The Samaritan Woman And Me

[Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Lisa Sharon Harper's new book The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right with permission of WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC. Order your copy here.]

JESUS REMINDS the Samaritan woman at the well that she was created for living water—she, the rejected one, was created for water that brings God’s healing, God’s acceptance, God’s wholeness. She was created for God’s peace between ethnic groups. She was created for God’s peace between genders. She was not created for the wilderness. She was created for places where living water springs from the earth and waters everything and everyone in its path. This hardened woman was created to be loved, and to love.

Humanity’s broken relationship with God is the ultimate cause of all other brokenness. It all stands as evidence of the initial break. In another sense, there is no way humanity could violate relationship with any other created being and not violate its relationship with God. All of creation is bound together by one thing: relationship with our Creator. It is Creator God’s love that binds us all together: To break one tie is to break them all.

And it all unraveled, from verse to verse and chapter to chapter. But that was not the end of the story; it was only the beginning. The first humans were tempted to grasp for their own way to peace in the garden, but their futile reach left them emptier than when they began. They reached for peace and received what Jesus called “well water.”

Like the ultimate Harriet Tubman committed to calling humanity to come home—to find the love it was created for—Jesus sits at the well and says to the nameless enemy, “Give me a drink.” And he doesn’t only speak to her heart. He also speaks to her mind. She has real concerns about the rightful place of worship, concerns hewn out of centuries of ethnic strife. Jesus engages her questions.

SOON AFTER beginning high school, I was invited by a friend to attend an area-wide camp meeting, where a guest preacher was headlining a revival. Surrounded by woods and ticks, the cicadas sang as our guest preacher took the stage, just off a two-lane country road in Erma, N.J. My church’s youth group sat in a middle row toward the back of the wooden pavilion where we listened intently as the preacher screamed about hell for what felt like forever. Then, as the organ played, he invited the lost forward to get right with God by accepting Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. He urged us not to wait another minute.

I sat there, unsure if I should go forward. I remembered all the things I’d done for God over the past year—walk-a-thons and sing-a-thons for Jesus, abstaining from drinking at the school musical’s cast party. I wasn’t sure if I was a Christian yet or not. When would I know? When could I be sure of my salvation and stop wondering during every altar call if I should walk forward?

In the middle of my mental gymnastics, my friend tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I would go forward with her. To this day, I don’t understand why she felt the need to go forward. I thought she was already a Christian. I went with her nonetheless. We knelt side by side at the altar, where she wept openly. Soon, I felt sobs well up from somewhere deep in my own soul. It was like something in my spirit threw up its hands and said to God: “Okay, you win. I’m not going to fight any more. I give up.” It was a giving up of control, of the need to be the master of my own fate, of the need to earn my own heaven. Then it was even more. As I sobbed alongside my friend, we were surrounded by old ladies who comforted us. It was a strange feeling—it felt like a spiritual homecoming, like old souls ushering younger ones through a threshold to a spiritual place called “home.” What happened in me that night was about power and love. As tears fell on the wooden altar, I felt surrounded by the heart of God: I knew God loved me.

And while the preacher had focused on hell, I’ve come to understand that God’s work in me that night was less about salvation from hell in an afterlife, though I do believe in the reality of hell. Rather, that night was about power—the power of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead to reverse the Fall here on earth and in the afterlife.

On that late summer’s night, I rose from the altar and was overcome by a wave of laughter. I felt giddy, lighter, and new, as if a light had been turned on in my soul. As if I had woken up after a lifelong haze of half-sleep, half-life. I could feel it, though I didn’t yet have the language for it. I felt the power of the resurrection. As my friends drove me home, I remember thinking: “I wonder if I’ll still be a Christian 10 years from now.” That was 1983.

IN THE DAYS of antebellum slavery, enslaved people of African descent were not legally permitted to marry. Their unions were not recognized by law, so instead of a marriage ceremony, men and women—who vowed to love, serve, and protect each other till death, the master’s whip, or sale made them part—signified their commitment to each other by jumping in unison over a handcrafted broom. On one side of the broom, they were single; on the other, the two became one in the spiritual realm, even if their union was not recognized by law. I’ve come to refer to the night I walked down the aisle as the night I jumped the broom with Jesus. That night Jesus said, “I love you, Lisa. You are worth pursuing. I have pursued you across 2,000 years of time. I broke the barriers of time and space to be with you ... again.” That night, I said yes to Jesus. I dropped my well water at the altar, and Jesus’ living water began to trickle up from my soul.

My problems, issues, and brokenness weren’t all taken away that night. But something real, something transformative happened at that altar. I entered back into relationship with God, through the person of Jesus. In the decades since, God has revealed the presence and impact of broken relationships in my life. God has revealed a deep sense of self-hatred and shame, as well as broken relationships with men that stem from childhood abuse. God revealed a penchant toward over-consumption and disregard for the rest of creation. God revealed hopelessness for the healing of my fractured family, as well as the reality of my social, economic, and political status as an African American in the U.S. and within the evangelical church. God also revealed my American privilege on the global stage.

The revelations came slowly, as I was able to handle them, with guidance from others who had trod the paths before. With each revelation, God brought light, healing, and redemption. The healings didn’t always come in the form I imagined them, but they came—in God’s way, in God’s time. And 32 years later I am still waiting on God for some of the most stubborn brokenness in my soul and life to be healed, and I am partnering with God to bring healing to some of the most broken corners of our society and world.

The nameless Samaritan woman dropped her jar of well water and went back to the city to talk to the people she had tried to avoid. But something was different now. She was bold, confident, and actively loving the people who had shamed her. With no concern for what they thought of her, the woman told them about her encounter with Jesus. The text tells us: “Many of the Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony” (John 4:39). This shamed, rejected, marginalized, ethnic enemy became the first person in John’s gospel to communicate the very good news and bring transformation to an entire city. The Samaritan woman and her city were transformed by God’s love and power.