The woman at the well, 2018 homily

Today’s gospel opens with a puzzle. Why would a woman go to draw water from a well at noon on a bright, sunny day, all by herself, when everybody else would lay low in the cool and shade of their houses? The heat alone would make the job unpleasant, if not painful. Besides, most women tend to do these tasks together, not all alone. What possible motive could she have? What else but shame?

Shame has been part of our human experience since the garden. When our first parents ate the forbidden fruit, the first thing they noticed was their nakedness. Before the Fall, we read, “the man and his wife were naked and not ashamed.” But after the Fall, shame became our lot. We lost the glory of God, which was our covering; as St. Paul says, “All have sinned, and lack the glory of God.” We became mortal, and fear of death led us to sin even more. 

We all know shame when we see it. The politician who’s been caught in a scandal…the little child who’s been caught with their hand in the cookie jar: the eyes look down or off to the side, the lips are tightly pursed, the skin turns red.

Shame is unbearable. So our first parents hid among the plants of the garden, and sewed fig leaf aprons for themselves. When they were confronted, Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. Ever since then, we’ve followed the same strategies. We try to cover the wrongs we do. We learn to shift blame, and shame, to others: Jews despised Samaritans, and Samaritans Jews; each person and each tribe sought to relieve their shame by despising others. 

Such was the case with the woman in today’s text. She was a Samaritan, so she looked down on Jews. She was genuinely surprised and stunned that Jesus, a Jewish man, would ask her, a Samaritan woman, for a drink.

And she hadn’t lived a very good life. Five times she had gotten married. Each time, her marriage failed. Was it her? Was it her husbands? In the end, it didn’t matter. She finally gave up on marriage altogether, and just lived with a man. The other women despised her, and doubtless feared her a little too. She was shamed. And that is why she came to draw water from Jacob’s well at noon on a bright, sunny day. The heat of the sun was easier to bear than the looks of the other women.

Then she met Jesus, and everything turned around. He asked her for a drink of water, and her walls of protection—her despising Jews and avoiding men—came down. He offered her living water, and when she accepted his offer, he told her to go and get her husband. When she told him she had no husband, he took off all her fig leaves and showed that he knew everything—and yet, he didn’t reject her. She came to see him as the second Adam, with whom she could be naked and not ashamed. 

She had found the Messiah. He clothed her shame in mercy. He covered her sins in love. She didn’t need the walls any more. She ran to the others in her town and told them, “Come meet a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” Now that got the town’s attention. They all ran out to meet Christ. And through her words, they believed.

What about our witness to Christ? When it’s weak, or ineffective, or even non-existent, could it be that we need to hear the good news ourselves? He knows us, better than we know ourselves, he knows us in all our brokenness—and yet he loves us. We don’t confess Christ when we say how much better we are than others, or how we have all the right answers to the modern world’s problems.

No. To be a Christian is to speak in St. Photini’s words. Here is the Man who knows us, everything we’ve ever done, yet loves us and gives himself to us. Here is the man before whom all our walls crumble, all our fig leaves are taken away, and in whose life and light we may clothe ourselves. “Look to him and be radiant, and your faces shall never be ashamed,” in the glory of his Kingdom, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.