This week we reflect on the Samaritan woman encounter with Jesus in John 4. Biblical scholar Jerome H. Neyrey spells out in detail just how unconcerned John’s Gospel is about female propriety: “In John 4, all social taboos customarily separating males and females into separate worlds are systematically recognized, but broken and transformed. This upsetting of cultural taboos, moreover, is conscious and intentional; it constitutes an essential part of the author’s communication.”
What are the social taboos that are “broken and transformed” by the text? First, a solitary Samaritan woman approaches Jesus at a public well at the wrong time of day. Since village women normally drew water only at dawn and dusk, a woman appearing alone at noon would have been considered improper. Jesus speaks to her and a lengthy conversation ensues. The woman herself remarks on Jesus’ impropriety. Jews disliked and shunned Samaritans and it was considered inappropriate for men to speak to women outside their kinship circles in public. But Jesus is not deterred.
Second, when Jesus asks the woman to call her husband, Neyrey notes, “She went into the village marketplace where all the men are gathered. The narrative does not say ‘marketplace,’ but from our knowledge of that culture, we would be culturally accurate in imagining males.
gathered together in an open-air space, such as a marketplace…” The message is clear. The Samaritan woman is as far removed from the proper matrona ideal of GrecoRoman culture as anyone could imagine. And yet she exhibits remarkable theological acumen sparring with Jesus over where true worship is found. Unlike the respected rabbi, Nicodemus John 3, who last Sunday meets secretly with Jesus at night and departs still doubting, the Samaritan woman meets him in broad daylight and departs a true believer. John’s Gospel portrays her as the privileged recipient of Jesus’ self-revelation as “Messiah” and the great “I Am” hearkening back to Moses pointing to Jesus’ oneness with the divine. On her word, “Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him” (John 4:39).
For John, the Samaritan woman represents the consummate “outsider” who, after her transformative encounter with Jesus, becomes not only an “insider” but also a leader, publicly proclaiming Jesus the Messiah to both men and women via village communication channels. Along the way the narrative deliberately highlights and then discounts stereotypical female behaviors to which she does not conform. Yet her non-conformity presents no obstacle to her acceptance and subsequent leadership in Jesus’ kinship network.
For me, the most compelling piece of “good news” in this passage is that the Samaritan woman’s search for true worship comes to fruition in her lengthy dialogue with Jesus. In the encounter not only is she changed, but so is Jesus. Her joyful embrace of Jesus’ teaching slakes his hunger to fulfil God’s will “on earth as in heaven.” “I have food to eat that you don’t know about,” says a re-energized Jesus, rejoicing that God’s harvest is indeed vast (John 4:32-38). The woman’s search for true worship “in Spirit and in Truth” is at last fulfilled. Jesus recognizes that he did not sow the hunger for God that already existed within her. But he did reap what another had sown. As for the Samaritan woman, she now joins a group of sowers and reapers “gathering crops for eternal life” (John 4:36).
And what about us?
Where do we find true worship?
Where do we gather crops for eternal life?
Solomzi!