In our world today, the whole creation is groaning with the pain of thirst, longing for life. What, then, does mission mean in such a context? When more than two billion people globally lack safely managed drinking water, their thirst challenges the Church to respond. Rivers and wells are drying up as temperatures rise, while floods, droughts, groundwater depletion, pollution and increasing salinity are deepening the ecological crisis. Mission today must therefore break open these grounds of thirst by protecting creation and defending water as God’s gift and the right of every living being. The water crisis is particularly acute across South Asia. Climate-induced droughts, floods and heatwaves are contaminating water sources and making safe water increasingly difficult to obtain. UNICEF reports that 347 million children in South Asia lack access to safe water, the highest number of any region in the world.[2]
This crisis also has a distinctly gendered face. In many rural communities, women and girls must walk about six kilometres, and sometimes considerably farther, to fetch water for their households. They carry heavy vessels in intense heat, often making the journey more than once a day. For example, UNICEF tells the story of a girl in Sindh, Pakistan, who walked seven kilometres with her mother to the nearest clean-water source, sometimes three times a day. Such journeys consume time that could otherwise be devoted to education, employment, rest and participation in community life.[3]
When we meet an unnamed woman in Samaria walking towards Jacob’s well in John 4, therefore, we also see the faces of millions of South Asian women and girls who continue to walk long distances in search of water. This unnamed woman in Samaria’s journey is not merely an ancient biblical detail; it is a living reality. The water jar she carries represents gendered labour, social inequality, ecological injustice and the daily struggle for survival. Jesus’ meeting with her at the well invites the Church to encounter God among those whose bodies bear the burden of the water crisis.
At the same time, the denial of access to water for Dalits in India remains a painful reality, sustained by the casteist belief that Dalits “pollute” drinking-water sources. Their cry echoes from the margins: “We thirst.” Who will hear their cry, and who will help quench their thirst? Mission requires us, on the one hand, to repent of the human actions that have wounded creation, sometimes beyond repair and, on the other, to rediscover the meaning and relevance of Christ’s promise of living water for our times and contexts.
In this Bible study, I shall explore several missional themes emerging from John 4. Drawing upon the portrayal of this encounter in The Chosen[4] as a form of visual Scripture, I shall ask what it means to re-envision mission as Jubilee today, particularly from a decolonial perspective. I will begin by discussing decolonial mission and explaining why a decolonial reading of the Bible matters. I will then explore the politics of naming and reclaim the woman from Samaria’s identity as Photini, the name by which she is remembered in Christian tradition.
Next, I will consider the significance of Jesus offering the first explicit “I am” revelation in John’s Gospel during his encounter with Photini, a woman living at the margins. I will reflect upon the intercultural and theological conversation between Jesus and Photini before examining how mission to Samaria is undertaken by a Samaritan woman herself. I will then explore the profound meaning of Photini leaving her water jar beside the well. Finally, I will offer some signposts for understanding and practising mission as Jubilee, liberating women from the burden of water collection, resisting caste-based exclusion, restoring wounded ecosystems and ensuring that living water flows freely for all in our thirsty and wounded world today.
1. Why Does a Decolonial Reading of the Bible Matter?
I conclude every reading of the Bible by asking, “How is this the Word of God?” This is a question I learnt through the chaplaincy at the University of Manchester. It invites us not simply to declare that the Bible is the Word of God, but to discern how God’s life-giving, liberating Word emerges from the text in our particular contexts. Coloniality refers to the enduring patterns of power inherited from dominant empires. These patterns continue even after formal colonial rule has ended. Colonial powers have often selected biblical texts and imposed interpretations that legitimise domination over the powerless and maintain control over people’s bodies, lands, minds, cultures and Indigenous spiritualities. In this process, coloniality has filtered, distorted and sometimes obstructed the liberating Word of God from reaching communities at the margins. A decolonial reading of the Bible is therefore essential. It seeks to liberate oppressed communities—and biblical interpretation itself—from the continuing chains of coloniality. It asks not only, “What does this text mean?” but also: Who has interpreted this text? From which social location? Whose interests has that interpretation served? Whose voices have been silenced? And how might this text become God’s liberating Word today?
A decolonial reading of the Bible involves:
Analysing the power relations within the text, behind the text and in its interpretation.
Listening to unnamed, silenced and marginalised people within the biblical narrative.
Disrupting interpretations that demand unquestioning obedience to religious, political or social authority.
Reading from the lived experiences, struggles and wisdom of oppressed communities.
Liberating readers—particularly the powerless—to recognise their dignity and agency.
Liberating Christian faith and theological language from the chains of colonialism.
Reading from a Dalit Theological Perspective
From a Dalit theological perspective, decolonial interpretation takes the form of a subaltern biblical hermeneutic. It reads the Bible from below from the locations of those who have been crushed, excluded, silenced and treated as socially insignificant. Its purpose is not merely to understand the text but to participate in the transformation of unjust realities. Understanding without transformation can leave existing structures of power untouched. The drum can serve as a symbol of this subaltern hermeneutic. Historically associated with Dalit life, labour, communication, resistance and celebration, the drum represents an oral and embodied way of knowing. Its sound interrupts the silence imposed by caste and colonial power. It gathers the community, announces resistance and makes unheard voices audible.
The drum therefore becomes a new theological locale, a place from which God is heard and theology is articulated. Decolonial interpretation moves biblical reflection away from the exclusive control of dominant pulpits, academic institutions and written commentaries, and towards the songs, stories, rhythms, memories and struggles of subaltern communities. It invites us to hear the Word of God not only from the written page but also through the resonating drumbeats of people struggling for dignity, justice and life.
2. Redeeming the “Unnamed woman” of Samaria with a Name
Would we ordinarily call someone the “Chennai woman,” the “Delhi woman” the “Aizwal woman”, or the “Dhaka woman”? Then why has the woman in John 4 been remembered for centuries simply as “the Samaritan woman”? “Samaritan” identifies her religious and ethnic community, but when it becomes her only name, her individual identity can disappear behind a contested geography. She is defined according to how dominant society sees her: a woman, a Samaritan, a foreigner, an outsider and an “other.” In the eyes of the dominant order, she becomes an “unwoman”, someone whose humanity, dignity and voice are not fully recognised. The Gospel of John does not tell us her name. Yet the Eastern Christian tradition remembers her as St Photini from the Greek phōteinē, meaning “luminous,” “enlightened” or “the radiant one.” According to this tradition, Photini is the woman with whom Jesus conversed at Jacob’s well in John 4:5–42. Naming her Photini is therefore a decolonial act of remembrance. It resists the erasure of her identity and celebrates her as a bearer of Christ’s light.
Challenging the Labels Placed upon Her
Photini has been burdened by several intersecting forms of marginalisation:
She comes from Samaria, a contested geography.
She is a woman engaging publicly in theological conversation with a Jewish man.
She belongs to a community regarded with hostility and suspicion by many Jews of that period.
She has frequently been judged through a moralising interpretation of her five husbands.
Her arrival at the well at noon has often been interpreted as evidence that she was isolated or rejected by her community.
The biblical text, however, never calls Photini immoral or sexually sinful. We are not told why she had five husbands. She may have experienced repeated bereavement, divorce, abandonment, economic vulnerability or the consequences of patriarchal marriage arrangements. These men may represent what had happened to her, rather than evidence of wrongdoing by her. To reduce her story to sexual morality is to place the burden of patriarchy upon the woman while leaving the actions and power of men unquestioned. Likewise, John tells us that she came to the well at about noon, but does not explicitly say that she came because she was ostracised. That familiar interpretation may reveal more about the assumptions of interpreters than about Photini herself. A decolonial reading distinguishes carefully between what the text says and the judgements that later readers have imposed upon her.
From a Nameless “Other” to Luminous Witness
Jesus does not treat Photini as an object of shame. He recognises her as a theological conversation partner. She questions him, challenges inherited boundaries, discusses worship, anticipates the Messiah and gradually recognises who Jesus is. Their conversation is the longest recorded conversation between Jesus and an individual in the Gospels. Photini then becomes an interpreter, witness and missionary to her own community. The people of her city come to Jesus not because she remains silent and obedient, but because she speaks: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” Her question creates space for others to encounter Christ for themselves.
To call her Photini is therefore to celebrate her movement:
From unnamed woman to recognised person;
From imposed shame to restored dignity;
From object of interpretation to theological interpreter;
From the margins of the story to the centre of mission;
From carrying a water jar to carrying the testimony of living water.
Photini is not merely “the Samaritan woman.” She is the luminous one, a theologian, witness and apostle from the margins through whom the light of Christ reaches Samaria.
3. Revealing the “I Am”: Divine Disclosure at the Margins
Which is the first “I am” saying of Jesus in John’s Gospel? If we mean the well-known metaphorical sayings “I am the bread of life,” “I am the light of the world,” and so forth, the first occurs in John 6:35: “I am the bread of life.” But the first time Jesus uses the significant expression egō eimi “I am” to reveal his identity occurs earlier, in his conversation with Photini: “I know that Messiah is coming… When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am—the one who is speaking to you.” John 4:25–26 The Greek reads: Egō eimi, ho lalōn soi literally, “I am, the one speaking with you.” It can naturally be translated, “I am he,” meaning, “I am the Messiah.” Yet within John’s Gospel, egō eimi also carries a deeper theological resonance, recalling God’s self-revelation to Moses: “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). John 4:26 therefore holds together Jesus’ messianic identity and the possibility of divine self-disclosure.
To Whom Is the “I Am” Revealed?
This revelation does not first occur in the Temple, before the religious authorities or among Jesus’ disciples. It takes place beside a well in Samaria during a theological conversation with a woman from a marginalised community.
Jesus reveals himself to:
A woman in a patriarchal society;
A Samaritan in the context of Jewish–Samaritan hostility;
A person outside his own religious community;
Someone repeatedly burdened by later interpreters with assumptions of shame and immorality;
Photini, who questions, reasons and theologises with him.
The geography of revelation is therefore significant. The “I Am” is disclosed at a well, beyond the recognised centres of religious power. Divine revelation moves from the centre towards the margins and is received, interpreted and proclaimed from the margins.
Revelation Through Intercultural Conversation
The disclosure comes only after a long and demanding conversation. Jesus and Photini discuss water, ancestry, gender, ethnicity, worship, contested sacred places and the coming Messiah. She does not remain a passive recipient of Jesus’ teaching. She asks questions, challenges assumptions and moves the conversation into deeper theological territory. We should be cautious about claiming that Jesus only then discovered his divinity, because the text does not explicitly say this. Nevertheless, we can say that his identity is disclosed relationally through an encounter with Photini. The Word who became flesh communicates through genuine conversation. Jesus does not merely speak to Photini; he speaks with her. In the course of their meeting, each ministers to the other. Photini receives the promise of living water and recognition of her theological agency. Jesus receives water, hospitality within conversation and an opening into the Samaritan community. Barriers are crossed, inherited hostilities are disrupted, and a new relationship becomes possible—between Jew and Samaritan, man and woman, and human beings and God.
Mission as Mutual Transformation
This encounter challenges models of mission in which a powerful Christian centre carries God to supposedly godless margins. Jesus is already present at the margins, yet his identity is publicly disclosed there through conversation with a marginalised woman. Mission is therefore not a one-way movement from the knowledgeable to the ignorant, the powerful to the powerless, or the “saved” to the “unsaved.” Mission is a meeting in which both participants become vulnerable to conversation, relationships are transformed, and new understandings of God emerge. Photini does not simply receive a revelation. She helps create the conversational space in which the revelation is spoken. She then carries it to her community, becoming an interpreter and witness of the “I Am.” The margins are thus not merely the objects or destinations of mission; they are the theological locations from which mission begins.
This is Jubilee mission from the margins: Christ is disclosed through boundary-crossing relationships, marginalised people become theologians and witnesses, and communities divided by inherited hostility are invited into new life.
4. Mission as Intercultural/interfaith Conversation
The meeting between Jesus and Photini is an intercultural and interreligious encounter. They come from two historically related but deeply divided communities, Jewish and Samaritan. Their peoples carry competing memories, contested scriptures, rival sacred geographies and inherited hostility. Yet beside Jacob’s well, these differences become the subject of conversation rather than reasons for separation.
Photini is not merely waiting for Jesus to give her the correct answers. She is a truth-seeker who brings her community’s theological questions into the conversation:
“Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” John 4:20
Her question concerns Mount Gerizim, the sacred centre of Samaritan worship, and Jerusalem, the centre of Jewish worship. It is a question about land, ancestry, religious identity, contested sacred space and the power to decide where God may be encountered. Photini is asking: Who controls worship? Which community owns sacred truth? Where does God dwell?
Photini as a Subversive Theologian
Photini’s question challenges Jesus to respond to a dispute that has divided their communities. She is not a passive learner but a theologian who directs the conversation towards one of the most contested religious questions of her time. Her thirst is not only for physical water but also for truth, dignity and worship liberated from exclusion. Photini’s subversive theology destabilises the boundaries between teacher and learner, missionary and mission field, centre and margin. She demonstrates that people at the margins do not merely receive theology formulated elsewhere; they ask the disruptive questions through which new theological understanding emerges. The conversation at the well teaches us that theology becomes transformative when marginalised people speak, dominant certainties are questioned, and all participants become open to the liberating movement of God’s Spirit.
Jesus responds:
“The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… God is spirit, and those who worship must worship in spirit and truth.”John 4:21, 24
This response should not be read in a supersessionist way, as though Jesus dismisses Samaritan worship and declares Christianity superior to both Samaritans and Jews. Rather, Jesus disrupts every attempt to imprison God within one geography, institution, ethnicity or religious centre. Neither Mount Gerizim nor Jerusalem can claim exclusive possession of God. “God is Spirit” means that God cannot be controlled by temples, borders, dominant communities or authorised religious elites. The Spirit moves freely, crossing the boundaries human beings construct. True worship is not secured by belonging to the “right” ethnic group or occupying the “correct” sacred land. It is grounded in Spirit and truth—in relationships characterised by honesty, justice, dignity and life.
The Margins as Sites of Theological Truth
Photini’s question opens the way for this profound teaching about worship. The truth emerges through conversation with a woman from a marginalised community. This reminds us that people at the margins are not empty vessels waiting to receive the truth from missionaries. They are truth-seekers, truth-bearers and theological conversation partners.
Mission as intercultural conversation therefore requires:
Listening before speaking;
Receiving as well as giving;
Recognising the theological wisdom of other communities;
Addressing contested histories rather than concealing them;
Relinquishing claims to possess God exclusively;
Allowing encounters across difference to transform everyone involved.
Mission does not mean carrying a God whom we own into another person’s culture. It means discerning the God who is already present and active there. Intercultural mission begins with humility—the recognition that no culture, church or religious tradition can contain the fullness of God.
A Jubilee of Worship
Jesus and Photini move beyond the rivalry between two sacred centres towards a new vision of worship. Jubilee mission releases worship from captivity to geography, ethnicity, patriarchy and institutional power. It does not erase cultural identities or sacred histories; rather, it resists their use as instruments of domination and exclusion. At Jacob’s well, Jesus and Photini demonstrate that conversation across difference can become sacred space. The well becomes a sanctuary without walls, their dialogue becomes an act of theology, and their encounter becomes worship in Spirit and truth.
Mission as intercultural conversation asks the Church today: Are we willing only to speak about God to people at the margins, or are we also willing to hear God speaking to us through them?
5. Decolonial Mission: Mission to Samaria by a Samaritan
Colonial mission often treats the “other” as a mission field, an object to be converted, civilised or rescued. Mission flows from a supposedly knowledgeable and powerful centre towards people portrayed as spiritually empty. Such an approach denies the agency, wisdom and existing spiritual life of local communities. John 4 offers a radically different model. Mission to Samaria is initiated and led by a Samaritan, Photini herself.
The Missionary the Disciples Did Not Expect
While Jesus is conversing with Photini, the disciples go into the city to buy food. When they return, they are astonished that Jesus is speaking with a woman, yet none of them asks her who she is or what Jesus is discussing with her. They return from the city carrying food, but they do not bring anyone to meet Jesus.
Photini, however, returns to that same city carrying a testimony:
“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” John 4:29
The disciples bring food out of Samaria; Photini brings the people of Samaria to Jesus. Those regarded as trained disciples misunderstand the moment, while the marginalised woman recognises its missional possibility.
From Mission Field to Mission Agency
Photini does not approach her community as a religious conqueror. She speaks as one of them, from within their history, culture and struggles. She does not impose a finished doctrine or demand unquestioning acceptance. She shares her experience and offers an open invitation: “Come and see.”
Her question, “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” creates space for discernment. She does not compel her community to accept her conclusion; she invites them to encounter Jesus and decide for themselves. This is solidarity mission: testimony offered with humility, trust and respect for the agency of the community.
John records:
“Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” John 4:39
The text does not say that the disciples evangelised the Samaritans. Photini’s testimony opens the way. Mission to Samaria becomes a Samaritan-led mission.
Mission Rooted in Local Agency
The people respond to Photini’s invitation by leaving the city and coming to Jesus. They then invite Jesus to remain with them, and he stays for two days. The Samaritans are not passive recipients: they come, listen, discern, welcome and offer hospitality. Their encounter with Jesus takes place because Photini has prepared the way.
Later they say to her: “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves.” John 4:42
This need not diminish Photini’s witness. Rather, it demonstrates the fruitfulness of her mission. Decolonial mission does not create permanent dependency upon the missionary. It enables people to hear, interpret and own faith for themselves. Photini’s witness does not make her community dependent upon her; it opens a path towards their direct encounter with Christ.
Recognising the Labour of the Margins
Jesus tells his disciples: “I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.” John 4:38. The disciples are called to recognise that mission did not begin with them. They enter a field in which others, including Photini, have already laboured. This challenges churches and mission agencies that arrive in communities and behave as though God was absent until they appeared.
Decolonial mission asks:
Who has already been labouring in this community?
Whose testimony has prepared the way?
Whose knowledge and leadership have been overlooked?
Are outsiders controlling the mission, or supporting locally led witness?
Are women and marginalised people treated as mission objects or recognised as missional agents?
Jubilee Mission from the Margins
Photini embodies Jubilee mission because she moves from being objectified as an outsider to becoming a subject and leader of mission. She is not rescued from Samaria and taken into the religious centre. Instead, she returns to her people, and mission grows through her relationships, credibility and testimony.
Decolonial mission therefore means:
Mission with people, rather than mission to them;
Mission led by communities rather than imposed by outsiders;
Solidarity rather than superiority;
Testimony rather than coercion;
Invitation rather than conquest;
Local agency rather than colonial dependency.
Photini teaches us that the margins are not simply waiting to receive missionaries. The margins are already raising theologians, witnesses and apostles. Mission to Samaria is led by a Samaritan and the Church must learn to recognise, honour and follow such leadership today.
6. Photini’s Water Jar at the Well
Photini comes from the city of Sychar in Samaria to draw water from Jacob’s well. After meeting Jesus, she returns to her city but leaves her water jar behind:
“Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city.” John 4:28
John does not explain why she leaves it. The abandoned jar is therefore an open and evocative symbol, inviting readers to discern its theological and missional significance.
A Sign of Thirst Quenched
Photini arrives seeking ordinary water but encounters Jesus, who offers her “living water.” Leaving the jar may signify that her deepest thirst for life, dignity, truth and recognition has been quenched.
The jar remains at the well as a silent testimony to the disciples: this woman has received more than the water she came to collect. She has encountered the source of living water and has discovered a new purpose.
A Sign That Barriers Have Been Broken
The jar also testifies that Jesus, the Saviour of the world, has crossed barriers constructed through gender, ethnicity, religion and inherited tradition. Beside the well, Jesus builds an inclusive communion that disrupts exclusion and discrimination.
The well was a place of contested ancestry, but it becomes a meeting place. The jar was associated with domestic labour, but it becomes a symbol of liberation and mission. Photini was treated as an outsider, but she becomes the person through whom her city encounters Jesus.
A Promise to Return
Leaving her jar may also indicate the urgency of Photini’s mission. She does not abandon the well forever; she leaves the jar as though to say, “I shall return.” She soon returns, not alone, but accompanied by people from her city whom she has inspired to come, meet and listen to Jesus.
She arrives at the well carrying a jar but returns carrying a community. The instrument used to collect water remains behind while Photini becomes a vessel carrying the news of living water.
From Domestic Labour to Public Vocation
The water jar can represent the gendered labour imposed upon women. In many communities today, women and girls still walk long distances carrying heavy vessels of water for their households. Photini’s jar therefore connects her story with women whose bodies continue to bear the burden of water insecurity.
When Photini leaves the jar, her public vocation takes priority over the role society has assigned to her. She moves from the private labour of fetching water to the public ministry of proclamation. Her new calling is to address the thirst of her city by inviting its people to encounter Jesus.
Photini is among the earliest and most significant witnesses to Jesus in John’s Gospel. She is the first person in the Gospel to whom Jesus explicitly discloses himself as the Messiah, and her testimony brings an entire Samaritan community towards him. Anyone who denies women’s equality, gifts or leadership in Church and society must reckon with Photini’s theological agency and public proclamation.
Her witness calls us:
To celebrate the ministry and ordination of women;
To recognise and nurture women’s gifts and leadership;
To listen to women’s interpretations of faith and Scripture;
To resist patriarchy, misogyny and gender-based violence;
To remove the burdens that prevent women and girls from flourishing.
A Jar Shared in Solidarity
Might we also imagine that Photini leaves the water jar as a gift? Jesus has asked her for a drink, but he has no vessel with which to draw water. Having received the promise of living water, perhaps she leaves her own resource so that Jesus and his disciples may quench their physical thirst.
Read in this way, the jar becomes a sign of mutuality. Photini is not merely a recipient of Jesus’ gift; she also has something to offer. Mission is not a one-way act of giving from the powerful to the powerless. It is a relationship in which gifts, resources and life are shared.
A Jar That Remembers the Thirsty
The jar left with Jesus can also serve as a reminder that countless people remain thirsty. It represents communities without safe drinking water, Dalits denied access to common water sources, women and girls walking kilometres to collect water, and the whole creation groaning under climate breakdown.
The jar calls Jesus’ followers to join his life-giving work by:
Protecting rivers, wells and ecosystems;
Defending access to safe water as a human right;
Resisting caste-based and gender-based exclusion;
Sharing resources with communities experiencing water poverty;
Challenging systems that commodify and exploit water.
A Symbol of Liberation
The water jar may have confined Photini within a prescribed gendered role. Leaving it behind can therefore symbolise liberation from the forces that sought to domesticate, silence and control her. Yet this does not devalue the essential work of fetching water or those who perform it. Rather, it challenges the unequal social arrangements that place this burden primarily upon women and girls.
Photini does not leave her responsibilities to become an individual detached from her community. She returns to liberate, enlighten and invite the whole city. Her freedom becomes communal; her encounter becomes testimony; and her living water begins to overflow towards others.
A Jubilee Jar
Photini’s water jar is therefore a Jubilee symbol:
An empty jar testifying to a thirst that has been quenched;
An abandoned burden witnessing to liberation;
A shared resource expressing solidarity;
A vessel reminding us of those who remain thirsty;
A sign that women are theologians, missionaries and leaders;
An invitation for living water to flow as peace, dignity and justice.
Photini invites us to come to Jesus, receive the living water, and then become vessels through whom that water reaches a thirsty world:
“We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” 2 Corinthians 4:7
The jar is left at the well, but Photini becomes a living vessel. She came carrying water for her household; she returns carrying good news for her city. Jubilee mission begins when the burdens of the margins are transformed into signs of liberation and when living water flows towards all creation.
Conclusion: Mission from the Margins—Celebrating Photini and Her Waters of Life
Celebrating Photini’s waters of life invites us to reimagine mission as Jubilee mission from the margins. Jubilee is God’s movement of release, restoration and redistribution: burdens are lifted, captives are liberated, excluded people recover their dignity, the land is allowed to heal, and the gifts of creation are shared so that everyone may flourish. In John 4, this Jubilee does not begin in Jerusalem, a temple or another centre of religious authority. It begins beside a well in contested Samaria, through a life-giving conversation between Jesus and Photini.
1. Redeeming the nameless with a name
Jubilee mission restores identities erased by dominant histories. The woman whom the text leaves unnamed and interpreters have reduced to her gender, ethnicity or presumed morality is remembered as Photini the luminous and enlightened one. Naming her resists erasure and celebrates her dignity, theological agency and witness. Mission from the margins asks whose names, stories and gifts have been forgotten. It works to restore the identities of women, Dalits, Indigenous peoples, migrants and other marginalised communities who have too often been treated as objects of mission rather than subjects of God’s mission.
2. Rediscovering the “I Am” in Jesus
The first significant egō eimi disclosure by Jesus occurs not before the powerful but in conversation with Photini. At the margins, Jesus declares, “I am the one speaking with you.” His identity is disclosed through a boundary-crossing relationship with a woman from outside his religious community.
Jubilee mission therefore encounters Christ anew among people pushed to the edges. We do not carry a Christ whom we possess to supposedly godless margins. Christ is already there, waiting to be revealed through conversation, vulnerability and mutual transformation.
3. Reaffirming God as Spirit
Photini’s question about worship challenges religious communities that seek to contain God within their own sacred places, traditions and institutions. Jesus responds, “God is Spirit.” God cannot be possessed by Jerusalem, Mount Gerizim, a denomination, a nation, a caste, a race or an empire. Jubilee mission releases faith from captivity to colonial power and religious superiority. Worship in Spirit and truth is expressed wherever barriers are dismantled, dignity is restored, creation is protected and communities are reconciled through justice.
4. Reversing mission through solidarity
John 4 reverses the direction of conventional mission. Mission to Samaria is not led by the disciples or imposed by religious outsiders. It is initiated by Photini, a Samaritan who speaks from within her community and invites her people: “Come and see.” This is not mission from the powerful to the powerless but mission arising from below. It replaces conquest with conversation, superiority with solidarity, coercion with invitation, and dependency with local agency. The people regarded as the mission field become missionaries, theologians and leaders of God’s transforming work.
5. Recovering a new vocation
Photini arrives carrying a water jar but leaves it beside the well. She came to collect water for her household but returns carrying good news for her city. Her abandoned jar signifies a burden interrupted, a thirst quenched and a vocation recovered. Jubilee mission enables people to move beyond the identities and burdens imposed upon them and discover their God-given callings. It celebrates women’s leadership, resists patriarchy and creates space for marginalised people to proclaim, organise and lead. Photini’s living water does not remain a private spiritual possession; it flows into the public life of her community.
Jubilee Mission in a Thirsty World
Photini’s story also calls us back to the material reality of water. Living water cannot be reduced to a spiritual metaphor while millions remain without safe drinking water, women and girls walk kilometres carrying water, Dalits are denied access to common wells, rivers are polluted, and creation groans under climate breakdown.
Jubilee mission must therefore:
Defend water as God’s gift and a right shared by all;
Resist the privatisation, pollution and exploitation of water;
Challenge caste, gender and economic inequalities in access to water;
Liberate women and girls from the unequal burden of water collection;
Restore rivers, wells, land and damaged ecosystems;
Recognise people at the margins as leaders of ecological and social transformation.
Celebrating Photini’s waters of life renews our mission as an overflowing movement of dignity, justice and liberation. It calls the Church to leave behind its own jars of colonialism, patriarchy, casteism, racism, religious superiority and ecological exploitation. It invites us to receive the living water offered by Christ and to allow it to become a river of Jubilee flowing from the margins. Photini came to the well unnamed, but she returned with a voice. She came carrying a burden, but she returned carrying a vocation. She came alone, but she returned with her community. She came searching for water, but she became a witness to the living water.
May we celebrate Photini, the luminous one. May we listen to the wisdom flowing from the margins. And may we join her in allowing God’s living waters to flow through our thirsty world, bringing liberation to the oppressed, dignity to the excluded, healing to creation and fullness of life for all. Allow me to conclude with a poem on water from my pen:
Who knows the pains of deep blue waters,
For her tears wept and kept within
What’s for a man but domination that matters
For his power swept and crept herein
When she tries to quench the thirst of the poor,
He grabs it from their mouths for sure
For he dictates that water is for money and not for any
And pours her in the rich houses for waste
Arise O waters, Arise O people,
Water for life and water for all
Injustice to water and injustice to people
Speak out and speak aloud
For man’s injustice to be watered away
And justice to be for waters again
Let Waters roll down in justice and
And let the streams be ever flowing to all in righteousness.
May God bless our initiatives for water justice and let justice roll down like waters, let righteousness flow like a never-ending stream!
Rev. Dr. Raj Bharat Patta,
rajpatta@gmail.com
04.08.2026
[1] Bible Study presented by Raj Bharat Patta at CWM South Asia Assembly held at Bangkok 4-7 August, 2026.
[2] https://www.unicef.org/asia-pacific/stories/safe-water-bright-future
[3] https://www.unicef.org/asia-pacific/stories/access-clean-water-gives-girls-freedom-learn
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ordhsDeAt60
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