(John 4:28-29 NIV)
Jesus talks to this lady and then she leaves to go tell everyone in town about Him. As she was leaving, Jesus didn’t say, “be sure to describe me like this:” or anything like that. If you take this little conversation and plop it into current teachings on evangelism, Jesus did it all wrong. Here goes this woman, back to a city full of all sorts of twisted beliefs, and she has no training whatsoever on how to talk to them or how to explain Jesus in a doctrinally correct way.
I think Jesus sent her fully equipped, because in that short time, she got to KNOW Him. If you don’t know something, you have to memorize a really good script about it to talk about it. She didn’t have a script, she didn’t have any statements, she just had a conversation with Jesus. Her re-telling of her conversation was skued, but that didn’t keep people from coming to meet Jesus. He did a lot more and said a lot more than all she had ever done, but when she said “He told me everything I ever did” that was enough for the people of Samaria to come out.
They came out and Jesus stayed there for TWO DAYS! I never caught that before. The trip Jesus took would take 2-3 days through the middle of Samaria, but 5-6 days if he would have taken the traditional anti-Samaritan route. Jesus took the 3 day counter-cultural route and then stayed there for an extra 2 days. He didn’t just go through Samaria but He spent the night there, then another day, then ANOTHER NIGHT!
This confirms thoughts I’ve had before: Jesus is crazy.
Tags: Jesus, Samaria, evangelism, Gospel, crazy