The Wanton Woman Preacher: John 4 on International Women’s Day When the Epstein Files are Here
Photo by Brimingham Museum’s Trust on Unsplash
“Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’”
I remember hearing stories about her. They were trying to be compassionate, in their own way; men acknowledging that even women could have had a sexual past. Maybe they painted this picture in their homilies, or maybe I was just so indoctrinated by then in both the purity culture of slut shaming and the hyper-sexualization culture that was priming me, a child, to be desirable to men. Either way, I pictured her with smeared black eye liner (daring) and a wicked hangover (the reason she was there in the noonday sun).
The woman at the well was a wanton woman.
It strikes me that Jesus, though, does not shame her in this conversation.
We simply do not know, but we do know this: she definitely was a preacher and a leader of the faith.
It strikes me, too, that in the great temptations Jesus faces at the hands of the devil, none of them are the temptations I was taught were the grievous sins of the world: teenage girls in crop tops and big pieces of chocolate cake. Raised in the chewing-gum-metaphors of purity culture, I heard stories of the Samaritan Woman and her ilk as the warning: loose girls end up alone at the well to be chastised by God. And this was because girls should fundamentally — at minimum — expect violent and dehumanizing attitudes from men, if not outright be responsible for safeguarding ourselves from the most heinous expressions of this violence by adults against children. Purity culture taught boys they were inherently violent. It also taught me that even though I was a child, men sexualizing me in my Soffee shorts in the 100º summer heart was my sin to fix.
And the way to fix it? Was to give my life to Jesus, who would welcome my chastity and apologies. Now look: I am a priest. I have really doubled down on the “giving my life to Jesus” bit. But not for any mythical un-chewed-gum status. I have given my life to Jesus because I have followed, with delight, in the ways of this woman at the well.
The woman in John 4 might have worn whatever was thought to be scandalous in first century Judea, she may have married her way around the fringes of town. Likely, though, there is more to her story than the colorful caricatures painted for me in that stale-smelling youth room — likely, there is a story of grief. Of loss. Of longing for someone to stay alive long enough, or care enough, to be truly present to her.
Or perhaps there is something even more harrowing to her story. I cannot hear about her now without hearing echoes of the horrors etched across the millions of pages in the Epstein files. Girls, children, preyed upon because like this woman, they would be seen walking home from school alone. In need of companionship, of friendship, of being wanted.
So often the sermons of my youth told me I shouldn’t desire to be desired. There are sermons I myself preach about unclenching the fist this world can have on us for bending us towards acquiescence and “fitting in.” But these weren’t those sermons. These were sermons shaming teenagers for the most basic, God-given thing in us: the desire to be with someone who loves us, and whom we may love in return. Temptation, after all, is rarely to do evil things for evil’s sake. It’s usually for us to do evil things out of the powerful desire to do or be good, or at least, be included.
It haunts me how intimately connected the patriarchal systems of violence against children are — be they the hyper-sexualizing of children in the secular world, or the weird way this hyper-sexualization gets bent in Christian spaces by telling children to safeguard their virginity from grown men as some kind of sanctification. When I read the Epstein files, I feel sick to my stomach. I feel sick in the parallels between the files and reports of the harm church leaders have done to children.
And I feel sick for the ways the hyper-sexualization of girls and woman is a weapon deployed to demean, hide, or eradicate our God-given value.
Because here’s the thing about this unnamed Samaritan woman. Maybe she delighted in having many relationships over the course of her life. Or maybe she was a grieving widow in the worst string of luck a woman can find. Perhaps she had been trafficked herself, unable to escape systems of abuse, violence, forced dependence, and degradation. We simply do not know, but we do know this: she definitely was a preacher and a leader of the faith.
When Jesus says to her, “you are right to say, ‘I have no husband,’” and goes on to say the man she is with currently is not her husband, he does not admonish her, tell her to repent of the sex she has had, or even tell her to leave this unwed bed she is in.
Jesus tells her of the goodness of God. That a time is coming when she will be so compelled to worship in spirit and truth that where she worships, and with whom, will be of consequence in that this worship is so wide-reaching it calls all beyond binaries and divisions into communion, connection, and delight. He does not say this worship will erase libido, or that she must tell this good news as penance for her past.
He tells her the good news: he himself is the promised Messiah. She is the first in John’s Gospel to explicitly hear this from Jesus. And Jesus tells her, perhaps knowing that she is going to go and preach this good news to all her own people in Samaria. She will preach whether or not they think she is crazy, or out for their husbands, or too damaged.
If she is a survivor of violence and abuse, it makes her testimony all the more powerful. She has far more at risk than Peter or James or John. And yet, in the strange bit about working the harvest, Jesus is telling Peter and James et al that their work? Is to do what this Samaritan woman has done.
Because thanks to this woman, “many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” And because of her, they invite Jesus to stay, coming to know through her testimony and his that Jesus truly is the savior not just of one people group, but of the whole world.
