Three Ways to Speak with Compassion

I’ve been thinking a lot about Samaritans lately. Two Samaritan individuals in particular. One was a woman that Jesus had a conversation with at a well. The other was fictional, part of a parable that Jesus told. Both have lessons for us about compassion that we really need to hear right now. This week, we will look at Jesus and the Samaritan woman.

Compassion for a Samaritan

In John 4, there’s an account of a conversation between Jesus and a Samaritan at a well in Samaria. The whole encounter was full of controversy. Jesus, a Jew, would not be expected to even travel through Samaria, much less talk to a Samaritan (and a woman at that!).

Let’s back up so we can understand why. The land called Samaria during Jesus’s life wasn’t always Samaria. It used to be part of Israel, part of the promised land God promised to Moses and the Israelites. The land was divided between the 12 tribes of Israel. Fast forward a few centuries and Solomon was king of all of Israel. He made some (very) bad decisions toward the end of his reign and, as a result, God split Israel into two. The northern kingdom was still called Israel and included the area occupied by 10 of the tribes. The southern kingdom was called Judah. It consisted of the area owned by the tribes of Judah and Benjamin and included the city of Jerusalem, where the temple of God was.

As time went on, Israel and Judah were occupied, exiled, conquered multiple times. By the time Jesus was born, the country of Israel consisted of what was Judah and the land around the sea of Galilee in the far north of the original country. In between the two areas was Samaria. The Israelites that came back from exile and settled back in Samaria had intermarried with other races and established their own ways of worshiping God (since they couldn’t go to the temple).

By the time Jesus was an adult, Samaritans were very much an ethnically mixed people and looked down on by Jews (do you see where we are going with this yet?). Most Jews who traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem went the long way around, over the mountains and across the Jordan river. They didn’t want to be seen within the borders of Samaria. To stop at a well, in the middle of the day, to talk to a Samaritan woman was just scandalous for a Jewish man.

And yet, that’s where we find Jesus on this day. He was hot and tired from a long journey on foot, so he sat down by Jacob’s well, outside the town of Sachar in Samaria. When the Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water for the day, Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (John 4:7). The woman’s response tells us all we need to know about Jew-Samaritan relations.

The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) - John 4:9

What follows is a conversation between Jesus and the woman that is full of hard truths. The woman was adulterous, she had already had five different husbands and was living with a man who was not her husband. She was considered the lowest of the low, even to other Samaritans. Jesus was unashamed to point out her sins. He was willing to speak truth, but he never condemned. He didn’t attack her character or treat her as if she was worthless. In fact, His purpose was to redeem her out of her sin. His words were convicting, but not mean. Shameful, but not spiteful. And when he was done, she knew who he was and unashamedly went to tell others.

What’s the Point?

I’m glad you asked! I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the world (and our country especially) is fractured right now. There are more divisions in the US than my high school algebra class. Not only do we all suddenly know everything about everything, but we know that the person we disagree with is hateful, ignorant, unwilling to listen and probably out to get us. We have to attack them before they attack us, because of course we have to win.

Does that sound familiar? Hopefully that’s not your attitude, but I bet it’s one that you’ve experienced.

There has to be a better way. There must be a way to talk to people, especially ones we disagree with, that honors God and builds up rather than tears down. Fortunately, the Bible spends a little time talking about how we speak to each other!

Here are three ways the Bible instructs us to speak to others

so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. – Ephesians 4:14-16

Paul is saying that it is easy to get caught up in the latest argument, the best sounding tweet, the most liked influencers. And you know the old saying: garbage in, garbage out.

Instead we should “speak truth in love.” DON’T FORGET THE “IN LOVE” PART! Yeah, I all-caps’d that. Because we do, all the time. Jesus spoke truth to the Samaritan woman. But he did so with the purpose of redeeming her out of her sin. He spoke to her in love, not in condemnation. He wasn’t trying to gaslight her or own her like a Twitter troll. He wasn’t trying to win, except to win her soul to him.

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. - Ephesians 4:29

Still Paul, still Ephesians. Do your words, whether spoken or typed, build up? Do they give grace to those who hear? Or do they tear down, belittle? Do you resort to ad hominem attacks or character building encouragement?

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. - James 3:6

Really, read all of James 3:1-12. James (Jesus’s brother) pulls zero punches. He throws haymaker after haymaker and lands each one. He compares the tongue to the rudder of a ship, a wildfire, a reptile, poison and restless evil. And he’s not wrong. In verse 10 he says, “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not be so.” (emphasis mine).

It is so easy to burn a person’s whole world down with our words. It takes very little effort. But what does it accomplish? Maybe it makes you feel good for a minute. But do you want to face God and, when he asks you what your accomplishments were, say, “well, I won a ton of Facebook comments wars?” Or do you want to look God in the eye and have him say, “Well done good and faithful servant?”

by Rob Trahan