Have you ever been in a social setting where someone out of the blue turns to you and asks a question about God, and though you might be eager to answer it just feels awkward – wrong place, wrong time? Maybe in your mind you are responding with a masterful combination of profundity and wit, but as you hear your own words coming out they sound canned, forced, out of place for the setting. People smile politely but both you and they know things just got weird and look for a way to move the conversation along to something else . . .

It’s not much of a generalization to say that church people are comfortable talking about God in churchy settings with churchy people, but often struggle talking about God with those outside the church. Maybe it’s because we’ve really only learned to talk about God in that one way, and in other settings it doesn’t always translate well.

There is a section in Luke’s gospel where Jesus takes a long detour from his most frequented territory of Galilee and Judea (aka very churchy places full of very churchy people) and goes through Samaritan country – where people hold some unorthodox ideas about God, don’t look at the Bible with the same reverence the Jews do, and hold a good deal of skepticism about the religious establishment. And we see that on this detour Jesus’ communication style changes. Where a lot of preaching and teaching happens in Jewish territory, in Samaria it’s almost all parables. As Jesus travels along he tells stories that slip past the defenses of his listeners, explode stereotypes about what God is like, and connect God to the happenings of everyday life. And these stories endure as some of the Bible’s most powerful teachings on life with God.

Between Sundays you and I live in Samaria. We need to learn from Jesus how to live our everyday lives immersed in him, and how to talk to others about God while we’re on the journey. Series starts this Sunday.

Lord bless you friends, and looking forward to being with you this weekend -

Tim
Mt 6:33