The Woman at the Well
St. Photini Icon written by Mary Jane Miller
A Reflection on John 4:4-42
I used to think that this story was about shame. That it was the tale of a wayward woman brought to repentance by Christ. I’m sure this reading was encouraged by the fundamentalist culture in which I first encountered these verses. The character of the Samaritan woman was flattened, reduced to a tired trope, and she was even misidentified as a prostitute, even though the text gives no indication of this.
Shame does play a part in this story, though not as I once understood it. Many New Testament scholars have pointed out that this is a bit of an odd time for a woman to be collecting water at a well—the heat of the day would make her task so much more arduous. Women typically came in the cool of the morning and evening, their work doubling as a social opportunity. There are lots of reasons why this woman might have made the choice to come alone in the afternoon, but shame is one of them. She has had five husbands, and she is not married to her current partner. That would make for some awkward conversation among women, to be sure.
But I don’t think it’s good exegesis to simply take that reading at face value. We can’t engage with this story without considering its patriarchal context. This woman almost certainly didn’t choose this life. Perhaps she was a survivor of abuse. Perhaps her husbands died one after the other, the brothers of her first husband marrying her in succession, as prescribed by Mosaic law, to ensure that she was provided for. And perhaps at some point she simply appeared to be cursed, and others kept their distance from her. Whatever her circumstances, her life wasn’t an easy one.
However, as the text makes clear, her marital status is not the point of this story, and focusing on that puritanical reading puts us at risk of missing the larger message that God is conveying to us here. Yes, Jesus notes her circumstances. But then the conversation moves on and never returns to them. Jesus does not address her situation as a divine “gotcha” moment. Instead, he is letting her know that she is seen. He is not seeking to shame her—for shame never comes from God—but to relieve her of shame by treating her as an equal, as someone worthy of the attention of God. Who could forget her Old Testament predecessor, another woman at a well—Hagar, the mother of Ishmael? God spoke so tenderly to her in her desperation that she became the first person to name God. The name she chose? El Roi. The God who sees me.
What Jesus is really up to in this story is what he’s usually up to—defying expectations, breaking the barriers we humans have placed between ourselves, and inviting us all into a wider vision of the love of God. It’s almost as if Jesus is operating from a playbook of holy disruption in this story (and, since I like to believe that God has a sense of humor, I can imagine Jesus internally chuckling at the scandal it would cause, even among his own disciples). Step one: pass through Samaria, a region typically avoided by Jews due to the distrust and hatred between the two peoples. Step two, with increasing escalation: talk to a Samaritan, not just any Samaritan, but a woman, not just a public conversation, but a private one. Can you see those first-century eyebrows raising all the way up to the hairline? Step three, ask the woman for a drink, even though the Jews diligently avoided sharing food or drink with Samaritans.
And then for the piece de resistance, step four, engage in a lengthy theological discussion with a woman. A Samaritan woman. Not the president of the Samaritan Home and Family Guild, but a Samaritan woman who is something of an outcast, whose life has been full of loss and tragedy, whose story has never been about herself, but instead about the men in her life. It is scandalous. Scandalously redemptive. That’s our Jesus.
Once the woman knows that she is respected, that she has Jesus’ attention, she has a question for him. Who is right: the Samaritans or the Jews? Should they be worshipping on Mt. Gerizim or in Jerusalem? But Jesus has not come to choose sides, to settle a dispute. Jesus instead torpedoes the whole bitter debate. Neither side is right, because Jesus himself changes the entire equation with his wide-open arms on the cross. Jesus’ vision of redemption is always wider than we can imagine. And in the Kingdom he describes, all are welcome, all are embraced, and all are loved. Jesus’ desire is not to arbitrate a disagreement but to restore and to reconcile, to gather in all of God’s children. He blows binary thinking right out of the water. There is no clean or unclean to Jesus. The living water will not be contained within our preconceived notions of religion, faith, God. The living water always overflows.
It’s important to ask ourselves: how does this woman come to belief? She comes to belief because she is seen, known, and listened to with respect. She comes to belief because Jesus knows her story and refuses to be scandalized by it. After all, where is Jesus more at home than with the outcast and the excluded? Soon the woman has left her water jar behind to tell everyone she knows. The living water now flows in her and through her. What more succinct way is there for Jesus to say so many things at once? That women are seen by God. That women have a place in theological spheres. And that women have a vitally important place in ministry. Jesus’ own disciples are utterly baffled by this whole situation. But she gets it, right away.
I’m sure you’ll be as delighted as I was to learn that this woman has a name. In the Orthodox tradition, she is known as St. Photini, her name deriving from the Greek word “phos,” “light.” Her title is Equal-to-the-Apostles, and tradition holds that it was the apostles who baptized her under that name before she went on to be a prolific missionary and martyr. And I hope you’ll also enjoy the mental image of me almost falling out of my chair when I learned last week while reading Kathleen Norris’ The Cloister Walk that one of the ancient Greek words for baptism was…photismos. Illumination. Here we are, right back at the water, each of us called by the God who sees us, each of us immersed in the living water that has no boundaries, no beginning, no end. The living water that God pours out on us, that we may pour it out on others. Because it’s water that flows all the way through our faith—from creation to the parting of the Red Sea, from the Jordan River baptisms to the miracle at the wedding feast in Cana, from the washing of the disciples’ feet to the blood and water that flowed from Jesus’ side. Water is essential to our lives, our bodies and our faith. And what this story tells us is that it will not be denied to anyone. Come, all you who are thirsty, and drink.