Today we line up two stories from John’s Gospel. Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews comes to Jesus by night. The unnamed Samaritan woman at the well comes to Jesus in broad daylight. The contrasts continue. Nicodemus is a Jew and a leader. The Samaritan woman is of a tribe that had unfriendly, even hostile relations with the Jews. The Jews considered Samaritans to be half Jewish because they intermarried with Assyrian tribes for six hundred years. Talk about holding a grudge.

We are told that Nicodemus is a Pharisee, a righteous leader of the Jews. The Samaritan woman has had five husbands in a life that was likely more tragic than scandalous. She comes to the well at noon in the heat of the day to avoid contact with other women of the village. She is outcast and lonely. Her ancestors on the Assyrian side of the family tree worshiped idols. The Jews of Jerusalem haven’t forgotten it.

While both Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman completely miss important things that Jesus says to them, look at who recognizes the true identity of Jesus. As we discussed last week, Nicodemus takes the entire three years of Jesus’ earthly ministry before he slowly warms up and believes who Jesus really is. The Samaritan woman is the first person in the Bible to whom Jesus reveals his identity as the Messiah. Echoing God’s name to Moses, Jesus tells the woman, “I am he.”

So I ask you, does God have a sense of humor or what? Jesus first reveals that he is the Messiah not to Caesar, not to Pilate, not to the disciples, but to an unnamed, lonely, outcast Samaritan woman in the dusty outback of Samaria. And we read this Gospel story of the woman with five husbands the same week that Elizabeth Taylor with her seven husbands (or was it eight?) is called to her rest!

Today I want to introduce you to a topic you probably never knew existed. It is called the history of interpretation. For example during the period of slave trading in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was common for clergy to preach sermons to slaves citing passages from Paul that encouraged them to submit to their masters. Hopefully today we would never interpret scripture along those lines nor preach sermons like that. When it comes to the subject of the treatment of women by preachers and the public, sadly we often find ourselves stuck in the same kinds of interpretations we heard about slaves two centuries ago.

You can line up nearly two thousand years of preaching about the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and how Eve ate the apple of knowledge and wisdom after being tempted by the serpent. Right down to the present day you will hear sermons that say “Eve was tempted. She ate the apple. She committed the original sin.” But if you go back to the text you will find that it literally says “Adam was standing right beside her.”

NOW if you ask whether Adam as master of the household exercised good manly leadership in this situation you find that instead of grabbing Eve by the hand and saying “Let’s get out of here, this serpent is a nut cake” he stands there complicit in his silence. He must be thinking “OK, this seems a little shaky, so Eve, you eat the apple and let’s see what happens.”

NOW that we examine the text a bit closer the issue of who committed the original sin is not so clear. Any reasonable interpretation would have to say, BOTH were guilty. Yet the tired old interpretation that Eve was guilty and therefore women are somehow spiritually or morally inferior is an interpretation that benefits one party (men) at the expense of another (women).

In the same way, if you look at interpretations of this story of the Samaritan woman at the well, you find two thousand years of preaching casting her in the role of a harlot, a sinful woman of loose morals, and even the village prostitute. Yet a closer examination of this text reveals no information that would lead us to these conclusions.

Notice that Jesus does not mention repentance to her, so how can we conclude that her sin is an issue here? The woman could very well have been widowed, abandoned, or divorced multiple times. Her present “husband” could be an arrangement of financial dependence, sanctioned by Old Testament law where a childless woman must marry her deceased husband’s brother. There are all kinds of situations that would render this woman’s life tragic rather than scandalous.

When the woman says “I see you are a prophet”, she is making a confession of faith. Jesus in turn sees her for her dependence and loneliness. Jesus sees her not as a hated Samaritan, not as a woman, not as a person with a tragic past, but as a child of God – with value, significance, and dignity in God’s eyes. Given this reading of the text, why do so many churches perpetuate misogyny in our world today? Why do churches marginalize half of society?

The sad truth is that by interpreting, preaching, and insisting that women are somehow inferior to men, entire churches have historically benefitted. From Genesis to Revelation the projection of masculine fear of the feminine into preaching and the very framework of churches themselves has led to more human misery and suffering than all the wars in history.

What we hear in church and the framework for how our churches are organized matters to society. If the subtext of the sermon week after week contains a message about the inferiority of women, then you will find some families where violence towards women seems to be somehow condoned. If you see male clergy sticking to the tired old line that the disciples were all male, therefore only men can be ordained (I might add the disciples were all Jewish too), you will find businesses clinging to compensation and hiring policies favoring men over women.

If we can only rid ourselves of bias and judgment; if we can only rise above petty moralistic interpretations, these stories have powerful transforming messages for us. This story about the woman at the well is not at all about morality or her sinfulness. This story is about the identity of Jesus, the Messiah who offers us dignity and new life in a relationship with God.

After all, she is the first person in the Gospels to seek out others and tell them about Jesus. “Come and see” she says to her neighbors. Jesus is still at that well today. He looks you in the eyes and offers living water, new life, so that you may live abundantly. Like the woman at the well, can you accept his offer? Will you run to your neighbors to tell them about the Jesus you met at the well?