The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. John. (4:5-42)
How beautiful is Our Lord Jesus Christ? How overflowing is His love? How merciful is His heart towards us as sinners? The moment that we think we have an answer to these questions Our Lord breaks through our preconceived notions and shatters them completely and shows Himself to be far above anything that we think that we understand. This became clear to me once again as I read and prepared for this week’s gospel reading.
We are told that the Lord Jesus Christ was in the region of Samaria. As many of you know, this is not a Jewish region. Samaritans are not Jews. They are like an offshoot from Judaism, they would be something like schismatics, those who make a schism or break off from the larger group. I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ came to this particular reason, not because He was thirsty for water, but because He thirsted to do the will of His Father and to bring a certain Samaritan woman to salvation.
Not so coincidentally this woman whom we call Photini, came to the well, but she did so at a very strange hour, at the sixth hour or noon. To me this is strange since typically in a warm climate the people will go to the well either very early in the morning or very late in the day after the sun has started to go down. Perhaps she was going to the well in the middle of the hot sun because she did not want to encounter anyone. Perhaps she felt shame over the state of her life and her situation.
In fact we are quite sure that she felt shame since she tried to hide her broken situation from the Lord Jesus Christ when He told her to go and call her husband and she tried to lie to his face saying “I have no husband.”
But first we notice something quite beautiful. Our Lord asks her for a drink. He sees this woman and He knows her to be someone who is living in sin. He comes down to her level. He doesn’t behave as if He is above her, although He is in fact above all the heavens and the earth. He bends low in His person in order to ask her for a drink of water. This is really quite important. It is so shocking to her that she questions him because it is well known that Jews don’t have any dealings with Samaritans. They were considered like a different class of people who did not honor God and believe as the Jews believed. Yet He condescends not only to speak with her as a Jew but as the Son of God.
He does this because through appearing to need her assistance, He gets her to open up and to enter into a conversation. This is always the path to salvation, conversation and engagement with Jesus Christ. What follows is the single longest conversation that Our Lord had with one person in the whole New Testament.
He asked her for water but in fact He was getting ready to give her living water. The water that she could offer him was natural water from the well. One would drink some of it and just a little while later they would be thirsty and would require another drink. Yet the water that Our Lord would offer her would be water that never runs out, water that continually refreshes, water that changes life forever. He promised her this water and He immediately grabbed hold of her interest. She wanted this water because she was tired and thirsty, but He knew that what she was really after was something much deeper.
In our lives we grow thirsty and tired. We thirst for so many things and then when we receive them we are still surprisingly unhappy. Think for a moment of the multitude of pop stars and actors who had everything, fame, fortune, influence and yet they were not happy and kept running to try to satisfy the thirst even more and typically because they ran towards the wrong things they found this thirst was never satiated. They grew even more thirsty and they would follow these urges towards their own destruction, often through broken relationships and drugs among other things.
Each one of us also has thirsts. You can’t pretend that you don’t have them. They are part of the human condition. But where do we go to receive refreshment? Where do we go to have our thirst quenched? For Photini, she was thirsty for love and companionship. So thirsty in fact that she was willing to live outside of the law of God to have it. She had had 5 husbands, and we don’t know what happened to them. We don’t know if they died or if they gave a certificate of divorce or what exactly happened to them. And now this Samaritan woman was with a man to whom she was not married. And she tried to hide this fact but the Lord saw right through her. He examined her heart like a good surgeon and He knew immediately that she was seeking meaning in her life and that she was seeking deep and lasting love.
She found this deep and lasting love in the person of Jesus Christ. From the very first moment that He spoke with her, He began to bestow His grace on her. He began to fill her heart which was empty with that living water. She allowed this to happen and because she engaged with Him, He filled her with a new joy and over time we have learned through our sacred tradition that His thirst became her thirst, that is, she thirsted to do God’s will and to share this living water which was given to her, with others.
“At Pentecost Saint Photini received baptism, along with her five sisters, Anatole, Photo, Photis, Paraskeve, Kyriake, and her two sons, Photeinos and Joseph. She then began a missionary career, traveling far and wide, preaching the good news of the Messiah’s coming, His death and resurrection.
When Nero, the emperor of Rome, began to persecute Christians, Photini and her son Joseph were in Carthage, in Africa, where she was preaching the Christian gospel. After Jesus appeared to Photini in a dream, she sailed to Rome. Her son and many Christians from Africa accompanied her. Photini’s arrival and activity aroused curiosity in the capital city. Everyone talked about her, “Who is this woman?” they asked. “She came here with a crowd of followers and she preaches Christ with great boldness.”
Soldiers were ordered to bring her to the emperor, but Photini anticipated them. Before they could arrest her, Photini, with her son Joseph and her Christian friends, went to Nero. When the emperor saw them, he asked why they had come. Photini answered, “We have come to teach you to believe in Christ.” The half-mad ruler of the Roman Empire did not frighten her. She wanted to convert him! Nero asked the saints their names. Again Photini answered. By name she introduced herself, her five sisters and younger son.
The emperor then demanded to know whether they had all agreed to die for the Nazarene. Photini spoke for them. “Yes, for the love of Him we rejoice and in His name we’ll gladly die.””
Her life continued with many more trials and tortures and yet she overcame them all because the water that was in her was much more powerful than the fire within the emperor. Hers was the living water, the water of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus. Let us also receive Christ gladly and we will receive everything that we need to quench our deepest thirsts and to drink of the water of His glorious resurrection. Christ is risen!
Source: Sermons