Witnessing for Jesus

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, March 12, 2023
John 4:5-42

    Have you ever felt God calling you to do something you’d never dreamed of doing before?  When I told my family that I actually felt God calling me to be a pastor – their first reaction was…OK….?!   There are no pastors in my family.  I actually come from a pretty musical family so I think at the least everyone thought I’d be a church musician; my dad was hoping I’d become a doctor, because, who wouldn’t want a doctor in the family?!  Having a pastor in the family is a bit more awkward if you’re avoiding bringing up politics and religion at family gatherings.  My family is now very supportive of my role as a pastor, I’m happy to say.  I’ve now been serving as a pastor for twelve years, and I’ve gotten used to other people’s surprised reactions who aren’t expecting a pastor to be a young mom like me.  I wasn’t sure I should be a pastor, but here I am today, and for the most part, loving it.
    Then God took it to the next level and as I was having “coffee” and “a just checking-in” conversation with my bishop when I was still serving in the Nebraska Synod, he asked my husband and I to serve together as Directors for Evangelical Mission, where my role would primarily be helping congregations improve their evangelism efforts.  First, I didn’t think of myself as a pastor, and just when I was getting used to that role, I had to think of myself as an evangelist.  I’m a far cry from a door-knocking Jehovah Witness or street corner preacher, but I discovered I did have a passion and interest in helping people connect more deeply to faith in Jesus.  It took awhile for me to live into the idea of “evangelical” having a positive connotation, and that I could not only share my faith but also encourage others to share their faith in positive, non-threatening ways.  So that’s a bit of my background and how God calls surprising people to do surprising, unlikely things all of the time, like me, like many people in the scripture and throughout history.  God even is calling YOU to do surprising, unlikely things, like sharing YOUR faith, serving YOUR church in various ways, AND expecting that God will call other, unlikely people to join you!
    In our gospel for today, we see Jesus seek out a very unlikely evangelist – a Samaritan woman who has come to a well at noon, because she did NOT want to run into anyone else.  It’s the hottest time of the day, and no one in their right mind would be at that well at that time – better to get the water in the early morning or evening.  Last week, we read John chapter 3, where pretty much the most opposite person from a Samaritan woman married five times comes to Jesus also at a time when no one else was around to encounter…Nicodemus, a leader of the Pharisees – highly respected, knowledgeable, and religious person of faith.
    If you go back and read chapters 3 and 4, you’ll start to see the connections.  Jesus is traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem but John tells us he has to go through Samaria.  The thing is, Samaria is north of Galilee and Jerusalem is south. He is going in the opposite direction.  Jesus needs to go to Samaria for other reasons than it being the quickest route to Jerusalem.  He’s on a mission, and he knows this unlikely woman at the well is a part of that mission, to share the good news about what God is doing through Jesus Christ.  In fact, this is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in all four of the gospels.  She’s so transformed by this encounter with Jesus that she leaves her water jar at the well, forgetting her immediate thirst, apparently, and tells people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done.  He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”  
She’s not even sure what to tell people about who this Jesus guy is – maybe he’s the Messiah?!  She’s an unlikely, reluctant evangelist.  She still has questions.  She has no credibility, really, for people to listen to her as a woman married five times living with someone who is not her husband.  But she can tell people what Jesus has done for her.  And many people in that city come to believe in Jesus because of her testimony, John tells us, as unlikely of an evangelist as she may be.  God uses this woman to impact many people in sharing the good news about who Jesus is and what Jesus has done for her.  God often works through unlikely and surprising people to do great things- even through ordinary people like us.  God knows everything we have ever done, and uses us anyway, just like Jesus calls this Samaritan woman to follow him and changes her life in a way that she wants to tell others about him.
The Samaritan woman’s witness causes us to think about how we might share what Jesus has done for us and still allow opportunity for questions and conversation.  We don’t have all the answers, but we can share our positive experiences of what being a church member and a person of faith has done for our lives.  We can expect that God will work through other people, too, to hear and see how God is at work in other people’s lives, unlikely and surprising as those stories may be.  Thanks be to God!
Amen.