Message Two - Shameful Sam(antha) or Haji Hannah
The Shameful Samaritan and First Evangelist
Presented at Free Methodist Senior Retreat, April 1999

Introduction
In John 4, we have another example of Jesus’ personal evangelistic ministry. Here, just as with the disabled man lying beside the pool of Bethesda, Jesus encounters an individual and engages that person in a conversation that ultimately brings her to a point where she has to make up her mind how she feels about Jesus and what she is going to believe about him. Let’s look at John 4:1-26 which records this encounter for us.

What we have here is one of the most analyzed and taught instances of Jesus’ personal ministry where evangelism is concerned. It is probably second to Jesus’ twilight meeting with Nicodemus in John 3 where Jesus tells this member of the Jewish ruling council that he must be “born again.” What we find here is Jesus applying many of the same evangelistic principles as he did in John 5 with the disabled man by the pool, yet with an entirely different outcome. We won’t go into the same detail examining this incident as we did with the one we reviewed yesterday from John 5 because I’m sure most of you have already heard a number of messages on this same portion of scripture. However, let’s reiterate the same principles Jesus applied in this situation as he did with the man who was disabled for 38 years.

Once again we find Jesus reaching out to someone normally avoided by others. The person Jesus meets and engages in conversation is a Samaritan woman who has had five failed marriages and is presently in an adulterous affair. She has come to the well at the hottest time of the day to avoid the ridicule and rejection she would experience from the other women of Sychar if she came to the well at the normal times when it was cool, morning and evening. When she finds Jesus there at the well, she expects even more rejection and, possibly, even ridicule. Why? Because men in this time and culture didn’t have anything to do with women in public. Women in general were looked down upon as second class citizens by men. Jews, as Jesus, normally had nothing to do with Samaritans because they were viewed as half-breeds and religious heretics. And, no respectable person, male or female, Jew or Samaritan, would ever want to be seen associating with someone like this woman who was known to be of loose sexual morals and an adultress. Yet, Jesus reached out to her.

In fact, not only did he reach out to her, but he actually initiated contact with her by asking her for help. He asked her for a drink of water. Similar to how he started the conversation and his relationship with the disabled man beside the pool, Jesus utilized a question to help meet the person he chose to relate to and wanted to help. It is important to underscore that, in this case, his question was a request for help. This completely disarmed the woman. Jesus actually put himself in the position of being the needful one, and made the woman the one who had the capacity to help. What a turn around from what she expected. She anticipated being looked down upon, rather than the one being looked up to for help. What an important evangelistic principle to remember.

Just as with the disabled man, Jesus sought to learn about the woman so he could relate to her specifically, relative to her concerns and circumstances. In this case, God must have directly revealed to him certain insights because Jesus confronted her with information about her private life he could not have known any other way. This would be consistent with the principle that Jesus only did what he saw God doing and only said what he heard God saying. God must have told him these secret things about her. This is why her immediate response to his intimate knowledge of her was that he must be a prophet. He began, as with the man healed, talking about her concerns and circumstances before introducing the substance of what he wanted to talk to her about and then did so in a way that continued to address those very same concerns and circumstances.

And then, in this case too, he acted decisively, seemingly out of the blue. I don’t exactly know what to do with this principle. I’m very threatened by it, but he tells her to do something in a very similar way as he told the man who had been disabled for such a long time to get up, pick up his mat and walk. He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” Apparently, there is a time when it is a appropriate to trigger some kind of reaction, or response, or decision on the other person’s part so that you can to move to the next level of interaction. I don’t quite have a handle on this principle, but it is repeated in both encounters, so we have to take this principle into serious consideration and figure out how to apply it.

Another couple of principles we shall see later repeated in this case is that, by relating to one person, Jesus was able to impact many others through the influence of the person he originally established a relationship with, even the women at the well. And, Jesus did evangelism both to individuals and groups, with individual evangelism leading to group evangelism.

As consistent with the previous case, Jesus was obviously more concerned about the praise of God than the praise of men otherwise he would have avoided even being seen in the vicinity of this woman. And, lastly, Jesus definitely was always in control of the situation.

We can see that almost point for point, most of the principles Jesus applied to his evangelistic encounter with the man he healed by the pool, he also applied to his evangelistic encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well.

However , what I really want to concentrate our attention upon at this time is what happened to the Samaritan woman and what followed as a result of her encounter with Jesus. Let’s read the next portion, John 4:27-42.

What happened to the woman! Before she was Shameful Samantha. She was Haji Hannah. She was so afraid of what others thought of her, she avoided all contact that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Remember? That’s why she went to the well at high noon. So she wouldn’t subject herself to the glare and belittling of her fellow townspeople. She was the one who cowered when Jesus approached her and was startled when he but uttered a word to her, let alone asked her for help. She wasn’t used to being treated like a human being. But now, we find her leaving her valuable water jar at the well and going back to town, scurrying around, telling anyone who would listen, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”

What a strange thing for this woman, of all people, to say. Didn’t she go to the well at a time when no one else would be there because she wanted to avoid any and all who knew about her not so secret sex life. Her problem was that too many people already knew everything she ever did. So what was so astounding about what she said! Why would especially that particular comment on her part motivate anyone in that town to follow her down to the well in the blistering midday heat to find out whether what she implied by her question, “Could this be the Christ?” be actually true or not. It must have been her demeanor and how she said it. She must have become a totally different person.

She was transformed from a person who slipped from shadow to shadow to avoid being seen and having to interact with anyone, a person who never looked you in the eye but whose eyes were always downcast, whose face was so sullen that she brought her own storm cloud wherever she went. She was transformed from that person to someone whose utter joy and excitement shed sunshine on everyone everywhere. She wasn’t ashamed any more. Somehow she didn’t care any longer what people knew about her. Rather than slinking away from people, she was approaching them. She wasn’t self-obsessed any longer but rather was concerned only for others. Her passion was that they meet the person who had made such a miraculous difference in her life too. She went from being Haji Hannah to Happily Hilarious Hannah! She became the very first Christian evangelist recorded in the Bible and an extremely fruitful one, too!

In any case the change in her must have been remarkable to say the least, because not just a few followed her down the hill to the well to find out who this life-changing person was, but there must have been multitudes. When Jesus told his disciples to, “open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest,” he was referring to the mass of white robes that were flocking down the hillside toward them to meet the Promised One, their Messiah, Jesus himself.

But what was most amazing to me was the fact that this woman, the Haji Hannah that she was, a spanking brand new baby believer, turned out to be so effective in her evangelism to the very people who used to ridicule and reject her. And, as far as I can see, she applied very few of the principles we have extracted from examining how Jesus did evangelism in these two cases; first, to the disabled man by the pool and second, to the Samaritan woman at the well. She knew nothing about evangelism. All she knew is that she met this guy who changed her life and she wanted others to meet him so he could change their lives, too. Evangelism to her was that simple. One person introducing someone to another person. That’s it, no more, no less! Evangelism to her was simply bringing people to Jesus and introducing him to them, and them to him!

So what can we learn about ourselves as Japanese American Nisei Christians by identifying with Haji Hannah?
I believe a lot of us are like her. Maybe we haven’t had five failed marriages and we presently aren’t in an adulterous affair. However, I believe we tend to be just as concerned about what others may think of us.

Japanese culture has often been referred to as a shame culture. While describing Japanese culture as such has been hotly disputed. What has not been argued is the fact that people of Japanese ancestry are highly shame-oriented, much more acutely concerned about shame as opposed to guilt. We tend to be obsessed about not bringing embarrassment or shame upon ourselves, our parents, our families, our ethnic community, and our entire race, least concern of all being bringing embarrassment or shame upon ourselves.

Our fear of bringing shame dictates much of what we do with our lives, long term and on a daily basis. Rather than choosing a job or college major that would lead to a self-fulfilling career as most majority Americans would, we chose our jobs, majors and careers according to what would please and meet the expectations of our parents and would bring honor to the reputation of not only our family, but the entire Japanese American community as well. We have operated upon the philosophy that what is best for the whole is best for me, rather than the majority American philosophy that what is best for me is best for the whole.

And, for those of us who are Japanese American Christians, we tend to transfer this whole obsessive compulsive fear of bringing embarrassment and shame upon those we care about most to our relationship with Christ, especially if our models of what it means to be a dynamic Christian, Christian leader and church come from the majority culture and community. In comparison, we find ourselves significantly lacking relative to these models we have chosen. Consequently, we tend to have a very poor Christian self-image, and corporate image. Therefore, we tend not to value ourselves very highly as Christians, let alone as Christian leaders. And, similarly, we tend to see our churches as not being very exemplary either. And, as a result, for fear bringing embarrassment and even shame upon Christ, we hesitate to witness, share our faith, and invite people to our churches. We end up isolating ourselves or, at least, the Christian part us, from the view of non-Christians we know, so as not to do any harm to Christ’s reputation, his mission in the world, and the likelihood of their being open to the Gospel when at some future time a really spiritual Christian comes along. In the process, we might not be hindering, but we sure aren’t helping Christ’s reputation or helping to fulfill his mission in the world either. Something needs to happen in our lives that will turn our lives inside out just like Haji Hannah’s.

Haji Hannah was the perfect example of what Jesus talked about when he said, “Indeed the water I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” What he was telling the Samaritan woman is that, rather than her life being like a gravity-fed well like Jacob’s well, he would transform her life from the inside out so she would become like an artesian well. What’s the difference between a gravity-fed well and an artesian well? A gravity-fed well depends on sources of water coming from the outside in. It is dependent upon outward circumstances as to whether or how much water there is in the well. If there is plenty of rain, the well becomes full. If there is a drought, the water gets depleted, becomes more and more stagnant, until the well becomes deep, empty and ultimately dry. The Samaritan woman described Jacob’s well as deep, and that it would take Jesus a lot of effort to reach the water to draw it out. What this mean is that Jacobs well was gravity-fed and stagnant, and no new water had drained into the well for some time. The deeper the water level, the more stagnant was the water. This is an apt picture of what Haji Hannah’s life was like before she met Christ. Her life was about as deep and empty as Jacob’s well. The amount of life in her had evaporated to the point were there was only a puddle at the bottom. And, that puddle was concentrated with contaminants. Her life was completely dependent on outside circumstances to make her life either feel full or empty. She was empty and no one around her wanted to share any of their water with her to help sustain her and fill her up. But, when she met Jesus, he gave her water, a different kind of water, his very own Spirit, and he planted it in her so she became a whole new kind of well. She became like an artesian well which has its own water source deep within. That water source immediately began to fill her life up. It became in her a “spring of water welling up to eternal life.” And, as it did; as it welled up, it diluted the contaminants in the puddle, it carried the crud and debris up to the top, until all the bad stuff was pushed out where now the spring was spilling over and spreading the life-giving water of Christ’s Spirit all around on dry ground and causing all kinds of new life to emerge and grow.

That’s what needs to happen to those of us who are so shame-oriented, so dependent upon what others think of us in order to feel good about ourselves and enable us to feel alive. However, the problem is we tend not to feel good about ourselves or feel alive most of the time. We need to have a face to face encounter with Jesus, just like Haji Hannah. We need Jesus to transform us from being gravity-fed wells to artesian wells. We need to allow His Spirit to well up in us to eternal life, diluting the contaminants, pushing them out, and finally spilling over clean and clear, giving life to all those surrounding us.

Consistent with this view and conviction, we at Iwa have just recently come up with a new definition of evangelism and discipleship that we believe will be especially helpful for those of us coming from a shame-based Japanese cultural background who are so very shame-oriented, concretely oriented, and relationally oriented. It goes like this:

Evangelism and discipleship is getting to know Jesus better on the inside,
so we can better know the Jesus who is inside of us,
and wants to transform us to be just like him from the inside out,
and enable us to help others to do likewise.

A shortened version of the same definition goes something like this:

We need to get to know Jesus better,
so we can better introduce others to the Jesus we know.

How do we apply all those evangelistic principles we distilled from the two encounters Jesus had, first, with the disabled man by the pool and, second, the Samaritan woman at the well? As Jesus, the Son, only did what he saw the Father doing, so we can do likewise - only do what we see Jesus doing and saying, allowing Jesus’ own Spirit to enable us to do and say whatever he wills and wants through us to whomever he will and wants.

Amen? Amen!

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