Acts 11:19-30
Psalm 66:1-12
John 4:5-42

"So She Left Her Jar"

Jesus meets an old woman at the heart of an old city (Sychar), which (if it is the ruin of Shechem) had been the capital of an old kingdom (Israel), long since fallen into ruins. A thousand years earlier, the kingdom had gathered within it Eleven Tribes of Israel, now lost. The scene is a weary scene. We might say that the world has grown old and is now past all its hopes, as the woman is. The Gospel tells us that Jesus is weary, weary in His compassion, and sat down (Jn 4:6).

The place where they meet is ancient, even primordial in Jewish terms: "Jacob's well." As the water source, the well is the heart of the whole region, a deep well renown for its pure and sweet water. Every family in this region must make the journey to the well — back and forth, over and over ... many thousands of times over the span of a life. Each one must carry a large, clay water jar, for only a large jar would make sense for retrieving household water. Even our plastic, five-gallon pails filled with water are heavy. But the jars of Jesus' time were made of clay. The heart of Sychar, then, is a heavy heart if only measured by daily necessity. And, Jesus remarks, "you will drink but soon thirst again."

Oh, the burden of clay! It is not for nothing that is called earthenware. How heavy, the earth! And we are earthen: the first-created human, Adam, means earth (derived from the Hebrew Adamah). Thus, our burden is not only one of constant, bodily necessity, represented by the heavy weight of water jars, but in our bodies themselves. We say that we have feet of clay to express our sinfulness, and we picture the old jar carried by the woman as being riddled with cracks as her life is fractured by grave sin.

She lives in adultery, separated from God, no longer wholesome or whole. Indeed, her entire region once was whole, gathered and united under King David. The tribes of Israel were distinct and strong. Now, from the Judean point of view, these people have become "people of the land" — returned to the earth as clay turns to dust. No one knew which tribe they belonged to, for descent had been lost through marriage to pagans ... leading inevitably to the idolatry practiced by pagan families. For their part, the Israelites had worshiped at the Temple, not on Zion, but on Mount Gerazim, destroyed by Jews as a false Temple one hundred years earlier. By every measure, the people of Sychar-Shechem were a lost people.

But this is the point of the Advent of Christ: everyone in the world was separated from God. We had lost our way, wandering in a deadly fog, desiring a return to God (figured by Eden), but not knowing how to get there or even who we were, as the inspired Fathers have written. It is Jesus Who must show, once more, the Image of humankind. It is Jesus, the first-born of the Father, who must inform us that we are adopted children and that God is our Father, really and truly. It is Jesus Who is to bring this "in wandering mazes lost" life to an end:

Against this backdrop of cosmic breadth, well might the woman look up and see her life as it is and has been. How many more years will her cracked and fractured world hold together? With each passing day her burden of clay grows heavier ... until it can no longer be borne. Is this not the essential condition of the human person? We must constantly seek water from life-giving springs, but we are fated to carry it in clay jars where it will not last.

Yes, St. Paul inspires us with the words, "We have this treasure in clay jars!" (2 Cor 4:7), this treasure which Jesus describes as an at-one-ment with God in spirit and truth. But our daily reality is clay — so weighty, so unwieldy, and, over time, so riddled with cracks. The truth is, we long to be at-one with living water with no trace left of our clay. God made us to be water — the mind and heart, three-quarters water, with 92% water flowing in our lifegiving veins. We long to be divine bodies streaming through living water with zero resistance, to be lifted up on pure, bubbling springs. We cannot live without water:

In a sense God's Son has always been revealed to us in association with living water. His Baptism is commemorated by the Orthodox Catholic Church as a tsunami of blessing with priests sweeping the congregations with waves of holy water from heavy-laden Hyssop branches. For at Jesus' Baptism, the Holy Trinity is revealed. Then, tracing his ministry, we might vault thousands of feet above the Holy Land, and see that Lake Gennesaret, the Sea of Galilee, is a an umbilicus, a "navel of the world," which formed veins like a blood streams throughout Canaan, the Land of Promise. Jesus walked on this water, He taught from a boat off its shores. He gave his Sermon on the Mount against a backdrop of this watery expanse. Like the God of old, he brought the multitudes to a wilderness along its shores and fed them with multiplied bread. He sat down his Disciples in the mists of the Jordan's head waters to confront them with His Identity. And He sent them to baptize in the Jordan's waters. At His first miracle He turned water into wine and then from the Cross poured out His own water and blood upon us. God has made us to be tethered to water, body and spirit. Without the "lifespring from on High," we become all clay, men or women of earth.

This is the essential story of Jacob's well: a struggle between two selves having one flesh, for they are twins: one self tends toward grace, the other tends toward clay. Jacob encamped here with wives and children and flocks and full of God's bounty, for he possessed the blessing. Jacob was filled with God's grace and the promises. For he received them from the hand of Abraham's son, Isaac. It was to be Esau's blessing (his twin's blessing), but that "man of earth" traded it for a bowl of porridge. Esau was "all hungry as the sea" and would have traded his soul for the object of his desires: that warm, innards-pleasing food .... and did. The earthen word Adam also means "the one who is red," and Esau was marked with red hair to be "the man of clay."

Sacred Scripture poses this riddle: Esau was the man of clay and the one destined for grace and blessing according to the rules of Israelite society. During the process of birth, his twin, Jacob, strove with him to be first-born, but Esau's hand emerged first, and the midwife tied a scarlet thread around his wrist to signify that he had pride of place as his father's first-born son. When he emerged, fully born, he still bore this red yarn about his wrist, placing his claim on Isaac's patrimony. We know the story — how Jacob tricked the nearly blind Isaac in order to steal Esau's blessing and how Esau willingly traded his spiritual patrimony in exchange for bodily pleasure (a tale re-enacted by so many of us).

The woman at the well, in this sense, is Esau's descendant. She has traded God's blessing in exchange for bodily pleasures. Esau's historical descendants lived south of the Land of Promise in Edom, south of the Dead Sea in a barren wilderness. North of Judea was fractured Israel and Samaria, equally lost in spiritual terms. And roaming throughout this landscape is God, the One Who alone can grant blessing to each and every one of them. He offers her drink, which will

At the conclusion of His earthly journey, God Himself will become the Image of these people: humbled, outcast, and without an earthly inheritance. Yet, within Him are contained the hidden springs which alone spring up to Heaven and to the Kingdom.

From the Troparion of Mid-Pentecost Wednesday,