Thank you, Photina!

"Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.  Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by the journey, was sitting by the well.  It was about noon.  A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, 'Give me a drink.'"

--John 4: 5-7

The meeting of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.

You don't know her name, but you all know who she is.  She is the Samaritan woman at the well, and as one theologian put it, without her we do not have a Church today.

While this woman goes nameless in the Gospel, the ancient Church gave her the name Photina, which means "the luminous one."  Following her encounter with Jesus she continued to preach about his salvific love and was eventually martyred under the Roman Emperor Nero by being thrown down a dry well.  Her faith, it was said, was equal to that of the apostles because she shared Jesus' message with so many, and the Church in the East still honors her as a major saint on both February 26 and the Fourth Sunday of Easter.

Photina's importance cannot be overstated, yet in order to really grasp how significant she is, we have to understand who she is:  a woman, and even more than that, a Samaritan.  By now we all know the routine--Jewish men were forbidden from talking to women in public, and the Jews and Samaritans didn't get along--and so the fact that Jesus stops and speaks to her is remarkable; furthermore, she's first Gentile convert in the Fourth Gospel, and the conversation they have is the single longest conversation Jesus has with any other person throughout any of the Gospels!  But why is this conversation such a radical moment?  If we look at the relationship between Jews and Samaritans we see why.

Both Jews and Samaritans claimed Abraham as their ancestor, and both worshipped the Most High God.  Yet, there were conflicts, which were mainly two-fold: First, Samaritans only regarded the first five books of the Hebrew testament as legitimate.  Just Torah, nothing else, no prophets, no psalms, just those five, and in their version the holy site was not Mount Zion but Mount Gerazim, the very place where we find Jesus meeting Photina.  Still, the biggest wedge driven between the Jews and Samaritans came during the days of exile, around 720 BC.  The Assyrians came in from the north, and when they did they captured Samaria and took may of their people captive.  Those Samaritans not taken away decided that, in order to survive, they would inter-marry with their foreign invaders.  The Jews, who were in the region of Judea just south of Samaria, were outraged at this. A few years later, when the Babylonians came and invaded Judea, the Jews there stood their ground and refused to inter-marry.  A long time passed, and eventually all the folks in exile were allowed to return home, and around 450 BC the Jews began to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, but when the Samaritans came down south to offer aid, they were refused with extreme prejudice.  To the Jews the Samaritans had committed an unforgivable sin:  they had forsaken their identity, and in doing so lost the right to be called Jews at all.  That had been four centuries earlier, and the conflict was still hot in Jesus' day.

Governor Zerubabbel rejects Samaritan assistance in rebuilding the Temple (c. 450 BC)

With that in-mind, we can begin to understand how significant a figure Photina is and how radical a conversation this is that she is having with Jesus.  Neither rejects the other, nor do they ignore each other--both options would have been acceptable.  Neither ridicules the other's worship methods, ancestral background, or ethnicity. Instead, they have a conversation with each other. That conversation leads to a relationship.  That relationship leads to Photina's life being changed. And that change in her life leads her to share her story with others in Sychar.  And that sharing leads to the Gospel spreading to Samaritans and other Gentiles.  And that spreading leads to us worshipping here in our communities every Sunday morning.  And it all began with an encounter between two individuals who could only be described as an extreme Other. 

It was hard for the disciples to understand.  Why would Jesus talk to a Samaritan?  Why would he talk to a woman?   It seemed like a waste of time to them.   To be fair, it doesn't seem like such a big deal to us now; after all, they both worshipped the same God.  But what if we put it into a more modern context?

Imagine a Christian pastor or priest having a conversation with a Muslim woman on the side of the road.  The Christian and Muslim believe in the same God, but their methods are different.  The Christian's holiest city is Jerusalem, the Muslim's is Mecca.  The Christian's primary languages have been Greek and Latin, and the message of faith found in the revelation of God through the Gospel of Jesus Christ; the Muslim's primary language is Arabic, and the message of faith found in the revelation of God to the prophet Muhammad.  They pray differently, dress differenlty, and have different diets, but at no time in that conversation does the Christian or Muslim dismiss  the other.  Instead, they tell their stories, and God is alive in them in ways they never knew before, transforming both of their lives.

It is in the spirit of Photina and Jesus that I have been regularly having such conversations with Muhammad Elahi, the imam for the Islamic Cultural Center of Asheboro.  For about a month now I have joined him and another Christian pastor in town--and their families--for dinner, during which time we read the Quran and the Gospels, and we ask questions, and we explore.  And you know what we learn, each and every time?  Our similarities far outweigh our differences, and our God is big enough to hold us both.  We need not fear each other, nor reject or ignore each other.  As Jesus and Photina both went outside the comforts of their respective societies by speaking with each other, we are doing the same, reminding ourselves that the face of God is often times found in the extreme Other, that the message of God's love is sometimes spoken in a foreign language.  I was blessed to pray at Muhammed's mosque on Friday, and I hope someday soon to have him join us at Good Shepherd sometime soon.  The fruits of Photina and Jesus' conversation are rich, even to this day, and while I don't know what will ultimately be the fruits of our conversations, I am certain that God is moving in them and that God will change all of our lives for the better because of them.

What does the extreme Other look like to you?  Who is the person that could be describe as your complete opposite?  I want you to picture that type of person.  Now I wonder what might happen if you stepped out of your own comfort zone and had a conversation and formed a relationship with that person, as Jesus and Photina did.  Maybe you'll learn something about them, and even about yourself, and about God.  Maybe you'll see that God is big enough to hold you both. Our church, after all, exists in no small part due to such a holy conversation.   Thanks be to God for that!  Blessed, Photina, pray for us!  

Saint Photina of Samaria