Here are some of the observations Eugene Peterson makes in Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places (2005) p17-21, about God's generous welcome as he contrasts the stories of Jesus & Nicodemus and Jesus & the Samaritan woman at the well (I added little bits & pieces along the way as part of the sermon this last Sunday):
1. The vocabulary is easy to understand. The metaphors describing how God is at work are known to everyone for they come out of ordinary life. With Nicodemus it is birth; with the Samaritan woman it is water. We all have sufficient experience of those two words to know what is going on without further instruction. We all know what birth is: our being here is proof that we were born. We all know what water is: we drink it or wash in it several times a day. And the metaphor common to both stories, wind/breath, is also plain. We all know what wind/breath is: just blow on your hand or take a deep breath, just look at the leaves blowing in the breeze.
2. The first story is about a man; the second is about a woman. There is no preferred gender in the Christian life. How important it is to state this fact! There is no preferred gender! It is still the case that significant parts of the church say that the generous welcome of God to people has certain conditions on it according to what particular sperm out of many thousands happened to fertilise the egg in a woman’s womb. Why should what God’s Spirit wants to do be limited by our human traditions?
3. The first story takes place in a city, the centre of sophistication and learning and fashion; the second on the outskirts of a small town in the country. Geography has no bearing on perception or aptitude.
4. Nicodemus is a respectable member of a strictly orthodox sect of the Pharisees; while the Samaritan woman is a disreputable member of the despised heretical sect of the Samaritans. Racial background, religious identity, and moral track record are neither here nor there in matters of how the Spirit works.
5. The man is named and the woman is unnamed. Reputation and standing in the community doesn’t seem to count for anything.
6. There is also this: Nicodemus opens the conversation with Jesus with a religious statement, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God.” Jesus opens the conversation with the woman by asking for a drink of water, a sentence that doesn’t sound the least bit religious. It doesn’t seem to make any difference in the Christian life who gets things started, Jesus or us, or what the subject matter is, heavenly or earthly.
7. In both stories a reputation is at risk: Nicodemus risks his reputation by being seen with Jesus (that’s why he went to him under the cover of darkness – he wanted to minimise the risk); Jesus risks his reputation by being seen with the Samaritan woman. There is a sense of ignoring conventions here
on both sides, a crossing of the lines of caution, a willingness on both sides to risk misunderstanding.
Look at how wide the welcome of Jesus is… a man and a woman, city and country, an insider and an outsider, a professional and a layperson, a respectable man and a woman whose reputation is in serious question, and orthodox and a heretic, one who takes initiative and one who lets it be taken, one named and the other anonymous, with one a human reputation is at risk, and with the other the divine reputation is at risk. But there is more…
8. In both conversations “spirit” is the pivotal word. “Spirit” links the differences and contrasts in the two stories and makes them aspects of one story. In both conversations “Spirit” refers primarily to God and only derivatively to the man and the woman: In the first conversation the Spirit gives birth (“So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit”); Spirit is an agent, a source, a cause of the birth that makes a person able to “see” and “enter”. In the second conversation, God is Spirit; the consequence is that we worship him in spirit and truth. It is only because God is Spirit that there is anything to say about what we do or don’t do.
9. Finally, there is this: Jesus is the primary figure in both stories – Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman provide the occasion but it is Jesus who provides the content. I wonder if we need to rediscover this when we talk about what kind of church we want to be. In these stories we see that in everything that has to do with living, Jesus is working at the centre. We welcome because Jesus has first welcomed. We understand things because of what Jesus reveals.
1. The vocabulary is easy to understand. The metaphors describing how God is at work are known to everyone for they come out of ordinary life. With Nicodemus it is birth; with the Samaritan woman it is water. We all have sufficient experience of those two words to know what is going on without further instruction. We all know what birth is: our being here is proof that we were born. We all know what water is: we drink it or wash in it several times a day. And the metaphor common to both stories, wind/breath, is also plain. We all know what wind/breath is: just blow on your hand or take a deep breath, just look at the leaves blowing in the breeze.
2. The first story is about a man; the second is about a woman. There is no preferred gender in the Christian life. How important it is to state this fact! There is no preferred gender! It is still the case that significant parts of the church say that the generous welcome of God to people has certain conditions on it according to what particular sperm out of many thousands happened to fertilise the egg in a woman’s womb. Why should what God’s Spirit wants to do be limited by our human traditions?
3. The first story takes place in a city, the centre of sophistication and learning and fashion; the second on the outskirts of a small town in the country. Geography has no bearing on perception or aptitude.
4. Nicodemus is a respectable member of a strictly orthodox sect of the Pharisees; while the Samaritan woman is a disreputable member of the despised heretical sect of the Samaritans. Racial background, religious identity, and moral track record are neither here nor there in matters of how the Spirit works.
5. The man is named and the woman is unnamed. Reputation and standing in the community doesn’t seem to count for anything.
6. There is also this: Nicodemus opens the conversation with Jesus with a religious statement, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God.” Jesus opens the conversation with the woman by asking for a drink of water, a sentence that doesn’t sound the least bit religious. It doesn’t seem to make any difference in the Christian life who gets things started, Jesus or us, or what the subject matter is, heavenly or earthly.
7. In both stories a reputation is at risk: Nicodemus risks his reputation by being seen with Jesus (that’s why he went to him under the cover of darkness – he wanted to minimise the risk); Jesus risks his reputation by being seen with the Samaritan woman. There is a sense of ignoring conventions here
on both sides, a crossing of the lines of caution, a willingness on both sides to risk misunderstanding.
Look at how wide the welcome of Jesus is… a man and a woman, city and country, an insider and an outsider, a professional and a layperson, a respectable man and a woman whose reputation is in serious question, and orthodox and a heretic, one who takes initiative and one who lets it be taken, one named and the other anonymous, with one a human reputation is at risk, and with the other the divine reputation is at risk. But there is more…
8. In both conversations “spirit” is the pivotal word. “Spirit” links the differences and contrasts in the two stories and makes them aspects of one story. In both conversations “Spirit” refers primarily to God and only derivatively to the man and the woman: In the first conversation the Spirit gives birth (“So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit”); Spirit is an agent, a source, a cause of the birth that makes a person able to “see” and “enter”. In the second conversation, God is Spirit; the consequence is that we worship him in spirit and truth. It is only because God is Spirit that there is anything to say about what we do or don’t do.
9. Finally, there is this: Jesus is the primary figure in both stories – Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman provide the occasion but it is Jesus who provides the content. I wonder if we need to rediscover this when we talk about what kind of church we want to be. In these stories we see that in everything that has to do with living, Jesus is working at the centre. We welcome because Jesus has first welcomed. We understand things because of what Jesus reveals.
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