(St. Photina)
The Samaritan Woman at the well
(Equal-to-the-apostles)
February 24, 2008: 3rd Sunday of Lent
Exodus 17:3-7 Romans 5:1-2, 5-8 John 4:4-39
To the churched and unchurched[1]
gathered in a church not built by human hands[2]
First reading: water from the rock
(Ex 17:3-7)
In those days, in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst with our children and our livestock?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? A little more and they will stone me!” The Lord answered Moses, “Go over there in front of the people, along with some of the elders of Israel, holding in your hand, as you go, the staff with which you struck the river. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock in Horeb. Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it for the people to drink.” This Moses did, in the presence of the elders of Israel. The place was called Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”
Gospel: water from the well of Jacob
Jn 4:4-39
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John
Glory to you, Lord.
Jn 4:4-9: Meeting at the well
Jesus and his disciples had to pass through Samaria and they came to a town named Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down at the well. It was high noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink of water.” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a cup of drink?” (A Jew would never use the same dish or cup that a Samaritan uses.)
Jn 4:10-15: Living waters
Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the well is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.
Jn 4:16-18: Five husbands!
Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!"
Jn 4:19-24: Worship in spirit and truth
“I can see that you are a prophet,” the woman said.” Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans do not really know whom you worship; we Jews know whom we worship, because salvation comes from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Those are the kind of people the Father wants to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Jn 4:25-26, 28-30, 39: Belief in Jesus
The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak with you am he.” At that, moment Jesus’ disciples returned, and they were greatly surprised to find him talking with a woman. The woman then left her water jar behind and went back to town, and said to the people there, “Come and see someone who told me everything I have ever done! Could this not be the Messiah?” At that, they set out from the town to meet him. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him on the strength of the woman’s word of testimony that, `He told me everything I ever did!’”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
Water & shade at Jacob’s well
As Jesus and the disciples were leaving Judea and were going back to Galilee they decided to go through unfriendly Samaria instead of around it. They came to a town called Sychar. Jacob’s well was there. It was high noon, and all were tired and thirsty. An artist’s conception of the scene depicts a massive oak tree stretching its immense branches over Jacob’s well. In its heavenly shade and amid cool breezes the weary wayfarers are wiping their brows and slaking their thirst with cool clear water from the ancestral well of Jacob. (Jn 4: 3-6)
Ancestral wells runs deep with sexism
At the ancestral well, the woman said to Jesus, “Sir, you do not have a bucket, and the well is deep.” (Jn 4:11) Ancestral wells run deep. They run deep with the priorities and values with which we arrange our lives. Speaking of his ancestral well a friend writes, “I was raised in a conservative working class family in Cincinnati, Ohio. Being of German ancestry, I was taught from my earliest memory to challenge nothing that Holy Mother Church teaches. I was taught to respect all persons in positions of authority: teachers, parents, aunts, uncles, police, government officials, etc. I was taught to work for what I wanted and to wait until I had cash to buy it. I was taught that the Lord helps those who help themselves. And I was taught there is no excuse for being dirty because everyone can afford a bar of soap.” With those priorities and values he had arranged his life, and in later years he was not proud of himself.
The ancestral well in today’s gospel runs deep with sexism. When the disciples went into town to buy food, Jesus remained behind at the well. Suddenly a Samaritan woman with a bad reputation in town came upon him. (In that culture, as is in all cultures, it is only the women and not the men who have a bad reputation in town, even though adultery or fornication takes two!) Public sinner that she was, she had to wear a scarlet letter on her forehead. To avoid the gossip and cruelty of other women fetching water in the cool of early morning, she came in the heat of high noon when nobody would be around.
This lengthy gospel presents Jesus as doing what no respectable rabbi would do: he is chatting friendly with a woman in public! This surprises the woman herself. “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a cup of drink?” (Jn 4:9) Returning to the well, the apostles also are surprised to see Jesus speaking publicly with the woman. (Jn 4:27) Where in the world did that woman and that first college of apostles (consisting of males only) get their sexism? Where do all cultures and colleges and religions get their sexism? Why, of course, they imbibe it at the ancestral well.
Jesus refused to drink from that well. Instead, he stood out in the open for all to see, and with the woman, he held the longest private conversation of Jesus recorded in the New Testament. It runs through almost 40 scriptural verses. It is so long that a liturgical directive allows the gospel reading for this Sunday to be shortened for sake of the people in the pews who are anxious to get out and get going. By speaking at great length with the Samaritan woman and not to her Jesus restored her human dignity and recognized her right to have her spiritual needs met.
Ancestral wells run deep sectarianism
Out of the blue, Jesus told the woman to go fetch her husband. It was a ploy to open a discussion about her marital situation and her bad reputation in town. When she replied that she had no husband, Jesus responded, “You’re right, woman! You have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband!” (Jn 4:17-18) Startled that Jesus knew so much about her past, the Samaritan woman exclaimed, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet!” (Jn 4:19)
Out of the blue again (that’s what makes this conversation seem so rambling), the woman brought up a religious bone of contention between Jesus and herself. We Samaritans, she told him, worship here on Mt. Gerizim, but you Jews claim one must worship in the temple in Jerusalem. (Jn 4:20) That, too, was a ploy; the woman wanted to change the subject about her bad reputation.
The ancestral well in today’s gospel runs deep also with sectarianism. Where in the world did Samaritans get their claim that Mt. Gerizim is the only right place to worship God? They imbibed it at their ancestral well. “My [Samaritan] ancestors worshipped here on this mountain,” the woman told Jesus (Jn 4: 20). That was her proof that Mt. Gerizim is the right place to worship God.
Where in the world did Jews get their claim that Jerusalem is the only right place to worship God? They imbibed it at their ancestral well. Where in the world do Muslims get their claim that Medina and Mecca in Saudi Arabia are the only right places to worship God? They imbibe it at their Islamic ancestral well. Where in the world do some Catholics get the claim that the only right place to worship God is in St. Peter’s in Rome? Of course, they get it from an ancestral well.
Jesus went along with the woman’s ploy; he changed the subject and addressed her problem. Refusing to drink from any ancestral well, he assured her that it does not matter where one worships, whether on Mt. Gerizim or in Jerusalem or in Medina and Mecca or even in St. Peter’s in Rome. What matters is how we worship God. What matters is that we worship God in spirit and truth. ((Jn 4:21-23)
Turning the tables
When the lengthy conversation at the well opens, it is the woman who has cool clear water to offer, and it is the Lord who is thirsty and asking for some to drink. In the course of the almost rambling conversation, we find ourselves exclaiming, “For God's sake, give the thirsty man a drink of water! He’s dying of thirst!" Nowhere in the whole account do we read that Jesus ever received a cup of water from the Samaritan woman. No material transaction is related. There is only spiritual transaction in which the tables are turned. At the end of the day, it is now Jesus who has living water to offer, and it is the woman who is thirsty and is asking for some to drink. Jesus offers her living water. She drinks deeply of it and is converted from her meandering life. The water of rebirth washes away the scarlet letter from her brow, and she now walks with her head up high.
Rather she runs with her head up high. Overwhelmed by her encounter with Jesus, the woman takes off in such a hurry she forgets her water jar! (Jn 4:28) She runs off to tell her people in town about Jesus and invites them to come and see for themselves. Because of her testimony many Samaritans come to believe in Jesus (Jn 4:39).
Conclusion
St. Photina, equal-to-the-apostles.
The Orthodox Church has a long and rich tradition about the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob. Sermons from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries call her “apostle” and “evangelist,” and characterize her as “excelling the male disciples!” (No sexism here!) At her baptism, that unnamed Samaritan woman received the name of Photina! (Phos in Greek means light. E.g., photosynthesis comes from phos.) Photina is “The enlightened one. “ Photina is also “The enlightener.” She took the light she received at the well of Jacob and Jesus and ran to enlighten her people in town. Then she went on zealous apostolic journeys to bring that light to distant lands like Carthage and Smyrna in Asia Minor. On her feast day, February 28, the Orthodox Church sings this hymn to the Samaritan woman:
By the well of Jacob, O holy one, thou didst find the water of eternal and blessed life. And having partaken thereof, O wise Photina, thou went forth proclaiming Christ, the Anointed One and the Light of the World.
The Samaritan Woman at the well
(Equal-to-the-apostles)
February 24, 2008: 3rd Sunday of Lent
Exodus 17:3-7 Romans 5:1-2, 5-8 John 4:4-39
To the churched and unchurched[1]
gathered in a church not built by human hands[2]
First reading: water from the rock
(Ex 17:3-7)
In those days, in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst with our children and our livestock?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? A little more and they will stone me!” The Lord answered Moses, “Go over there in front of the people, along with some of the elders of Israel, holding in your hand, as you go, the staff with which you struck the river. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock in Horeb. Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it for the people to drink.” This Moses did, in the presence of the elders of Israel. The place was called Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”
Gospel: water from the well of Jacob
Jn 4:4-39
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John
Glory to you, Lord.
Jn 4:4-9: Meeting at the well
Jesus and his disciples had to pass through Samaria and they came to a town named Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down at the well. It was high noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink of water.” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a cup of drink?” (A Jew would never use the same dish or cup that a Samaritan uses.)
Jn 4:10-15: Living waters
Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the well is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.
Jn 4:16-18: Five husbands!
Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!"
Jn 4:19-24: Worship in spirit and truth
“I can see that you are a prophet,” the woman said.” Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans do not really know whom you worship; we Jews know whom we worship, because salvation comes from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Those are the kind of people the Father wants to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Jn 4:25-26, 28-30, 39: Belief in Jesus
The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak with you am he.” At that, moment Jesus’ disciples returned, and they were greatly surprised to find him talking with a woman. The woman then left her water jar behind and went back to town, and said to the people there, “Come and see someone who told me everything I have ever done! Could this not be the Messiah?” At that, they set out from the town to meet him. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him on the strength of the woman’s word of testimony that, `He told me everything I ever did!’”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
Water & shade at Jacob’s well
As Jesus and the disciples were leaving Judea and were going back to Galilee they decided to go through unfriendly Samaria instead of around it. They came to a town called Sychar. Jacob’s well was there. It was high noon, and all were tired and thirsty. An artist’s conception of the scene depicts a massive oak tree stretching its immense branches over Jacob’s well. In its heavenly shade and amid cool breezes the weary wayfarers are wiping their brows and slaking their thirst with cool clear water from the ancestral well of Jacob. (Jn 4: 3-6)
Ancestral wells runs deep with sexism
At the ancestral well, the woman said to Jesus, “Sir, you do not have a bucket, and the well is deep.” (Jn 4:11) Ancestral wells run deep. They run deep with the priorities and values with which we arrange our lives. Speaking of his ancestral well a friend writes, “I was raised in a conservative working class family in Cincinnati, Ohio. Being of German ancestry, I was taught from my earliest memory to challenge nothing that Holy Mother Church teaches. I was taught to respect all persons in positions of authority: teachers, parents, aunts, uncles, police, government officials, etc. I was taught to work for what I wanted and to wait until I had cash to buy it. I was taught that the Lord helps those who help themselves. And I was taught there is no excuse for being dirty because everyone can afford a bar of soap.” With those priorities and values he had arranged his life, and in later years he was not proud of himself.
The ancestral well in today’s gospel runs deep with sexism. When the disciples went into town to buy food, Jesus remained behind at the well. Suddenly a Samaritan woman with a bad reputation in town came upon him. (In that culture, as is in all cultures, it is only the women and not the men who have a bad reputation in town, even though adultery or fornication takes two!) Public sinner that she was, she had to wear a scarlet letter on her forehead. To avoid the gossip and cruelty of other women fetching water in the cool of early morning, she came in the heat of high noon when nobody would be around.
This lengthy gospel presents Jesus as doing what no respectable rabbi would do: he is chatting friendly with a woman in public! This surprises the woman herself. “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a cup of drink?” (Jn 4:9) Returning to the well, the apostles also are surprised to see Jesus speaking publicly with the woman. (Jn 4:27) Where in the world did that woman and that first college of apostles (consisting of males only) get their sexism? Where do all cultures and colleges and religions get their sexism? Why, of course, they imbibe it at the ancestral well.
Jesus refused to drink from that well. Instead, he stood out in the open for all to see, and with the woman, he held the longest private conversation of Jesus recorded in the New Testament. It runs through almost 40 scriptural verses. It is so long that a liturgical directive allows the gospel reading for this Sunday to be shortened for sake of the people in the pews who are anxious to get out and get going. By speaking at great length with the Samaritan woman and not to her Jesus restored her human dignity and recognized her right to have her spiritual needs met.
Ancestral wells run deep sectarianism
Out of the blue, Jesus told the woman to go fetch her husband. It was a ploy to open a discussion about her marital situation and her bad reputation in town. When she replied that she had no husband, Jesus responded, “You’re right, woman! You have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband!” (Jn 4:17-18) Startled that Jesus knew so much about her past, the Samaritan woman exclaimed, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet!” (Jn 4:19)
Out of the blue again (that’s what makes this conversation seem so rambling), the woman brought up a religious bone of contention between Jesus and herself. We Samaritans, she told him, worship here on Mt. Gerizim, but you Jews claim one must worship in the temple in Jerusalem. (Jn 4:20) That, too, was a ploy; the woman wanted to change the subject about her bad reputation.
The ancestral well in today’s gospel runs deep also with sectarianism. Where in the world did Samaritans get their claim that Mt. Gerizim is the only right place to worship God? They imbibed it at their ancestral well. “My [Samaritan] ancestors worshipped here on this mountain,” the woman told Jesus (Jn 4: 20). That was her proof that Mt. Gerizim is the right place to worship God.
Where in the world did Jews get their claim that Jerusalem is the only right place to worship God? They imbibed it at their ancestral well. Where in the world do Muslims get their claim that Medina and Mecca in Saudi Arabia are the only right places to worship God? They imbibe it at their Islamic ancestral well. Where in the world do some Catholics get the claim that the only right place to worship God is in St. Peter’s in Rome? Of course, they get it from an ancestral well.
Jesus went along with the woman’s ploy; he changed the subject and addressed her problem. Refusing to drink from any ancestral well, he assured her that it does not matter where one worships, whether on Mt. Gerizim or in Jerusalem or in Medina and Mecca or even in St. Peter’s in Rome. What matters is how we worship God. What matters is that we worship God in spirit and truth. ((Jn 4:21-23)
Turning the tables
When the lengthy conversation at the well opens, it is the woman who has cool clear water to offer, and it is the Lord who is thirsty and asking for some to drink. In the course of the almost rambling conversation, we find ourselves exclaiming, “For God's sake, give the thirsty man a drink of water! He’s dying of thirst!" Nowhere in the whole account do we read that Jesus ever received a cup of water from the Samaritan woman. No material transaction is related. There is only spiritual transaction in which the tables are turned. At the end of the day, it is now Jesus who has living water to offer, and it is the woman who is thirsty and is asking for some to drink. Jesus offers her living water. She drinks deeply of it and is converted from her meandering life. The water of rebirth washes away the scarlet letter from her brow, and she now walks with her head up high.
Rather she runs with her head up high. Overwhelmed by her encounter with Jesus, the woman takes off in such a hurry she forgets her water jar! (Jn 4:28) She runs off to tell her people in town about Jesus and invites them to come and see for themselves. Because of her testimony many Samaritans come to believe in Jesus (Jn 4:39).
Conclusion
St. Photina, equal-to-the-apostles.
The Orthodox Church has a long and rich tradition about the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob. Sermons from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries call her “apostle” and “evangelist,” and characterize her as “excelling the male disciples!” (No sexism here!) At her baptism, that unnamed Samaritan woman received the name of Photina! (Phos in Greek means light. E.g., photosynthesis comes from phos.) Photina is “The enlightened one. “ Photina is also “The enlightener.” She took the light she received at the well of Jacob and Jesus and ran to enlighten her people in town. Then she went on zealous apostolic journeys to bring that light to distant lands like Carthage and Smyrna in Asia Minor. On her feast day, February 28, the Orthodox Church sings this hymn to the Samaritan woman:
By the well of Jacob, O holy one, thou didst find the water of eternal and blessed life. And having partaken thereof, O wise Photina, thou went forth proclaiming Christ, the Anointed One and the Light of the World.
