THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
PREJUDICE
DR. JIM DIXON
JUNE 28, 1987
JOHN 4:1-42
His name was Worthy Taylor, and his story is known to some of you. He was a farmer in the 19th century in the state of Ohio, and he was very, very well-to-do. In the year 1839 when Worthy Taylor was 35 years old, there was a knock at his door. It was a 17 year old boy. He was looking for work. He said he’d be willing to do most anything. His name was Jim. Worthy Taylor had a large farm and he needed a lot of help, and so he hired Jim.
The days passed and the weeks passed and Jim fell in love with Worthy Taylor’s daughter. And so there came a day when Jim approached Worthy Taylor to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Now, Worthy Taylor hated poor people. He hated people who dressed poorly—he considered them inferior—and Jim was poor. He was dressed poor and he had little or nothing. Worthy Taylor had always made Jim sleep in the loft of the barn. He didn’t think Jim was good enough to stay in with the other men and certainly not good enough to stay in the house. So he kept him in the loft of the barn. And as Jim approached Worthy Taylor seeking to marry worthy Taylor’s daughter, worthy Taylor said, “Son, I’m gonna be honest with you. You’re poor. You’re always gonna be poor. You’re a good-for-nothing and you’re always gonna be a good-for-nothing. You’re never going to amount to anything and you’re not good enough to marry my daughter. I didn’t hire you to court my daughter. I hired you to work this farm.” And worthy Taylor fired Jim and he never saw him again.
31 years passed until the year 1880 came, when Worthy Taylor was 66 years old. Worthy Taylor’s barn was very old and he needed a new barn. So he went up into the loft of the old barn to see if there was anything valuable there. He didn’t want that to be there if he was going to tear the barn down. Worthy had a long time ago forgotten about Jim, the 17-year-old poor, good-for-nothing boy who had come by his farm 31 years earlier. But suddenly Worthy Taylor, as he looked in the loft of the barn and saw the beam above the loft where Jim had slept, saw that Jim had carved his full name. When Worthy Taylor saw that name, he froze. He was literally stunned because, at that very moment, Jim was the president of the United States of America. James A Garfield was the name carved on the beam up in the loft where Jim had slept.
I think it’s safe to say that Worthy Taylor had prejudged Jim. He had been a little too quick to judge, a little too quick to form an opinion. But you see, the reason that Worthy Taylor did that was because he had a socioeconomic prejudice. Some people are prejudiced against rich people. Some people are prejudiced against poor people. Worthy Taylor hated the poor. The English word prejudice originally simply meant “To prejudge; to judge too early,” but it came to refer to any kind of false discrimination against people. The Greek and biblical word for prejudice is the word prokrima, and it also originally simply meant to prejudge, but it also came to refer to false discrimination of people.
The Bible tells us that God loves people. God loves all people—they are precious in His sight—and hates prejudice. This morning we’re going to discuss two different types of prejudice, both of which Jesus, our Lord, confronted in this episode with the Samaritan woman at the Well of Jacob. Both of these types of prejudice Jesus rebuked by His life and His work. These comprise our two teachings this morning.
The first teaching concerns sexual discrimination and prejudice against women. The Bible tells us in Genesis chapter one that God created man; in the image of God, male and female, created He them. You see, men and women are precious to God. They’re both created in His image and in His likeness. They have eternal value in His sight. Throughout history, tragically, women have oftentimes been discriminated against. There have been many times throughout history when women have been devalued by society. And such a time was the time when our Lord Jesus Christ walked this Earth. He lived in a time when there was tremendous prejudice against women. And in our passage of scripture for today, the disciples marveled when they came back from a Samaritan village and saw Jesus talking to a woman. And we understand why they marveled when we understand the culture of that day. In that day, it was considered improper for any man to talk to a woman in public.
In many parts of Palestine, certainly it was improper for a rabbi to talk to a woman in public. Now, at that time, in many parts of the biblical and ancient world, women were not allowed to hold or own property. In many parts of the biblical world, women were viewed as property. The Jews believed that a woman had half the value of a man. There was an old Jewish prayer, oftentimes prayed in the first century, wherein Jewish men thanked God that He didn’t make them a woman. Jewish parents wanted male heirs—they wanted male offspring and didn’t want to have girls. Women were discouraged from being educated because it was considered a waste of time. A man in the biblical and ancient world could divorce his wife without explanation. You see, things are different today. Today men and women can divorce each other without explanation, but then only men could do that.
And of course, the Jewish rabbis taught that it was wrong to speak to a woman in public. They taught that it was wrong for a man even to speak to his wife, mother, or daughter in public. The Pharisees believed it was wrong to even look at a woman in public. That’s why sometimes they were called the bruised and bleeding Pharisees. They actually walked into walls to avoid looking at women. It was in such a bizarre society, such a patriarchal society, that our Lord Jesus Christ came, and we should make no mistake about this: Jesus Christ shattered the prevailing view of women in His time.
He stood against the prejudice of His time by His life, by His actions, and by His words. He told Jewish men that they couldn’t divorce their wives at all except on the grounds of adultery (and if they divorced their wives and married anyone else, they themselves would become adulterers). He treated women with dignity and honor, and they were drawn to His compassion. They were numbered among His followers and His disciples, and they were with Him at the cross as He was crucified. And to them, He appeared resurrected and alive. He offered women along with men eternal life. He offered men and women alike the privilege of becoming children of God through faith. He offered to make women heirs, co-heirs, of the grace of life. And to the woman at the well in Samaria, He offered living water, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit Himself. Now, through the centuries, women have continued to be prejudiced against. The Bible makes it clear that God views men and women as equal in His sight, but women have continued to be the victims of prejudice.
On July 5th, 1813, an 18-year-old young man named James Barry came into the United States Army recruiting office. He wanted to serve in the Army Medical Corps, and the recruiter said, “James, have you ever worked in a hospital before?” He said, “No, sir.” The recruiter said, “Well, why do you want to work in a hospital?” James said, “I just want to help people.” Now James was kind of frail and he was kind of thin. The recruiter looked at him. He had freckles on his face and he had red hair. The recruiter said, “James, are you Scottish?” He said, “Yes, sir. My grandfather was an earl.” The recruiter didn’t know whether that was true, and even today historians do not know if that was true. But the recruiter was impressed with James, and so he was received into the United States Army and that was the beginning of one of the most fascinating medical careers in the history of the world.
One and a half years later, James Barry became an assistant surgeon. 12 years later, Dr. James Barry became a Surgeon Major in the United States Army. Time went by and James Barry became the Deputy Inspector General. And finally, after a lifetime of distinguished service, James Barry became the Inspector General himself, the highest ranking medical officer in the United States Army. His life was storied, filled with adventure, accomplishments, awards, accolades, and recognition. He was a man given to temper. He once defended his honor in a duel to the death, and the people loved him. But there was always something strange about James Barry. People always suspected that there was some secret he was keeping. Something was hidden. James Barry died on July 25th, 1865, at the age of 70. He died in London, England. The medical examiners issued a report that literally shook the world. James Barry, the Inspector General, the highest ranking medical officer in the United States Army, was a woman.
For 50 years, she had pretended to be a man. She showed great courage, but also, tragically, she pretended to be a man because she knew that the only way she could ever be a doctor would be if she would pretend to be a man. She knew that the only way she could ever accomplish the things she longed to accomplish would be if she would pretend to be a man. The only way that she could ever render the service she longed to render would be to feign manhood. And so she did. Women are still prejudiced against, though not so severely today. There have been, I suppose, many times, countless times, when women in our generation and preceding generations longed to accomplish things that were reserved only for men, to hold positions that were available only to men.
You know, there are some people today who seem to believe that the suppression of women is biblical. “God just likes to keep women down,” that’s what some people think. And oftentimes you hear people point out how the Bible grants a certain authority to the husband in the context of the home. And this is true, but if you really study the Bible in the words of scripture, you soon see that this authority granted to the husband has nothing to do with any superiority on his part. When you really study the Bible, you see that the roles God has given to wives and to husbands are both roles of great dignity. They are roles that God wills to be carried out with servants’ hearts. It’s very evident in the Bible that God wants husbands and wives to have a servant’s heart and be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Sometimes you hear people mention how, in the Bible, women are viewed as primarily called to a nurturing role and men are viewed as primarily called to a breadwinning role. And there’s truth to that. But it is also true that, as you go through the Bible, there are countless examples of women who participated in breadwinning roles and men who participated in nurturing roles. And it’s to men that the Bible says, “Rear your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” I don’t know how many of you have ever read the 31st chapter of Proverbs. It is a beautiful chapter of scripture where you have a portrait of what God believes to be the godly woman. A godly woman is a woman whose children will one day rise up and call her blessed, a woman whose husband praises her in the gates. And this is a woman who not only is involved in nurture but, if you read this passage, it’s obvious that she’s wheeling and dealing in the world of real estate and the merchandising of products.
You see, God gives women far more flexibility than many men do. And there are many cases in the Bible where God grants exceptional authority to women. Deborah was a prophetess and a priest in Israel. She was a judge. She was a leader of Israel’s armies. Miriam was, with Aaron, second in command under Moses in Israel. Esther, greatly beloved of God, was queen of Persia, and it was her courage and her bravery that prevented the genocide of the Jews. The Bible tells husbands that they are to honor their wives. “Bestow honor upon the woman” is what the Bible says, “as equal heirs, co-heirs of the grace of life.”
You know, I’m not a woman’s libber and I certainly am not a radical feminist. I don’t want to be a male chauvinist either. I have no doubt when I go to God’s word that men and women are equal. I have no doubt that God values and loves and honors men and women equally. I do believe that men and women in God’s plan and God’s economy are different but equal, endowed with beautiful but different gifts. We live in a world today where women have greater freedoms than perhaps they have ever had. There’s less prejudice today towards women. This means there are far more opportunities for those of you here who are women than ever. You have many choices that are set before you, tough choices. A lot of women today are choosing to pursue careers outside the home. And if God so calls you, then God bless you.
But you know, we also live in a society that is not only prejudiced against women, but we live in a society that is prejudiced against homemaking. You see, we live in a society that exalts the office and degrades the home. And there are many women who have children and feel called to homemaking, but they almost feel like homemaking isn’t worthy because that’s what this society has told them. And to you, I want to say (and I believe God wants to say) nothing is more wonderful or important than homemaking. In God’s sight, there is no calling that’s any higher than that. We live in a nation with many problems. Our children are growing up in a nation with incredible temptations, perhaps temptations greater than any generation has ever faced. And there is no calling more noble in the sight of God than that of nurturing or homemaking. Men are exhorted not to be prejudiced against women. I think women would be exhorted by God (and in this, I believe I have the Spirit of God) to pursue whatever career He calls them to, but to do it not because the world tells them to but because they’re led of God. Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold. If God calls you to be a homemaker, rejoice in it.
Well, there’s a second kind of prejudice that this passage of scripture refers to that our Lord Jesus Christ confronted in Samaria. The second kind of prejudice is racial prejudice—the prejudice of one race towards another race. You see, this woman at Jacob’s Well was not only a woman, she was also a Samaritan. The woman said to our Lord Jesus Christ, “How is it that You, being a Jew, would ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” And then John comments, “The Jews had no dealings with Samaritans.” There was hatred between the Jew and the Samaritan.
722 years before Christ, the Assyrians invaded the Northern Kingdom of Israel. They conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel and took captives. They took many Jews from the Northern Kingdom and took them to foreign lands, and most of these Jews never came back. That’s why biblical scholars refer to the ten lost tribes. But the Assyrians allowed some of the Jews in the Northern Kingdom to remain there in Israel, and the Assyrians also began to bring into Northern Israel foreigners from other places: from Ava, from Babylon, from Kutha, from Hamoth, and from other countries. As time passed and as the years went by, these remnant Jews in Northern Israel began to intermarry with these peoples from other places, producing children and offspring of mixed blood.
For the Jew, this was taboo. Now, this offspring of mixed blood was called Samaritan. The capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel had been Samaria. The region in which those Jews had lived oftentimes had been called Samaria, and so the offspring of this mixed union were called Samaritans. Now, in the year 586, Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians invaded the Southern Kingdom of Israel and the Jews in the Southern Kingdom of Israel were exiled to other countries. But they maintained what they would refer to as their racial purity. They did not intermarry with other races. They were consecrated. They persevered in maintaining what they would consider to be their blood purity. And in the year 520, when Cyrus King of the Medo-Persian Empire allowed the Jews of the Southern Kingdom to return to Jerusalem, they returned with great pride that they were still Jews.
They began to hate those Jews in the Northern Kingdom that had allowed their blood to be tainted through the marriage of men and women from other races. The Jews of the Southern Kingdom began to refer to the Samaritans of the Northern Kingdom as half-breeds. Now, around the year 450, in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah when the Jews around the city of Jerusalem were rebuilding the walls, some of the Samaritans came south and they asked the Jews for permission to help them rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. And the Jews said, “Get out of here. We don’t want your help. You’re not part of us. You are tainted. You are polluted. You are half-breeds. You are Samaritans.” The Samaritans were enraged and went home.
It was a short time after that that a Jewish man named Manasseh married the daughter of Sanballat, a Samaritan. This Jew and this Samaritan woman went into the region of Samaria. And there, on Mount Gerizim, they built a new temple, a Samaritan temple. They claimed that this new temple, this Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim, was the true temple of God. And it became the rival of the temple at Jerusalem on the Hill of David. And of course, the Jews and the Samaritans hated each other for this. Finally, in the year 129 BC, John Hyrcanus—a Jew, a Maccabean, a Hasmonean—took Jewish armies and went north into Samaria and totally wiped out the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim.
By the time of Christ, there was such hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans that it was dangerous for a Jewish person to even travel through Samaria and it was dangerous for a Samaritan to travel through Judea. Now Jesus and the disciples, as Jesus would journey to Galilee (which was to the uttermost North) could have gone to the east to cross the Jordan River and gone up north and avoided Samaria. That’s what many Jews did. But Jesus chose to go right through Samaria, and He came to a village of Samaria and the disciples went into a Samaritan village to buy food (something most Jews would never have done). And then Jesus publicly began to speak to a Samaritan woman, something no Jew would do. That’s why the Samaritan woman said, “How is it that You, a Jew, would ask for a drink of water from me, a Samaritan?”
You see, Jesus Christ wanted to break down the walls of prejudice. The Bible makes it clear that God hates prejudice towards any race because God loves all people. And the Bible says, “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, and there is neither male nor female. All are one in Christ Jesus.”
Now, there’s always been prejudice in this world. Shortly after World War I, in Munich, Germany, the Nazi Party was formed. In the year 1919, Adolf Hitler came to leadership over the Nazi Party. In the year 1920, the Nazi Party adopted the clockwise swastika as the emblem of their organization. Now of course, the Nazi Party was extremely nationalistic and they were extremely racist, and they believed in the supremacy of the so-called Arian race. They hated all other races, but particularly they hated Jews.
In the latter twenties and in the early 1930s, there was economic depression throughout Europe. And in Germany, many of the German people, in the midst of their frustration and their midst of their desperate need, began to turn to the Nazi Party for hope and for help because the Nazi Party promised jobs to its people (and glory). It was in this atmosphere that on January 30th, 1933, Adolph Hitler became the chancellor of Germany. He established a Nazi dictatorship. He began to form concentration camps throughout Germany. Into those camps he would place political dissidents. Actually, he would place people of racial minorities (particularly Jews) and he would torment them. And this was long before the advent of World War II. Of course, it was in 1939 that the Nazi government, the Nazi nation, began World War II in the invasion of Poland.
Over a period of a few years, Nazi Germany came to dominate most of Europe, but Great Britain and the United States of America and Russia stood against the Nazis and Adolf Hitler. And you all know that in 1945 Germany and Japan and the Axis powers were defeated. And on April 30th, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide, taking his own life, but not before the Nazis had murdered 12 million civilians and not before the Nazis had incinerated 6 million Jews. And people say, “How could it have happened? How could human beings just be butchered by other human beings? How could there be such hatred?”
At the Nuremberg war trials (the Nazi medical trials), it was discovered through documented evidence that the Nazis had actually used Jews as human guinea pigs for medical experimentation. They had injected thousands of healthy Jews with diphtheria, with typhoid, and with many diseases that are very serious. They injected them with smallpox and some diseases that were terminal. They watched these Jews slowly suffer and slowly die while they tried ludicrous antidotes that they knew could never work. In the midst of their experimentations, they subjected Jews to massive doses of X-rays in experimentation with radiation. They castrated thousands of Jewish men so they could dissect and examine their organs, and they performed medical experiments in muscle regeneration and bone transplants. And they took healthy Jewish men and women and cut off their arms and legs without anesthetics and watch them die in agony by the thousands. In the Nuremberg medical trials there were 22 Nazi doctors, and 12 of them were sentenced to death by hanging. And that was unprecedented.
But you see, the free world was in shock. How could there be such racial prejudice? How could there be such hatred? How could human beings be treated like meat at a butcher shop? Of course, in America, we say, “Well, that was Germany and that happened there, but that could never happen here.” But of course, we’ve had our own prejudices, such as our period of slavery. You know, after the Civil War in the year 1867 in Pulaski, Tennessee, a secret organization was formed. They call themselves the Invisible Empire of the South. That’s what they called themselves in the beginning. They didn’t really simply want dominion over the South, they actually wanted dominion over the nation. They established what they called a Grand Wizard and gave him national authority. They put Grand Dragons over every state in the United States of America, and they put Grand Titans over every county in the United States of America and Grand Cyclops over every city in the United States of America. Their organization grew and their hatred grew, and they hated blacks. They sought to deny any rights to blacks. They tortured blacks and whites who supported blacks. They wore robes—white robes—and they wore masks on their faces. They wore white cardboard hats as hoods on their heads. They were better known as the Ku Klux Klan.
In the year 1915, the Ku Klux Klan was reorganized in Atlanta, Georgia, and this time they were more powerful than before and filled with more hatred. They not only hated blacks, but they also hated Jews, Roman Catholics, foreigners, and political liberals. They grew in power all across this nation and they burned flaming torches on the lawns of their enemies. They literally lynched thousands of minorities. Now, there were many atrocities committed by other racist groups attributed to the Ku Klux Klan, but the truth is there’s documented evidence that the Ku Klux Klan murdered thousands of people. And we might say, “Well, how could Americans support something like that? Surely not many Americans would join an organization like that.” But you see, in the 1920s, 5 million Americans were members of the Ku Klux Klan. 5 million. DC Stephenson, who was the Grand Dragon of the state of Indiana, literally ran the state of Indiana. Harry Truman, president of the United States; Hugo Black, the United States Supreme Court Justice; Edward White, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court; they all had been members of the Ku Klux Klan. In fairness to Black and Truman, they joined the Klan very young for a short period of time for the purpose of political expediency when they didn’t understand fully what they were doing. But you see, prejudice is a problem for all of us.
Prejudice is a danger in every strata of society, in every part of the world. Each and every one of us, each and every one of you, is capable of prejudice. God warns us that He hates it, because God loves people. God loves men and women. God loves people of every race. Jesus Christ died on Calvary’s cross for all people of all races, male and female. And when a lawyer once came up to Christ and said, “What must I do to receive eternal life?” Jesus said, “You’re a lawyer. You know the law. How do you read it?” And the man said, “Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Jesus said, “You’ve answered well. Do this and you’ll live.” And the lawyer said, “Well, who is my neighbor?”
Our Lord Jesus, of course, told the story of the good Samaritan, a story that must have shocked the Jewish community in the midst of their prejudices. The Lord Jesus said, “There was a man going from Jerusalem to Jericho on the Jericho road, and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and left him half dead by the side of the road.” Jesus said, “Now, a priest was going by that road and he saw the wounded man, but he passed by on the other side. And then there came a Levite on that road and he saw this wounded man but he passed by on the other side.” But then Jesus said, “Now by chance there came a Samaritan.” Now that word was loaded. He was talking to Jews. They hated the Samaritans. And Jesus said, “By chance there came a Samaritan and he saw the wounded man.” And Jesus said, “He was moved with compassion, and he went to him and he bound his wounds and he anointed him with oil, and he took him to an inn and he paid for his care.” In that story, to the shock of the Jews, Jesus Christ was exalting—in one sense—a Samaritan, the most hated person in Israel. He was exalting a Samaritan over the two groups of people most beloved and honored in Israel: the priests and the Levites. He did this because the Samaritan understood the love of God. The Samaritan understood the compassion of God for all peoples.
Jesus Christ hates prejudice, and if you take the name of Christ— if you call Him Lord and Savior and you call yourself Christian—He calls upon you to love all people equally. When I was growing up, there was a song we used to sing as a kid, and I think it describes how Jesus Christ feels about all people:
“Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world
Red and yellow, black and white
They are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world”
That’s the attitude the Lord wants each and every one of us to have. There’d be no prejudice socioeconomically, sexually, or racially. The Bible says, “Show no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.” Let’s close in prayer.
Lord Jesus, You are the Creator of all life. The earth and the heavens are the works of Your hands. You created us. We honor You, we exalt You. You are the Creator, we are the creation. And Lord, You love us all. You died for us. You rose for us. You live for us. You intercede for Your people. You’ve called upon us to love one another. By this, all men will know that we are Your disciples, if we love one another. Lord, help us to have compassion on all people for your namesake—male and female, red, yellow, black, and white— that Your kingdom might grow, that Your name might be exalted, and that Your gospel might go forth on the Earth. Lord, we love You. We want Your heart to be our heart. We commit our lives to You anew. We pray these things in Your great name. Amen.