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This week I'm reflecting on the #MeToo hashtag, places of privilege in culture and the whether or not we really understand the story of the women at well in John 4?
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
So I've been watching this Me Too hashtag unfold on social media. Women in my life, women that I know, women that I love, women that I care for deeply posting about their experiences with sexual harassment and sexual assault in the world. And I've been hesitant to say anything about this because as a man, in a place of privilege in society, it's really not my place to comment at all right now, but simply to listen and to absorb this and to think about how I can respond differently, I can be better and call other men to be better in the world around me. But there is something that I want to draw our attention to because there's this story in the Gospels. It's in John four in particular where Jesus has this interaction with this Samaritan woman and he goes to this meeting with her.
Speaker 1:He meets her out in the open day which was strange for a man to be talking to a woman in that culture at that time. But through the course of his conversation he realizes this woman has been married five times. And I think sometimes the way that we read this story is to assume that Jesus looks at this woman who's made all these mistakes, all these in fact sexual errors in her life, and he has grace on her, he has forgiveness for her, and he treats her as a human being, and it's a beautiful story. Except here's the thing that we miss: In that culture, that woman had no choice about when or how or if she was going to be divorced. In that culture, the only person who could initiate a divorce was a man.
Speaker 1:That story is not about Jesus finding a woman who has made errors in the past and taking pity on her and forgiving her. That is about Jesus coming across a woman who has been victimized over and over and over again by the men in her culture and Jesus says I treat you with dignity and respect and I will listen to your story and I will be here with you whether it is appropriate or not because you are a human being worthy of that. And as men in this culture that is something we need to learn from and we need to emulate. Are we willing to listen? Are we willing to understand?
Speaker 1:Are we willing to hear the stories that are uncomfortable for us? To know the women around us, women that we love, women that we have never met, women that we pass by on the street all the time have been treated and victimized in these same ways. That is what Christ calls us to.