Third Sunday in Lent, March 12, 2023

Acceptance of the other; openness to God breaking into our lives, and our response

John 4: 5–42

So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.

The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

[The woman] said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the well is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?”

Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and come back.”

The woman answered and said to him, “I do not have a husband.”

Jesus answered her, “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.”

The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Anointed; when he comes, he will tell us everything.”

Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking with you.”

At that moment his disciples returned, and were amazed that he was talking with a woman, but still no one said, “What are you looking for?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah?” They went out of the town and came to him.

Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat.”

But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.”

So the disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?”

Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘In four months the harvest will be here’? I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest. The reaper is already receiving his payment and gathering crops for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For here the saying is verified that ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work.”

Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me everything I have done.” When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days.

Many more began to believe in him because of his word, and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”

Music Meditations

• Lord, I Need You—Chris Tomlin (praise and Worship)
• Create in me a clean heart, O God—Keith Greene Maranatha Singers
• Come My Way, My Truth, My Life—Ralph Vaughn Williams
• I Will Arise—Celtic arrangement by Michael Card
• For Those Tears I Dies—Marsha Stevens
• Come to the Water—John Foley, S.J.

Opening Prayer

Adapted from Sacred Space, a service of the Irish Jesuits, 2023:

Lord, I am going about my business like the Samaritan Woman, and am taken aback when you accost me at my particular well. You interrupt my business, my getting and spending, and you interrupt the routines of my day. You know everything about me, the good and the bad. You know my heart. Instead of resisting, let me be like the woman at the well, moved with joy at meeting you and committed to changing my life, if need be. Give me the courage to do so.

Companions for the Journey

From a blog called “Interrupting the Silence”, by Father Mike Marsh, Rector of St Phillip’s Episcopal church in west Texas:

She has a history. Things done and left undone, some good some not so good. Guilts and regrets. Fears. Wounds and sorrows. Secrets too. She is a woman with a past. Study the history of this text, read the commentaries, listen to the interpretations and you will learn that her past is generally seen as one of promiscuity. The evidence? Five spouses and now living unmarried with a sixth man. Looked at but not seen. Labelled yet nameless. She remains unknown to everyone. Everyone, that is, except Jesus.

How easily we forget that women of her day had very little choice or control over their own lives. If she is divorced it is because the men divorced her. She had no right of divorce. That was exclusively the man’s right. Maybe it was a just divorce but often it was not. If she’s not divorced then she has suffered the death of five husbands. Five times left alone, five times nameless, faceless, and of no value, five times starting over. Maybe some divorced her. Maybe some died. We don’t know. Either one, divorce or death, is a tragedy for her life.

So let’s not be too quick to judge. We don’t know the details of her past. Maybe we don’t need to. Maybe it is enough that she mirrors for us our own lives. We too are people with a past, people with a history. We are all Samaritan women. People like her, people like us, people with a past, often live in fear of being found out. It is not just the fear that another will know the truth, the facts, about us but that they will do so without ever really seeing us and without ever really knowing us. We all thirst to be seen and to be known at a deep intimate level. We all want to pour our lives out to one who knows us, to let them drink from the depths of our very being. That is exactly what Jesus is asking of this woman with a past when he says, “Give me a drink.” It is the invitation to let herself be known. To be known is to be loved and to be loved is to be known. To be found out, however, without being known leaves us dry and desolate. It leaves us to live a dehydrated life thirsting for something more, something different, but always returning to the same old wells.

We all go down to some well. For some, like the Samaritan woman, it is the marriage well. For others it is the well of perfectionism. Some go to the well of hiding and isolation. Others will draw from the well of power and control. Too many will drink from the wells of addiction. Many live at the well of busyness and denial. We could each name the wells from which we drink. Day after day, month after month, year after year we go to the same well to drink. We arrive hoping our thirst will be quenched. We leave as thirsty as when we arrived only to return the next day. For too long we have drunk from the well that never satisfies, the well that can never satisfy. Husband after husband this is the well to which the Samaritan woman has returned.

There is another well, however. It is the well of Jesus Christ. It is the well that washes us clean of our past. This is the well from which new life and new possibilities spring forth. It is the well that frees us from the patterns and habits that keep us living as thirsty people That is the well the Samaritan women in today’s gospel found. She intended to go to the same old well she had gone to for years, the well that her ancestors and their flocks drank from. Today is different. Jesus holds before her two realities of her life; the reality of what is and the reality of what might be. He brings her past to the light of the noon day. “You have had five husbands,” he says, “and the one you have now is not your husband.” It is not a statement of condemnation but simply a statement of what is. He tells her everything she has ever done. She has been found out. But it doesn’t end there. Jesus is more interested in her future than her past. He wants to satisfy her thirst more than judge her history. Jesus knows her. He looks beyond her past and sees a woman dying of thirst; a woman thirsting to be loved, to be seen, to be accepted, to be included, to be forgiven, to be known. Her thirst will never be quenched by the external wells of life. Nor will ours. Jesus says so.

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.” This is the living water of new life, new possibilities, and freedom from the past. This living water is Jesus’ own life. It became in the Samaritan woman “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” She discovered within herself the interior well and left her water jar behind. She had now become the well in which Christ’s life flows.

It’s not enough, however, to hear her story or even believe her testimony. Until we come to the well of Christ’s life within us we will continue returning to the dry wells of our life. We will continue to live thirsty. We will continue to live in fear of being found out. So I wonder, from what wells do you drink? How much longer will you carry your water jars? There is another well, one that promises life, one by which we are known and loved. Come to a new well. Come to the well of Christ’s life, Christ’s love, Christ’s presence that is already in you. Come to the well that is Christ himself and then drink deeply. Drink deeply until you become the one you are meant to be.

Weekly Memorization

Taken from the gospel for today’s session…

Whoever drinks of the water I shall give will never thirst

Living the Good News

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?

Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:

Reflection Questions

• Have I ever felt that I did “not quite belong” to the community found myself in?
  Did I feel isolated, judged by others, or simply invisible?
  How did it make me feel about reaching out to others?
• Have I ever, in the midst of trying to love a complicated or stressful life, found myself in need of refreshment?
  Can I admit my “thirst”?
  Why or why not?
• We all at one time or another go down to some “well”, seeking to quench the thirst for happiness and contentment. What has been my particular well?
  Am I still at this well?
  Is it a life-giving one?
  Have I been drawn to more than one “well” in my life?
• Do I need God’s mercy and understanding?
  Have I asked for it?
  Does someone need my mercy and understanding?
• Look what happens in John’s Gospel when Jesus and the woman open up to each other in an honest dialogue. What change in my life might a conversation with Jesus lead me to?
• Is there someone in my life that I need or want to have a meaningful conversation with?
• What does the water imagery in this gospel suggest to you about your own spiritual and emotional life?
  Where does it need to be refreshed?
• The woman leaves her bucket at the well, perhaps symbolizing the old life she is leaving behind. Is there something in my life I need to “leave behind”?
• The woman at the well entered into a conversation with Jesus. What conversation do I want to have with him?
  Can I have it now?
  What keeps me from trusting Jesus’ words?
• We, like Christ, are evangelizers for God (Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis). The pope has called us to be missionary disciples. Note here that the woman did not pack up everything and follow Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem. She had another mission give her by Jesus. What are some ways we can be evangelizers for God?
  When was the last time I was involved in such an encounter?
  What holds me back from being a better evangelizer?

Meditations

A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action:

St. Francis was a lover of nature. If he were to return to earth right now, would he be happy ?

Within about 10 years most people on the planet will face life with water shortages.

Half the world’s major rivers are being seriously polluted and/or depleted.

About 40 percent of rivers and lakes in the U.S. surveyed by the EPA are too polluted for swimming or fishing.

Why is this happening?
Too often we pit one need against another as we use rivers and lakes to meet our needs. We grow food in ways that send pollution into our drinking water. We often manufacture products in ways that use more water than is necessary, or poison the water that people are depending upon for their daily living. We clear away forests without thinking about the erosion that will wash into our waters.

What I can do:
Learn more about how water is apportioned and adulterated in our own country and around the world.
Pray for those who have no clean water and lobby against the movement to “privatize” water in the developing world.
Speak or write to my political leaders, and support initiatives that aim at providing clean water for all.

A Meditation in the Ignatian Style/Imagination:

Reread the story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, putting yourself in her shoes, and imagine what you see as you approach the well to draw water. Why is there no one ese from the village at the well? Why did you come at this time? Are you not accepted by the other women of Sechem? Describe the actual physical surroundings you find yourself in. What does the area look like? Smell like? How hot is it? What do you see perched on the edge of the well? What does this man look like? What does he ask of you? Why do you hesitate to give him water? How does Jesus let you know that he is aware of your past? (Just what IS your past?) How do you feel about having this past known to this man? Does he condemn you? What does Jesus tell you about the climate of your heart? Is it embarrassing that Jesus knows so much about you?

Talk to Jesus about the brokenness in your own life—mistakes made, anger still unresolved, regret, shame, sadness. Then speak to him of your desire to use this brokenness to enter into communion with him who understands and has compassion for all. Finally, let that healing and accepting energy lead you back to the world, to your immediate relationships and even to others who may need your healing touch.

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions:

Consider these words from Psalm 42:

As the deer pants for streams of water So my soul pants for you, O God My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

Then I ask myself: What does our present generation thirst for? What does the world thirst for? Has there ever been a “dry” time when God gave me what I needed in terms of comfort, respite, or simply God’s sustaining presence? I name (silently or aloud) a hard place in my life at this time. Where in that rocky, desert place is God providing water for me?

Finally: I say a prayer of hope and thanksgiving for God’s sustaining presence in my life.

A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action:

Think of someone in your family or among your friends and acquaintances who is somewhat outside the circle because of something he did in the past, or because she is an embarrassment to you… (maybe she dresses weirdly, is too plump, or holds the wrong political views). Now think of how Jesus would view this person, and to what lengths he would go to be inclusive. Do one thing this week—a phone call, a note, an invitation to grab a bite to eat or go to the movies—that makes this person feel accepted by you. Find time for a conversation of significance. Go on, be brave! Be forgiving!

Poetic Reflection:

Think of a woman who has been discarded as worthless at least five times, rendered unworthy of human contact, but recognized in the loving eyes of Jesus who promises so much more. What a gift it is to be thankful when life is a struggle…

“Conversations –III”

Isn’t it strange
that as we are bent, broken
like bread, torn like cloth
poured away.
Still we are not consumed

Bless you, God.

Bless you
Who make mountains and winds;
Who give fire to breath
And freckles to children.

Bless you.

—Rev. Ed Ingebretzen in Psalms of the Still Country

Closing Prayer

Lord, help me to see those marginalized among us. Help me to be welcoming and compassionate, listening to their pain and sorrow, their anger and loneliness. In many ways, I am an outsider too, not quite fitting in. Teach me to rely on your love and care for me and for others who are on the margins of life for one reason or another.