Sunday of the Samaritan Woman – 2012 May 13

Fr. Robert Miclean
Annapolis Orthodox Mission
May 13, 2012
Sunday of the Samaritan Woman
Epistle: Acts 11:19-26, 29-30
Gospel: John 4:5-42

What are you thirsting for?  Many people today speak about their thirst for knowledge or enlightenment, but often, what they’re finding is nothing but ‘escape’ from reality.  We see an increasing emphasis in Western culture on creating one’s own ‘personal’ ‘spirituality,’ designer religion, made to suite the particular wants and whims of the individual, while avoiding accountability and the need for real change, i.e., repentance.

We see this escapism in the increasing popularity of adopting or incorporating into one’s spiritual ‘path’, aspects of Buddhism or vague concepts of Eastern mysticism, like ‘meditation,’ in which you can pick and choose your own aspects of religion.  This individualism has even made its way into more traditional forms of Christianity, even Orthodoxy.

Many, if not most people today, are thirsting after God; they may even be looking for the Truth, but many people are also very confused: we’re a fast-food culture that’s grown accustomed to having it ‘my way’ and buying into the arguments of the culture without submitting them to the Church and Holy Tradition so that we can come to know the “faith once received.”

The truth is, if we’re not willing to come outside of ourselves, if we’re not willing to change our ways and learn the way of Christ, then we’re only deceiving ourselves in our thinking that what we’re gaining is actually real enlightenment.  In other words, if we’re crafting a religion that suites us and does not transform us, through submission and denial of self, then what we’re finding is actually just more escapism, and not the path of true enlightenment.

This is the problem of sin: We want it ‘our way’ and not ‘God’s way.’  ‘My will be done’ rather than ‘Thy will be done.’  Then we wonder why we’re not fulfilled, why we’re still stuck, why we become so reliant on all those temporary things that help us ‘escape,’ but in no way satisfy our thirst for knowing God and growing in that knowledge and love of Him.  As Jesus says, “the way is narrow that leads to life and few are those who find it”  (Matt. 7:14).

Why is this the case, that few are those who find it?  Because many are looking for the way of Christ, Christianity, on their terms, and that is NOT Christianity.  Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  The Way is narrow because it is ONE way, the way of Christ as He has revealed it to His Body, the Church.  Christ proclaims that this is the only way of ultimate enlightenment.  We find in Him a single path,  not a multitude of choices which somehow equal the same thing.  Christ’s life is the way to freedom from our pride—from all that we fear.

And this way of Christ is summed up in the cross—the emblem of Christ’s gift of Himself, His love, for us, His own kenosis (or self-emptying).  There’s no Christianity without the cross, without learning to die to self, to become free of the passions, the pride of self-will, the stubbornness of sin.  There’s no ‘quick fix,’ no path that lets us borrow from here and there to create our own syncretistic version of Christianity.  The modern ‘doctrine’ of “you have your truth, I have my truth” is an oxymoron.  There’s no such thing as ‘truths’; there is by definition, only one Truth and that truth is God revealed to us in Jesus Christ Himself.  All truth is His.

As Christians, we don’t gain peace through escapism: our struggles, our sins follow us!  Instead, we gain peace by bringing Christ into the midst of our struggles, our passions, our desire for healing.  Through our participation in the Church, we learn to give them over to Christ so He can transfigure them and bring us true enlightenment.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus Christ meets a Samaritan woman at the well.  She’s lost, confused.  She has had five husbands and the man she lives with now is not her husband.  She’s abandoned the faith of her fathers and embraced a licentious life—all to no avail.  She’s still unfulfilled.  She’s still in the dark, lost and confused.  Christ proclaims to her that He is the Messiah, God incarnate, “the living water.”  He proclaims freedom to her.  No longer does she need escape.

Jesus says to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, ‘but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.  But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”  Desiring this water, desiring true life, eternal life, she repents of her sins and finds Him who is Life itself.  The Apostles rightly name her, “Photini,” ‘the enlightened one.’  Not only has she turned to the Light herself, repenting, turning from her former life of delusion, but she brings her own people to the knowledge and love of God and becomes one of the great evangelists of the early Church.

There are no temporary, fast-food solutions to the problem of our egos, our pride, our struggles with sin, and the sickness of our souls.  Christ God offers us not a way of escape, of pretending these problems don’t exist, of ‘positive thinking.’  Instead, He offers us the opportunity to grow, to heal, to overcome them by becoming fellow victors with Him over our sin and death.

As we grow in the knowledge and love of God, we learn the way of Christ, the narrow way, the only way to true enlightenment.  This path, this way of struggle that leads to our enlightenment, our healing, is found in the Church that Christ Himself founded.  Here He has left us all the tools of salvation by which we may become the fullness of the men and women of God He formed us to be.  Jesus Christ promises us, that if we seek, we shall find.

And likewise, He says to us today, that if we follow Him, His way, not the way we want, but the way of patience, of godly submission, of conforming ourselves to the life that He shows us through His Church and which is exemplified in the lives of countless Saints who have gone before us like Photini, then we will have our thirst sated too.

 

Examine your life.  Is there anything holding you back from the Lord, from true enlightenment?  What struggle with sin—anger, lust, pride, or ego, is standing in your way?  Nothing is too great for God!  Each of us is given the opportunity today to follow the lead of St. Photini.  She stepped out from the shadows of the darkness of her sins, of her escapism, to embrace the spiritual rebirth of life with Christ.  With her, we can choose to drink from the water that Christ offers, His way—the water that springs up inside us to healing and eternal life.  May it be so