This one will be short and sweet because I have a ton of things going on behind the scenes. Most people are familiar with John 4, the woman at the well, but I had some one as one question that completely made me think differently about it.
He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17 “I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Please read the beginning of this passage if you are not totally familiar with it but here is the normal way of looking at this, this woman was some kind of dirty woman, she was coming to the well in the middle of the day because she was unwelcome by the rest of the women in town. (People drew water in the morning when it was cool). And of course Jesus dispenses with the social morays that would have prevented him from talking to her. My view there didn’t change but listening to a theology professor talk about our presuppositions was very interesting.
Who was allowed to ask for a divorce in this culture? This woman? No, only the husband was allowed to do such a thing. I still don’t know why this woman was divorced that many times but I do know she must have been hurting much deeper than I initially thought. She was now living with another man who is not her husband, why? Was it because he felt he couldn’t marry a woman who was damaged goods? Was that the only way she could find shelter? This woman represents brokenness on a level I never saw before because I only looked at it through my “Sunday School Eyes” as one Pastor put it. I only see what I have always seen.
It a grand moment when you can put your presuppositions about a passage aside and read it again for the first time, you never know what God will reveal to you.