Lent Three
Preparation
Please begin by reading John 4:5-42 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided the text for you at the end of this reflection.
Reflection--Good News for Everyone!
Don’t miss the radical inclusiveness of Jesus’ actions! The disciples were shocked when they spotted Jesus speaking to this woman at the well. It was a public scandal from the prospective of “proper” Jewish society of the day. She had a number of strikes against her; she was a gentile, she was a woman (most devout men of the time would not have discussed theology with a woman in private, let alone in public), she was “living in sin” with a man not her husband, and she was a Samaritan (a people whom the Jews despised—no devout Jew would have used a drinking vessel touched by a Samaritan). Jesus brought God’s love to her without a thought to his “image” and without condemnation.
Many in our community can identify with the ostracized woman whose life Jesus changed. We know all too well what it means to be rejected by others. But do we model Jesus in our own lives? Whom do we exclude from the invitation to God’s love; someone of another race, someone from another social class, someone of a different orientation, someone whose politics are not ours, someone who is or isn’t “politically correct”? Lent is a good time to take a hard look at those questions. God did not appoint us to decide who is in and who is out of God’s harvest!
Notice the ageless model for “evangelism,” a “churchy” word that just means sharing the good news of God’s love with others. One commentator makes these astute observations about what happened with Jesus, the Samaritan woman, and the people of her village: “One who encounters Jesus and comes to believe in him goes and tells others, who spend some time with him, come to belief and so go on to invite others. … True discipleship arises precisely because those who believe come to create communities of discipleship that can welcome new believers and help them to experience for themselves the one who offers life-giving water.”*
People in the time and place where our gospel story took place used “living water” to refer to fresh, flowing water as opposed to stagnant water. Our encounter with Jesus leads to the gift of the Holy Spirit, “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life,” that can take us out of the stagnant backwaters of our lives and make us conduits for the refreshing flow of the Holy Spirit that blesses ourselves and others.
Mychal Judge, the New York fire department chaplain killed in the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, kept this prayer in his pocket: “Lord, take me where You want me to go; let me meet who You want me to meet; tell me what You want me to say, and keep me out of Your way.” Copy it and put it somewhere you will see it often!
revclay
* Veronica Koperski, S.F.C.C., Homily Service: An Ecumenical Resource for Sharing the Word (March 2002): 10-11.
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John 4:5-42
So [Jesus] came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that 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 have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?"
Jesus said to her, "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. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."
The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never 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 him, "I have no husband."
Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no 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 see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem."
Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these 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 Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us."
Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you."
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?"
Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" They left the city and were on their way to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, "Rabbi, eat something."
But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about."
So the disciples said to one another, "Surely no one has brought him something to eat?"
Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, 'Four months more, then comes the harvest'? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I have ever done." So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world." [NRSV]