Precious or Disgusting

In the beginning of Christ’s earthly ministry, as Christ began to build a following among the people. Some of the Jewish authorities became concerned about his popularity. They went and spoke to Saint John the Forerunner who replied, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” This was not the answer that they were looking for. Many regarded John as a prophet, and for him to say that Christ was greater than himself was to encourage the people to follow Christ. It was as His popularity was rising that Christ took a journey from Judea to Galilee, a place with many more Gentiles. His journey would take Him through Samaria. 

The Samaritans as a group of people were despised. When the Northern Kingdom of Israel was taken into captivity by the Assyrians, many of the people of Samaria were taken from their homes and resettled elsewhere. People from other places were then brought into Samaria and intermarried with the remaining people. The thinking was that this would keep people from rebellion. They were not tied to a land that they felt the need to defend. The area was already corrupted from the faith that had been given them, and matters only got worse as time went on. The Samaritans had their own place of worship separate from the worship in Jerusalem, they had different canons of Scripture and different customs. They were worse than gentiles, because the Jewish people were called to be set apart, to have their own customs and worship which had been given them by God. These people should have known better and rejected the God of their fathers. 

This is the backdrop of the conversation that Christ had in the gospel this morning. When He, a jew, showed up at the well of Jacob the Old Testament Patriarch, the Samaritan Woman chided Him as someone who was in the wrong place. She reminds Him that Jews are not supposed to have anything to do with Samaritans. Rather than leaving, however, Christ begins to reveal to the Samaritan Woman Who He is and what He is able to give to her. The conversation itself is wonderful, but all the more remarkable because it wasn’t supposed to happen.

I want you to imagine that you are going about your day as usual, and naturally you have your phone on you because there is nothing in the world more precious to you than your phone. Now I want you to imagine that you drop your phone on the ground in the living room on the rug. Do you pick it up, or get a new phone? Now imagine that you are outside and it falls on the ground in the dirt and mud. You still would pick it up, but you would probably wash it off. Now imagine that it falls in the garbage, or worse yet the toilet. Is there a point at which you just let it go? Is there a level of contamination that is too much?

Christ meets a Samaritan woman, but not just any Samaritan Woman. This one has been married five times before and is now living with a man who is not her husband. She is out in the heat of the day getting water because she doesn’t want to encounter anybody who is going to judge her or criticize her for her lifestyle. Christ meets this woman and treats her with love. Christ treats everyone that He meets in this way. No matter what Christ does, He does it with love. Even turning over the tables of the money changers is an act of love in that He is driving them from the corruption that is holding them enslaved. 

I think we desperately need to hear this. God loves us. Not collectively, not as a group or a Church, but personally. He comes to each one of us offering His love, His mercy and compassion, His correction and help. He loves us and wants to draw us to Himself. And this love is not diminished by a blemish, or a little dirt, or the incredible filth that we have immersed ourselves in.

But this good news comes at a cost. If God loves us despite our sin, who are we to hate, judge, or condemn others for their sins? This whole conversation took place while the disciples were away buying food. They were shocked when they returned to find that He was talking to such a woman. We are told that they didn’t express these feelings, but the feelings were there.

Our Lord came to tax collectors, sinners, and harlots, and those who were forgiven much loved much. Those who were forgiven little loved little. We struggle to see the sin in ourselves as clearly as the sin in others. Every week we say in the words of Saint Paul that Christ came to save sinners of whom I am first. But we struggle to mean them. 

The Samaritan Woman was so moved by her encounter with Christ that she went and talked to all those people she would usually have avoided. She told them that Christ told her all her sins. Most of us don’t want to be told our failings, but this meant that for perhaps the first time in her life she was really seen. Not just as something broken or defiled, but as precious, as loved. 

She became Saint Photini, Saint Svetlana. She was a light to her own people, an evangelist to those who had long ago abandoned worship of the True God. By drawing water for Christ to drink, she became the means by which her own people began to be cleansed and purified of their sins and brought back to the worship of God Who desires not the death of sinner, but that he should turn from his way and live. 

We are not called to judge or condemn others, but neither are we to call sin virtue. Christ called out her sin, or more to the point, called her out of her sin. He was uniquely qualified to do that. We must do so only with awareness of our sin. The beginning of this is realizing that I’m not slightly blemished or a little dirty. I have rather given myself over to sin. Even if my actual transgressions of God’s commandments are few and far between, the problem is that I have allowed myself to be the servant of sin. I am defiled, I am not worthy of God’s love, but thankfully He loves me more than I love me. I will deface myself and abuse myself but He will not. I will lower myself and obscure the image of God within me, but He will not give up on me. If I try to do the same with those whom I encounter, what I will find is that many of them will see God and repent of their sins, desiring to become what another sees in them. If I only see sin in a person, I tell them that that is what they are. If I see Christ in them, even if just barely, I tell them that that is what they are, and He can conform them to that image and likeness. Then they will go and tell everyone else, “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”