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In 1979, at Jacob’s Well in the West Bank, a monk named Father Philoumenos was brutally murdered by Jewish settlers. He had been living in a cave there, tending the well where Jesus met the Samaritan woman. He guarded it. He preserved it. He believed it was holy ground.
After his death, another monk came from Greece, Father Justinus. In the face of ongoing danger from settlers, threats and even beatings, he carved a sarcophagus of stone, a tomb, into which he laid the body of Father Philoumenos, and then, by himself, over many years built a church on the site of Jacob’s well.
He adorned it with icons, beautiful icons. And, when he was finished, on the other side of the church entrance, across from the sarcophagus of Father Philoumenos, he carved another tomb, and put his own name on it… Father Justinus.
The church was christened St. Photini, the name of the woman at the well. To this day, Father Justinus resides there.
It was there I met him while on pilgrimage, and walked with him through the entrance into that church right by his tomb. And as he entered he ran his hand across the cold stone and, I imagine thought: “What am I willing to die for today?”
It is a weighty question. “What am I willing to die for today?” It is a Lenten question.
It returns us to Ash Wednesday, and the words that accompany the ashes smudged across our foreheads… “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
A reminder of our mortality. Not meant to frighten, but to induce focus: on the fragility of life, on our limited control, on the extraordinary blessing it is to be human in the world right now made intentionally, and with purpose by a God who loves us and wants us to be here. We are providentially placed.
For how long? What is the span of our days?
Who knows? But it’s enough to know that right here, right now we are where God wants us to be.
For Father Justinus the tomb was not a symbol of terror but a sign of clarity. If we are dust and to dust we shall return, then the question is: What do I do with this body filled with nefesh, the breath of God?
This is a question about more than – “How am I going to live,” but rather- “What am I willing to die for?” What am I willing to give this last exhale of divine breath, or maybe I should say – “for whom?”
They say the well over which St. Photini’s church is built was dug by the patriarch Jacob. To my mind, given the land and climate and ground into which it was dug, Jacob must have been a water-diviner, a dowser as they are called – one of those special people who have the capacity to walk across dry land, and know where to dig a well when no water is apparent.
I can see Jacob getting up early in the quietest hours of the morning, leaving his people behind in their tents, and going out into the desert, into the wilderness, taking off his sandals, and walking softly and silently.
And what we may not appreciate, you and I, is what was at stake for Jacob in doing this. This was not a walk in the park; this was a walk, into a space that he was unfamiliar with (which is why he was looking for water) at a time of day when there were lions, there were snakes, there were scorpions.
To be alone, to be silent, to be out during the time when predators hunt and animals comes up out of their burrows was to put one’s life at risk. Jacob wasn’t jingling bear bells. He was doing just the opposite. Walking silently, meditatively, almost in a trance. feeling the earth beneath his bare feet, listening internally for a sound, a vibration, a movement.
What was Jacob willing to die for? Water? A little alone time?
And then when he thought he felt the radiance of life rumble up through the rocks, he would drop prone to the ground, arms splayed out, fingers wide apart, and feel with every fiber of his being for that living water.
And if he could feel it flowing he would rise to his knees, exhale, and give thanks to God. Then pile a cairn of rocks to remember where to bring his people back with hoes and shovels.
And what I learned from Father Justinus is that Jacob’s well isn’t connected to saturated ground, or an ancient pond that somehow got buried in a cave, but to a living river that has a source, a well-spring, that has been running clean for thousands of years.
When you arrive in Nablus and get out of the bus in front of St. Photini’s church. You enter a gate and a pilgrimage begins – you walk across the courtyard and pass by the tombs, one of which is empty. You enter a majestic sanctuary filled with giant wall frescoes.
Then down a series of steps into a basement, and there stands in front of you a well into which you drop a bucket attached to a very long rope. And if you are quiet you will hear it splash.
And when you feel the bucket dragged by the flowing stream, you hoist it up, full of the living water Jesus was talking about.
I drank from that well.
To drink that water at St Photini’s is to ask the question: “What am I willing to die for?” Or should I say, “Who am I willing to die for?”
For Jacob, it was his tribe. Jesus broadens the embrace to include a Samaritan, who was a woman, who was an outcast. We know who Jesus was willing to die for.
“Who are you willing to die for?”
Maybe this question is so alive for me because of the events that recently took place in Minneapolis. Maybe it is because the Episcopal Bishop in New Hampshire told his priests to get their affairs in order. Probably both. But also, because of a book I just finished titled: It Can’t Happen Here written by Sinclair Lewis in 1935.
It’s a novel about how a dictator takes over a democracy in a nation where people kept saying: it can’t happen here. Hence the title.
There is a section of the book that revolves around a concentration camp that had been set up to re-education people, to bring them in line with the thoughts and direction of the Chief, Buzz Windrip.
“Re-education” is what it was called… Mao was a master, though Stalin was not far behind, Sinclair Lewis was prescient, writing even even a bit before they really got going. Torturing people into telling on people to stop their pain, to save their life, to tell a lie that would transfer their pain to someone else. “Re-education.”
And so the question characters in this story had to answer every day was: “What am I willing to die for?” Or more so: “Who am I willing to die for?”
It is a question about life, how to live, the patterns of life, our “yeses” and our “nos.”
Some people may die for a principle. Some people may die for a piece of property. Jacob was willing to die for his tribe. Father Justinus is willing to die for the living water that rushes under St. Photini’s in the West Bank so pilgrims can taste what Jesus tasted the day he met the Samaritan woman.
In Sinclair Lewis’s book the characters in the concentration camp were willing to die for one another.
I just returned from the Episcopal Parish Network conference Friday. where I heard our Presiding Bishop, Sean Rowe, say: “Every single person in this room is committed to the unity of all people… And I would stake my life on this.”
In the season of Lent I invite us to wonder: “Who am I willing to die for?” How big is my “yes?”
Most of us are not like Father Justinus. We don’t run our hand across the tomb that waits for us. We don’t go out into our day wondering if today is the day I’m going to die for somebody…
But if we decide how we are going to live for one another, in the moment, then, if that moment comes; if a vulnerable person gets knocked to the ground – Will we jump in?
Will we pull them out of harm’s way? Will we go back into the ice-cold river, to grab one more hand, or take off our shoes in the desert to find water?
Because we don’t make that decision in the moment. We don’t make it when the crisis hits. We don’t make it after the fire starts, or the water rises, or the earth beings to quake. We don’t make it after the rights are denied the ID’s ripped up, the loyalty statements required. We don’t make it after things fall apart.
We make it right now.
Who we are willing to die for is a Lenten question, a question that requires deciding how we are going to live.