A Conversation Beyond Expectation – A Life Beyond Conceiving

Christ is risen!

The Gospel today on this Sunday of the Samaritan Woman is from chapter 4 of the Gospel of St John about the meeting at Jacob’s well between Jesus Christ and the Samaritan woman, Photini. Let’s look at their conversation carefully and see what we can learn. The meeting takes place “at the sixth hour” which is noon, so it is very hot as Jesus Christ “wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well.” When Photini arrives with a pitcher to draw water, “Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ Photini is quite surprised because Jews do not talk to the people of Samaria.

In a modern context this would be like a meeting by the office water cooler or an outdoor well between two people who had never met, with an opportunity for a private conversation. And what a conversation it was!  Jesus Christ said to Photini. Quote: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water,” concluded Jesus. Understandably, Photini was quite confused and said to Jesus. Quote. “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?” asked Photini.

Jesus Christ said to her. Quote: “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give [them] will never thirst; the water that I shall give [them] will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life, concluded Jesus. Now that is what would usually be called “a conversation stopper”—that is, a comment that kills a conversation because it is shocking, surprising and out of context. You don’t expect someone you have never met before to start chatting with you about eternal life as soon as you meet them. However, Photini responds, not with confusion, but with deep interest, and says. Quote: “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw [water],” she concludes. So, we are surprised; but, of course, Jesus Christ was not. He knew that Photini was aware of the sins in her present life on earth, interested in eternal life, but unsure how to gain it.

Then Jesus Christ asks her to “call your husband to come here.” Photini replies honestly. Quote: “I have no husband.” And Jesus then raises the conversation to a further level that she would not have anticipated. Jesus Christ says to her. Quote: “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband;’ for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly,” concluded Jesus.

Photini tells Jesus exactly what she is thinking and raises the question that is central in her mind about the relationship between Samaritans and Jews. Quote: “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain and you [Jews] say that in Jerusalem is the place where [people] ought to worship,” she concludes. Then, it is Jesus Christ who raises the conversation to a still higher level, speaking of a future that is to come for Jews, Samaritans and all the people of the world. Jesus said to her. Quote: “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth,” concluded Jesus Christ.

Photini indicates to him that she is very theologically and spiritually informed. She tells Jesus. Quote: “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things,” she concludes. “Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am he,” concluded Jesus Christ. Now, remarkable and unexpected as that conversation was, what happens next is just as remarkable and unexpected to everyone except Jesus Christ. Photini left her water jug—a very important possession—at the well and went into the city and “said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?’ [And the people] went out of the city and were coming to him…. Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony…They asked [Jesus] to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.” So ends today’s Gospel.

Jesus Christ has done something quite astounding: He has said, without any qualifications, that He is the Messiah, the Christ. He has indicated His divinity. And Photini has also done something very important. She has exercised her freedom to believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah; and she has then become an evangelist seeking to bring others to belief in Christ. This linking of divine power from Jesus Christ and human freedom from Photini is very important for us to understand.

This is precisely the question raised by the Christian Professor Bernhard W. Anderson in his book, The Eighth Century Prophets: Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah (Longman, 1988, Fourth Edition). Anderson writes: “What is the relation between divine power and human freedom? It would seem that, to avoid utter contradiction, one would have to say either that God is in complete control, in which case human beings lose their responsibility, or alternatively, human beings are fully in control of their own destiny, in which case God is either severely limited or has absented himself from the world in order to leave things up to human beings. The surprising thing is that the prophetic message wants to hold on to both: God’s unlimited power and human responsibility. God’s presence does not take away human freedom but that very presence demands the exercise of responsibility… In teaching the theme of repentance, the eighth century prophets begin, not with Israel’s freedom to decide, but with the divine initiative which requires and grants freedom, concludes Professor Anderson” [p. 27].

To understand this encounter between Jesus Christ and Photini we too must “hold on to both … God’s unlimited power and human responsibility.” We too have to learn how to “begin with God’s initiative,” and only then consider our “freedom to decide” how to live our lives. How can we do this?

St Augustine stresses how God made the entire world, which, of course, includes each of us as unique human beings. St Augustine preached. Quote: “You ask what you should offer [to God]: offer yourself. For what else does the Lord seek of you but you? Because of all earthly creatures he has made nothing better than you, he seeks yourself from yourself, because you have lost yourself,” concludes St Augustine.

It is true that once we let the Holy Trinity into our lives we have “lost” ourselves. However, we have gained a much deeper closeness to God. Precisely how and when this will happen will be different for each of us. But it can and will happen if we pray to become “lost” to our own desires and wishes in order to welcome the will of God into our lives.

St Augustine is not proposing a difficult mystical journey. He preaches quite simply that we should prepare ourselves and go regularly to Holy Communion. St Augustine preached of how Christ became a human being. Quote: “because if he had not become [a human being], we would not have his flesh; if we did not have his flesh, we would not eat the bread of the altar [that is, the Eucharist]…. This is where you are going…. You come through Christ to Christ. How through Christ to Christ? Through Christ the man to Christ the God, through the Word made flesh to the word which in the beginning was God with God,” concludes St Augustine.

That is powerful isn’t it? As Orthodox Christians, we “come through Christ the man to Christ the God.” Jesus Christ is the person who guides us through the Holy Spirit to find the will of God the Father for each of our lives. St Augustine is basing his preaching on the opening chapter of the Gospel of St John, verses 1, 2 and 14. Quote: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word as with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth,” concludes St John.

It is the Holy Spirit who brings us to this new awareness of Jesus Christ who is both man and God. At times, this can happen suddenly and unexpectedly, as Gregory the Great preached. Quote: 

“How good it is to raise up eyes of faith to the power of this worker, the Holy Spirit, and look here at our ancestors in the Old Testament and the New Testament. With the eyes of my faith open, I gaze on David, on Amos, on Daniel, on Peter, on Paul, on Matthew—and I am filled with a desire to behold the nature of the worker, the Holy Spirit. But I fall short!... What a skilled worker this [Holy] Spirit is!... No sooner does the Spirit touch our minds in regard to anything that we are taught; the Spirit’s very touch is teaching. The Spirit changes the human heart in a moment, filling it with light. Suddenly we are no longer what we were; suddenly we are something we never used to be,” concludes St Gregory.

At other times, our move from being guided by our own wishes to being guided by the will of God might be a gradual progression into holiness. Each of our journeys of drawing closer to the Holy Trinity are unique. But whether that journey is immediate or gradual, let us begin today.

Christ is risen! Father Emmanuel Kahn