JP8: JESUS REVEALS IDENTITY IN MOST UNLIKELY PLACE: WHAT HE TEACHES US ABOUT PEOPLE, POLITICS, AND PROTOCOL

Campaign announcements are typically grand occasions with the candidates seeking to make a lasting and influential impression on the public to build a loyal following.  Not so with Jesus.  

In this fourth chapter of John’s record of Jesus’ life we find profound action mixed with timely truth. Truth about people, politics, and protocol that defies convention.

Jesus shows us that when we elevate people over politics and protocol we can inspire results that politics and protocol cannot.

People Before Politics

It’s helpful to remember that everything Jesus did was on purpose.  Not just what He did, but also how He did it.  How he did things is the pattern that he left for us to follow by the power of the Holy Spirit.  It’s the pattern that John writes about here at the beginning of chapter 4,

“Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.” (NIV, Jn 4:1–3).

We don't know exactly why the religious leaders were keeping track of the number of people being baptized by John and Jesus and their respective followers.  We do know that it became a matter of debate and signaled Jesus' departure for Galilea to avoid the debate altogether.

Perhaps he did not want to give people the impression that he was in competition with John.  Or, he wanted to avoid unnecessary attention at this early stage in the unfolding rescue plan.

Setting out for Galilea, Jesus takes the most direct but risky route through Samaria (Jews in Jesus' day wrongly considered Samaritans as impure - a sort of half-breed type of people who sullied the purity of the Jewish people back then.  This injustice was a great source of tension.)  

Jesus could have stayed in Judea and merged efforts with John.  He could have stayed in Judea to embrace the prestige of success and influence, elevating himself over John.  Instead, he quickly leaves the area in favor of having conversations with outcasts.  

What happens next is a massive breach of social and religious protocol.

“Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (NIV, Jn 4:4–7).

People Before Protocol

After walking approximately a day and a half, Jesus was tired and thirsty from the walk.  With the disciples in town buying food, Jesus arrives at noon to meet a lone Samaritan woman, drawing water for herself during the hottest part of the day.

In a shocking display of Jesus putting people over protocol, he asks the woman for a drink.  The ensuing conversation quickly moves from casual to spiritual with Jesus revealing himself verbally as the Messiah for-the-very-first-time.  This is the pattern of Jesus - elevating outcasts.

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” (NIV, Jn 4:25–26).

Instead of a formal announcement among the religious elites, Jesus chooses an informal conversation with a castaway.  As a Samaritan she was alienated from her Jewish neighbors, as a woman she was simply viewed as less than, as a woman with five husbands and a plus one she was rejected by her own townspeople.  

As a result of her encounter with Jesus, the woman is changed and tells her story to everyone who will listen with many people following Jesus in large part because of her transformation story.

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him...Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. (NIV, Jn 4:28–30, 39-41).

Value Determined By Christ, Not Our Class or Past

When we elevate people over politics and protocol, we can inspire results that politics and protocol cannot.  By staying focused on his mission, we learn from Jesus that in God's Kingdom value is determined by Christ not our class or past.

The impulse to have the last word in arguments and to settle every cultural controversy dilutes the way Jesus patterned for us and keeps us from initiating conversations with people in our actual sphere of influence.  Conversations that lead to transformation.

If you want to effect change on your street or city, start a conversation with someone who is lonely, vulnerable, and not like you.  They will be amazed that you did.