This morning’s gospel tells the story of the person who brought Jesus his first converts as well as the person with whom he had the longest conversation recorded in the gospels. In Greek sermons written from the 4th to the 14th centuries the Samaritan woman is often compared to the male disciples and frequently found to be their superior. During this same period many hymns were composed to honor this woman who encountered Jesus at the well. One 6th century hymn called her “wise”, “holy”, “faithful” and “god-bearing”. In time she was canonized by the Eastern Orthodox Church and enrolled among her saints.
The Samaritan woman’s cult spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean world and reached as far west as Spain. In Roman martyrology she was known as Photina. There’s also a legend which claims that she preached the gospel in various places, went to Carthage, was imprisoned for three years for her faith and finally died a martyr during the reign of Nero. Martyred along with her were her two sons, Joseph and Victor; three sisters and three others. A Spanish legend says that Photina converted and baptized Nero’s daughter, Domnina, along with a hundred of her servants.
The legends about this woman have always been much more widespread in the Eastern Orthodox Church than in the West and her feast day was celebrated last Sunday. A modern Orthodox writer, Eva Topping, points out that Photeine is still a name that’s very common among Greek Orthodox women and describes her as the “nameless woman of the Gospel who becomes transfigured into light and is listed in Orthodox liturgical books as the “Glorious Saint and Great Martyr Photeine, the Samaritan Woman”.
Now all that’s very interesting, especially to us women as we have so few role models in the Scriptures. But the real question is what does this woman have to say to us today? Well in the first place if we’re going to understand her story, we have to remember the rigid Levitical legalism to which Jesus would have been subjected as a faithful Jew because it provides the essential backdrop for this gospel story. First of all, there isn’t any other story in the scriptures which more powerfully reveals God’s evolution of grace through Jesus’ transformation of rules into relationships than this intense encounter between Jesus and the woman at the well because so many of the prohibitions of the Levitical Holiness Code come into play.
For example, in Jesus’ day Jewish men could neither speak to nor touch a women who wasn’t their wife. Why? Because they didn’t want to run the risk of becoming unclean. Since they wouldn’t have had any way of knowing where the woman was in her monthly cycle. If she were “unclean” then they would have become unclean simply by touching her.
As the story in this morning’s gospel unfolds we discover that this woman is promiscuous. If not a prostitute then certainly someone who seems to have had a very hard time staying married. It’s highly probable that she’d also broken the strict divorce codes of the time which would explain why she was at the well at noon all alone instead of coming to the well at daybreak or dusk which was the time women gathered water for their families and gossiped among themselves. So you see, simply by talking to her, Jesus was breaking the holiness code in several different ways.
We also have to remember that she was a Samaritan, a despised foreigner, in many respects; the equilivant of a Palestinian in the eyes of today’s Israeli. So this morning we should be just as astounded as the disciples were when they found Jesus talking to this woman. In some ways Jesus willingness to talk to the Samaritan woman revealed his own human need to make a connection with the deep spiritual need within her. In a way, Jesus plumbed the well of the Samaritan woman’s soul just as deeply as she had plumbed the ancient well of Jacob.
What we have in this story is a stunning example of Jesus embodying a new understanding of holiness. This story isn’t about the purity code of ritualistic law but rather the compassionate code of the human heart. For in this story Jesus completely rewrites the definition of piety. Instead of rigidly excluding people on the basis of behavior or status or law, in this story we have Jesus radically including people on the basis of need and value and worth. Dorothy Sayers, the great English mystery writer, once wrote, “Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the cradle and the last at the cross. They had never known a man like this Jesus. There had never been such another”.
In today’s gospel we have an example of Jesus demonstrating a new way of being human. He looked into the eyes of this woman and met her as she was. He ignored the cultural stereotyping and judgment which was expected from a Jew toward a Samaritan and he refused to behave according to the expectations of his tradition. By doing this Jesus threw down the gauntlet to all of us who bear his name. As a result, you and I are faced with seriously evaluating how well we’re doing at this business of grace? How open, accepting and non-judgmental are we to the rich variety of people, both sinners and saints, who come our way? Are we sensitive, intuitive and responsive to their needs?
Justice Harry Blackmun was named to the Supreme Court by President Nixon because he was considered a constitutional conservative. Blackmun served for 24 years and surprised everyone including himself as he gradually broadened his understanding of the law. One of his former law clerks, who wrote an eulogy at the time of his death, remarked that Blackmun grew in his sensitivity to the needs of the people who lurked behind the pages of the court briefs. Because of his own Christian faith Blackmun began to realize that compassion had to serve as the basic foundation of judicial reasoning. Or as another colleague put it Blackmun worried about the “little people who had no angels on their shoulders. He insisted on seeing the litigants as individuals and not as abstract categories”.
A street minister in Chicago tells the story of a young mother who came into his homeless shelter sick, frightened, and completely racked by guilt and despair. She was a prostitute and a drug addict who in a cocaine-induced hysteria had offered her two year old daughter for sex so that she could feed her own ravenous addiction. Completely revolted by this revelation, at first the street minister was speechless. Finally, when he spoke he asked her whether she’d ever thought of going to church for help. “I’ll never forget the look of pure astonishment that crossed her face” he said. ‘Church” she cried. ‘Why would I ever go there? They’d just make me feel even worse than I already do!’” What a condemnation of the contemporary Christian Church? After all aren’t we the community which is called to represent Christ to the world in our times?
But let’s take another look at our gospel story because there’s more here than a gracious, generous, compassionate, inclusive Jesus. For if we listen carefully we’ll also hear that our warm fuzzy Jesus quickly became as hard as nails. Before very long the conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well quickly became intense. For as they connected spiritually, emotionally and intellectually all the pretense and politeness was stripped away. Suddenly the comforting Jesus had become a confrontational Jesus. For if he was going to engage this woman as a child of God then he needed to engage all of who she was. In other words, her brokenness, her weakness, her corruption, her need, and most of all, her deep, deep thirst for a sense of purpose and worth. That’s why Jesus confronted her with her sexual history.
He told her, with no holds barred, that until she encountered God she would never experience the abundant life. Until she drank deeply of the living water, the very roots of who she was would remain shriveled, dry and barren. Because she was so precious in the eyes of God, Jesus showed her in glaring detail the unworthiness of her present lifestyle. The result of that confrontation was her transformation. She was transformed from a woman living on the edge of society into the first Christian evangelist, a glorious saint, the great martyr Photina. Instead of being offended by Jesus’ confrontational approach she was empowered. For through seeing herself in the mirror of Jesus’ truth, she was able to meet herself honestly for the very first time. It was that clear view of who she was that enabled her to change. She wanted more from life. She wanted relationship and authentic intimacy. So with great courage she reached for more.
That’s probably why she left her water jar behind as she ran to the village. She ran back to share the living water that was now overflowing from her soul. Because of those actions this fallen, rejected, broken woman became the first evangelist in the gospel of John. The first person who, with passionate joy, proclaimed the Good News of the Gospel. “Come my friends,” she cried. “Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done. He is the Messiah! He is the God who sees us as we are! He is the God who loves us as we are! He is the God who empowers us to become who we still need to be!
Once upon a time there was a Rabbi who was much beloved by the people. He was a brilliant, wise and charismatic leader. Crowds surrounded him constantly seeking blessing and healing and truth. But there was always one surly man in the crowd who always appeared wherever and whenever the Rabbi would speak. This old man contradicted the Rabbi pointed out the Rabbi’s weaknesses and generally made fun of his defects. This heckler infuriated the people who loved and revered the Rabbi. And then one day the heckler died. Everyone heaved a sign of relief and thought to themselves “Good riddance!” Everyone that is, except the Rabbi, who came to the heckler’s funeral overcome with grief and loss. When he was asked if he was mourning over the eternal fate of this wicked man the Rabbi responded, “Oh no, no! Why should I mourn over our friend who is now surely in heaven? It is for myself that I am grieving. This man was the only true friend I had. I’m surrounded by people who revere me. He was the only one who ever challenged me and now I fear that with him gone I’ll stop growing.” As he said these words he burst into tears.
This morning, my friends, I want to urge you to come to the well to meet Jesus. For he’s the only true friend you really have. That’s why you must come. Come in the glare of the noonday sun like she did. Come and offer your thirst as well as your need. The promise of our faith is that Jesus will be there to greet you, to touch you, to comfort you, to confront you and ultimately to help you grow. Never forget, that there’s nothing you have done or have not done that will turn him off. All you and I have to do is to be open and receptive and if you’ll do that Jesus will fill you with living water. The living water of hope and grace and possibility so that you’ll never be thirsty again. AMEN
No comments:
Post a Comment