Chuck
March 1st, 2005, 12:24 PM
What amazes me is that no matter what bible text you pick there is always some current issue related to that text. The Gospel lesson for this week is Jesus conversation with the woman at the well. And one of the current news items revolves around the Speech by Larry Summers, the President of Harvard University, who said that women are not equal to men in math and science.
The text for the 3rd Sunday in Lent in year A is always John 4; the 2nd Sunday in Lent is John 3. In John 3 Jesus says something similar to what he says in John 4 but the outcome is totally different. You remember John 3 because it contains John 3:16. “God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whosoever believes in him should not perish but should have eternal life.” You may remember that this conversation begins with Nicodemus. Nicodemus is a good man; a respected religious leader who declares his positive evaluation of Jesus based on his own his this-worldly standards (The People’s New Testament Commentary p 296). Yet Nicodemus never comes to true faith, even though when Jesus is attacked teaching in the temple Nicodemus defends him (7:50-52) and then at the end of the gospel Nicodemus’ courage gives Jesus a royal burial (19:39). So we have in chapter 3 a good man, highly respected Pharisee, who admires Jesus, but never comes to faith.
In our lesson for today we have an immoral, non-Jewish, Samaritan woman. This woman has the longest conversation of anyone with Jesus in all of the gospels. She is on the bottom rung of the ladder as one who is admired and respected; yet she comes to partial faith.
What amazed me as I was thinking about this story is that the issue of woman in relation to men has been in the headlines recently. We normally think of Harvard University as the ultimate in political correctness. The Kennedy’s go to Harvard, the Bushes and Kerry’s go to Yale. Harvard is the upper crust of the upper crust. The women at Harvard have just in the last few years had the opportunity to join sororities. And Harvard sororities are about women becoming the epitome of what it means to be professional and a woman of grace and elegance. Harvard women are not, for the most part, party girls.
So imagine my surprise that Larry Summers the president of Harvard University suggested that part of the reason women hadn't achieved equality in academic science was "intrinsic aptitude." It was nature more than nurture, genes more than prejudice. (Ellen Goodman 02/24/05 the Boston Globe). Summers gave his remarks at MIT where MIT Biology professor Nancy Hopkins walked out saying that she felt she was going to be sick.
The question of men and women equality is a question that apparently has been with us from the beginning of creation. I like the first creation story in Genesis that says God created humankind, male and female he created them, rather than the second creation story that says God created a helper for the man, even though you can understand helper not as one of subordination, but as a person of equality. I like to think that God created Eve as a co-equal partner.
What we have in this Jesus story in John 4 is a woman who is on the lowest rung of the social and cultural ladder in regard to Jesus as a Jewish man. Fist this woman was a Samaritan. The Samaritans were the descendants of the 10 lost tribes. They had intermarried with foreign people. 2 Kings 17 tells us that people from all over the Middle East had settled in what had been the Northern Kingdom and these people worshipped the God of Moses, but also all the gods of all the other nations, so the Samaritans constantly broke the 1st commandment of Moses, namely that people are to worship only one God, Yahweh. The second thing, this person that Jesus talked to was a woman. Jewish men did not talk to Jewish women in public, let alone Samaritan women. Third, this woman was at the well to draw water in the middle of the day. Self-respecting women drew water in the morning. They were not out offering themselves to the public in the middle of the day. The middle of the day was reserved for men.
Jesus is in Samaria. The Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus is at the well, which is located in Schemen between Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal. It was here that Jacob bought a plot of land; here that Joseph’s bones were brought from Egypt and buried; here on this mountain that Jeroboam built a temple after Israel and Judea split so that the people of the Northern kingdom would not travel to Jerusalem to worship. Let it be noted that in Jesus’ day the temple on Mount Gerizim had been destroyed, and when the Gospel of John was written both temples were destroyed, because the Jerusalem temple was destroyed in 70 and John was written sometime after 85.
So Jesus is in the wrong country, talking to the wrong sex, and even asking for a drink of water. She is surprised because of all that I have said. She asks Jesus to explain himself and he says if you knew who was asking you, you would have asked me and I would have given you living water. Jeremiah used the phrase living water to refer to God. Jesus is telling her he is God. She says give me some of that water. Jesus replies, “Go call your husband.” She says, “I don’t have a husband.” She has withdrawn from the dialogue. She has told him the truth but told it in a way to deceive. How often have you and I not lied but told something or withheld something with the intention to deceive. But she is talking to God and Jesus says, “You are right; you have no husband and the man you are now with is not your husband.” She understands that he has supernatural knowledge, so she put Jesus in the highest category she knows and says, “I perceive that you are a prophet.” And then she asks this question. She is trying to cause an argument. She is trying to get the discussion away from herself. When I was a child my dad mowed down what my mother considered her blackberry bushes. Whenever they would begin to discuss my behavior, I would just mention the word blackberries and the discussion was no longer focused on me. That is what this woman is doing. Jesus answers her, “Salvation is form the Jews.” Why - because Jesus is a Jew, but then adds, “The true worshipper will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth.” That is, the true worshipper will worship God consistent with God as revealed in Christ. She then says, “I know the Messiah is coming.” Jesus says, “I am He.”
The disciples have been missing from the scene, because they had gone into town to buy food. Now they return. The woman leaves and asks a question of the townspeople, “Can this be the Messiah? He told me everything about myself.” So the people in the town rushed out to see Jesus and Jesus stayed with them two days. The word “stayed in” is the same as “abided with” them two days. That is the height of faith in John. Those who have faith in the Gospel of John abide with Jesus and Jesus abides with them.
Three things I would have you note about this story. Jesus does not condemn the women. Does not tell her she broke the first commandment. Does not tell her she is a sinner because she has had five husbands and now lives with a man. That may be because women did not have the status in Jesus’ time and she could have simply been passed from man to man without any choice on her part. The second thing I would have you notice is that her life is changed She is no longer the same. She now has the living water. She has a relationship with the living God. She got there through a series of questions. The third thing I would have you notice is that she is now a witness. Though her faith is tentative, she brings people to Jesus.
John’s gospel represents an element of Christianity that did not become the main stream. In John’s church, women are equal. The reason is, in John’s church the Spirit rules and the Spirit is no respecter of persons. In Pentecostal churches today women have equal status with the men. There are women preachers in the Pentecostal churches that have just as much authority as the men. Later the early church began to absorb Roman, Greek and Jewish cultural values and so women were treated as subordinate to men. There are even New Testament scriptures that support the idea that men are superior to women. But the Gospel of John would say that women are equal to men and if they are not in math and science as are the men, it is because of cultural factors that cause women to go into other fields. I don’t think there is any question about how Jesus felt about women, especially if you look at the gospel of John for your answer.
ELLEN GOODMAN
Summers's teachable moment
By Ellen Goodman | February 24, 2005
WASHINGTON
IS IT POSSIBLE that I'm beginning to feel sorry for Larry Summers? Do I need an intervention?
No, it isn't his opponents who have dredged up my soupcon of sympathy for the president of Harvard University. It's his defenders.
The Story That Will Not Die began when Summers offered his opinion on women and science. Deliberately provoking a conference audience, he suggested that part of the reason women hadn't achieved equality in academic science was "intrinsic aptitude." It was nature more than nurture, genes more than prejudice.
When MIT scientist Nancy Hopkins dropped the dime on Summers, there was a firestorm of criticism. But that was followed by a second round in which he was defended as a victim of political correctness, a poor defenseless seeker of wisdom in the Ivy League madrassas.
George Will tagged professor Hopkins as hysterical, a word which, he failed to note, comes from the Greek root for uterus, thus proving that only women can be hysterical. Other pundits either compared Summers' opponents to "religious fundamentalists," accused Harvard of "neo-Stalinist intolerance," or praised poor Larry for facing down "the gods of political correctness."
Even The Washington Post editorial page said that if Summers was punished for the "crime of positing a politically incorrect hypothesis" the "chilling effect on free inquiry will harm everyone." After all, the editorial said, he was "provoking fresh thought on big issues."
Why didn't I think of that? The suggestion that women were innately less able to do math and science wasn't the same old tired stereotype with a sell-by date of 1636, when Harvard was established. It was a cutting-edge fresh thought!
In case you haven't noticed, the phrase "political correctness" is now only used sarcastically. These days, to be politically correct is to be a cowed conformist, too afraid to speak the truth, which -- surprise! -- invariably turns out to be an old conservative idea.
We have come full circle so that uttering a stereotype is classified as daring. Soon, the brave new thing will be to call your 56-year-old secretary a "girl" and the forward thinkers will say that white men can't jump. Summers' own breath of fresh air was to challenge the notion that men and women can be equal at science -- an idea so politically correct that not a single woman has held a math chair at Harvard in 370 years.
Barbara Grosz, chair of the Harvard task force on women in science and engineering, recaps the argument with some exasperation: "The criticism of Summers' talk was not that the ideas he expressed were politically incorrect, but that they were just plain incorrect." How come, she wonders, when Summers talks he's being open-minded and provocative, but when his challengers offer a spirited rebuttal they're accused of trampling on academic freedom?
This is especially ironic since the campus-wide rap, expressed at yet another testy faculty encounter Tuesday, is that Summers never listens and brooks no criticism.
Hopkins, a Harvard PhD and one of 15 senior women scientists who got neighboring MIT to fess up to gender bias, describes the weirdness of being attacked as anti-research or even anti-genetics. "I'm a geneticist," she says, "but the genetics of career choices is just lunacy. We are nowhere near the research on innate differences. But we do know the attitudes that hold people back. When you eliminate the discrimination that says only boys can do math, then we'll talk."
Meanwhile, she shares the deep frustration of women scientists who find themselves back to square one, having to prove that women can so do science. Let's see now, women had only 2.4 percent of the physics PhDs in 1970 but 18 percent in 2003. Is that evolution on steroids?
Ah, but this is about my sympathy for Summers. He needs to be defended from his defenders. The truth is that the Harvard president is on social probation. He's alienated so many people that one more false move and he'll end up at the World Bank where he can insult whole countries.
But I think this is, as they say, a "teachable moment." Summers has expressed his regret at "sending a signal of discouragement." He's repented for remarks that didn't align with what the "research has established." He's regretted the "backlash" against those who disagreed with him.
His opponents are suspicious of this deathbed conversion, and his supporters are sure that he's bowing to the neo-Stalinists. But he has surrounded himself with the retaining walls of task forces and made promises to put the status of women high on his list.
The musical question in Harvard Square is whether he should still be president. Well, remember when women used to curse the inefficiency of feminism? You had to enlighten men one at a time. Do we really want to start all over again?
In the spirit of nurture over nature, I say Save Summers. But get him some new pals.
Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.
John 4 Notes from NRSV
Jesus and the Samaritans
The Pharisees, hostile to John, now turn on Jesus
4. Samaria, between Judea and Galilee, with a mixed people. Samaria was inhabited by mixed remnants of the northern tribes who worshiped the Lord God and used the Pentateuch Jews despised them. In one tradition disciples are forbidden to visit their towns. Mt 10.10, but according got others Jesus was friendly to Samaritans. Remember the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan was the leper that returned to give Jesus thanks.
Jacob’s well
Sychar Well (Jacob's Well)
In the center of the Shechem, the modern city of Nablus, a very special well stands on land purchased by Jacob (Genesis 13:18-19). His son Joseph, whose remains were brought back to the Promised Land by the Israelite Tribes, was buried in a tomb not far from the well.
In John 4, Jesus stood at the well and asked a Samaritan woman for water, eventually revealing himself as the Messiah (John 4:5-26). The ruins of two churches and the unfinished walls of a third are found at the site. A cross-shaped church was built at the site during the Byzantine period using the well as its center.
The Crusaders built their own church over the earlier one. Construction was begun on a Russian Orthodox Church in 1914. Following the Communist revolution in 1917, however, building was stopped and it was never completed. Recent work on the site has added beauty and is completing some parts of the Russian structure.
2 Kings 17:21-41 – The people worship the Lord but also other gods from other lands breaking the 1st commandment.
4:10 Living water
Jeremiah 2:13. For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.
Life: Jesus descended from heaven to bring eternal life (participation in God’s life), through being lifted up, on the cross.
Abundant life: life without measure
17 I have no husband: a true answer but given with an intention to deceive.
20 A prophet: one who should be willing to settle rival religious claims.
23 Worship in truth – In accord with God’s nature seen in Christ.
The text for the 3rd Sunday in Lent in year A is always John 4; the 2nd Sunday in Lent is John 3. In John 3 Jesus says something similar to what he says in John 4 but the outcome is totally different. You remember John 3 because it contains John 3:16. “God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whosoever believes in him should not perish but should have eternal life.” You may remember that this conversation begins with Nicodemus. Nicodemus is a good man; a respected religious leader who declares his positive evaluation of Jesus based on his own his this-worldly standards (The People’s New Testament Commentary p 296). Yet Nicodemus never comes to true faith, even though when Jesus is attacked teaching in the temple Nicodemus defends him (7:50-52) and then at the end of the gospel Nicodemus’ courage gives Jesus a royal burial (19:39). So we have in chapter 3 a good man, highly respected Pharisee, who admires Jesus, but never comes to faith.
In our lesson for today we have an immoral, non-Jewish, Samaritan woman. This woman has the longest conversation of anyone with Jesus in all of the gospels. She is on the bottom rung of the ladder as one who is admired and respected; yet she comes to partial faith.
What amazed me as I was thinking about this story is that the issue of woman in relation to men has been in the headlines recently. We normally think of Harvard University as the ultimate in political correctness. The Kennedy’s go to Harvard, the Bushes and Kerry’s go to Yale. Harvard is the upper crust of the upper crust. The women at Harvard have just in the last few years had the opportunity to join sororities. And Harvard sororities are about women becoming the epitome of what it means to be professional and a woman of grace and elegance. Harvard women are not, for the most part, party girls.
So imagine my surprise that Larry Summers the president of Harvard University suggested that part of the reason women hadn't achieved equality in academic science was "intrinsic aptitude." It was nature more than nurture, genes more than prejudice. (Ellen Goodman 02/24/05 the Boston Globe). Summers gave his remarks at MIT where MIT Biology professor Nancy Hopkins walked out saying that she felt she was going to be sick.
The question of men and women equality is a question that apparently has been with us from the beginning of creation. I like the first creation story in Genesis that says God created humankind, male and female he created them, rather than the second creation story that says God created a helper for the man, even though you can understand helper not as one of subordination, but as a person of equality. I like to think that God created Eve as a co-equal partner.
What we have in this Jesus story in John 4 is a woman who is on the lowest rung of the social and cultural ladder in regard to Jesus as a Jewish man. Fist this woman was a Samaritan. The Samaritans were the descendants of the 10 lost tribes. They had intermarried with foreign people. 2 Kings 17 tells us that people from all over the Middle East had settled in what had been the Northern Kingdom and these people worshipped the God of Moses, but also all the gods of all the other nations, so the Samaritans constantly broke the 1st commandment of Moses, namely that people are to worship only one God, Yahweh. The second thing, this person that Jesus talked to was a woman. Jewish men did not talk to Jewish women in public, let alone Samaritan women. Third, this woman was at the well to draw water in the middle of the day. Self-respecting women drew water in the morning. They were not out offering themselves to the public in the middle of the day. The middle of the day was reserved for men.
Jesus is in Samaria. The Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus is at the well, which is located in Schemen between Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal. It was here that Jacob bought a plot of land; here that Joseph’s bones were brought from Egypt and buried; here on this mountain that Jeroboam built a temple after Israel and Judea split so that the people of the Northern kingdom would not travel to Jerusalem to worship. Let it be noted that in Jesus’ day the temple on Mount Gerizim had been destroyed, and when the Gospel of John was written both temples were destroyed, because the Jerusalem temple was destroyed in 70 and John was written sometime after 85.
So Jesus is in the wrong country, talking to the wrong sex, and even asking for a drink of water. She is surprised because of all that I have said. She asks Jesus to explain himself and he says if you knew who was asking you, you would have asked me and I would have given you living water. Jeremiah used the phrase living water to refer to God. Jesus is telling her he is God. She says give me some of that water. Jesus replies, “Go call your husband.” She says, “I don’t have a husband.” She has withdrawn from the dialogue. She has told him the truth but told it in a way to deceive. How often have you and I not lied but told something or withheld something with the intention to deceive. But she is talking to God and Jesus says, “You are right; you have no husband and the man you are now with is not your husband.” She understands that he has supernatural knowledge, so she put Jesus in the highest category she knows and says, “I perceive that you are a prophet.” And then she asks this question. She is trying to cause an argument. She is trying to get the discussion away from herself. When I was a child my dad mowed down what my mother considered her blackberry bushes. Whenever they would begin to discuss my behavior, I would just mention the word blackberries and the discussion was no longer focused on me. That is what this woman is doing. Jesus answers her, “Salvation is form the Jews.” Why - because Jesus is a Jew, but then adds, “The true worshipper will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth.” That is, the true worshipper will worship God consistent with God as revealed in Christ. She then says, “I know the Messiah is coming.” Jesus says, “I am He.”
The disciples have been missing from the scene, because they had gone into town to buy food. Now they return. The woman leaves and asks a question of the townspeople, “Can this be the Messiah? He told me everything about myself.” So the people in the town rushed out to see Jesus and Jesus stayed with them two days. The word “stayed in” is the same as “abided with” them two days. That is the height of faith in John. Those who have faith in the Gospel of John abide with Jesus and Jesus abides with them.
Three things I would have you note about this story. Jesus does not condemn the women. Does not tell her she broke the first commandment. Does not tell her she is a sinner because she has had five husbands and now lives with a man. That may be because women did not have the status in Jesus’ time and she could have simply been passed from man to man without any choice on her part. The second thing I would have you notice is that her life is changed She is no longer the same. She now has the living water. She has a relationship with the living God. She got there through a series of questions. The third thing I would have you notice is that she is now a witness. Though her faith is tentative, she brings people to Jesus.
John’s gospel represents an element of Christianity that did not become the main stream. In John’s church, women are equal. The reason is, in John’s church the Spirit rules and the Spirit is no respecter of persons. In Pentecostal churches today women have equal status with the men. There are women preachers in the Pentecostal churches that have just as much authority as the men. Later the early church began to absorb Roman, Greek and Jewish cultural values and so women were treated as subordinate to men. There are even New Testament scriptures that support the idea that men are superior to women. But the Gospel of John would say that women are equal to men and if they are not in math and science as are the men, it is because of cultural factors that cause women to go into other fields. I don’t think there is any question about how Jesus felt about women, especially if you look at the gospel of John for your answer.
ELLEN GOODMAN
Summers's teachable moment
By Ellen Goodman | February 24, 2005
WASHINGTON
IS IT POSSIBLE that I'm beginning to feel sorry for Larry Summers? Do I need an intervention?
No, it isn't his opponents who have dredged up my soupcon of sympathy for the president of Harvard University. It's his defenders.
The Story That Will Not Die began when Summers offered his opinion on women and science. Deliberately provoking a conference audience, he suggested that part of the reason women hadn't achieved equality in academic science was "intrinsic aptitude." It was nature more than nurture, genes more than prejudice.
When MIT scientist Nancy Hopkins dropped the dime on Summers, there was a firestorm of criticism. But that was followed by a second round in which he was defended as a victim of political correctness, a poor defenseless seeker of wisdom in the Ivy League madrassas.
George Will tagged professor Hopkins as hysterical, a word which, he failed to note, comes from the Greek root for uterus, thus proving that only women can be hysterical. Other pundits either compared Summers' opponents to "religious fundamentalists," accused Harvard of "neo-Stalinist intolerance," or praised poor Larry for facing down "the gods of political correctness."
Even The Washington Post editorial page said that if Summers was punished for the "crime of positing a politically incorrect hypothesis" the "chilling effect on free inquiry will harm everyone." After all, the editorial said, he was "provoking fresh thought on big issues."
Why didn't I think of that? The suggestion that women were innately less able to do math and science wasn't the same old tired stereotype with a sell-by date of 1636, when Harvard was established. It was a cutting-edge fresh thought!
In case you haven't noticed, the phrase "political correctness" is now only used sarcastically. These days, to be politically correct is to be a cowed conformist, too afraid to speak the truth, which -- surprise! -- invariably turns out to be an old conservative idea.
We have come full circle so that uttering a stereotype is classified as daring. Soon, the brave new thing will be to call your 56-year-old secretary a "girl" and the forward thinkers will say that white men can't jump. Summers' own breath of fresh air was to challenge the notion that men and women can be equal at science -- an idea so politically correct that not a single woman has held a math chair at Harvard in 370 years.
Barbara Grosz, chair of the Harvard task force on women in science and engineering, recaps the argument with some exasperation: "The criticism of Summers' talk was not that the ideas he expressed were politically incorrect, but that they were just plain incorrect." How come, she wonders, when Summers talks he's being open-minded and provocative, but when his challengers offer a spirited rebuttal they're accused of trampling on academic freedom?
This is especially ironic since the campus-wide rap, expressed at yet another testy faculty encounter Tuesday, is that Summers never listens and brooks no criticism.
Hopkins, a Harvard PhD and one of 15 senior women scientists who got neighboring MIT to fess up to gender bias, describes the weirdness of being attacked as anti-research or even anti-genetics. "I'm a geneticist," she says, "but the genetics of career choices is just lunacy. We are nowhere near the research on innate differences. But we do know the attitudes that hold people back. When you eliminate the discrimination that says only boys can do math, then we'll talk."
Meanwhile, she shares the deep frustration of women scientists who find themselves back to square one, having to prove that women can so do science. Let's see now, women had only 2.4 percent of the physics PhDs in 1970 but 18 percent in 2003. Is that evolution on steroids?
Ah, but this is about my sympathy for Summers. He needs to be defended from his defenders. The truth is that the Harvard president is on social probation. He's alienated so many people that one more false move and he'll end up at the World Bank where he can insult whole countries.
But I think this is, as they say, a "teachable moment." Summers has expressed his regret at "sending a signal of discouragement." He's repented for remarks that didn't align with what the "research has established." He's regretted the "backlash" against those who disagreed with him.
His opponents are suspicious of this deathbed conversion, and his supporters are sure that he's bowing to the neo-Stalinists. But he has surrounded himself with the retaining walls of task forces and made promises to put the status of women high on his list.
The musical question in Harvard Square is whether he should still be president. Well, remember when women used to curse the inefficiency of feminism? You had to enlighten men one at a time. Do we really want to start all over again?
In the spirit of nurture over nature, I say Save Summers. But get him some new pals.
Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.
John 4 Notes from NRSV
Jesus and the Samaritans
The Pharisees, hostile to John, now turn on Jesus
4. Samaria, between Judea and Galilee, with a mixed people. Samaria was inhabited by mixed remnants of the northern tribes who worshiped the Lord God and used the Pentateuch Jews despised them. In one tradition disciples are forbidden to visit their towns. Mt 10.10, but according got others Jesus was friendly to Samaritans. Remember the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan was the leper that returned to give Jesus thanks.
Jacob’s well
Sychar Well (Jacob's Well)
In the center of the Shechem, the modern city of Nablus, a very special well stands on land purchased by Jacob (Genesis 13:18-19). His son Joseph, whose remains were brought back to the Promised Land by the Israelite Tribes, was buried in a tomb not far from the well.
In John 4, Jesus stood at the well and asked a Samaritan woman for water, eventually revealing himself as the Messiah (John 4:5-26). The ruins of two churches and the unfinished walls of a third are found at the site. A cross-shaped church was built at the site during the Byzantine period using the well as its center.
The Crusaders built their own church over the earlier one. Construction was begun on a Russian Orthodox Church in 1914. Following the Communist revolution in 1917, however, building was stopped and it was never completed. Recent work on the site has added beauty and is completing some parts of the Russian structure.
2 Kings 17:21-41 – The people worship the Lord but also other gods from other lands breaking the 1st commandment.
4:10 Living water
Jeremiah 2:13. For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.
Life: Jesus descended from heaven to bring eternal life (participation in God’s life), through being lifted up, on the cross.
Abundant life: life without measure
17 I have no husband: a true answer but given with an intention to deceive.
20 A prophet: one who should be willing to settle rival religious claims.
23 Worship in truth – In accord with God’s nature seen in Christ.