There’s an old joke that’s told in a variety of ways. A man goes to heaven and is getting a tour by St. Peter. Peter is pointing out the various places in heaven that might be of interest and introduces him to various people as they wander the streets. The man looks down a street and sees a doorway, but it is gated and well out of the way, leading into a building. The man asks, “Peter, what is that?” Peter replies, “Oh, that’s for the Presbyterians. They think they’re the only ones up here.”

It makes me smile every time I think about it. It rings so true. So many of us think that to be a “true Christian” demands that we fully and totally align with a particular set of theological beliefs or form of church governance.

I am grateful that my denomination has a motto, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” I think this captures something right about how we ought to approach one another.

I think it’s important because it gets to something that Jesus brings out in his conversation with a woman he meets at a well in the region of Samaria…

Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John—though in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

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?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

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.” John 4:1-26

There are so many layers to this conversation. SO MANY LAYERS. Honestly, I think it might be a Bible teacher’s dream. You have Jesus speaking, you have references to the Father and the Spirit. You get cultural issues surrounding men and women, Jew and Samaritan, and a woman coming to draw water at the height of the heat of the day. I am tempted to write a few thousand words just unpacking all of this.

But, that would be missing the forest for the trees. Which is, on the whole, something I and many other pastors are really good at. We assume the forest. But, in doing so, we end up not teaching the principle that helps us to follow Jesus and love well. Perhaps someday I will come back and write about all the trees in the forest of this conversation. Today, I want to focus on the big picture of Jesus in conversation.

As we take in the forest of this conversation, the first thing we notice is that John tells us that Jesus had to go through Samaria. Indeed, he did not have to go through Samaria. Jesus, like many of his countrymen, could have chosen to go around Samaria. This would have added a lot of time and distance to his travels. It appears that Jesus made this decision because he was concerned about the Pharisees and their rising jealousy. So, he wanted to get back to a safe harbor in Galilee as quickly as possible. This seems likely as to why he had to go through Samaria.

While he travels through, he stops to rest at a well. This would be totally normal, particularly in the heat of the day. The well was probably an oasis space due to the water present in the ground. Jesus and his disciples could have gotten out of the heat into some shade and rested during the hottest part of the day, then return to their travel later in the afternoon. The disciples, we learn, had even gone to get some food.

As Jesus is resting, a woman comes to the well to draw water. For us, this wouldn’t seem odd. But, at the time, this would be a strange time to do the hard work of drawing water and carrying it back to your home. Typically, water drawing was done early in the morning before the crushing heat and to have the water for the day’s activities. Likely, this was also a communal time for the women of the village. This means that this woman was likely an outsider within her community.

So, two outsiders (Jesus, an outsider within the Jewish community, and the woman) cross paths at a well. Jesus engages this woman. In doing so, Jesus breaks a couple of big boundaries. One, Jews and Samaritans don’t talk to one another. But also, a Jewish man talking to a Samaritan woman was really crossing boundaries.

Now, their conversation, like that of Nicodemus and Jesus, is one where she misses Jesus' deeper point. She hears his offer to never be thirsty again and desires it. You can almost hear the relief and hope in her voice. Think about it, on one level, she would not have to do the labor of drawing water. On a deeper level, it would free her from the shame of having to walk to the well at the heat of the day.

Compare Jesus' response to her as opposed to his response to Nicodemus. With Nicodemus, he responds with, “You should have known!” Yet, with this woman, he responds with kindness and gentleness. He helps her understand the misunderstanding. It is here, for the first time, that Jesus himself claims to be the coming Messiah.

When Jesus sits with the person who is on the outside of the community, his posture is that of grace and mercy. He treats her with dignity and respect. Jesus hides nothing from her but offers her the gracious truth.

It is interesting to me as I consider the way many of us Christians treat people inside and outside the faith. We tend to treat other Christians with kid gloves. For the people outside the faith, we offer them harsh treatment that we might call, “tough love.”

This posture is the opposite of how Jesus moved in the world.

One of us is doing it wrong.

I am guessing it is not Jesus.

The other thing that really strikes me is that Jesus intentionally put himself in the position to engage with someone like the Samaritan. Jesus intentionally opened the door to be in relationship with this cultural, moral, and religious outsider.

Most of the church strategy books and conferences teach how to program up the church so as to keep people deeply involved in the church. This is what makes them “sticky.” You want to create an environment where people’s entire lives are centered around the church building so that they don’t get caught up in the ways of the world. While the heart is good, the results end up with us keeping people from being able to find themselves interacting with people outside the faith.

Jesus was intentional to engage with people on the edges of his society. We are intentional to insulate ourselves from those very people.

One of us is doing it wrong.

I am guessing it is not Jesus.

We need to constantly remind ourselves that tough love is for the insider. Gentle and compassionate responses are for the outsider.