Compassion and Women -- John 4:3-30, 39-42 • Geoff Bradford

Turn our attention to God's Word. We're reading today as is our custom to read out loud together. We're looking at John chapter four. We'll start there in verse four. If you will find that in your bulletin or look up on the screen. Let's read together. You ready? Three, two, one.

And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the field that Jacob had given to his son, Joseph. Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 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 do not associate with Samaritans." Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself as did his sons and his livestock." Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water." Jesus said to her, "Go call your husband and come here." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband.' For you have had five husbands and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true." The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know. For salvation is from the Jews. For the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming. He who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman but no one said, "Who do you seek?" or "Why are you talking with her?" So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, "Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" They went out of the town and were coming to him. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there two days and many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe. For we have heard for ourselves and know that this indeed is the Savior of the world." — John 4:3-30, 39-42

This is the Word of God. Thanks be to God.

The Compassion of Jesus

We're in a series on the compassion of Jesus. We've been looking all this fall at different pictures, snapshots from the New Testament gospels showing and highlighting for us the compassion of Jesus. And as I said at the beginning of the series, there was no word in Greek, in classic Greek before this time for compassion. The New Testament writers had to come up with a word to describe Jesus. They'd never seen anything like him before.

This word in Greek—I'm going to give you a little Greek lesson this morning. Sorry if you didn't want to come to Nerd Church this morning. You're at Nerd Church. The word in Greek is my favorite word in Greek. It's splanchnizomai. Okay, we're going to say that together. I'm going to say it again and then you're going to say it.

Splanchnizomai.

Ready?

Splanchnizomai.

See, you came to church and you got your money's worth already this morning. You already learned Greek, right? This word comes from the word meaning intestines. Isn't that weird? What they were describing and creating this word was something that they saw in Jesus which went really deep in him. This compassion—and I know, it sounds weird that this word comes from the word for intestines—but that's really not that different from a word that we use to mean courage. We talk about a person. She has guts. He has guts, right?

I mean, it means somebody who's courageous and really that is so fitting as we read these gospel accounts because again, today, we're going to look at the gutsy compassion of Jesus and we're going to look at this story that's probably familiar to a lot of you. This interaction between Jesus and this woman of Samaria and I want to look at it under these three headings. If you're taking notes, the object of Jesus's compassion, the shape of Jesus's compassion, and the impact of Jesus' compassion.

Before I go any further, I just want to give a nod to my wife, Susan, and some conversations we've had about this and some writings of Elise Fitzpatrick. She has a book out called Worthy and it's really good. I've taken a lot from this.

The Object of His Compassion

So, the object of his compassion. Now, this is of course the woman at the well but I want to think about what we know about this woman. First, of course, she's a Samaritan. She's from Samaria. She's a Samaritan woman and that means she's from a particular region in Israel that lies between the northern part which is around the Sea of Galilee where Jesus was from Nazareth and where he did a lot of his miracles, and the South where Jerusalem is and Judea and the capital area. There's this area in the middle called Samaria.

Jesus going there ignores about a one thousand year tension between the people of Israel and the Samaritans. It stems back to history over almost a thousand years before when Jesus had this interaction. When there was a division between the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, the Northern Kingdom eventually is overrun by the nation of Assyria and people intermingle with them. They begin to take on the characteristics, reject the temple in Jerusalem, take on some of the trappings even of the religious system of Assyria and they were viewed therefore as outsiders. They were viewed as foreigners. There was a deep racial prejudice against Samaritans. God-fearing Jews would go six days to walk around Samaria rather than going straight through it. If you went through Samaria, you had one of two outcomes. You could be killed and it's a dangerous place for Jesus and the disciples to go through, but also a Jew would consider themselves defiled by going through there.

And yet, what do we read here in verse three? Jesus had to go through Samaria. Now, that doesn't mean that somebody was forcing Jesus—you know, knife at the back. Jesus, you gotta go through here. It's like we say, "Oh, you just had to have that extra cookie, right?" Jesus purposed to go there. He chose to go there. And the fact that he did so was shocking. I mean, people reading John's gospel for the first time, hearing it read aloud would have been shocked by this. But you can tell even in the passage, it's shocking to the woman. Jesus interacts with her and she says:

How is it that you, a Jew, are talking to me, a Samaritan, and asking me for a drink?

She is shocked by this. This is like nineteen sixties America. Let's be really truthful about this. In segregation in the United States, there were separate swimming pools for blacks and whites. There were separate water fountains for blacks and whites. White people didn't drink from the same fountain as black people. And this is what Jesus is doing. He's crossing the lines. He wants a drink from her. And in doing so, he treats this Samaritan woman not just as an object of scorn but as a person.

But this encounter is not just shocking because this is a Samaritan. I preached on this a couple years ago and focused on that. I want to focus on the other aspect this morning which is that she is a woman. Again, this is shocking. Do you realize how much in this passage gender comes up?

Notice in verse 27, the disciples come back and they find that he is talking to a woman. They marveled when they saw him talking to a woman. Now, why is that? Well, first century Judaism—a good Pharisee would not even speak to his wife in public. Here's some of the writings that were current in first century Judaism among rabbis about women:

"Rather burn the sayings of the law than teach them to a woman. Let no man prolong a conversation with a woman. Let no one converse with a woman in the streets, not even his own wife."

So the disciples come up and there's their rabbi having a conversation with a woman. The disciples know better. I mean, they know how it works. You don't question your rabbi, right? It tells us in the text that if they had dared, what would their question have been? "Hey, you want us to get rid of her? She bothering you?"

I mean, those would have been some of the questions. Look, Jesus purposed to go through Samaria. Jesus purposed to talk to this woman. That was very obvious to these disciples. Jesus initiated the conversation. Just initiating a conversation with a woman puts you in danger of there being sexual overtones to this conversation, of this being interpreted as fortuitous. And this is all the more important for us.

Did you notice whose well it was listed in this passage? Do you remember? Whose well was it? Jacob's well. So if you know your Old Testament, you go back to Genesis and find out that two of the patriarchs found wives at a well. Isaac's servant was sent and found a wife at a well. Jacob comes to a well. There's Rachel. And this well was the same one. So this scene has all this stuff going on. These are good Jewish boys. They know what's going on here. Don't you think they were like, "This is dangerous behavior, Jesus. What are you doing, Jesus?"

Spurgeon puts it this way: "They were tainted at first with a horrible suspicion that made them marvel that Jesus would openly talk to a woman." But Jesus didn't shrink back. Jesus wasn't worried about ruining his witness. He wasn't worried about what other people might think. He purposed to talk to her.

Is Jesus Good for Women?

So here's the question I have for us today. And this is an honest question for you. Is Jesus good for women? I mean, that may sound like a really strange question—like, well sure, of course, right? But wait. We live in the era of the Me Too movement. And unfortunately, there's been a Church Too hashtag movement. Anybody familiar with what I'm talking about? Story after story of abuses in the church, of women being abused by men abusing their authority. So it's an honest question to ask: Is Jesus good for women?

And I don't want to answer that question too fast. I want to do a little digging because I think this passage has some things to offer us this morning. I want to look at the shape of his compassion toward her because I think it's very telling.

The Shape of His Compassion

Jesus puts himself in a place of need with her. This is remarkable. He asks her for water. He doesn't start off the conversation saying, "Do you know that I can give you eternal life?" He can, right? "Hey, I have something for you. I have a message for you." Of course he does. But he starts off from a position of need, and it's an honest position of need.

In that day, you would have carried a leather bag with you. Jesus and his disciples would have had a small leather bag that they would have used to get the water out of the well. Where were the disciples during all this in John 4? They're in town. That's right. So they've got the leather bag. Jesus is sitting on a little raised platform around this well. He doesn't have anything to draw water with. It's an honest request.

Daniel Niles, a Sri Lankan theologian, says this: "Jesus was a true servant because he was at the mercy of those he came to serve. This weakness of Jesus, we as disciples must share. To serve from a position of power is not true service. That's beneficence."

He goes on to talk about how in Asia he's watched the church over the years assume a position of power—all the orphanages, all the seminaries, all the schools. And what happens in community, where the church is in a position of power over and over again in Asia, is people distrust the church. They're jealous of the church. But he says this: "The only way to build love between two people or two groups of people is to be related to each other, to stand in need." And he says, "The glory here is not the glory of the lion. It's the glory of the lamb. Jesus comes like a thirsty lamb to her. He comes in weakness and in real need. His request is genuine."

Second, the shape of his compassion is that he takes her seriously. He takes her seriously. As I've already said, it's unacceptable in that day for a man, a good, self-respecting Jewish man, much less a rabbi, to be speaking to a woman in public. And Jesus ignores this and engages her in conversation. But not only that—he engages her in a theological conversation.

Rabbis said you're under threat of hell if you teach a woman theology. And yet Jesus engages her in a theological conversation and he addresses her as a social equal.

And then he reveals to her what is arguably the most important teaching in all of the New Testament with regard to worship. This is a really important passage with regard to worship, and it's given to a Samaritan woman. It's astounding.

Jerob Bars, a professor at Covenant Seminary, says this: "Jesus treats a Samaritan woman as a rational, thoughtful person." He should know, of course, for he's the creator of women as persons—persons who are just as much in the image of God as any man he has made. As the creator of women, he is fully aware of her intellectual abilities and her capacity to learn and discuss theology. No teacher and no man had probably ever spoken to her in this way before, but Jesus enters into a theological discussion with her.

See the shape of his compassion? He comes to her in need. He treats her as a person who is to be taken seriously. And then, third, he engages her heart with truth and empathy—with truth and empathy.

Now, after all this discussion about where real worship happens, Jesus turns the discussion to her. "Go get your husband," right? And she says, "Well, she's had five husbands and the man that she's living with now is not her husband."

But I want you to listen very carefully because I think many of us have heard this preached before. I want to listen very carefully to what he does say and what he doesn't say as he responds to this. Jesus calls her out, but he doesn't shame her. He doesn't shame her.

I wonder how many times, if you've studied this or heard this before, that this is taught as if it's her fault—like she's a bad woman, some notorious sinner, some loose woman. Do you have any idea what it was like for women in that culture?

The four-hundred-year time period between your Old Testament and New Testament was a really terrible time for women. It was very common for women to be widowed. This is because the age for marrying for women was early teens and for men was usually in the twenties. It was very common for women to be widowed. Also, it was not uncommon at all for a woman to be divorced. A man in the first century could look at his wife and say, "I divorced you" for any failure of hers to please him.

So let's conjecture. There's some combination of those two things going on here, right? Some combination of her being probably widowed and probably divorced—probably some of both. What was that like for her? There are no structures really to protect her. She can't go get a job except prostitution. She can't own land. She has no power. So, yeah, she's living with a man who's not her husband.

You know, lots of people when they look at John 4, they point to the fact that Jesus meets her at a weird time. It's the middle of the day. What's she doing out there at the middle of the day? In an arid desert climate, it doesn't make any sense to draw water from the well at that time. All of them would have been going out first thing in the morning to draw water. But a lot of people point to this: she's probably out there in the middle of the day to avoid the people of Sychar. To avoid people, maybe because of her history, there's a stigma on her from the community. Maybe when she goes out, there's talk. "Oh, she's that woman nobody can handle." You know how people are? "Oh, she's the husband killer. She's the black widow."

I wonder if we can have compassion on her. Looking at how Jesus has compassion is so helpful here because he doesn't say, "Hey, no worries." He talks to her about her past, but he doesn't shame her. He treats her like he treats me and like he treats you as two things: sinner and a sufferer, both. All of us are both of those things. All of us have ways that we have shaken our fist in the face of God, but also all of us have ways that we have been deeply hurt and sinned against. We live in a world that's fallen. And like this woman, we desperately need the compassion of Jesus.

So when he calls her out and tells the truth, he's not saying, "Hey, I know you're a whore." He's saying, "I know you. I know you." He deals with her with empathy and truth.

The Gospel Offered

Then, finally, he offers her the gospel. He offers her living water. He invites her to himself. He gives her the gospel.

Is Jesus good for women? Yes. Dorothy Sayers famously said about Jesus: "Perhaps it is no wonder that women were the first at the cradle and the last at the cross. They had never known a man like this man. There had never been such another."

A prophet and a teacher who never nagged about them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized them, who never made jokes about them, never treated them as "oh, the woman, the women, God help us" or "the ladies, God bless 'em." Who took their questions and their arguments seriously, who never mapped out their sphere for them or urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female, who never had an axe to grind or uneasy male dignity to defend, who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious.

If you're a woman here this morning with us or joining us online, you want to know how God the Father views women, look at the person of Jesus. This is not some isolated event. This is over and over in the gospel accounts. Jesus is good for women. Jesus is good for women.

Look at the impact of this. We see what happens. The woman leaves her water jar. I don't know what that meant, but she was clearly derailed from her purpose that day. She was completely off of her schedule. And it sent her in a different direction. She goes back to the town and tells the people, "Come. Come meet this guy." She goes back and she becomes the first recorded non-Israelite to identify Jesus as the Messiah and she's the first missionary.

Do you know that because of this, the Eastern Orthodox branch of the church has a special celebration of her every February 26? It's a holy high holy day they call for the woman of Samaria and they name her. Her name in the Greek Orthodox Church is Photine—P-H-O-T-I-N-E—and it's told that tradition has it that she and two of her sons went to Carthage in North Africa and took the gospel there and were eventually murdered by the emperor Nero.

But I want you to think about this. It's not just Jesus that we see this in in the New Testament. I know a lot of people give the apostle Paul a bad rap. They're like, "Jesus good for women. Paul? We don't think so, right?" Paul wrote Second Timothy and First Corinthians, which do distinguish differences for men and women's roles in the home and church, and yet Paul called women his ministry partners, co-laborers. Do you know that he entrusted his most richly theological book to a woman? I mean, ask most Christians what is the most richly theological book of the New Testament and they'll say Romans. Do you know who carried that? Who Paul entrusted that to? He gave it to Phoebe to make sure it got distributed. A woman. He treated women as equals. Jesus is good for women.

The Ghosts of the Church

Unfortunately, this hasn't always been true in the church. There's a Bible study leader from Dallas named Jen Wilkin who's written about three female ghosts of the church. Now, by ghost of the church, I don't mean like ghosts in white sheets. What I mean is the ways that women are often misunderstood or denigrated. She describes them as the usurper, the temptress, and the child. I just want to talk about these briefly because I want to banish these ghosts from our church, and I want to ask you to help me think about this.

The Usurper. An usurper is when people view a woman as an authority thief—men have been taught that women are looking for a way to take what's been given to them, to take authority. This is the way that this manifests. Maybe women's opinions are viewed as vaguely threatening. There's a little concern, just sort of under the surface, that if you give a woman an inch, she's going to take a mile. If she might rock the boat of a male perspective if she uses her voice. This is meeting a woman who's a strong woman who has opinions and is accomplished. Conversations may feel like sparring matches. Silently, she's questioned in conversations. Just sort of like, "I don't know. I don't know if I agree." There's a lot of doubt cast.

The Temptress. There's the second woman that Jen Wilkin talks about—the temptress. This is what happens with an attractive woman a lot of times in church. A fear that women are sexual predators. People silently question things like, "Was that outfit appropriate for this occasion?" "Was there some kind of hidden sexual innuendo in that statement?" Maybe there's always somebody else that has to be brought into a conversation just so we're all safe. There's sort of safe phrasing that's used by church leaders—"Hey, tell your husband I said hello," or "Many blessings on your family." Like we can't acknowledge that you're just a person. There's always a little weird tension in the room, like eye contact is weird. Can't look at you.

The Child. The third one is the child.

This ghost treats women as intellectually and emotionally weaker than men. This is particularly in conversation or relationship with a younger woman, where a man will speak to a woman in simple terms, use very simple language, overexplain things, talk too loudly, address her emotions or even caution her. I think you're being too emotional about this. Dismiss her when she disagrees because she probably doesn't see the whole picture. Direct her to resources that are less scholarly than what you might recommend for a man.

We've asked the question: Is Jesus good for women? You all said this—great participation this morning. Yes. Is our church? I pray so, but it's going to take banishing some ghosts. It's going to take some work to banish the usurper, the temptress, the child. These have no place among Jesus people, do they? They have no place here. This is not how the Lord Jesus—and what we read in the Bible, even the apostle Paul—relates to women.

The Stereo Illustration

When I was a kid, we had a stereo in our house. I know unless you're over 40, you've probably never seen one of these. I'm going to describe it for you. It was a multi-unit system that played music. It had a record player that sat on top, and underneath it was a tuner with all these dials on it, and then two speakers out to the side. This was before CD players. We didn't even have a tape player in my house.

My dad had one, and I would play with the knobs. I would sit there and mess with the knobs on the tuner. You play something and you turn the balance—you might be familiar with this one. You turn the balance and you can make it go to the left-hand side of the room, and then you can make it go to the right-hand side of the room, back and forth. And if you do that, when you play on the left-hand side, you get certain instrumentation and certain vocals. But if you play it on the right-hand side, you get different instrumentation and different vocals. And if you put it in the middle, well that's what stereo is. Stereo is both together. In your balance, you're hearing both.

And I think that's a great illustration for us about men and women and how we think about the value of women in particular. It's kind of like a kid playing with the stereo. Imagine instead of left and right, we have W and M. We have women and men.

A lot of people, in wanting to talk about gender, want to turn it all the way to the W and talk about women in isolation from men. She's to be known by herself. This is the girl power movement—she doesn't need a man. She might not even need Jesus. We've turned it all the way.

Unfortunately, others crank the knob all the way toward the M for men. And women are known only in contrast to men. He's primary, she's secondary. We can turn her down. Thank you very much. We don't need to hear her voice. And what's noted is what's absent.

But the problem with such approaches is that God created humanity to operate in stereo. He wants the whole volume and the richness of the sound that comes out with two complementary voices that both speak of his glory. This is how God has designed people. This is how God wants his church to be.

We don't want a church—even as a complementarian church—that has just male voices. We want the full richness of what God has given for us. We want to be a church where Jesus is good for women, Jesus is good for men, and we love to enjoy him and one another together.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Prayer

Father, Lord, we pray that you would be exalted and lifted up in this place. Not only by our outward proclamation but by the real relationships, the way we do things, the way that we treat one another. We pray that people would come here and say, "Man, Jesus is good for women"—that this would be lived out in the way our community functions. Father, we pray that you would be prized and lifted up, that you would be every bit the hope of the world today as you were in the first century. That people would see the compassion of Jesus, that they'd smell it off of your people. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.