John 4:5-42
Christ is Risen!
It is strangely
appealing to define ourselves by our failures, especially when others know that
we have stumbled and treat us poorly as a result. As well, our own pride often causes us to
lose perspective such that we obsess about how we do not measure up to whatever
illusion of perfection we have accepted.
People are often their own harshest critics in ways that are not healthy
at all.
On
this Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, we celebrate that our Lord’s great victory
over death enables us to be free from defining ourselves by our sins or by how
other people may view us. He rises in glory not only over the tomb and
Hades, but over all the distortions of the beauty of the human person created
in His image and likeness. Today we commemorate that His salvation extends to
our most painful failings and to the harsh judgments of others upon us. Even
such difficult circumstances may become points of entry into the joy of the
empty tomb.
The
woman at the well certainly knew what it was like to be defined by others as
someone who did not measure up. She was a
Samaritan, and therefore rejected by the Jews as a heretic and a member of a
despised group that had intermarried with Gentiles. She herself had been married five times and
was now with a man to whom she was not married, which may have been why she
went to draw water at the unlikely time of high noon. Perhaps she went to the well in the heat of
the day in order to avoid the other Samaritan women who wanted nothing to do
with someone like her.
Imagine
her surprise, then, when the Savior asked her for a drink of water and then
engaged in a conversation about spiritual matters with her. Jewish men simply did not strike up
conversations with women in that time and place, and consuming food or drink
from a Samaritan was out of the question.
How even more shocking it is that Jesus Christ’s conversation with her
is the longest recorded between Him and any one person in the four
gospels. He spoke straightforwardly to
her and did not shy away from uncomfortable truths that hit her where she
lived. But instead of shutting down the
conversation or running away in fear, this Samaritan woman told the people of her
village about Christ. As a result, many
of her neighbors came to believe in the Lord.
This
Samaritan woman is known in the Church as St. Photini, which means “the
enlightened one.” Through the Savior’s
conversation with her, Photini became an evangelist who boldly shared the good
news, even to her Samaritan neighbors who were surely used to viewing her in
anything but spiritual terms. That took
tremendous courage. Photini was not only
brave in preaching to them, but ultimately in responding to the persecution of
the pagan Roman emperor Nero, to whom she said “O most impious of the blind,
you profligate and stupid man! Do you think me so deluded that I would consent
to renounce my Lord Christ and instead offer sacrifice to idols as blind as
you?” The Great Martyr Photini refused
to back down and gave the ultimate witness to Christ’s victory over death by
laying down her life for Him. The Savior
had set her free even from fear of the grave.
Too
many of us today flee in shame from uncomfortable truths, whether we encounter
them in our own thoughts or in the opinions of others. Too many of us define ourselves by our
failings, weaknesses, and temptations.
Too many of us accept some unrealistic cultural standard of “the good
life” as the norm we must meet in order to be worthwhile. Thank God, St. Photini the Great Martyr did
none of that. In response to her shocking encounter with the Savior, she humbly
acknowledged the truth about her brokenness; she did not react defensively or
make excuses. She did not end the
conversation or run away in shame.
Instead, she was open to the healing of her soul, to the possibility of
a new and restored life through the mercy of the Lord. This was such a great blessing to her that
she immediately shared the good news with the people of her village and refused
to stop, even to the point of laying down her life.
In
this joyous season of Pascha, we celebrate that Christ’s victory over death
delivers us from all the corrupting effects of sin, including our deeply
ingrained habits of thought and action that distract us from facing the truth
about ourselves. By setting us free from
bondage to the fear of death, our Risen Lord enables us to make even our most
bitter failures points of entry into the new day of His eternal life. He has conquered death, the wages of sin,
which means that our sins now have only the power over us that we allow them to
have. When, like St. Photini, we
acknowledge them straightforwardly and turn away from them, we participate
personally in the good news of Pascha. We
rise from death to life as we enter into the joy of the empty tomb. But when we proudly refuse to confess or
repent of our sins, we remain in slavery to our self-centered illusions of perfection,
to our sense of shame that we do not live up to the standards that we think we
must meet in order to be worthwhile.
In other words,
we insist on being our own saviors. But
since we cannot conquer death or heal our own souls, that is nothing but
foolish pride that keeps us bound to the fear of death, to the terror of
realizing how weak we are before the challenges we encounter both within our
own minds and in relation to others. Our failures and weaknesses are not good
in and of themselves, but we put them to good use when we let them open our
eyes to the truth of who we are, of where we stand before the Lord. If we will use them as ways to humble
ourselves without making excuses or otherwise blinding ourselves to what they
reveal about us, then we will put ourselves in the blessed place of St.
Photini, who was thirsty for strength and healing that she knew she could not
give herself, for “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” from the
depths of her soul.
Like her, we
must refuse to be paralyzed by guilt and shame before others and in our own
minds. Then we will take our attention
off whether we measure up to some self-imposed standard and instead focus on
receiving the healing mercy of Jesus Christ.
No matter what we have done, no matter how distorted and corrupt any
dimension of our life may be, no matter how anyone else treats or views us, Christ
is able to raise us up with Him from death to life. That is not only a future promise, but a
present reality. He rose in glory with
His wounds still visible, and no wound that we or others have inflicted puts us
beyond the good news of His resurrection.
In this glorious season of Pascha, let us all become like the Great
Martyr Photini by embracing enthusiastically the new life that the Savior has
brought to the world, for Christ is Risen!
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