Today we’re into the Third Sunday of Lent and are given this remarkable reading. This Sunday we’re praying for the members of our community who are preparing to enter the Church at Easter, but we’re also praying for ourselves as we take this time to reconnect with God.
Let’s take a moment to look at the Gospel. Jesus and His disciples were in a foreign country where Jews were generally hated. It was an area in between Galilee to the north and Judea to the south, sort of north central Israel today. We’ve heard in other readings where Jews would pass around Samaria for fear of mistreatment and even in the story of the Good Samaritan where a Samaritan was used as an example of a foreigner who was kind to the suffering man when his own countrymen weren’t. Jesus, who had a following at this point, sent his disciples into town to buy food. He wanted some time alone with this woman. That alone was scandalous. She was a woman who had had five husbands and was living with a man who wasn’t her husband. I’m sure her reputation was horrible.
Jesus told the woman to give him a drink. It was an ice breaker. They both knew the culture and customs of the region, but it started the conversation. This woman with six unfulfilling relationships was starving for something. She just didn’t know what. Jesus knew that water was the common thread. She could get water when she needed it by coming to the well, just as she could get one empty relationship after another by going from man to man. She hadn’t found any way to make her life meaningful.
How often do we find ourselves in the same situation, dying of thirst? Jesus knew this woman better than she knew herself. He wanted to offer her the water that would quench her thirst forever. How often do we look into a refrigerator that’s full and mumble that there’s nothing to eat. We scan through a couple hundred stations on the TV and complain that there’s nothing on. We, like the Samaritan woman, are starving. We search endlessly for something that will satisfy our very soul but don’t’ find it. That’s the catch. Earthly things were never meant to fulfill us. They simply sustain us. A couple of weeks ago we heard about Peter, James, and John catching more fish than their boats could hold. It was incredible. What did they do? They left everything and followed Jesus.
Christ knows us better than we could ever know ourselves. We are God’s creation. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Life isn’t found or defined in things. Over the course of my time as a deacon I’ve had many opportunities to serve at funerals. I’ve never heard people talk about the successes in the professional world. They talk about love and relationships and kindness.
This is a weekend where those coming into the church are going through the Scrutinies. It’s a time for them to reflect on where they are in their relationship with God. Just like the woman at the well they are asking to be shown the water that will quench their thirst forever.
This is a time for all of us to spend some time scrutinizing our lives. Lent is a time of fasting, prayer, and reconciling ourselves with God. So often we lie to ourselves and to each other. We don’t want to look into that mirror and see our shortcomings. I don’t. At first glance everything is just fine, but looking a little closer I see how I really look. Just like the woman at the well, we’re all looking for something. We live in real and spiritual desert.
We’re looking for something that will quench our thirst. Christ said, “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.” Pope Francis has declared this a year of Mercy. During this Lenten season it’s a time to take advantage of the sacrament of reconciliation to cleanse ourselves of our sins and make ourselves clean. Like the woman at the well who had failed so many times but kept searching, we too can start anew. We all say, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Just like Jesus said to the woman, he says to us, “I am he, the one speaking with you.”
