The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating by Andy Stanley

Author:Andy Stanley
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2015-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

(JOHN 4:27, emphasis added)

The Greek term translated surprised is translated in other sections of John as amazed. One translation says they marveled. Men didn’t talk to women alone in public. Rabbinic law taught that a man who spoke to a woman alone in public brought evil upon himself.6 Besides, Jews didn’t mix with Samaritans at all unless they absolutely had to. So for Jesus to be talking alone with a Samaritan woman was . . . scandalous. But at the same time, his decision to address this woman elevated her dignity in ways we cannot fathom. More so in light of the fact that this was not just any Samaritan woman. She had a past. A past that may have explained why she chose to make her trek to the well alone instead of in the company of the other women from her village. No doubt she hesitated even to make eye contact with this Jewish man who had apparently wandered off course on his way to somewhere else.

Best we can tell, this was early in Jesus’ ministry. Eventually the apostles grew accustomed to such unusual, unbecoming behavior from their Rabbi. Jesus went out of his way to elevate the status of women simply by stopping and acknowledging their presence and thus their value. When the gospel writers penned their individual accounts of Jesus’ life, they ran the risk of undermining his credibility and theirs by including his interactions with women. Apparently, there were so many similar exchanges that the writers knew they could not overlook all of them and stay true to the story line. For example, if it had been possible for the gospel writers to have navigated around the fact that women first discovered and announced the resurrection, I’m sure they would have. But there was no way past the truth that it was Jesus’ female followers who were up before dawn to visit the tomb. When the women ran to report his body missing, Luke tells us the men in the room responded just like you would expect men to respond:

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