Living Water

A Sermon for the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman

Jesus answered and said to her (the Samaritan woman), If you knew the gift of God, and Who it is who is speaking to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water (Jn 4:10)

During the Liturgy just now, the holy Gospel was read about the conversation of the Lord Jesus Christ with the Samaritan woman from the city of Sychar about the living water, that is, about the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is necessary for every man – and likewise about the worship of God in spirit and truth; and after the woman had gone away, about the Lord’s conversation with His disciples about spiritual food, about spiritual fields and the spiritual harvest. Today’s Gospel, then, speaks of many spiritual subjects – most important and instructive for each of us. This time, with God’s help, let us talk at least about the first two, for our edification and salvation – that is, about the living water and about the worship of God in spirit and truth. For greater clarity and better understanding of the conversation, let us repeat part of the Gospel that was read.

«The Lord comes, – says the holy Evangelist John the Theologian, – to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, wearied by the journey, sat down by the well. It was around the sixth hour (by our reckoning, the twelfth hour before midday). A woman of Samaria comes to draw water. Jesus says to her: Give Me a drink (for His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food). The Samaritan woman says to Him: How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink? – for the Jews do not associate with the Samaritans. Jesus answered her: If you knew the gift of God, and Who it is that says to you: give Me a drink, – then you yourself would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. The woman says to Him: Sir! You have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep: where then would Your living water come from? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well, and he himself drank from it, and his children and his livestock? Jesus answered her: Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never thirst to eternity; and the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water flowing into eternal life. The woman says to Him: Sir! Give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty, and need not come here to draw water. Jesus says to her: Go, call your husband and come here. The woman answered: I have no husband. Jesus says to her: You spoke the truth in saying that you have no husband; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in this you have spoken rightly. The woman says to Him: Lord, I see that You are a prophet»[1].

Here we shall interrupt the reading of the Gospel and converse about what has been read. In what simplicity we see here the God-man, the Creator of heaven and earth, who upholds all creation in His palm, the King of angels and of men! Weary as a man from the journey over stony ground beneath the sultry, scorching sun, He sits by the well and converses like an ordinary traveler with a woman—and a Samaritan at that, a schismatic in today’s parlance—and a sinner besides, one who had an unlawful cohabitant. Having come into the world to call not the righteous, but sinners, to repentance, the Lord desires to bring this sinful woman too to repentance, and through her many of her compatriots as well—and what does the all-wise Creator and Savior of men, who became like us in all things except sin, do for this? On the occasion of this drawing of water He begins with the woman a conversation about living water, or about the grace of the Holy Spirit, which cleanses sins, quenches the thirst of the immortal soul scorched by sins, extinguishes the fire of the passions and the fire of Gehenna, and reconciles the soul with God. And how wisely, and at the same time how simply, He leads her to an awareness of her sins, of the need for repentance and for the renewal of life; how wisely He leads her to faith in Him as the true Messiah! As the Knower of hearts, knowing her entire past life, filled with sins, the Lord tenderly, gradually awakens her conscience and brings her to the point of confessing her sins herself, and thereby to feel with all her heart her poverty and misery of soul, her need of faith in the Messiah the Deliverer, her thirst for the mercy of God, for the justification of God, her thirst for purity and chastity, her thirst for imperishable, eternal life. And so the Samaritan woman was caught into faith that saves. She came to believe in Jesus Christ and drew her fellow citizens to the faith; she repented of her former deeds, began a life of virtue, and came to have such a burning, holy love for the Lord that, as sacred tradition relates, she was not afraid in time to confess His name before Jews and pagans and to endure many sufferings for His sake—and she received the martyr’s crown under the persecutor of the Christians, the Roman emperor Nero[2]. Her name was Photina. Thus the Samaritan woman truly proved worthy to receive from the Lord the living water that flows into life everlasting, or the grace of the Holy Spirit, which cleansed her from her sins; quenched the thirst of her immortal soul, created in the image of God—poured into her heart living faith and burning love for the Lord, strengthened her in the confession of His holy name and in the terrible torments she endured for His sake, and made her a partaker of eternal life.

Is it now clear, after all that has been said, what the living water is—the water about which the Lord conversed with the Samaritan woman at the well—and what saving effects it produced in us sinners? The living water, or the grace of God, is the saving power of God acting in a person for salvation through faith in Christ—a power disposing him toward repentance and compunction—a power that combats sin and conquers sin—a power that pardons, heals, cleanses, sanctifies, reconciles and unites a person with God, stirring and kindling a person’s heart with love for God and neighbor—a power that enlightens, comforts and nourishes spiritually, re-creating and renewing, perfecting the whole person, and in some working wonders and seeing into what is hidden and secret.

A person who has found grace with God manifests it in himself through various virtues: living faith, hope and love; sincere and constant repentance; deep humility; gentleness and meekness toward all; freedom from malice; abstinence; purity; uprightness; godly-mindedness; peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; obedience; patience; holy boldness; and zeal for every virtue. The holy Apostle Paul writes thus about grace to his disciple Titus, bishop of the Church of Crete: the saving grace of God has appeared for all people, teaching us that, having renounced ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live chastely, righteously and godly in this present age, awaiting the blessed hope and the appearance of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might deliver us from all lawlessness and purify for Himself a special people, zealous for good works[3]. This grace, saving for all people, is needed by all of us as well, my brethren. The source of this grace, the well of this living water, is our Lord Jesus Christ, or the holy Orthodox Church, on which He poured out the Holy Spirit abundantly. In it, streams of life flow unceasingly in the Word of God, in the holy Mysteries, in the divine services—especially at the celebration of the Liturgy. Come, all of you, and draw the water of eternal life here, freely. Let us all seek grace above all earthly treasures, as the saints sought it—they who, in order to obtain grace, despised the world that lies in evil, with all its alluring and swiftly passing goods; who despised and wore out their own flesh with its many passions, so as to cleanse, sanctify, strengthen and raise on high the soul weighed down and darkened by fleshly attachments; so as to triumph over the passions and desires, and to love God with all the heart, and righteousness and holiness, and eternal life—for no one can serve two masters.

The Lord calls His grace living water, in contrast to the dead water with which the devil, the author of death and of every evil, labors assiduously to poison all people—and poisons a great many of them. This dead water, which many greedily drink, beguiled by its seeming sweetness, or taking its very bitterness for sweetness, is sin in all its countless offspring: pride, unbelief, heresy, schism, superstition, craftiness, hypocrisy, anger, rancor, irritability, vengefulness, ill will, malevolence, envy, malicious glee, blasphemy, sedition, disobedience to the authorities, condemnation, gluttony, dainty eating, gorging, and especially drunkenness, fornication, impurity, insolence, disobedience, sacrilege, miserliness, love of money, rapacious greed, hard-heartedness, plunder, lying, deceit, treachery, idleness with its idle occupations, laziness, negligence of the soul, impenitence, faint-heartedness, despondency, demonic fear, despair, and so on. These are the springs of dead water, flowing together with those in whom they flow—into eternal perdition. For this dead water there is a remedy:

– repentance and humble faith joined with fervent prayer, both at home and in church, and with fasting;

– Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, an all-earnest and constant struggle against one’s own passions and corrupt inclinations, diligent reading of the Word of God, of accounts of the lives of the saints, and of their soul-saving writings;

– remembrance of death and of the judgment, and of one’s own wretchedness and insignificance.

But let us continue reading the Gospel narrative of the Lord’s conversation with the Samaritan woman. The Samaritan woman says to Him: Our fathers worshipped on this mountain (understanding by our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob); but you say that the place where one must worship is in Jerusalem. Jesus says to her: Believe Me that a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You do not know what you worship; but we know what we worship, for salvation is from the Jews. But a time is coming, and is already here, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father seeks such worshippers for Himself. God is spirit: and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman says to Him: I know that the Messiah, that is, the Christ, will come; when He comes, He will tell us everything. Jesus says to her: It is I, the One who is speaking with you[4]. After this the woman left her water jar at the well, hurried into the city, and proclaimed to everyone the miraculous Discerner of hearts, – and many of the Samaritans, seeing Him and hearing His word, believed in Him.

What does it mean to worship God in spirit and truth? – It means to believe that God is in every place, and that in every place He sees and hears those who pray to Him, who sigh to Him, who repent before Him, who thank and glorify Him, – and not only in some particular place, for example on some mountain, as the Samaritan woman supposed, or only in a church; although without doubt God is nearer to us in a church, by His own promise: For wherever two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them[5], and especially because of His holy Mysteries that are celebrated here. – To worship in spirit and truth means to pray to God in communion with the Church with all the heart, with all the mind, with all zeal and reverence, with living faith, with firm hope, – and not merely to pronounce words without meaning and feeling, or to nod the head and move the hand without living thought and living feeling. This latter is not prayer, but only a lifeless shadow of prayer; it does not appease God, but angers Him. May God deliver each one of us from such prayer. – Let us all learn to worship God in spirit and truth: as we pray, let us bring God the fruits of prayer – unfeigned repentance, amendment of heart and of our whole manner of life – and let us be zealous for every virtue. This will be worship of God in spirit and in truth. Amen.