![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Our passage this evening was John 4:1-42, which is the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman.
Joe started with a rather straw-man "typical" exegesis of this passage, talking about Jesus' radical inclusion of the Samaritan woman. There's an element of that, but it rather misses the point. The story starts with Jesus demanding water from the woman (actually, it doesn't, I interjected, it starts with Jesus resting by Jacob's well, thus linking the story with the Jewish heritage; that aspect we rather neglected, as Jim pointed out), which would have been a pretty shocking thing for the woman - here is a man, speaking to her openly. Worse, he was a Jew. The initial conversation must have been very confusing for her - he was offering to give her living water (~=running clean water)??? Was he greater than Jacob?. Then the abrupt change of conversation, and he shows that he knows about her previous five men. That must have been pretty shocking; indeed, she changes the subject hastily.
We side-tracked hugely at about this point. We will all eventually worship in Spirit and in Truth - yes, the Jews have it right for now, but that's relative to True Worship which will happen when the Kingdom comes. Jim took this theme and ran with it - he thinks that we as a church should put worship far more centrally to our life - if we put worship at the heart of our deliberations about issues that affect the church, then we'd be much more likely to have the Spirit involved in our deliberations. The woman goes and takes up an apostolic ministry; we aren't told anything about whether she improves her life or not. Worship should be coming first, not discipline. Christ doesn't say to her "You must marry your partner", nor "you should ditch this man and go back to one of your previous husbands". We shouldn't be saying to people "you're an evil sinner. Oh, by the way, God loves you", but more "God loves you. Come, worship Him, and repent of your sins". There's tension here, though - Christ is radically including the Samaritan woman, but is also saying "actually, you need to sort your life out; 6 husbands isn't acceptable behaviour". Similarly, there are some things that really are not acceptable for people to do (and, slightly differently, for priests to do), but we as a church lack a mechanism for drawing lines in the sand; in some senses, this is a virtue. [Discussion of heresy here, which I'll update later, once I have the facts to hand].
It's also interesting, in that here again Christ is using a woman to proclaim his good news; also that the men can't quite accept it - they start back-tracking towards the end of the passage.
There was more we covered, but these seem to be the things that stuck in my mind.
Joe started with a rather straw-man "typical" exegesis of this passage, talking about Jesus' radical inclusion of the Samaritan woman. There's an element of that, but it rather misses the point. The story starts with Jesus demanding water from the woman (actually, it doesn't, I interjected, it starts with Jesus resting by Jacob's well, thus linking the story with the Jewish heritage; that aspect we rather neglected, as Jim pointed out), which would have been a pretty shocking thing for the woman - here is a man, speaking to her openly. Worse, he was a Jew. The initial conversation must have been very confusing for her - he was offering to give her living water (~=running clean water)??? Was he greater than Jacob?. Then the abrupt change of conversation, and he shows that he knows about her previous five men. That must have been pretty shocking; indeed, she changes the subject hastily.
We side-tracked hugely at about this point. We will all eventually worship in Spirit and in Truth - yes, the Jews have it right for now, but that's relative to True Worship which will happen when the Kingdom comes. Jim took this theme and ran with it - he thinks that we as a church should put worship far more centrally to our life - if we put worship at the heart of our deliberations about issues that affect the church, then we'd be much more likely to have the Spirit involved in our deliberations. The woman goes and takes up an apostolic ministry; we aren't told anything about whether she improves her life or not. Worship should be coming first, not discipline. Christ doesn't say to her "You must marry your partner", nor "you should ditch this man and go back to one of your previous husbands". We shouldn't be saying to people "you're an evil sinner. Oh, by the way, God loves you", but more "God loves you. Come, worship Him, and repent of your sins". There's tension here, though - Christ is radically including the Samaritan woman, but is also saying "actually, you need to sort your life out; 6 husbands isn't acceptable behaviour". Similarly, there are some things that really are not acceptable for people to do (and, slightly differently, for priests to do), but we as a church lack a mechanism for drawing lines in the sand; in some senses, this is a virtue. [Discussion of heresy here, which I'll update later, once I have the facts to hand].
It's also interesting, in that here again Christ is using a woman to proclaim his good news; also that the men can't quite accept it - they start back-tracking towards the end of the passage.
There was more we covered, but these seem to be the things that stuck in my mind.
(no subject)