A Credible Witness

Reflections on Power, Evangelism and Race

Brenda Salter McNeil

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780830834822
• eBook ISBN: 9780830874224
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Meet Jesus and Sam.Evangelist and teacher Brenda Salter McNeil thinks evangelism that only introduces people to Jesus is incomplete. The picture is much larger than that, she claims: Christ's death and resurrection reconcile us to God and to each other across gender, race and social lines.Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman, introduced here as Brenda's friend Sam, gives you the full picture of gospel reconciliation--reconciliation to God and to each other. In her powerful, prophetic way, Brenda expounds their interaction recorded in John 4 and shares her own story of coming to Christ and learning to relate to other Christians. A Credible Witness tells you why both types of reconciliation are necessary, and moves you to be a person whose evangelism happens through a right relationship with God and others."In today's world," Brenda writes, "we too are called to embody more than one type of reconciliation. The good news brings us to God, and it also brings life and healing to a broken, dying and divided world. Anything less is not the gospel."

1

KNOW MY CONTEXT TO KNOW MY STORY

I first fell in love with John 4 in seminary when Dr. John Perkins led a devotional Bible study on this text. Perkins is cofounder and chair of the Christian Community Development Association, an organization that supports and encourages practitioners of grassroots and church-based efforts to solve problems and meet needs in their own neighborhoods and communities. At that time he and his family were living in Northwest Pasadena, a neighborhood that had one of the highest daytime crime rates in California, where he founded the Harambee Christian Family Center.

As I listened to Perkins’s exposition of John 4, I realized that this was the first time I had ever heard someone unpack the social and cultural aspects of this text. Up to then I had heard this Scripture explained only from an evangelistic perspective: the woman in the story was a sinner and public outcast because of her questionable moral character, and Jesus came to the well to save her so she could have eternal life. But as John Perkins taught on this text, I began to see that in order to reach people with the gospel, like Jesus, we must first understand their context.

The story of the Samaritan woman is recorded in John 4:1-42 and is captured beautifully in The Message, a contemporary paraphrase of the Bible by Eugene Peterson:

Jesus realized that the Pharisees were keeping count of the baptisms that he and John performed (although his disciples, not Jesus, did the actual baptizing). They had posted the score that Jesus was ahead, turning him and John into rivals in the eyes of the people. So Jesus left the Judean countryside and went back to Galilee.

To get there, he had to pass through Samaria. He came to Sychar, a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon.

A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, “Would you give me a drink of water?” (His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.) The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, “How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (Jews in those days wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Samaritans.) Jesus answered, “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.” The woman said, “Sir, you don’t even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this ‘living water’? Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?”

Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst— not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.” The woman said, “Sir, give me this water so I won’t get thirsty, won’t ever have to come back to this well again!” He said, “Go call your husband and then come back.” “I have no husband,” she said. “That’s nicely put: ‘I have no husband.’ You’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now isn’t even your husband. You spoke the truth there, sure enough.”

“Oh, so you’re a prophet! Well, tell me this: Our ancestors worshipped God on this mountain, but you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place for worship, right?” “Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor there in Jerusalem. You worship guessing in the dark; Jews worship in the clear light of day. God’s way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”

The woman said, “I don’t know about that. I do know that the Messiah is coming. When he arrives, we’ll get the whole story.” “I am he,” said Jesus. “You don’t have to wait any longer or look any further.”

Just then his disciples came back. They were shocked. They couldn’t believe he was talking with that kind of woman. No one said what they were all thinking, but their faces showed it. The woman took the hint and left. In her confusion she left her water pot. Back in the village she told the people, “Come see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out. Do you think this could be the Messiah?” And they went out to see for themselves

Many of the Samaritans from that village committed themselves to him because of the woman’s witness: “He knew all about the things I did. He knows me inside out!” They asked him to stay on, so Jesus stayed two days. A lot more people entrusted their lives to him when they heard what he had to say. They said to the woman, “We’re no longer taking this on your say-so. We’ve heard it for ourselves and know it for sure. He’s the Savior of the world!”

My friend Sam lived in a context of racial and ethnic strife. The larger society in which she grew up discriminated against her ethnicity, culture, gender and religious tradition. She was a Samaritan woman. Everything in her society suggested, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that something was wrong with her—that she was born the wrong ethnicity and the wrong gender. I believe that she knew what it was to be ostracized—to have nothing in the society or popular culture that affirmed her or supported her dignity and worth as a person made in the image of God. So what did it mean to this woman that Jesus was a Jew?

A PAINFUL HISTORY

Samaritans and Jews absolutely did not associate with each other. Their animosity was rooted in their painful shared history after the Assyrians attacked and conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, as recounted in the Old Testament.

The Samaritans are the descendants of two groups: a) the remnant of the native Israelites who were not deported at the fall of the Northern kingdom in 722 B.C.; and b) foreign colonists brought in from Babylonia and Media by the Assyrian conquerors of Samaria (II Kings 17:24ff. gives an account of this). There was theological opposition between these northerners and the Jews of the South because of the Samaritan refusal to worship at Jerusalem. This was aggravated by the fact that after the Babylonian exile the Samaritans had put obstacles in the way of the Jewish restoration of Jerusalem, and that in the 2nd century B.C. the Samaritans had helped the Syrian monarchs in their wars against the Jews. In 128 B.C. the Jewish high priest burned the Samaritan temple on Gerizim.

The Samaritans emerged as a distinct ethnic group whose religious practices were characterized by “unfaithfulness to the covenant established by the God of Israel.”

The Samaritans were therefore considered pagans and infidels. Every time Jews encountered Samaritans, they were reminded of the sin, the curse and the disgrace of being defiled by falling into idolatrous pagan practices. Over time the hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans grew to be insurmountable because of their religious and cultural differences. No God-fearing Jew or self-respecting Israelite would be caught dead with a Samaritan. The Jews felt justified in their religious, social and cultural hatred of the Samaritans, who were seen as a debased people—as dogs! To call someone a Samaritan was to hurl an extreme insult.

This type of thinking and name-calling is the beginning of the dehumanization of a person or ethnic group. We objectify and project negative qualities onto those we fear or despise. It is difficult to discriminate against and mistreat a person when you identify with them or think of them as being “like us.” However if we can reduce them to “niggers,” “terrorists,” “savages” or “dogs,” or distance them from ourselves as “illegal aliens,” they become less than human and acceptable objects of mistreatment. After that, the transition from discrimination to hatred and bigotry becomes easier and easier; racism and “ethnic cleansing” can be justified by well-meaning people as something they are doing to protect the good in the name of the Lord.

A painful example of this is the abuse that happened in Iraq at Abu Ghraib prison. It was reported that while serving as prison guards in the U.S. military, respectable young Americans subjected men and women to violence, severe injury and rape. What could cause normal, patriotic Americans to commit such atrocities? Although there were probably many factors that contributed to this sadistic behavior, “psychologists and historians who study torture give what is probably the most disturbing explanation of all: they are us. For under certain circumstances, almost anyone has the capacity to commit the atrocities seen in the photos that have shocked the world.” These guards were normal people in wartime conditions who were afraid and probably saw and referred to the inmates under their care as “the enemy.” In this way they objectified and dehumanized them—no longer treating them like people with families who love them, who are innocent until proven guilty, but as objects of war.

Most of us would probably like to think that we would never do anything like that. But I have learned firsthand that when someone reduces another person to a category or a derogatory name—something that we all tend to do—they are capable of doing very hurtful things. One day I was at a Christian conference in Wheaton, Illinois, and the keynote speaker was a brilliant scholar who gave one of the most impressive lectures—on gnosticism and its impact on the church and contemporary culture—that I had ever heard. He was outstanding!

At the conclusion of his presentation I decided to ask him a question, but feeling intimidated by his intellectual prowess, I searched for the most intelligent way to articulate my inquiry to prove myself worthy of the time and attention of a man of his stature. I practiced it carefully and formulated the question in my mind before approaching him. The question had to do with racial reconciliation or ethnic diversity; I don’t remember the exact phrase I used, but it was one of those two.

However, I do still remember his response. Pointing his finger directly in my face, he yelled at me so everyone around us could hear: “I know your kind!” Then he accused me of being a liberal, left-wing, feminist Democrat who was in favor of gay rights and didn’t love our country!

I was hurt and humiliated. His words stung as if he had slapped me in the face. Although I didn’t suffer bodily harm, the character assassination was so brutal that I had to be led away by my friends into a nearby stairwell, where I sobbed uncontrollably.

This is what the Samaritans experienced on a daily basis. Like the scholar who felt justified in cutting me down to shreds because he labeled me a “liberal Democrat,” assuming he knew my social views and political affiliation, the Jews felt justified in their hatred and mistreatment of the Samaritans. And to be fair, the animosity was mutual: the Samaritans also fueled the bitter hatred between them and the Jews. They did adopt some of the pagan practices and foreign ways of their colonizers, which further validated the Jews in their reasons to stay alienated from them. “The Samaritans received only the five books of Moses, and rejected the writings of the prophets and all the Jewish traditions. From these causes arose an irreconcilable difference between them, so that the Jews regarded them as the worst of the human race and had no dealings with them.” To make matters worse, “Samaria became a place of refuge for all the outlaws of Judea. They received willingly all the Jewish criminals and refugees from justice. The violators of the Jewish laws, and those who had been excommunicated, betook themselves for safety to Samaria, and greatly increased their numbers and the hatred which subsisted between the two nations.” Hence, there was a long history of mutual hostility between the two ethnic groups, and their hatred for each other was palpable.

The woman at the well was absolutely right when she said that Jews and Samaritans did not associate with each other. They had no dealings with each other at any time or any place. They did not worship together in the same temple. They did not live together in the same provinces, towns or neighborhoods. They did not socialize or eat together. They did not attend the same schools. They did not share anything in common. The resulting hostile segregation was so great that if a Samaritan person and a Jewish person were walking on a sunny day and the Samaritan’s shadow crossed the Jew’s shadow, the Jewish person considered himself unclean. That’s how much they avoided each other! They stayed as far away as possible.

So why was this Jew talking to her? Sam had good reason to wonder.

A MAN’S WORLD

In addition to having to live with the stigma of being a Samaritan, Sam was born a woman. Women in her society were considered to be property—you belonged either to your father or to your husband. Even children had greater status in society than women. The primary purpose of a woman in that culture was to have children—preferably male children. That’s why the Bible is full of stories like those of Hannah, Sarah and Elizabeth—women who cried out to God in anguish, begging to give birth to a child. Women were considered cursed by God and had no real worth in society if they could not bear children. Men felt themselves to be fortunate and blessed because they were not born female. In the Jerusalem temple during worship, devout men would often address God with a prayer that said, “Lord, I thank you I was not born a slave, a Gentile [some translations say ‘imbecile’] or a woman!” This was not intended to be a slur; rather, it was considered a genuine act of worship in the presence of God.

If you were a Samaritan woman among Jews in that day, the disgrace was even greater. “A Jewish regulation of A.D. 65-66 warned that one could never count on the ritual purity of Samaritan women since they were menstruants from their cradle!” This decree was based upon an Old Testament Scripture that called for every woman to be kept apart from the general population during the time of her menstrual cycle. (I know this is a hard topic for most men to even think about, let alone read about in the Bible! Just imagine never being able to have sex with your wife—that is what this law meant.) Leviticus 15:19-23 says,

When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean. Whoever touches her bed must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. Whoever touches anything she sits on must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. Whether it is the bed or anything she was sitting on, when anyone touches it, he will be unclean till evening. If you were a Jewish woman, then, your times of segregation from the community ended once you were no longer menstruating. However, if you were a Samaritan woman you were declared a “perpetual menstruate”—meaning there was never a time when you were not unclean. From the time you were a little girl until you were an old, gray-haired woman, you were never clean—never good enough to be touched, never acceptable. For seven days a week, 365 days of the year, you were seen as filthy, dirty, unclean. There was never a day that you were clean enough to sit next to a Jewish person. Anything you sat on or drank from immediately became unclean and had to broken, burned or discarded. No one could eat after you or shake your hand, because to do so would cause them to become immediately unclean.

Can you imagine what it must do to a person’s self-esteem and selfimage to be told every day of her life that something is wrong with her? That she doesn’t measure up? That she’s not good enough? That she is dirty, unworthy or defective? When there is no social source of positive images to counteract these pervasive negative messages, over time this type of persistent, cultural assault creates a “hole in your soul.” Before long, even the strongest people start doubting themselves and begin looking for love in all the wrong places—simply trying to fill the emptiness inside.

As a black woman growing up in American society, I understand this. I know what it’s like to live in an environment where there is little that validates you or affirms your worth. The images that I see on television do not affirm my beauty as an African American woman. When I was growing up and watched the Miss America Pageant on television, I never imagined that the next Miss America would look like me. I didn’t even expect a black woman to place! Beauty was for white girls, or for black girls who looked as close to white as possible. I know what it’s like to drown in a sea of negative images of your people group in the media and in popular culture.

As I grew up in a working-class urban neighborhood, my parents regularly gave me messages trying to counter the negative impact the culture was having on my self-esteem. My mother would say things like “You can’t be as good as; you have to be better than”—meaning as a black person I would have to be twice as good as my white counterparts if I was to succeed. She would also look me right in the eye and say, “You’re as good as anybody else,” as if trying to convince me—and maybe even herself— that this was true. Not all parents have to talk to their children in this way. I now know that sociologists and psychologists call this “racial and ethnic socialization.” My mother was trying to make up for the toll that society was taking on my soul.

THE HOLES IN OUR SOULS

I relate to the Samaritan woman because she also grew up in a society where there was very little affirmation and validation of her worth as a woman or as an ethnic person. I believe that after a while she developed “a hole in her soul.” It could be that she lacked the nurture and affirmation she so desperately needed and eventually she began to look for love in all the wrong places. Maybe she was thirsty for love, for someone who would affirm her and validate her and touch her—someone who didn’t think of her as dirty, unclean and defiled. So perhaps she tried to fill the hole in her soul with romantic relationships. She wasn’t a bad person. She was a thirsty person—just like you and me. She needed validation. She needed nurture. She needed affection. All of us do. Human beings are born needing nurture and personal care. Scientists have proven that babies will fail to thrive if they do not get love and attention, even if all of their physical needs are met. As people made in the image of God, we are relational beings, and we need to be in caring, life-giving relationships.

I think my friend Sam tried to fill the hole in her soul by getting married. She looked for a man who would say, “I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you—I want to marry you.”

That may be her story. What’s yours? What messages have you received over time that have caused you to doubt your unique worth as a person m...

Table of contents

• A Credible Witness
• CONTENTS
• FOREWORD
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION Becoming a Credible Witness
• 1 KNOW MY CONTEXT TO KNOW MY STORY
• 2 BEGIN WITH A DIVINE MANDATE
• 3 ENGAGE IN INTENTIONAL INTERACTION
• 4 RELINQUISH POWER AND EMBRACE NEED
• 5 TAKE RISKS TO REACH OUT
• 6 DEVELOP RECIPROCITY AND INTERDEPENDENCE
• 7 GO BEYOND THE SUPERFICIAL
• 8 BE AUTHENTIC AND TRANSPARENT IN WORSHIP
• 9 MAKE A LIFE-CHANGING DECISION
• 10 TAKE ACTION TO BE COUNTERCULTURAL
• 11 BE A BRIDGE BUILDER
• CONCLUSION Taking the Witness Stand
• APPENDIX Leading a Group Discussion
• FURTHER READING
• NOTES
• About the Author