Sligo22: River of Life
Nicola Neal is an activist, pioneer, speaker and author. She is founder and CEO of Every Life International, a charity working with the urban poor in deprived communities around the world. Here’s a summary of what she had to say during the second week of #Sligo22 (NB: notes taken during Week B).
I’ve been married to Simon for 27 years. He was my childhood sweetheart, and I can’t remember life without him in it. I have two children. My son is 24, he lives in London. He graduated with a degree in Politics and works in Westminster. My son spent his childhood in the slum. He would home school himself in the mornings and spend every afternoon with me serving the poor. Justice runs through his veins. He’s a big dreamer and wants to be an influence in the global, political arena.
My daughter is nearly 20. She lives her life wholeheartedly. She has scaled more mountains in her 19 years than most of us have to climb in a lifetime. She is nothing short of stunningly brave. It’s my biggest joy and my deepest honour to call her my daughter.
We used to live in the beautiful UK city of Bath. We ran a church with another couple for ten years. Then in 2009, the Lord moved us to live in Uganda, where we began our ministry “Every Life”. We work among the poorest of the poor in slum communities. It’s a complete joy and honour to give our lives to serve the ones who hold a special place in the heart of Jesus.
Last night, Johnny was talking on John 7 whereJesus issues an invitation, “Anyone who’s thirsty, come to me, and I’ll give you a drink of living water.” Tonight, we’re going to jump back to John 4 tonight. Here we’ll find Jesus issuing a woman the same invitation. It’s a long chapter but worth it, hang in there with me.
There is so much that I love about this story. We could spend the whole week talking about this and we would not run out of things to say. Here we find Jesus walking from Judea to Galilee. He’s moving from one place to another. Samaria is geographically bang in the middle of the two. It would make sense to us to travel through Samaria. But if we take some time to look at the context of the story, Jesus didn’t have to go through Samaria at all. In this time, the Jews and Samaritans had been enemies for hundreds of years. The Jews would do everything they could to avoid the Samaritan people and the places they lived - Samaria was one of them so there was a very well-known trade route that Jesus could have taken. It caused a huge diversion. That was what was expected because no one would go through that place if they were Jewish.
So why did Jesus decide he had to go that way? I think it’s because of this: avoiding people has never been the way of Jesus. And there was someone that he wanted to have a conversation with.
He was tired and sat down. A woman appeared. In the context, the male Jewish attitude towards women was far from ideal. Women were seen as immoral, untrustworthy; they were considered to be little more than property to be bought and sold. They had no standing in society. They weren’t allowed to testify in court (the testimony of a woman was considered untrustworthy). They weren’t allowed to talk to men in public. A husband would not even address his wife on the street. Many Jewish men started their prayers thanking God they were born neither a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.
And then Jesus sits at a well and starts to engage with a Samaritan - Jesus, a Jew - starting to engage in conversation - that’s pretty shocking right there, that’s not normal. But take it one step further: a Jewish man with a Samaritan woman. This escalates to nothing short of scandalous. She understands it. Jesus asks for a drink, and she says, “How can you ask me? I’m a Samaritan, you’re a Jew.”
I love this woman. One day I’m going to meet her, in heaven. The story tells us she came to draw water at noon. That was not the normal time of day. Going to the well was the social highlight of a woman’s day, and all the women would congregate, gossip and spend time together. But not this woman. She’s come alone in the middle of the day.
It’s become a matter of speculation as to why. Many would suggest it’s because of the assumption that she was immoral, unclean, living with man number six, having had five husbands. Maybe that’s the truth. Or maybe there’s something else going on. Maybe, life had dealt her a really hard hand. Living in an era where only men could instigate divorce. Maybe she wasn’t able to produce children, in a culture that placed extreme importance on bearing children. Maybe those men had divorced her so they could find more fertile wives and have children. Maybe, she’d been passed on from husband to husband from brother to brother in line with Levitical marriage law and culture. Maybe she had been nothing less than trafficked. Maybe she wasn’t at all in control of her circumstances.
It’s really important to take the time to understand the stories and contexts around them, before we draw conclusions that this women was a brazen adulterer. She was living on the margins of society, on the margins of the margins. Her life is full of isolation and pain. So when Jesus sits and chooses to engage with her, He intentionally crosses over every religious, racial, cultural, gender and moral boundary that was in existence at that time. He violated all of them - He didn’t care. What He saw was a person - a broken person - who He wants to engage with.
Oh Jesus, you’re so wonderful. You can imagine how His question took her by surprise. She knows it’s scandalous. “What am I supposed to make of this?” It’s interesting she replies. Most women would have kept their head down, trying to stay out of trouble and not listening. I think in the UK, we’d say she had grit in her belly. I wonder what that could reveal to us about her. I wonder what she saw when she looked in the eyes of Jesus that day. There had been nothing but rejection, rebuke, condemnation and judgement from others. But what did she see in the eyes of Jesus? Did she see something different? Did she see grace? Did she see mercy? Did she see love?
I think if we’re really honest most of us can relate to this woman. Most of us know what it is like to feel the deep pain of shame and brokenness. At some point in our lives, the dream that we had imagined that didn’t quite work out the way we expected it to. The path that we suddenly find ourselves walking along that we never expected to find ourselves on. The parts of our lives we would rather people don’t see. But Jesus sees it all, all our joy and all our sorrow. He sees our mourning and He sees our pain. He sees our beauty and our ashes. And He chooses to come and engage with us and meet us right where we are at. And that’s what He does here: He breaks into her very ordinary moment. She would’ve been doing that every day for years, since she was young. He begins to speak to her about something extraordinary. And it’s stunning, to me.
He begins to declare to her, “There is so much more for you!” Verse 13: “Whoever who drinks this water will never thirst.”
I think, at the time, those who lived near a desert had a much better understanding of what it is to be truly thirsty. In slums, where water is a rare luxury and the roads are dusty and the sun is hot, water is an issue of life and death. This woman is told, “I have water for you that will satisfy you from the inside out, a water that brings true life.”
So easily we get caught up in life and look for things to fulfil that longing that never will be filled. Jesus is saying, “Only I can truly satisfy the longing of your soul. Everything is found in me.” And the woman replies in verse 25: “The Messiah will explain everything to us.” And Jesus says, “I am He.” I am the hope you have been waiting for. I am the Healer, Redeemer the Restorer, the one you have been longing for. And there is so much more for you, more hope, more joy, more healing. And it’s all found in me. Do you want a drink?
It’s stunning, this story.
Help him!
A little while ago I was back in Uganda, we had a young guy on our staff team. He’s amazing and now 22 years old. When I first met him, he was ten and very sick. He was HIV positive and in the end stages of life. He had AIDS, TB and heart failure. They’d done everything they could do in hospital; they gave him pain medication and we took him back home to his mother and explained everything. It was so painful. We knew him and he’d been coming to our group for a year. Mama was raising him by herself and they’re a beautiful family. I couldn’t imagine the pain of watching your child die, and not being able to do anything. And Sadam was walking up and down and screaming, in so much pain, going out of his mind. He was trying to pull his skin off to escape the pain and smashing his head against the wall, and mama was rocking, curled up - and it was just trauma. And we came, and she cried, “Help him!”
And we said, “There’s nothing that we can do. But can we pray for him in the name of Jesus?” So we got on our knees and we began to pray for the power of Jesus to come into his life. Sadam asked, “What are you doing?” And a Sadam said, “I want to pray.” We said, “Just speak the name.” And this tiny, dying, ten-year-old boy speaks the name of Jesus. And the moment he spoke the name of Jesus, all pain left his body in an instant. The whole place shifted: peace, presence and stillness came into the room. The mama wept and she said, “I need Jesus.” And gave her life to Jesus.
Twelve years later, he still lives in the same slum community. I was doing an interview for him to document his story. And I said, “Do you remember this time?” He is so full of the power and presence of Jesus. At the beginning he said, “Mama Nicola, I was walking down this passageway, and as I walked past this person they just fell over onto the ground and said, “I must have Jesus!” So I led him to Jesus and I want to start a house in his church, is this okay?” And I said, “Very okay.”
This is my Sadam, little Sadam, dying Sadam, now a pillar of resurrection life in his community. He took a drink and now it’s becoming a river. He’s planted three churches in the past six months. He asks, “Is that okay?” And I’m like, “Yes!” I’m just trying to keep up.
I asked him to tell me his story. I asked, “Do you remember the day you met Jesus?” So I transcribed it in his words. Who better to tell his story than him himself?
I was so sick then, that whenever I passed people they didn’t want anything to do with me. I was disgusting to them. HIV, TB and pneumonia were destroying my life. People would throw rocks and stones at me. They called me a moving corpse. They would shout in the streets, “Here comes the walking dead.” People never believed I would accomplish anything. Most assumed that I would die. But I didn’t die because I met Jesus. Now as I walk around our community people see me and they are confused. They ask who I am. And I reply, “I am the one you called a walking corpse. But I am alive. I am very much alive because of Jesus.”
He got his strength and went to school and grew in his relationship with Jesus. We baptised him a few weeks after. He went into the water and came out and started to preach the gospel. Men came out of the bar, drunk and high. One by one, he led them to Jesus and they got baptised too.
Sadam took a drink and it’s become a river of life. Now he’s seen the power of God in his community. It’s so stunning.
So often our human tendency is to judge people because of our stereotypes, customs, prejudice, bias, conscious or unconscious, and dismiss people. It would’ve been very easy to do that with Sadam that day. But Jesus never wrote Sadam off. Jesus always saw people regardless of who they were, what they’d done, where they were from, what their reputations were. He sees people and wants to engage with them regardless. That’s what we need to do as a church. That is the way of Jesus. That is the way of love. It takes our time and intentionality, and risk and boldness and courage. Sometimes, it means putting ourselves in very uncomfortable situations. But it is what changes lives. Sometimes it’s what changes history. Even if it’s just for one person. The woman at the well. Or the Sadam in the community.
My challenge for you today, and for me as well, is, who is the one?
Who is the woman at the well? Who is the kid at the slum? Who is the one waiting for you to cross the boundary line between you and them? And say, “There is life for you. There is no shame to be trafficked in here. Just love. Just grace. Just mercy.”
Who’s the one?
Who’s the one waiting in front of you? Who can you stand in front of and say, “You are not the walking dead, not a walking corpse.” Who’s the one?
And tonight I feel like the Lord wants to do two things:
Firstly, stand and invite the spirit to come. We’re going to invite him to come and bring a fresh wave of His Spirit. I believe He wants to minister life and healing to you and to me. And then we’re going to ask Him to send us out.