Has God ever surprised you?
Have you ever found that what you expected from the Lord isn’t what He had in mind?
Have you ever been in a situation where real spiritual growth forced you out of your comfort
zone?
Hey everybody this is Steve and God works in unexpected ways.
In this week’s Gospel, Jesus offers Living Water to a Samaritan Woman.
And in this week’s passage from the Book of Acts, the Church preaches the Gospel to
the Gentiles for the first time.
Links, as always, are down in the doobley-doo.
And remember to check out the intro videos we made for both John’s Gospel account and
the Book of Acts, to help you better understand the readings.
Like we briefly explained last week, this week’s readings are also part of this bigger
theme of baptism.
As we, the generations of Christians that have joined the Church over the years, make
sense of who we are.
And what God has in store for us.
And this theme of baptism is probably easy to see in the Gospel reading.
Because it centers on water.
Jesus is in Samaria.
And He’s tired from His journey so he stops by the Well of Jacob to rest and have a drink
of water.
The Samaritans were seen as outcasts by the Jews, as we covered back in Episode 8.
And Jacob, as we covered back in Episode 22, was the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham.
And a really important person in the Old Testament.
He was the unexpected heir to Isaac, someone who gained an inheritance that didn’t seem
like it was meant for him.
This is some really important context to help understand what happens by the well.
That’s why, if you haven’t yet, you should check out those two episodes.
So Jesus is resting by Jacob’s Well when a Samaritan woman comes to draw water.
And Jesus asks her for a drink.
The woman is shocked and responds with a question.
It was odd for a man to speak to a woman he didn’t know.
And even more odd for a Jewish man to speak to a Samaritan woman.
Because the Jews and Samaritans didn’t get along very well.
Jesus adds to the woman’s shock by saying that, if she really knew who she was talking
to, she would have asked Him for living water.
This is a bit of a play on words.
In Hebrew and Aramaic, living water can mean something spiritual.
Or, it can mean running water, like what you’d find in a river rather than a well.
So the poor woman is confused about how Jesus can offer her running water.
After all, He doesn’t have a bucket or any way to get it.
Then Jesus again blows the woman’s mind, and tells her that He’s not offering her
just any old drink of water.
Whether you drink from a well or from a river, at some point, you’re going to get thirsty
again.
And that’s not what Jesus is offering.
So the Lord points to the well and tells her: “Everyone who drinks of this water will
thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the
water that I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
(John 4:14)
It’s amazing to read this back and forth between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman.
Because, no matter how scandalous or downright confusing the conversation gets, the woman
sticks with Jesus.
And when the Lord tells her this incredible thing, that He can give her water that will
eternally quench her thirst, the woman doesn’t pull away.
She doesn’t assume that Jesus is some crazy stranger hanging out by the village well.
She takes Him seriously.
And says, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”
(John 4:15)
Jesus doesn’t abandon the Samaritan Woman at that point in the conversation, leaving
her curious about getting her hands on this water.
Christ wants the woman to move even deeper into this mystery.
He wants her to really know who He is.
So He unexpectedly asks the Samaritan Woman to bring her husband.
Which seems simple enough.
Yet the woman responds that she doesn’t have a husband.
Jesus agrees and shows that He knows more about the woman than any normal stranger would.
“You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband;’ for you have had five husbands, and he whom
you now have is not your husband; this you said truly.”
(John 4:17-18)
We tend to hear this and assume that the woman was sinful.
That she left her old husbands, and bounced around to different relationships.
Eventually living with a man without getting married.
Yet St Ephrem the Syrian, in hymns he composed for the Samaritan Woman, says that this reputation
for sin was undeserved.
That each of her husbands had, unfortunately, died.
And that this led people to think she was cursed, so no one else wanted to marry her.
Which pushed her into a situation where she lived with a man outside of marriage, purely
to survive at a time when it was all but impossible to survive as a woman on your own.
She wanted someone in her life.
And, time and time again, that need was frustrated.
She drank from the well, again and again.
And each time, she remained thirsty.
Now, for the first time in her life, the Samaritan Woman meets a man who is no mere man.
When Jesus tells the woman that she is with a 6th man that’s not her husband, she believes
that Jesus is some kind of prophet.
And she immediately desires to learn more from Him.
So she asks about worship.
Because one of the things that separated Jews and Samaritans was the question of where exactly
people should worship God.
Where is the holy place where people can encounter God?
And once again, Jesus surprises her.
Because He doesn’t say that people should worship on Mt Zion, like the Jews say.
Or on Mt Gerizim, like the Samaritans say.
Instead, He offers a completely unexpected answer:
Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem
will you worship the Father.
You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in
spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship Him.
God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
(John 4:21-25)
And again, the Samaritan Woman pushes the conversation even further.
She says she’s heard that a Messiah is coming who will show the people these things.
And Jesus replies that He is that Messiah.
At this point the disciples, who were busy getting lunch, return.
The Samaritan Woman (who gets it, who understands that Jesus is the Messiah they’ve been waiting
for) leaves her water jar and immediately goes to preach to the Samaritans that the
Christ, the anointed one, has come.
Meanwhile, the disciples try to get Jesus to have a bit to eat.
And when Jesus tries to do what He did with the Samaritan Woman, when He tries to show
the disciples that He already has a greater food, a more mystical food, they completely
miss the point.
They think someone else already brought Him lunch.
So the one person who walks away actually understanding who Jesus is, and what He really
offers the world, isn’t one of the Lord’s disciples.
It’s a Samaritan Woman, living in sin because of the terrible difficulties of her life.
And through her, many Samaritans came to believe in Christ.
To unexpectedly realize that a Jewish man, someone they might have dismissed as an enemy,
was actually the promised Messiah and very Son of God.
This Samaritan Woman, by the way, is St Photine.
One of the great saints of the Church.
She preached the Gospel to her family, and traveled as far as Carthage, making new disciples.
She eventually gave her life as a martyr.
And we remember her as St Photine, Equal to the Apostles.
St Photine challenged the expectations that people had.
She was a woman, a person whose testimony wouldn’t even have been accepted in court
at the time.
She was a Samaritan, an enemy of the Jews.
And yet she is the one who had the patience and persistence and curiosity to sit with
Christ.
To talk to Him.
To open her life to the mystery that He was revealing.
Even the disciples, who were too busy listening to their stomachs and getting lunch, didn’t
understand.
Because the Gospel is a deeper mystery than we can fully understand.
And has a more cosmic significance than we can comprehend.
We get a taste for the true scope of the Gospel in this week’s reading from Acts.
We ended episode 31 with the martyrdom of St Stephen, the first martyr of the Church.
This week’s reading picks up after that, when many Christians fled, scattered by this
persecution.
They traveled far and wide, across the Mediterranean to many different places.
But one thing united them all:
They only preached the Gospel to the Jews.
Which makes sense on some level.
After all, Jesus is the Messiah prophesied by the Jewish prophets and by Jewish Scripture.
It makes sense to think that maybe He came specifically for the Chosen People of God,
for the sons and daughters of Abraham.
Yet that was challenged in the city of Antioch.
“But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke
to the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus.
And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number that believed turned to the
Lord.”
(Acts 11:20-21)
When the Church in Jerusalem hears about this, they aren’t quite sure what to make of it.
So they send Barnabas to Antioch, to investigate and let them know what’s going on.
Barnabas was himself a Jew.
And when he saw the Gospel spreading to Gentiles, he could have gotten scared or defensive because
some boundary was being crossed.
But he didn’t.
“When Barnabas came and saw the grace of God, he was glad; and he exhorted them all
to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose; for he was a good man, full of the
Holy Spirit and of faith.
And a large company was added to the Lord.”
(Acts 11:23-24)
But Barnabas doesn’t stop there.
He sees the state of the Church in Antioch and his instinct is to go get help to really
shape these new Christians.
So he leaves Antioch and goes to Tarsus, which is not a short trip, to look for Paul.
And he brings Paul back to Antioch where they stay for a full year, preaching and teaching
and shaping these new Christians.
This makes perfect sense: Paul is the Apostle to the Gentiles, one of the greatest missionaries
in the history of the Church.
Paul grew up a pious Jew, he knew the Old Testament very well.
And he could see that the whole point was salvation of the whole world.
Which is why Jesus Himself told His disciples to preach the Gospel to all nations.
And as the Church began to understand what this meant, as those first Christians crossed
this boundary, and began truly preaching the Gospel to everyone, the identify of the Church
began to solidify.
“And in Antioch the disciples were for the first time called Christians.
(Acts 11:26)
So as we continue to explore this theme of baptism, of the Living Water that flows from
Christ and truly transforms our lives, we’re reminded of just how revolutionary the Christian
life is.
The Samaritan Woman unexpectedly became Photine, Equal to the Apostles.
The Gospel message, initially reserved only for Jews, was opened up to all people.
And it’s a challenge for us because there may be ways that we’re still putting boundaries
around the Gospel today.
Maybe we’re comfortable with the Church being limited to people with our ethnic background.
Maybe we’re comfortable with our parish being made up of the same people we’ve always
known.
Maybe we’re not quite ready to preach the Gospel with the zeal of Photine, or support
the spread of the Gospel with the joy of Barnabas.
But through the prayers of these great saints, and the grace of God, maybe we too can do
our part in helping the Gospel spread anywhere and everywhere.
We’ve covered a lot of ground today.
And to help work through what this all means for each us, we’ll end as we always do on
Live the Word: with 3 questions.
First, do you take Jesus seriously when He promises to satisfy your thirst?
Or are you still drinking from wells that run dry?
Just the Samaritan Woman, who was married multiple times, didn’t find who she was
looking for until she met Christ: are you trying to satisfy your thirst apart from the
Lord?
Second, what kind of ideas do you have about how God is supposed to behave?
The Samaritan Woman thought she knew what to expect from the Messiah, but she quickly
learned that He was not what she thought.
Do you sometimes expect God simply to grant you your wishes?
Do you see Him as your co-pilot, helping you get where you think you need to go?
Or is He truly the mystical one who acts in and for the world, often in unexpected ways?
Third, do you have the patience and courage to really sit with Christ?
To let Him see you, show you who He made you to be?
God, of course, made us and sees us clearly.
But we so often try to hide certain things from Him because of our shame.
And we often hide things from ourselves as well.
Yet Photine doesn’t come to the Lord under the cover of darkness.
She comes to the well at noon, in broad daylight.
Are you open to the Lord seeing you in the light of day?
Are you open to seeing yourself; the true state of your life and your heart?
We’ll be back with a new episode on Monday.
And my buddy Christian will have a short response video up on Thursday as he wrestles with these
questions.
I hope you’ll read the Gospels and Epistle passages we covered today.
And, whether it’s with family or friends or a Bible Study group, I hope you’ll talk
about what we’ve covered and wrestle with what God has for you, in your life.
Most importantly, I hope you’ll celebrate with us this Sunday and every Sunday, to hear
the beautiful Scripture readings proclaimed during the Divine Liturgy and to learn how
you can Live the Word.
Thanks for watching.
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Christ is Risen!