In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.
Christ is risen!
I know as an Orthodox Christian I am right. I am on the winning side, the right path. And from my vantage point, looking down upon all others, I can see and point out their errors, I can shout the truth at them. The Orthodox Faith is the true Faith, and I may receive glory from it.
We hear today how Christ has come into contact with the Samaritan Woman, and he acts nothing like how I do. He sits calmly and addresses her with dignity—showing her neither the contempt nor the disdain which I use when I aggressively argue at my neighbour. “You are wrong and I am right,” I would start, yet the Lord opens with a simple request, “Give me a drink.” And where I would use a gap in the conversation to explain my greatness, a clever point I have stolen from another, the Lord listens—really listens—to the woman and points to her the deeper understanding, the spiritual understanding, the life-giving understanding.
And I, if I am to be a true servant of the Lord, must learn to do the same. For our Faith is not about being right but rather about bringing others into a greater relationship with the Lord. Even if I speak true words, if I fail to speak the Truth in love (cf. Ephesians 4:15), I bring condemnation upon myself.
The Lord spoke with love, with compassion, and was able to take the conversation from asking for a drink to revealing to her the divine name, for where our translations have “I who speak to you am he,” the Greek has the more powerful, “I ᴀᴍ, the one speaking to you.” (“Ἐγώ εἰμι, ὁ λαλῶν σοι.”) From talking about water he shows himself to be the I ᴀᴍ who spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush (see Exodus 3:14).
Let us too, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, learn to talk not from a position of being right but from a position of love so that the Truth, so that Jesus Christ, may shine out. Let us set aside our ego, our sin, our desire to be correct and demonstrate to our neighbours and our friends true love that we give an account of the hope within us with meekness and fear (cf. 1 Peter 3:15). And then, dear brothers and sisters, as the Samaritan Woman we will be able to go back to our kindred and say to them, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
To Christ our True God, who loves us and draws us to himself, be all glory, honour and worship, together with his unoriginate Father and the All-holy, Good and Life-giving Spirit. Amen.
In those days, those apostles who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to none except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number that believed turned to the Lord. News of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad; and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose; for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a large company was added to the Lord. So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul; and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church, and taught a large company of people; and in Antioch the disciples were for the first time called Christians. Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one of them named Agabos stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world; and this took place in the days of Claudius. And the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brethren who lived in Judea, and they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.
— Acts 11:19–30
At that time, Jesus came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw. Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he. Just then his disciples came. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but none said, “What do you wish?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” They went out of the city and were coming to him. Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him food?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest. He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour; others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour. Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony. “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard ourselves, and we know that this is indeed Christ the Saviour of the world.
— John 4:5–42