John 20:1-19 (Matins)
Acts 11:19-30
John 4:5-42

Into the Deep

Let us cast our minds over all the Gospels and ask, "Do we ever meet a more voluble, more questioning, more seeking woman than the Samaritan woman at the well?" Five husbands?! It is a wonder that she has not brought twenty-five husbands to divorce or wearied them to an early grave with her tensity — her ceaseless flood of probing thoughts and questions! Perhaps you have known a woman (or man) like this .... or even dated one. There will be no quiet evenings holding hands on the front porch glider, for her mind burns ever bright as a diamond. She looks up at the night sky and sees not pleasant pictures of constellations but rather urges questions concerning the origins of the universe or the metaphysical significance of black holes or ultimate meanings of creation and life. She is not content with the quotidian life of chores, exertion, and rest. The Samaritan woman is a seeker.

As we enter the scene this morning in our Gospel reading, we are presented with a contrast. We read that Jesus is "wearied," that He "sat down," that He asks for "a drink." He is in a retiring posture, passive and reserved. A quiet and humble women would simply fill his cup with water and say no more. But the Samaritan woman goes straight to the point of engagement, even possible conflict, launching into a conversation concerning true religion, the antagonisms between Samaritans and Judeans, and the great question that underlies these: Where is the true Temple? On Mount Gerazim in Samaria or on Mount Zion in Judea?

Hearing the high pitch and energy of her mind, Jesus goes directly to her wavelength:

This is the level of "God thought." Human discourse with God is always about the state of life in which we meet with Him. And we are accustomed to Jesus habituating these profound regions. Indeed, the Gospels stand out in the literature of the world for this terse power (viz. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis, 1946), for this spare composition that transcends the quotidian. But which disciple or Roman official or Temple authority ever approaches Jesus of Nazareth at this level of discourse? More astonishing still in the first century .... which woman? The disciples were astonished (we read this morning) that Jesus was talking to a woman. Yes, the Canaanite woman is remarkable for her humility. And Martha of Bethany is expressive in her anxiety and her grief (when her brother dies). We think of the Most Holy Mother of God as the "woman wrapped in silence." But which woman in the Gospels is so intensely focused on ultimate questions concerning communion with God, much less personal and general salvation? She says,

Two strangers meet at a well who spend little time in life's shallows .... discovering, we might say, a marriage of true minds.

On the subject of marriage, many Scripture scholars have noticed that this scene is composed of elements of the Jewish betrothal story:

•   A stranger arrives from a foreign land.
  
•   He encounters a girl or woman at a well (symbolizing fertility).
  
•   Water is drawn.
  
•   The woman runs to tell her people of the bridegroom's arrival.  (Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative).

Who would dispute that in some ways the story of the Samaritan woman is about marriage. The woman has had five husbands. Is this about lust? Lust can be pursued in other ways than marriage. Marriage is not about the body. It is about the soul. Marriage, after all, is the ultimate human relationship: one bone, one flesh, the Lord Jesus says (Mt 19:5). People seek it because they believe a dream might come true, a dream of inner fulfillment, of two lives joined in peace and the constancy of holy love. Marriage is the way we seek after human truth in relationship. Our God is Himself Relationship, and as we are made in God's Image, we seek the identity of relationship, too. We might say He has inscribed it in our DNA. For we commonly see that humans at birth need love and, soon, the need to give love. Marriage is the consummation of relationship: opposites being joined that will replicate the Image of God. The Samaritan woman has obviously dug deep into the earth of human relationship in this way, deeper and deeper as she passes through one marriage after another, always seeking. The pattern is not one of fulfillment, but of coming up dry. Always digging and coming up dry.

Digging deep is another obvious theme set before us as her meeting with God takes place at the well of wells, Jacob's Well, where no one in ancient Israel had ever dug deeper: — 135 feet deep and twelve feet in diameter, a wonder of the ancient world. And, of course, the subject is "living water," which no amount of drilling or digging might ever hope to obtain.

Finally, the site where the story takes place commemorates a most holy depth: where Abraham had erected an Altar, where he offered sacrifice, and where he heard God speak, confirming His covenant that Abraham would be the father of a chosen race. That is, the woman stands on a kind of Mount Sinai, where man has spoken to God and where God has spoken to man .... or before a Burning Bush in the Midian wilderness. On this score, we might ask, where else in the Gospels does Jesus plainly say, "I am the Christ"?

In this, the many-married woman finally is joined to the Bridegroom. She has long sought the Bridegroom, and she has found Him. She has not been the wise virgin going out to meet the bridegroom with her lamp full of oil, for she has poured herself out seeking fulfillment, burning her oil in marriage after marriage. And here we come to a burning point of the story.

You see, set within each of us at conception is an eternal soul. Our soul is that ongoing happening, that mystery we call "Me." We may term it consciousness or ego or whatever you like to fill in a blank we shall never understand, not in a material way. But we know this: it is ageless. That is, the Me we had when we were children is the same Me we have today and forever. It is eternal because it is composed of the same Divinity of the One Who made it and Who set it within us. Call it our divine spark. But whatever we call it, it is very God placed within each of us. And God placed it there to be the master of our bodies and minds.

Blaise Pascal described it as a void within us that, unless we fill it with God, we shall spend all of our lives trying to fill it, in vain, with everything else in the world. In our own time, people commonly fill this divinely etched void with sex. Sex-in-search-of-meaning. But it is a proverb that sex alone, and the false "relationship" that goes with it, will always leave us feeling empty, even desolated .... and many times powerfully and instantly desolated.

That the Samaritan woman now has a man who is not her husband signifies that she has finally lapsed into this lust .... and fallen into desolation. The cracked jar of clay she carries says as much. Yes, we may have this treasure in clay jars (2 Cor 4:7), St. Paul says. But, then, we also have this clay .... cracked, leaking, which is to say, never to be filled, never satisfying our yearning souls .... which of course is the content of the conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well. But with Jesus there is forgiveness and restoration.

In the Samaritan woman we are presented with an ideal of salvation. She is the yearning world awaiting the Savior:

The woman sets down her jar of clay turning away from empty and disappointing life. And she runs to the people of the town announcing the Good News prophesied by Isaiah:

And our woman-evangelist who has burned her oil seeking light? She will be named Photini at her baptism, "the Enlightened One." And she will bring many to the Christ Who singled her out to hear these longed for words, the desire of the everlasting hills.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.