Last week, in John 3, we witnessed the covert encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus – a religious leader, who snuck off to talk with Jesus at night, full of questions. Nicodemus left unwilling to proclaim faith in Jesus as the Messiah. This past Sunday, in John 4, we heard Jesus’ longest conversation in the entire Gospel of John, with an unnamed Samaritan woman at a well outside of town in the full heat of day. In the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, she is called Photini, which means “the luminous one.”
Photini was also full of questions, yet her tentative witness to the Good News of Jesus Christ ultimately led to the conversion of many people. Theologian Debie Thomas notes that, “she is the first person (an ethnic/religious outsider, at that) to whom Jesus reveals his identity in John’s Gospel. And Photini is the first believer in any of the Gospels to straightway become an evangelist, and bring her entire city to a saving knowledge of Jesus.”
Much has been written about Jesus’ transgressing and breaking taboos in this passage. When Jesus asked her for a drink of water, the Samaritan woman confronted him about his breaking of taboos – she was probably as shocked and astonished at his behavior as his disciples were when they returned – a Jewish man should not converse alone with a Samaritan woman, let alone ask her for a drink of water.
You may have heard theories about why Photini was there at the well in the middle of day, instead of going in the morning with most women, when it would be cooler. She may have been ostracized for her marital status, or infertility or disability. Whatever the reason, she preferred to go when she would be alone.
Why was Jesus sitting there? What if Jesus – fully human and fully divine – was truly thirsty and tired, in the middle of the day, in the midst of his journey from Jerusalem back to Galilee? Sure, we know that Jesus could have ordered water to come bubbling up out of the well, but he didn’t. Jesus’ actual thirst and his vulnerability provided an opening for his conversation with Photini. The well – a Biblical symbol of encounter. An In-between place.
As Professor Rolf Jacobson put it, “If the well is understood as a betrothal type scene, what happens in John 4 turns the traditional well scene on its head. The audience knows that Jesus never married – so they know Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at a well is not a betrothal scene. But it is an encounter scene – it is a salvation scene. The well is a place for critical, life-changing encounter with God.
The well is a space between Jews and Samaritans.
The well is a space between town and wilderness.
The well is a place in between the men who have been unfaithful to [the woman] and Jesus – the one being of ultimate fidelity.
The well is a place in between her painful past and her joyful future.”
“The well is a place in between her painful past and her joyful future.”
Because Jesus and Photini stepped outside of religious and political boundaries and had a conversation together in that in-between place, Jesus revealed his identity as “I AM” as the Messiah to her AND she became a witness for him to the very community it seems like she was trying to avoid. She forgot her water jug, ran back to her village and said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” AND, remarkably, the people of Sychar did not ignore her. They listened to Photini, came out to Jesus and came to believe in Jesus as the Messiah themselves.
Something in their interaction freed Photini from whatever shame or guilt she had been carrying – the shame and guilt that made her want to avoid her fellow villagers at the well, that made her want to go in the middle of the day, when it was the hottest.
Freed from shame and guilt, Photini rushed back to urgently tell the villagers of Sychar about Jesus. Because of her, the first person and only person to call Jesus “the Messiah” in the Gospel of John, her entire village came to believe in Jesus.
Like the well of Sychar, Lent can be that “place” between a painful past and a joyful future. Lent is the perfect season in which to “shrive,” (like Shrove Tuesday) to release yourself from, to allow God to free you from whatever shame, guilt, anger, or grudge is holding you back from full participation in the life of the Church. If you would like to schedule Reconciliation of a Penitent, or Confession, with me, as a way to formalize God’s love, mercy and forgiveness, please contact me. Participating in Reconciliation of a Penitent is, for some, the most effective Lenten fast – much better for one’s soul than giving up chocolate or Facebook. It is an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace.
Yesterday, I read this in one of my favorite little books of meditations, Living Lent by the Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, about confession:
“Most people making a first confession are scared to death. Things hidden from view for years are about to be shared with another human being and with God. I point out that God has already known about these things for some time . . . What usually happens is that the Great Shameful Secret, once it’s on the table, doesn’t look nearly as powerful as it did behind closed doors. I did that. I wish I hadn’t. I regret it and wish with all my heart it hadn’t happened . . . The person who just confessed almost always feels freer, as she should: She’s just joined the human race, a family from which she was formerly cut off because she had walked away with the mistaken belief that her sin separated her from everybody else . . . But, it doesn’t. She has a planet full of brothers and sisters who have also made bad choices from time to time and also regret them. Forgiveness is real. It can set you free. Asking for it is not nearly as hard as almost everyone thinks it will be.”
God loves us as we are, now. As we heard in John’s Gospel last week, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
God does not require an outward confession to know that we are sorry for our sins and brokenness. God yearns to take away our shame, guilt and anger so that we may run freely, like Photini, and proclaim the Good News of God’s love for all people!
God meets us in in-between places and welcomes all our questions and our doubts, all our pain and all our joy. God became incarnate as a thirsty Jewish man at a well outside of Sychar who broke all religious and political boundaries to ask a woman from Samaria for a drink of water. And then empowered her to become the first evangelist of the Gospel. If Photini can do it, so can we, with God’s help! Amen.
Watch Pastor Teresa’s full sermon from Sunday, March 8: