|
Dear friends:
My introduction to this week’s "Encounter with Jesus" was presented as all sin and grace. The Samaritan woman had five marriages, after all, was living with someone who was not her husband, and still Jesus talked to her. What more do you need to know?
Apparently, a lot.
One thing worth knowing is that in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Samaritan woman comes to be called “Photine,” meaning “the illuminated one.” She is celebrated as a person who, after meeting Jesus and telling her neighbors about her discovery, traveled around the Mediterranean world preaching the gospel. Some parts of the tradition say that she ended up in Rome, preached to Emperor Nero, and died there as a martyr. Lost in the western tradition is the fact that this woman was called the first evangelist and “equal to the apostles.”
A close reading of the story (all 39 verses of it!) reveals that sin is never even mentioned.
When Jesus refers to her “five husbands” he likely was not referring to her sexual history but to her economic story. Marriage, after all, was an economic arrangement between two families. Girls could be married to much older men at the ages of 11, 12, or 13 for the economic benefit of their families. Families could also force their children to divorce and remarry if a better deal came along. Having several marriages wasn’t uncommon since spouses frequently died from illness, war, or injury. And women themselves were traded like property and had little say in the matter.
So, it’s most likely that Jesus was saying to her, “I see you. I see how you’ve been tossed around like a sack of grain. I see what that must have done to your heart.”
One of the things that Jesus offered, and that Photine enthusiastically accepted, was freedom from damaging social constructs. He said to her, in essence, these distinctions between Jew and Samaritan, male and female, those with power and privilege and those without, are not only meaningless but they also contaminate the water from Jacob’s well. The hour is coming, Jesus says, when all of that will be replaced by a realm of love, abundance, and spiritual power. Indeed, Jesus tells her, “The Father seeks such as these” who are willing to recognize and live into this alternative realm (John 4:23).
The Samaritan woman understood that time to be now, embraced it for herself and told her neighbors about it. She set aside her prejudices, certainties, and histories to enter into that moment.
I wonder what it would take for us to follow Photine, to let her evangelize us as she did her neighbors. What would it take to see our own moment as abundant in living water? What old stories about ourselves and others would we have to surrender? What fears would we have to release? What future would we invite?
We’ll explore it together this weekend. Come, and bring a friend.
Bob
| 
