This Sunday of the Samaritan woman poses a very poignant question to us: What are you thirsting for? Many people today speak about using “self-help”, or say they are ‘spiritual,’ not ‘religious.’ Often, what they really want is something to legitimize their own thinking, whatever they’ve cobbled together into some kind of self-styled ‘religion’ even if they’d be horrified to call it that. We see an increasing emphasis on this kind of ‘personal’ ‘spirituality,’ made to suite the particular wants or whims of the individual and the culture, while avoiding accountability, repentance and growth in the likeness of the Only Changeless One—the Living Water.
We see this kind of escapism in the increasing popularity of adopting or incorporating into one’s spiritual ‘path’, aspects of Buddhism, vague concepts of Eastern mysticism, on ‘escaping reality through meditation’ rather than focus and contemplation on Christ and His redemption and healing of the brokenness in us and around us.
Whatever people strive to put in the place of the hole that only God can fill, many people today are thirsting; they may even be looking for the Truth, but many people are also very confused because they want the Truth on their terms: we’re a ‘fast-food culture’ that’s grown accustomed to having it ‘my way.’ The Church is here to give you what you need and what I need, what is the timeless Truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Anything else is just delusion.
This is the truth: if we’re not willing to submit ourselves and our ways, our thinking, to learn the way of Christ, what He’s entrusted to the Church, 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 spirituality that suites us, that comes from our own heads, but doesn’t transform us through submission and self denial to grow in the likeness of Christ as He has revealed Himself to us, 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,’ not ‘God’s.’ ‘My will be done’ rather than ‘Thy will be done.’ People often wonder why they’re not fulfilled, why they’re still stuck, why they become so reliant on all those temporary things that help them ‘escape,’ but which in no way satisfy their thirst for God, which growing in the knowledge and love of Him alone satisfies. Jesus reminds us: “the way is narrow that leads to life and few are those who find it” (Mt. 7:14).
Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” The Way is narrow because it is ONE way because Christ is one, God is one, 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 as He is One, not a multitude of choices which somehow equal the same thing while presenting God in different ways. Christ’s life is the way to freedom from our pride—from all that we fear, from all our struggles with ego, which, if we let them, would otherwise define us.
We don’t gain peace through escapism: our struggles, our sins follow us, continue to haunt us, harm us and others! Instead, we gain peace by bringing Christ into the midst of our struggles, our passions, our struggle for healing through repentance.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at the well. She’s lost, confused—just like so many today. She’s been ‘going it on her own’: she’s had five husbands and the man she has now is not her husband. She’s abandoned the faith of her fathers and embraced a licentious life—to no avail! She’s still unfulfilled, she’s still suffering; she’s still in the dark, lost and confused, thirsting for more. Christ proclaims to her that He is the Messiah, God incarnate,“the living water.” He proclaims freedom to her—not escape—but transfiguration, redemption.
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, i.e., turns from them, and finds Him who is Life itself. The Apostles rightly name her, “Photini,” ‘the enlightened one.’ Her deeds are all revealed; nothing more is concealed; no longer does she walk in the darkness and shame, for now she’s found the joy and freedom of life with God through repentance; she’s given a new identity in Christ.
Not only does Photini herself turn to the Light, repenting; she also brings her people to the knowledge and love of God, that they too can find healing and salvation thru repentance. Photini becomes one of the great evangelists of the early Church, helping others to find the same Living Water. It’s exactly that love for God, found in her new life in Him, which motivates her missionary zeal; this is a lesson for us as well who hope to grow our church.
There are no temporary, ‘fast-food’ solutions to the problem of our egos, our pride, our struggles with sin. 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 embracing the reality of who He is, who we are called to be, and thirsting more for Him.
We embrace this new life by calling out to Him daily through our prayers and in between in moments of temptation, frustration, need. We bring Him into the midst of our problems through prayer rather than turning to ‘self help.’ We avail ourselves of the services and Sacraments of the Church that communicate Christ’s life and truth to us and which we desperately need to hear because the rest of the time we’re so surrounded by a culture that largely doesn’t know God.
Otherwise, if Christ and the Church are just on the periphery, we simply can’t make forward progress in faith and healing, in the life that’s alone in Christ; the voices of the world are otherwise too dominant. “Narrow is the road that leads to life.”
Christ 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 humility, of conforming ourselves to the life that He shows us through His Church and exemplified in the lives of countless Saints who have gone before us like Photini, then we’ll have our thirst sated too.
Examine your life. What are you thirsting for? Is there anything holding you back from the Lord, from true enlightenment, from the fullness of life in Christ that He beckons us to receive? Is Christ the center of your life or on the periphery? 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 too can thirst for Christ and drink from the water that Christ offers—the water that springs up inside us to healing and eternal life. Christ is risen!
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday of the Samaritan Woman
May 18 2014
Epistle: Acts 11:19-26, 29-30
Gospel: John 4:5-42
