{"id":2430,"date":"2016-08-31T03:27:59","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T03:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/?p=2430"},"modified":"2016-08-31T03:27:59","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T03:27:59","slug":"the-woman-at-the-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/2016\/08\/31\/the-woman-at-the-well\/","title":{"rendered":"The Woman at the Well"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/96\/2016\/08\/Ellie-Vergowe.jpg\" rel=\"prettyPhoto[2430]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-2431\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/96\/2016\/08\/Ellie-Vergowe-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Ellie Vergowe\" width=\"216\" height=\"144\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/96\/2016\/08\/Ellie-Vergowe-300x200.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/96\/2016\/08\/Ellie-Vergowe-1024x682.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/96\/2016\/08\/Ellie-Vergowe.jpg 2029w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 216px) 100vw, 216px\" \/><\/a><em>Ellie VerGowe is currently serving as Ministerial Resident for Community Outreach at First Covenant Church on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Ellie enjoys dancing, being outside and reading a good book on a rainy day with a friend and a cup of tea.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I recently read the story of the woman that Jesus meets at the well in John 4. Jesus is traveling\u00a0and finally sits down at a well in Samaria in the heat of the day. As he is sitting there, a woman\u00a0comes to the well to draw water. Her story comes out a bit as Jesus talks with her. She is at the\u00a0well in the hottest part of the day because of her marital situation. We don\u2019t know the whole\u00a0story, but she has been through a lot. Maybe other women make fun of her when she draws\u00a0water in cooler parts of the day and she has decided to go to the well alone.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-2437 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/96\/2016\/08\/woman-at-the-well-2-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"The Samaritan Woman - John 4:1-42\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/96\/2016\/08\/woman-at-the-well-2-300x199.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/96\/2016\/08\/woman-at-the-well-2.jpg 699w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>It is all very scandalous really\u2026she is a ridiculed woman and left out of her community. She, a\u00a0Samaritan of not \u201cpure\u201d bloodline speaks with a Jewish rabbi alone. And Jesus and this woman\u00a0converse, she gives him water and he gifts her with the knowledge of his gift of grace and life\u2026of living water.<\/p>\n<p>Jesus explicitly tells her, this scandalous woman, that HE is the one that she and\u00a0everyone else had been waiting for\u2026the Christ, the Messiah.\u00a0This woman sees the truth and in her joy runs back to her community to preach the gospel. But\u00a0then John tells us that she says this in verse 29: \u201cCome, see a man who told me everything I\u00a0ever did. Could this be the Messiah?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What? Didn\u2019t Jesus JUST tell her that he was the Messiah?\u00a0While I don\u2019t know how all the ways internalized patriarchy manifested itself in this ancient\u00a0context, this woman\u2019s response was a word of challenge for me when I read it most recently.\u00a0This woman preaches with a question, though she knows the answer full well, and from the\u00a0mouth of God, no less. I have noticed this pattern within myself and in many female colleagues.\u00a0When I enter meetings, when I preach, when I speak to my colleagues, I speak with an air of\u00a0apology and question. I say, \u201cI don\u2019t know if this would work, but\u2026\u201d and \u201cI am still learning, but\u00a0what if we\u2026\u201d and \u201cI think\u2026\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u2026\u201d while most of my male colleagues state their\u00a0opinions and thoughts with an air of confidence. In their speech there are few questions and\u00a0little to no apologies.<\/p>\n<p>While I believe that questions and apologies aren\u2019t bad and can sometimes even welcome\u00a0others into conversation more, many of us women have been socialized to speak without\u00a0confidence and with apologizing for the space that we take up in the world\u2026as if the world\u00a0wasn\u2019t desperate for the voices of women preaching the gospel (whether it knows it or not!).\u00a0The Samaritan woman preached the gospel with questions but God still ushered people to faith\u00a0through her words. The gospel is still preached in our questions and apologies and fear\u2026but my\u00a0sisters\u2026we know the truth. We\u2019ve been gifted. We\u2019ve been called. Let us, we who preach while\u00a0being women (a scandal to so many!), preach without questioning our place to do so and tell the<br \/>\ntruth without apology.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-report-this\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge?moderation_action=report_form&#038;object_type=post&#038;object_id=2430&#038;width=250&#038;height=300\" class=\"thickbox\" title=\"Report This Post\">Report This Post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ellie VerGowe is currently serving as Ministerial Resident for Community Outreach at First Covenant Church on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Ellie enjoys dancing, being outside and reading a good book on a rainy day with a friend and a cup of tea. I recently read the story of the woman that Jesus meets at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19328],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-testimoies-and-stories"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Woman at the Well - Commission on Biblical Gender Equality<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/2016\/08\/31\/the-woman-at-the-well\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Woman at the Well - Commission on Biblical Gender Equality\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ellie VerGowe is currently serving as Ministerial Resident for Community Outreach at First Covenant Church on Capitol Hill in Seattle. 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