame, became the catalyst of a transformed city simply because she was not disqualified from the encounter.
I want to ask you an honest question…in an age where we are all praying for revival…where do we think it will come from? See I feel in the modern church we equate the mark of a revival carrier with a blue tick on a preacher’s instagram account. We see a young person in our congregation who is a solid leader, an eloquent speaker and we think surely this guy will bring revival to cities one day.
But when I read my bible - I see cities being moved because of people who were the most decrepit of society - who were simply not disqualified from the encounter. People who were so transformed by being seen and known, and loved by God.
I’ve been challenged since I got here…will I walk past the guy muttering to himself on the street or the scantily clad woman standing waiting outside an unmarked door in search of a nice addition to our congregation, or a good launch team candidate? Or will I be found waiting for people in the place of their escape and their shame?
I mentioned before that God loves a pattern. And I think if we would just be obedient to go where no one else might go…if we would be found not just inside the walls of the church but in the places that society turns their shoulder on, then I think revival will come from the most unlikely of places, in the same way the Messiah came from Nazareth.
See right now more than ever people all over our cities are doing everything they can to manage their shame.
It’s midday at the well…where are we??