From Within
We are grass. Weave baskets out of us. We are clay. Throw plates and bowls and cups. Build houses out of our wood. Sculpt statues out of our stone. Sing songs of love and beauty from our bodies.
In the name of God — the Mother, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit who breathe through us all.
This worship service is something I need today, and it is working on me already. I can tell because I arrived here this morning with a troubled soul, as has been the case ever since the war broke out again. I was standing outside for a brief moment when a woman walked by, pushing all her possessions ahead of her in a shopping cart. She was shouting and cursing and yelling, throwing around language that wasn’t very pretty — I won’t repeat it. I thought to myself: yes, we can talk about her mental health, and she is clearly unhoused. In her state, it is actually difficult to approach her and offer help. But at the same time, she is only perhaps an exaggeration of the language we hear very much in our current society and social media — directed at everybody who is not on the same page as we are. And so I pray that not only her voice and her heart will be healed, but all of ours. Because if there’s ever a time to come together, it is now. It is now.
Historical Background: The Samaritans
Let me delve into a little bit of history, and I’ll explain in a moment why this matters. The son of King David — Solomon — built a temple. It took him seven years. Then he spent another thirteen years building his royal palace. In order to provide the labor and the materials, he relied on forced labor and on cedars from Lebanon, which he obtained from a king called Hiram. One day Hiram said, “Well, are you going to pay me for all that stuff?” And Solomon said, “Why don’t you have these two towns, Zebulun and Naftali?” Hiram took them and then was angry, because the towns were worth nothing.
As you know, there are twelve tribes of Israel, and the ten tribes who lived in the north were taxed more heavily and provided most of the forced labor for the temple and the palace in Jerusalem in the south. When Solomon died and his son Rehoboam took over, the northern tribes came and said, “Your father put a heavy yoke on us. Can you lift it? Can you make our burden light?” And Rehoboam said, “No.” And so they said, “In that case, we’re on our own — we’re done with you.” And the kingdom split. The southern kingdom of Judah retained two tribes — Judah and Benjamin — while the other ten tribes in the north became known as the Kingdom of Israel.
In 722 BCE, the Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom and took most of the people away, never to be heard from again. This is what we refer to as the ten lost tribes of Israel — you may have heard that phrase. That is where it comes from. Some people stayed behind, others came in, they mixed and mingled, and ultimately formed another group — the Samaritans.
When the southern kingdom was later invaded by Babylon, the people were taken into exile — the Babylonian exile. When they were sent back roughly fifty years later to rebuild the temple (which the Babylonians had destroyed), the Samaritans came over and said, “Can we help?” And the Judeans said, “No. The way you worship is not the way we worship.” And so they split apart.
I am telling you all of this because the woman at the well is a Samaritan, and we are talking about centuries of animosity — centuries. I have heard the phrase being batted around recently: “We’ve been at war with Iran for forty-seven years.” It is a pittance. It is nothing compared to centuries. And Jesus steps right over it. You can understand why people in his day and in her day were like: “You are talking to whom? And you’re doing what? You’re sharing water from this well with that person, who for centuries has been stranger and enemy to us?” This was a big, big step.
Saint Photini: The Apostle at the Well
I also want to name that within the Greek Orthodox Church, this woman — who is nameless in the scripture — has received a name. You’ve heard me speak before about women in the Bible who are nameless; we’d like to give them a name. But in this case, it has already been done. Saint Photini — she is a saint in the Orthodox Church. Photini comes from the Greek word for phosphorus: light. She is the saint who brings light. And she is considered an apostle — meaning a messenger of the good news, just as Paul was an apostle. She brought the news. She went into town, and people listened and received what she had to share.
In the Western church, we have been very preoccupied with gender and sexuality — particularly the more troubling sides of it. And so we tend to read this story about the woman at the well as if she were a fallen woman. “You’ve had five husbands, and the one you’re living with now is not your husband.” But it clearly didn’t bother anybody in the town, because she goes in and everybody listens to her. If she really were the fallen woman that some in the Western church have made her out to be, do you think people would be paying attention? I doubt it. She was a saint, an apostle.
A Nation at War: Truth, Spirit, and the Cost of Conflict
I am thinking about these things because we are a country at war. And I don’t quite know how to think about it still. On the one hand, a part of me acknowledges that the regime in Iran is a horrible regime. The blood that is on their hands is countless, and the way in which they have taken the tenets of Islam and created a totalitarian regime is horrendous. Am I sorry to see them go? Not really — if they are indeed gone. But is that a cause for war? Is there not a moment where we want to remember what was written in the Bible: that you cannot oppose hate with hate? The Apostle Paul taught us that only the forces of love can overcome what is hateful in the world. I don’t want to sound like this is pie in the sky, or that it is easy to say — but are we truly forgetting that this was ever a lesson at all? My spirit is deeply troubled by this.
I want to say one thing without staking a clear position, but I want to say it plainly. Jesus says in this passage that we shall worship God in spirit and in truth. This government has sent people overseas to fight a war, and it is not telling the truth. We know very clearly that every time a different reason is offered for why this might be a good idea or why it might be necessary, the truth is not being spoken. Iran is not one week away from building a nuclear bomb. It is not days or months away from building intercontinental missiles that can reach the United States. These things are simply not true. And to send women and men into armed conflict — where their lives are on the line — on the basis of a lie is a sin. If you call yourself a Christian, a follower of Jesus who said we shall worship God in spirit and in truth, then you cannot be afraid of the truth when it matters most. And when does it matter most? In times of war. Speak the truth.
Our default position ought to be: we are opposed to war. We do not want war. That is the default. Can there sometimes be reasons to fight? Yes, I believe so. I say that as a descendant of people who were liberated by American, Canadian, and British service members who fought Hitler and liberated Europe. Is this one of those cases? I don’t know. I tend to say no. And if you disagree, you may have good reasons for it. But I hold that the basic, default position should be: we do not want to fight a war — rather than: can we find a good excuse?
We see the war being sold to the American public in different ways: one message doesn’t stick, so another is tried. Meanwhile, most of the discussion and the consequences we feel have to do with oil prices and inflation. Can we still go shopping? If you go to war, dare to ask us for a sacrifice. If it is a just war, we will bear it. If we agree with it, we will pay the price. But to fight a war and pretend it costs us nothing is impossible — because it costs some people everything. And I’m not even speaking of the people in Iran who have already suffered horrendously under this regime. As much as we like to think we have smart weapons and smart bombs, they miss. The targets are not always well chosen. The school really was a school, no matter what people try to say. And hundreds of children were killed in that school. This is what we have chosen to be part of.
The Living Water: A Poem and Prayer
Yes, my spirit is deeply troubled when I look at all of this. And I hold it up and try to look at it from the perspective of the story we read today. Because yes, we’ve been in a world of difference with Iran for forty-seven years — but look what Jesus overcame in bridging a divide of seven hundred years, and a gender difference that mattered enormously in those days. He himself notices this when he says, “Go find your husband” — because he realizes he cannot simply keep talking to a woman alone; he needs her husband present. That was what was proper. And I try to settle into the story and into the presence of God.
Because no matter what it is that we believe or hold true about the times we are in, there is still something welling up within that Jesus created, or helped us touch upon — however you want to see that. And this woman — Photini was her name — who transmitted Jesus’s light to all who heard her voice.
And back to Jesus.
Jesus shone the light on those he was not supposed to know. The broken-open Jesus stayed in town, and all the wells were opened, and living water flowed from within.
Then and now, the world’s no cause for joy. Then and now, the people were despised by rulers, citizens and subjects, voters and subjected, proponents and opponents. No one was told the cause of war. No one would hear the reason for the force. No reason did exist. No valid reason did exist.
Yet all the human rules and laws choke off the life and have us in their grip. Almost we believe that we are defeated, that we are not who we are — children of the living God — until Jesus came, and Saint Photini heard, and saw, and understood, and shared the light of God into all the secret places, and there was nothing darkness could do, for darkness has no power once you have seen the light, and once the living waters flow within.
No chlorinated tap water can satisfy the thirst once we saw the source of life, once we felt the well well up, once we were open to the love poured out over us — that love that has created us.
We see with utmost clarity how our rulers rule without the slightest charity towards their citizens and subjects, big and small, far and wide. And so our courage grows, our being glows, when you, O God, bestow your peace within our hearts.
For from within the love of God, I see the rulers murder in God’s name. I see the killing of the freedom seekers. I see the rulers who forget that longing — that longing for freedom, that longing for justice, that longing for life, and life abundantly, that longing for the love of life. I see them forget the source.
The source is not the people in the street. The source is in the well. The fountain of living water — from within the love of God, from within arises joy unspeakable.
I see the vain attempts to overcome hatred with might, which only pushes down the hatred until it finds another breathing hole through which the volcano will explode. The men fight because they know the way things go — because they created the way things go — no longer able to see the difference between the whispers of God and the temptations of the devil.
And then there are the women.
Remember the Canaanite woman whom Jesus insulted, the Syrophoenician woman whom Jesus disdained — these women whose daughters were healed because she was the one of great faith. She was the one who turned Jesus around.
The Samaritan woman at the well — her name: Photini, delight — for she had eyes to see. When Jesus saw her fully, another love exists.
Jesus and Photini, who should never meet or speak or see or love each other. Jesus and Photini, who brought him into town — that forbidden town — where all the world would separate. They joined.
So yes, the women overcame the taboos and gladly broke the walls, because their faith welled up within.
Closing Prayer
We pray therefore, O God, to help us feel the living Jesus and the presence of Photini. Restore in us the joy of our salvation. Touch that well within that we so often cannot find. Let the waters flow. Let your presence grow. Let our joy remain as a living testimony to your love, to your peace, to your presence, and to your light that the darkness did not overcome.
We are grass. Weave baskets out of us. We are clay. Throw plates and bowls and cups. Build houses out of our wood. Sculpt statues out of our stone. Sing songs of love and beauty from our bodies. Touch us as you touch us — so that as the prophet says, we shall rise up with wings like eagles. We shall run and not grow weary. We shall walk and we shall not faint.
Amen.