Jesus and the Samaritan Woman

5 December 2019: Spent a good portion of today grading papers for my Bible as Literature class. They are, on the whole, pretty darn good. This class continues to make me think about so many things--faith, literature, our relationship with God, our relationships with others--in new ways. Today I was particularly struck by a student's reading of John 4, the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. The student is arguing that Jesus--the Biblical Jesus, not just some alleged "liberal fantasy" of what we want him to be--in his outreach to all people, finds a specific place for women, giving them voice absent from many Old Testament stories, especially of "fallen" women. It's a lovely paper in the academic sense, but also quite moving on a personal level.