God creates. God invites us into family. God changes us into God's own people. We respond with faith, love, and hope. This is fundamental to the story of our life in God.
Our story today is focused at the middle step. We watch as Jesus invites a woman of Samaria to become a part of the family and we wonder, What would it be like to have a conversation with Jesus?
Based on the Samaritan woman's encounter with Jesus I will offer several suggestions about what you might expect of a conversation with Jesus.
When you have a conversation with Jesus, do not expect him to schedule in advance. Of course he might; maybe his people will talk to your people and set a time for an interview. Or you might take the initiative and request a visit. The distraught father seeking healing for his son asked for an appointment and Jesus put him on the agenda.
The evidence, I think, runs against that approach. For one thing, Jesus tends to converse with people like you who do not have "people" setting your schedule for you. But also because we are not capable of scheduling the Spirit of God. ("The Spirit blows wherever it will," as Jesus has just reminded Nicodemus in the previous chapter.) Jesus in the gospels seems to prefer spontaneity: Looking up in a tree and saying "You are inviting me to dinner tonight." Waiting for you to knock on the motel room door at 10 p.m. Encountering a beggar at the side of the road.
So I suggest your conversation is probably unscheduled. Certainly that was true for this woman in Sychar. She went out for water and when she got to the well, there was Jesus.
You may not know Jesus when he shows up. Jesus often converses with people who do not expect to see him and who do not know who he is when they meet. Even if a person knows about Jesus she may not know Jesus when the conversation starts.
Of course Jesus also converses with his friends, students, family members, and local officials. Conversing frequently with Jesus is no bar to having another conversation. But if you, like this woman, have no history of talking with Jesus that is no bar to having a conversation whenever he shows up.
My favorite kind of conversation is sitting at a table in the Bay Family Restaurant with enough food to keep us busy until we are tired of sitting. Jesus likes sharing meals but he often adds some action to the interaction.
For example, he might ask you to get him a glass of water. I remember one summer as a boy walking in the country with my father when he realized I might be getting dehydrated. So we walked to the back door of the next farmhouse and asked, Could we have a glass of water? But we left and walked back out the drive afterward; there was no long conversation with us.
The story at Jacob's Well is just as innocuous an encounter: A traveller is pausing at the well and asks, Could you give me a drink? That is innocuous, yes, but it has a subtext as well. It was like saying, "Are you open to interacting with me? Of paying attention to me?" If you are willing to get a glass of water you are aware of an actual person sitting in front of you.
Next time someone asks for a glass of water think about whether she is more thirsty for the water or for your attention to her as a person. We do not know for sure whether Jesus ever got the water he requested but we do know he got this woman's attention.
A conversation with Jesus may include a bit of bantering. A lot of people banter just for the fun of it. That is the conversational equivalent of playing ping pong not to win but just to keep the ball in play for as long as you can. In this story banter is a technique for starting the conversation. It is a way to test whether the other person is fluent in Aramaic, whether he has a trove of linguistic treasures to use in making conversation, and whether he will pay attention to what you are saying.
So the woman responded to Jesus' request for water by remarking, "I am surprised you would ask me since you are obviously a Judean man."
And Jesus says, "You may see I am not a Samaritan but you do not really know who I am. If you did you would have asked me for a drink."
And she replies, "Oh, you must be a great man! You can draw water without even a bucket!"
Jesus says, "Not that water down there but the water of eternal refreshment."
And she says, "Ah, well, an eternal artesian well. Sign me up."
And Jesus says, "Great! Come back with your husband and we'll take care of it."
Surely that is bantering. But it goes beyond banter. Jesus listened to the woman and the woman listened to Jesus and now, all of a sudden, Jesus cuts to the heart and soul of her life so far.
(I do not know just what her life so far had been. Neither do you. Her husbands might have all had cancer, one after another. Or maybe they were Zealots seeking freedom for their nation and were crucified by the Romans. There are a lot of men who are sure they know exactly what the woman's past life was based on this one verse and a lot of anti-feminist speculation. They are all wrong.)
We are well past the bantering now. The woman turns to a serious topic discussed seriously. The story had already touched on the infighting between the Samaritans and the Jews. Here is a man of insight and claiming religious competence. Maybe he can explain why Samaritans and Jews can't make common cause even under Roman occupation.
"I see you are a prophet," she says. "How is it we can not agree even about where to worship God?"
And Jesus says, "You can't agree because you do not ask the right question. The Father is Creator of the universe, not some local mountain deity. Whether you are on Mount Gerizim or on Mount Zion is beside the point; whether you are in God's Spirit is the question which matters."
Changing the question is a favorite tactic Jesus uses (and which John likes to show us). He told Nicodemus "you can't understand because you are entirely wrapped up in secular events." He told the disabled man at the pool to stop worrying about getting into the water and accept the healing already in his grasp.
Notice how the woman responds to this change from where people gather for worship to how we worship. She immediately jumps to the theological question. "I know," she says, "that we get twisted up in the incidentals and ignore the fundamentals." (She is actually a Samaritan but those are the words she would have used had she been a Moravian.) And she says, "I know the annointed one of God is coming and he will lay out all the fundamental things for us."
And Jesus says, "You are right. I am here."
If you get this far into a conversation with Jesus you are likely to feel overwhelmed and excited. You are likely to leave your water jar in your excitement and hurry back to tell your neighbors and friends. And they are likely to become excited too, maybe so excited they follow you back to the well so they too can converse with Jesus.
Not every conversation with Jesus is exactly the same. But this story gives us a model for what we might expect.