Scripture: John 4:1-41
Jesus had living water for Nicodemus.
Jesus had living water for the Samaritan woman at the well.
Jesus has living water for you and for me.
Will you pray with me.
God help us to believe that our budding belief has a life of its own outside the tumult of this world. May our time of worship be a testament to you, that in all that we do . . . and in all that we fail to do . . . we might be drawn to you . . . and you to us right here, and right now — for you are our ocean and we are your water, and you are our steeple and we are your bell, and you are our savior and we are your salvation. In your name we pray, Amen.
There are two main schools of thought about the name of the “Samaritan woman at the well.” One school says that readers positively related to unnamed characters in the Bible, because we have no emotional connections to their name — and so we are free to love them. They are the universal every-person, a blank canvas for us to build an emotional connection with. This school of thought says John the gospeler leaves the Samaritan woman of scripture unnamed because the author wants us to connect positively with her.
Contrast this with Nicodemus from last week who comes at night to meet Jesus, and who we are inclined to distrust. His name is from the Greek nike meaning victory, and demos meaning people. When people hear Nicodemus, they hear the victory of the people, which is the name that matches Nicodemus’s political profile, and thus perhaps we do distrust Nicodemus a little.
The other school of thought about the Samaritan “woman at the well” says that she is yet another woman in a long tradition of Biblical women who the writers didn’t bother to record a name for — the role of women being consistently overlooked and under-acknowledged from Genesis to Revelation. Undoubtedly, they say, this Samaritan women in John chapter 4 had a name, and presumably Jesus asked for her name during the course of their conversation — it is lost to history.
But names have power, and to be fully known, the thinking goes, one needs a name. Some in the tradition have offered the name Photina as a suitable placeholder for this woman, and so I’ll do the same.
Photina meets Jesus at noon — which is purposely in contrast to the night-time sneakery of Nicodemus. Photina means light, and in the light she meets Jesus the Christ when they both come in the high heat of the day seeking a cooling drink of water at a well.
Jesus is on his way walking home to Galilee from Jerusalem — perhaps to let things cool off in Jerusalem after he made a healthy number of enemies by flipping those tables in the temple. The scripture notes that Jesus HAS TO travel through Samaria, which might be true — even though there are many ways to get from Jerusalem to Galilee. Jesus’s detour into enemy territory allows us to see Jesus making a connection with someone who is very different from him — you can look to the Parable of the Good Samaritan for confirmation of how Samaritans and Jews were cultural enemies and even to touch each other was unexpected.
Even though they are in Samaria, Photina knows right away that Jesus is not a Samaritan when he asks her for a drink of water. And she doesn’t shy away from naming the social awkwardness of their situation: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” Said another way: “we’re supposed to have bad blood between us, you and me.”
The genius of this story is that Photina and Jesus each have something that the other needs. Jesus doesn’t have a cup, or bucket, and therefore no ability to drink from the well on this hot day — remember Jacob whose brother Esau comes back home from hunting starving, and Jacob extorts a valuable concession out of Esau before he gives his brother a bowl of food? Photina doesn’t extort Jesus. And, like you and like me, Photina has experienced some hurt and some pain in her life. She’s had five husbands which is a whole lot of loss no matter how it has come to be.
Jesus offers Photina the living water of his Spirit. She hears Jesus’s words and believes, drinking deeply from the spring of Jesus’s promise of eternal life. She accepts a friendship with him, and goes to tell her friends about the living water. Remember that Nicodemus, a person of the same religious background as Jesus, didn’t really understand the promise that Jesus was making to him. Yet, here Photina, across all the divisions, sees the light and receives the Spirit water. She goes home without her water jar, going with joy to share the good news with her community.
Jesus offers us the same living water.
He invites us to leave our old ways.
Go with joy.
Share the good news.
Love Jesus in your own way.
Accept this gift of life freely given.
Photina receives what Jesus offers with joy and becomes one of the first of his apostles by bearing witness to her whole community.
We can appreciate that God uses unlikely messengers to share the Gospel, a Gospel which is like water to a parched throat. God uses unlikely messengers, even us, even you, and even me, to carry the Gospel message.
Thank God for Nicodemus who reminds us that even if you and I don’t understand the nature of this faith that Jesus invites us into, we still have a role to play — remember Nicodemus sticks out his neck to save Jesus’s life, and then honors him when he is dead. Nicodemus’s attempts at faith and belief are not fruitless . . . they just put him on a different path. Have hope!
Thank God for Photina who reminds us that even if you and I feel helpless and worthless in our more trying moments, that God will find a way to find us through the ordinary and unexpected . . . through something as simple as the cup we use to drink water. God is asking us to be drawn into the mystery of faith by whatever road we can travel. There is not just one way to enter eternal life with Jesus. Keep going! Have hope!
Thank God for you, my friends, for we are surely on this journey together. Let us keep on our way with Jesus, from Jerusalem into enemy territory, and beyond — to find new friends, to go home again to Galilee next week, where we will continue to seek Christ’s healing together.
Keep on the way with Jesus, who won’t let us fall behind.
None of us will.
May it be so, Amen.
