So: House Group today, exploring the Samaritan Woman at the Well (John 4) and all the ways in which Jesus is taboo-busting by simply talking to her (actually, I would say: flirting with her). The Samaritan woman – the first evangelist, from the same gospel that also brought you the first apostle, also a woman – is disqualified from acceptability on several grounds. Firstly, she is a woman. Second, she is a foreigner. Third, her sexual identity is problematic.

So in the discussion around this passage I thought of Paul’s famous ‘In Christ there is no…’ and thought that the Samaritan woman is embodying what Paul is describing. So I think it would be orthodox and reflective of Christ’s actions to say: In Christ there is neither Jew nor Samaritan, there is neither male nor female, there is neither sexually legitimate nor illegitimate.

It’s *all* secondary. It’s not about whether you worship on a mountain or in the temple, it’s whether you worship in spirit and in truth. It’s not about how you apply your dangly bits, it’s about whether you love in spirit and in truth…

/rant over