Sacred Space and Spiritual Nakedness

A Homily on Samaritan Woman Sunday offered by Deacon Alexander Earl of St. Vladimir’s Seminary

Many of you perhaps know that I am a philosophy and theology teacher. In one of my classes offered to working professionals, all Protestant men, I asked them the following question: would you let your child bring home a Ouija board to play with in your house? The gentlemen gave the answer I expected: absolutely not. More telling was when I asked them why they wouldn’t. Again, they responded to do so would be to open their children, themselves and their home up to unwanted influences.

But take someone else, take your perfectly secular atheist. Say I am selling this atheist a house, and I say that in the attic is a Satanic altar where various rituals used to be performed, though we do not know the details. There is even a pentagram left in the floor. I would be willing to bet that said atheist would feel very uncomfortable with that fact. If asked, I’m sure they would answer just like those Protestant men: whatever it is, whatever I believe, I just don’t want to take the risk of opening myself up to that kind of stuff.

To say to an Orthodox audience that there is such a thing as sacred space, or even demonic space, is hardly controversial. We believe as a matter of course in the power of spaces and items to contain energies or activities that we participate in and interact with. Whether it be our own parish and its icons, to relics, to the holy sites in Jerusalem, we believe quite seriously that space matters, and God, or something else, is bound to inhabit that space and make use of it. And I would say most everyone believes this whether they want to admit it or not. Just use the question of the Ouija board or the satanic altar to prove it.

So listen closely: sacred space is powerful, it’s dangerous, it makes us vulnerable, it opens us up to a higher realities.

I say all of this by way of prelude to our Gospel reading for today. A story most of us know well: the Samaritan woman comes to the well and encounters Jesus, and, despite her otherness—she is a Samaritan, he is a Jew; she is a woman, he is a man; she is married, he is celibate—Jesus engages her as she is. But that’s not what I want to focus on. What I find most interesting is the context: Jacob’s well.

The scriptures have almost nothing to say about it. Genesis 33 doesn’t even mention a well. But what we should keep in mind is all of the sacred sites associated with Jacob leading up to this point. Recall Jacob’s dream at Bethel, where he sees a ladder with angels ascending and descending with the Lord a top of it. He sets up an altar saying, “Surely the Lord is in this place.” Or again after Jacob’s struggle with Laban, Rachel’s father, where they make a covenant and set up a pillar and Jacob says, “the Lord watched between you and me.” Or when Jacob wrestles with an angel at Peniel and says, “I have seen God face to face.” In Genesis 33, Jacob is reconciled with his estranged brother Esau, from whom he stole their father’s blessing, and sets up an altar at Schechem upon his safe arrival, what becomes known as Jacob’s well.

All of these instances show a meeting of heaven and earth, an encounter of Jacob with the Lord God of Israel, the God of Israel who redeems his people, the God of Israel who brings together what has been torn asunder. And so it is here we find Jesus with the Samaritan woman. She follows in the footsteps of her forefathers, and she comes to the deep well of Jacob for sustenance, but perhaps she has forgotten something important: all of these sacred spaces are for encountering the Lord, and this is what she has found without knowing it. 

Christ is the true Jacob’s ladder, he is the meeting of heaven and earth as God made flesh. Christ is the one who watches, the Pantocrator, the ruler of the universe. Christ is the one who unites what is broken, he is the One Who Is. 

This is the truth of the Samaritan woman’s thirst. She comes to the well for water, the disciples leave Christ to find food. But neither realize it is Christ who is true drink, true food, living water; and we are in the same position. Every single desire we have is just like the Samaritan woman. I think I want drink, or a good steak dinner, or a successful career or a happy marriage, but these are all finite objects for an infinite desire. They can satisfy me no more than my thirst is ultimately satisfied by a tall glass of water. In the end, I will be coming back for more. The relief is temporary. And this is why we find the world so frustrating, because no matter where we aim our attention, we are never ultimately satisfied. Suffering is our lot. Death is our promised end. The world provides no enduring rest, just more anxiety and frustration. Especially in the modern world.

And yet despite this restlessness that we all possess, we come to Christ kicking and screaming, even those of us in church here today. We do not easily give up our false desires and our delusions of satisfaction. How many of us have really left everything and picked up our cross? I certainly have not. And that is because encountering Christ entails nakedness.  

Remember what I said: sacred space is powerful, it’s dangerous, it makes us vulnerable, it opens us up to a higher realities.

This is a terrifying prospect if you are honest about it, especially if I have to face my own insecurities, failures, skeletons, bad habits, embarrassing idiosyncrasies. Our culture of obsession with humor and laughter is a veiled way of lording over people their weaknesses. As Plato remarks in the Republic, laughter is a power move. I like to humiliate people, lest I be humiliated. Better to laugh first than be laughed at.

We see this vulnerability with the Samaritan woman, for when Christ asks about her husband, she speaks truly saying when she says she has none, but Christ reveals the full truth of the matter: you have five husbands, and the one you’re with now is not your husband. That’s a secret most people wouldn’t want exposed. Certainly something one might be a little sensitive about, ashamed about, uncomfortable with. But Jesus sees her clearly. He sees her in her spiritual nakedness, but he does not laugh at her, he is not attempting to “expose her” like some tabloid journalist.

We must understand this nakedness well and not resist it. Just like Adam and Eve in Paradise when they are found naked in their rejection of God, or Moses when he encounters the Burning Bush and is told to take off his shoes, we cannot encounter Jesus truly until we accept this nakedness before God. This nakedness is obviously painful—who wants to come to terms with their insecurities?—but it is far worse to wander through this earth hungering and thirsting after objects that cannot satisfy us pretending we are clothed in precious fur and jewels. Here is the truth: we areneedy, not matter how much we try to be self-sufficient. We are lacking, no matter how much we try to have it all together.

So here is the Gospel, brothers and sisters: Jesus does not leave her in her spiritual nakedness, nor use it to gain power over her. He does not ignore her thirst for living water. He does not reject her because she is a Samaritan, or anything else for that matter. In fact, notice this additional paradox at the very beginning of the Gospel reading: it says Jesus was wearied from his journey and that it was about the sixth hour. He was wearied!

The living water itself. The water that if you drink from it you will not thirst, you will no longer be wearied, but he is wearied. This shows the extreme love for mankind of our God. God is weary after us. He comes to us, he meets us at the well of our desires, and he is the living water come to flow over into our true life. Most importantly, he wearies at the sixth hour. The mention of this is no accident. In the Gospel of John Jesus is crucified at the sixth hour. It is on the cross that Jesus says ‘it is finished,’ that is, his journey to retrieve the lost sheep. It is on the cross that water flows from his side.

In other words, the Samaritan woman is mysteriously already at the foot of the cross, and Jesus encounters her as the weary one on the cross. This is the true well of Jacob. This is sacred space. This is the exposure of our own nakedness: the naked God so weary after us, so unapologetically self-emptying to give us true life, and yet we are often so convinced that we are kings and queens, masters of our own universe.

So let us pull all of these threads together:

First, as I’ve said, sacred space is powerful, it’s dangerous, it makes us vulnerable, it opens us up to a higher realities.

 Second, sacred space is about encountering Jesus Christ. When we are looking for the sacred, when we touch an icon, or a relic, or travel to a holy site, or sit out in nature with awe, we must remember all is sacred only because it is touched by the Lord Jesus Christ, because it witnesses to him.

Third, sacred space reveals that our deepest desires, our yearning, our weariness, are for Jesus Christ and only fulfilled in Christ. Every desire I have, from thirst to hunger, to love and companionship, are intimations of an infinite longing that this world cannot satisfy.

Fourth, this revelation is a revelation of our nakedness. It reveals us for what we truly are and what we truly need. It is that moment that prompts us to honesty about who we are and what we are made for, beyond our own self-delusions and ability to distract ourselves from this truth.

Fifth, and lastly, all of this is possible only because the reverse is true: God’s own deepest desire, yearning, weariness, is for us. He yearns for us from the cross, he calls us to quench our thirst by partaking of his own life. Your hunger for God is God already hungering for you.

So, brothers and sisters, let us draw near to that deep well, the fountain of life, the bread of heaven, our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ. Let us accept our nakedness, our vulnerability, our shame, that in the end all our longing is for the One who first longed for us. All glory be to Jesus Christ, together with his Father who is without beginning, and his all-holy, good and life-creating Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.