"Jesus and the Woman with a Bucket" Sermon for 3 Lent 2017
Sermon for Sunday 19 March 2017
3rd Sunday in Lent
Lutheran Church of the Redeemer,
Jerusalem
The Rev. Carrie Ballenger Smith
Grace and peace to you from God our
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
"The
holy martyr Photina was that Samaritan woman who had the rare fortune to speak
with the Lord Christ Himself at Jacob's Well in Sychar. Coming to faith in the
Lord, she then came to belief in His Gospel, together with her two sons, Victor
and Josiah, and five sisters who were called Anatolia, Phota, Photida,
Paraskeva and Kyriake. They went to Carthage in Africa. But they were arrested
and taken to Rome in the time of the Emperor Nero, and thrown into prison. By
the providence of God, Domnina, Nero's daughter, came into contact with St.
Photina and was brought by her to the Christian faith. After imprisonment, they
all suffered for Christ. Photina, who first encountered the light of truth by a
well, was thrown into a well, where she died and entered into the immortal
Kingdom of Christ."
(Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic, The
Prolog from Ochrid/Ohridski Prolog)
This is the story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well, according to Greek Orthodox tradition. The Catholic tradition is similar, except she is called St. Photiona. Her feast day is celebrated tomorrow, on March 20th. In some traditions, she is known as “St. Photina—Equal to the Apostles.
This is the story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well, according to Greek Orthodox tradition. The Catholic tradition is similar, except she is called St. Photiona. Her feast day is celebrated tomorrow, on March 20th. In some traditions, she is known as “St. Photina—Equal to the Apostles.
Today I
begin my sermon with this tradition of “St. Photina” because, frankly, I’m
tired of preaching about nameless women in our Holy Scriptures. I’m tired of
waiting for a Gospel reading that features someone who looks like me, and then
when we finally get one, our Bible commentaries tell us she’s just another
anonymous woman with a sketchy past, a good opportunity to preach a morality message:
“Don’t be like the woman at the well! But if you are…well, at least Jesus will accept you.”
No! Today I want
to tell you about Photina, or Photiona, or…Jennifer, or whatever her name might
have been: A woman who (for unknown reasons) had been married to five men.
Maybe they died. Maybe they were unfaithful to her! Maybe they divorced her
because she was unable to bear a child. In any case, this woman—this strong
woman, this audacious woman, this persistent woman--got up anyway, got dressed
anyway, picked up her bucket anyway, and went to the well in the heat of the
midday.
And in my
sanctified imagination, this woman was thinking to herself,
“Oh, please
let there be no one there today. Please let this be the day I can just do my
chores and not have to listen to those other women and their comments. Please
let there be water, because Lord knows, I am thirsty.”
In my eyes,
this woman is a heroine, even before she met Jesus. Her culture, her time, and
her life circumstances, all conspired against her. Even our history of biblical
interpretation has conspired against her, making her into a sinner. Making her
into a “nasty woman.”
And
nevertheless…she persisted! Amen!
In case you’ve
missed my point so far: The Woman who met Jesus at the Well was not a sinner—she
was an outsider, not because of
anything she did, but because she was abandoned and rejected by her community.
As an outsider,
of course she was surprised that the Jewish man at the well asked her for a
drink. As a woman, and a Samaritan, he had no reason to talk to her. He had no
reason to acknowledge her presence.
She was a nobody.
Do you know
what it feels like to be a nobody? To not be counted? To feel you have nothing
to offer?
When have
you walked into a room only to realize that you are the wrong gender, the wrong
color, or possess the wrong credentials to hang with this crowd? Or what does
it feel like to know there are walls and checkpoints built just to keep you in
your place? To know that no matter what you do, you’ll never possess the right identification?
And what
does it feel like, then, when someone does notice you? What does it mean when
someone sees you, really sees you?
When you are
a nobody, what does it mean for a person to see you as –somebody?
During my
seminary training—the second time around, after I had been home for a number of
years with small children—I was experiencing a lot of ambivalence about my
future in ministry. It was the summer of my required chaplaincy training, which
I did at a trauma hospital in Waco, Texas. Now this was a Baptist hospital, in
a predominately Baptist town, and at least in that part of the world, most Baptists
do not believe in ordaining women. Again and again, I encountered patients who
didn’t care that my nametag said, “Chaplain.” Again and again, I was sent out
of the room so a “suitable” male chaplain could be brought in to pray with them.
Eventually, I was beginning to think that maybe, they were right. Maybe I
should return home to my kids. Maybe I had nothing to offer as a pastor!
Maybe, I was
nobody.
One evening,
after sharing these feelings with my supervisor and contemplating whether I
should quit the chaplaincy program, I prepared to leave the hospital. I was in
regular clothes—no collar. No cross. No nametag. Nothing to identify me. I was
just—nobody, walking through the halls to the exit. I just wanted to go home.
In peace. Alone.
But as I
made my way through the long hospital corridors, deep in some pretty
self-critical thought, a man suddenly darted out of a nearby hospital room,
looked right in my face, and said, “PASTOR! Come quick!”
I looked to
the right and to the left. Where was the pastor? Who was he talking to?
He said to
me again, “PASTOR! Come quick! I need someone to pray with my wife!”
I was so confused.
I had never seen this man before. And I was definitely not a pastor! I was just
a student. Just a wannabe, and on this day more of a “not-sure-I-wannabe.”
I was just…nobody.
But that’s
not what this man saw. He saw something about me that I didn’t. What could I
do? I followed him into his wife’s room. We gathered around her bed. We both
held her hands, and we prayed together. Afterward, he shook my hand and said, “Thank
you, Pastor. You came at just the right time. Your prayer was just what we
needed.”
His words
were everything to me. He and his wife had a need, and I had something to
offer. Little did he know that his request was what I was thirsty for—validation
of my call. Others said I was a nobody, but I now knew I did have something to
offer. I had a bucket! I had a call. And I could use it, for the sake of Jesus,
the fount of living water, the source of Good News for the world.
Now, when
the Samaritan woman—St. Photina—arrived at the well with her bucket, she didn’t
get her wish to be there alone, either. Jesus was there already, and he was
thirsty. “Give me a drink” Jesus said to her.
Can you
imagine her surprise?
Jesus, the
Son of God, the Prophet of the Most High, the Savior of the world, saw her. He
saw that a woman that the world counted as worthless had something he needed:
She had a
bucket. The well was deep. And he was thirsty.
“Give me a
drink,” Jesus said. And thus began the longest conversation Jesus has with a
woman, in all four of the gospels!
Thus began a
conversation, and a powerful transformation! The woman at the well comes to
realize not only who Jesus is, but also who she is. In the light of day, at the
fount of living water, she comes to know that Jesus is a prophet, maybe even
the Messiah!
And she
comes to know that she is somebody.
This is a
healing story, though we don’t often think of it that way. Jesus healed the
Samaritan woman of the disease of marginalization, inflicted by her community. He gave her living water, a new life and a new mission—as an apostle of the Good News.
So this is so
much more than a morality story about a nameless woman with five husbands.
This is so
much more than a story teaching us to “accept those who are different”.
I hope that
this morning you hear this Good News:
When you
feel you have nothing to give, when the world has weighed you down, when they
tell you you have nothing to offer, nothing to say, nothing to contribute,
When anyone
at all tells you that you are “Nobody”,
Know that
Jesus is waiting at the well for you. Jesus sees you. Jesus knows everything
about you! And he loves you—not in spite of who you are, but because of who you are.
Let us give
thanks this morning for St. Photina, the Woman at the Well…
The woman
with a bucket.
The woman
who persisted.
The woman
Jesus saw, and liberated, and sent as an apostle of the Good News!
And let us
give thanks for Jesus, the Messiah,
whose
acceptance quenches our thirst for belonging,
Whose grace
quenches our thirst for forgiveness,
And whose
love pours like a fountain of living water from the cross, enough for the whole
world.
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