Misreadings

For two Sundays now, the Old Testament and Gospel readings have echoed a recurring theme: God’s of DIvine promise spoken within the unfolding, turbulent story of human history.

Last week, we heard the account of God’s encounter with Abram, a childless man, who would become Abraham, the father of many nations. This week, the echo returns centuries later in the encounter between God and Moses at a decisive moment in Israel’s exodus journey from slavery. Out of the wilderness of that journey would emerge another defining event—the covenant sealed at Mount Sinai.

Two encounters. Two promises. Two covenants taking shape within the long narrative of God’s relationship with humanity.

John’s Gospel mirrors this pattern. Last Sunday we listened to the story of Nicodemus, a prominent Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, who approaches Jesus cautiously and under cover of night, anxious about the reputational cost of being seen asking questions. Today we overhear another encounter, this time between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well.

At first glance, the encounter at Jacob’s Well appears to be a simple exchange. Yet the location itself carries centuries of tension. Jacob’s well stood in a place long contested between Jews and Samaritans—two peoples with intertwined origins and rival claims to the same ancestral story. Their dispute was not only about land but about the very place – Jerusalem, the holy city of the Jews, or Mount Gerizim, the sacred mountain of the Samaritans, as the location for the right worship of God.

As the French proverb reminds us, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose—the more things change, the more they remain the same. As in Jesus’ time, the well lies within land contested by rival communities, and the geography has not lost its tension.

Many of us sense that we are living through unsettled and increasingly dark times. It is not only our own nation but much of the world that seems buffeted by the return of strongman politics and renewed great-power rivalry. Political leaders animated by grandiose visions of national destiny promise stability through domination while the global order fractures into competing spheres of influence.

Whenever such moments arise, religion often becomes entangled in political ambitions. Biblical language is invoked to legitimize territorial claims and nationalist visions. Faith itself is recruited to serve projects of power.

We see this dynamic in different places and forms—whether in the revived rhetoric of Manifest Destiny in American politics, in the religious nationalism of Russia’s Ruski Mir, or in modern, politically expansionist interpretations of Zionism.

At such moments, confusion about Scripture does not necessarily arise because the Bible is unclear. Confusion arises because we forget that the Bible itself is a complex historical record—one that bears witness to communities over the long span of history as they wrestle with land, justice, identity, belonging and exile.

More troubling still, confusion sometimes emerges from deliberate misreadings of what the biblical promises actually say.

In his recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Mike Huckerby, the current Administration’s choice as ambassador to Israel, and a Christian Zionist zealot, mixed a dangerous cocktail of biblical promise with contemporary political discourse to make the bold claim that God’s promise to Abraham grants the modern state of Israel a permanent divine entitlement to the land stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates. This interpretation distorts the biblical narrative by collapsing two distinct covenants into one.

The covenant with Abraham is God’s promise that this childless wandering Aramean to become the father of all nations and a blessing to all peoples. The covenant with Moses, centuries later, serves a different purpose. It forms a people committed to living justly within the designated land they will come to inhabit.

Neither covenant functions as a timeless political title deed. Indeed the Torah itself resists such an interpretation. In Leviticus God reminds Israel:

“The land is mine; you are but aliens and tenants with me.” (Leviticus 25:23)

In other words, the land ultimately belongs to God. Israel’s presence within it was always conditional, dependent upon its practice of justice, faithfulness, and care for the vulnerable. The prophets repeat this warning relentlessly: when injustice grows, dispossession and exile follow.

In biblical theology, land is never an absolute possession. It is a vocation before it becomes a habitation—a sign of gift rather than entitlement.

Genesis and Exodus therefore present two foundational covenants: two promises, two lineages, and two ways of understanding belonging to God. Much misunderstanding—ancient and modern—arises when these covenants are collapsed into one.

The Gospel of John provides a remarkable lens through which to see this distinction more clearly. John places two conversations side by side: one with Nicodemus and another with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well.

Nicodemus represents the world shaped by the covenant through Moses. A Pharisee, a scholar, and a leader of Israel, he embodies the religious tradition formed by the Law. Yet when he encounters Jesus he hears something unsettling: he must be “born from above.” Belonging to God cannot rest solely upon ancestry, law, or religious status. It requires new life—a life begun again through water and Spirit.

In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus speaks words that reopen the horizon first glimpsed in Abraham’s promise. John captures this in Jesus’ phrase:

“For God so loved the world.”

Not one family. No longer one nation, but again the world.

Immediately after this conversation the scene shifts from Jerusalem to Samaria. There, at Jacob’s Well, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman. Both Jews and Samaritans traced their ancestry to Abraham. Both believed themselves heirs of God’s covenant. The tension between their communities lies just beneath the surface of their exchange.

This rather bold woman asks Jesus about the question that had divided their peoples for centuries. She says that:

“Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that Jerusalem is the place where people must worship.”

Which mountain is holy? Which land truly belongs to God? Which claim to covenant is correct? Jesus’ answer is startling in its simplicity:

“The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem … but in spirit and truth.”

In a single sentence Jesus relocates holiness. No longer confined to Mount Gerizim. No longer secured by Jerusalem’s temple. God’s presence is no longer anchored to geography.

It is encountered in living relationship. And the first person to recognize this is not a priest or scholar but a Samaritan woman—an outsider by every conventional measure of religious authority. She runs back to her village and invites her neighbors to come and see.

John’s point here is that Jesus’ messiahship is first recognized in foreign territory beyond Jewish boundaries. John shows Jesus echoing Abraham’s promise in a new key. For these foreigners, without any reluctance or hesitation, proclaim:

“We know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Not the savior of one people or a single nation, but now the Savior who is to be a blessing to the whole world.

Seen together, the trajectory of Scripture becomes clear. Abraham reveals God’s promise to bless all nations. Moses shapes a people called to be an example of a society based on the practice of justice. Jesus reaffirms the trajectory of the promise to Abraham – a movement from one family, to beyond the possession of a single nation, to a blessing to all nations.

The movement of Scripture is toward widening the boundaries of belonging. A timely warning to those who might follow Mike Huckerby in his biblical misreading . Christians must tread carefully whenever biblical covenants are invoked to justify modern-day territorial claims.

The Bible itself resists such simplification. The promise to Abraham is a blessing to all nations. The covenant through Moses imposes on a specific community the obligation to live responsibly in harmony with one another and with the land, guided by principles of justice underneath the umbrella of God’s universal blessing.

At Jacob’s Well two ancient rivalries meet—rival claims of ancestry, rival claims of covenant, rival claims of sacred land. Yet Jesus does not resolve the dispute by choosing one mountain over another. Instead, he points beyond both of them to the future of God’s promise, which will not depend on who controls sacred ground but who receives the living water God offers to the whole world. Alas, however, the sad trajectory in most human affairs is plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Amen.