THE LORD EXPANDS OUR CHURCH-VISION
(Tuesday, May 20)
This past weekend as we celebrated the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, as we do every year, I noticed something in the Gospel-reading from John 4 that I hadn’t noticed before: The conversation with this woman is not just about her or for her. There’s also a big lesson in it for the Lord’s disciples, who go into the city to buy “food.” But this food turns out to be unnecessary, just like the water from Jacob’s well becomes unnecessary, when the Source of both “living water” and of our Daily Bread comes into the picture and does His thing; when He speaks in Spirit and truth to an outsider with all the wrong credentials, a Samaritan (heretical) woman who “has” a man who is not her husband. Note also that “the plot of land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph” (where this conversation took place) turned out unnecessary for Joseph, one who prefigured Christ when Joseph became the Bread-giver for his brothers and his father in a different land, where they all found food and a new home.
How can we relate to our own lives all these obscure, biblical factoids? In our own lives we might also be relying too heavily on the kinds of food and water that our “city” has to offer. I mean this in the sense of our spiritual nourishment, which may be coming more from our own heads than from communion with Christ in Spirit and truth. We also might think, (as did the disciples, when they brought food for the Lord) that we can nourish the Body of Christ, the Church, with “our” kind of food, from the confines of our man-made “city” with its human limitations. By this I mean our tendency to see our Orthodox Church as our city, our “polis,” walled off from the outsiders by our often highly-*polit*icised concepts of what and who is canonical or uncanonical, who or what is to be allowed inside our “temple.”
But the mystery of the Church, the one, holy, catholic (all-embracing) and apostolic Church, is one that expands our vision beyond our own city-walls to the surrounding fields, through Spirit and truth. As Christ says to His disciples, when they return with their food and feel a bit scandalized to find Him chatting with this woman, He also says to us: “Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!” (Jn 4:35) He has also told the Samaritan woman to look beyond “this mountain” where the Samaritans worshipped, in the tradition of her upbringing, and even beyond Jerusalem: “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.”
So, let me lift up my eyes today, and see all the places, people and situations I encounter as “all-embraced,” by the coming into our world of the Son of God. He can strike up a conversation with the least of us, with the outsiders, at any time, like in the middle of our day as He did with the Samaritan woman. Let me keep my eyes and ears open to His presence, as I pray a bit throughout my Tuesday: Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, give me this water that only You have, and thank You for it from the bottom of my heart.
