March 27, 2011 — Third Sunday of Lent

First Reading – Exodus 17: 3-7
In those days, in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst with our children and our livestock?” So Moses cried out to the LORD, “What shall I do with this people? a little more and they will stone me!” The LORD answered Moses, “Go over there in front of the people, along with some of the elders of Israel, holding in your hand, as you go, the staff with which you struck the river. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock in Horeb. Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it for the people to drink.”
This Moses did, in the presence of the elders of Israel. The place was called Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD in our midst or not?”

Responsorial Psalm - Psalm 95: 1-2, 6-7, 8-9
R. (8) If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD; let us acclaim the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us joyfully sing psalms to him.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Come, let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For he is our God, and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Oh, that today you would hear his voice: “Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the desert, Where your fathers tempted me; they tested me though they had seen my works.”
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

Second Reading: Romans 5: 1-2, 5-8
Brothers and sisters: Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For Christ, while we were still helpless, died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Gospel – John 4: 5-42
Jesus 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 cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern 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 Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one 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 Christ?” 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 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.”

Supplement: Historical Context
A quick recap of the history of the Jewish people that underpins this, and other Gospel narratives involving Samaritans…

Abraham was called into Covenant with the Lord. Abraham had a son, Isaac, who had 12 sons, the youngest of whom, Joseph (the one with the rainbow coat), was sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt. But once in Egypt, Joseph rose to be a great advisor to Pharaoh, and his prognostication of 7 years of surplus crops, followed by 7 years of drought, allowed Egypt to survive this challenging period. During the years of drought, many in the land of Canaan had traveled to Egypt, in an attempt to find work and food. But over the course of following generations, these immigrants found themselves increasingly maltreated by the land’s inhabitants, and conditions worsened up to the point of Moses, when we see the descendants of Joseph and his brothers as slaves in the land of Egypt.

Moses, called by God, led the people out of slavery (the Exodus) and into a period of wandering in the desert, hoping to make their way back to the Promised Land of Canaan, from which their ancestors had come to Egypt in the first place. Once Joshua and the itinerant people of Israel were able to re-claim the land of Canaan/Israel by way of military conquest, the tribes re-settled the region and established a loose confederation, not unlike the 13 original colonies at the outset of the American Revolution. During this time, the tribes were governed by a succession of Judges who lacked the absolute authority of a monarch but assumed responsibility for the governance and welfare of the people.

It was not until the anointing of Saul by the prophet Samuel that a monarchy, and thus, Kingdom, was established, and only with his successor, David, did the unified Kingdom of Israel come into being. King David reigned over a prosperous entity that comprised all of the 12 tribes, but this period of stability was short-lived, as the Kingdom soon became divided into the North (Kingdom of Israel) and South (Kingdom of Judah).

In 720, the neighboring Assyrian Empire invaded and conquered the Northern Kingdom, effectively ending its existence. Per the practice of the day, the occupying forces brought many of the inhabitants back with them to serve as slaves in the home territory of Assyria, leaving behind the sick, the crippled, and an assortment of others.

Meanwhile, they opened the land of Israel up to occupation by their own citizens, so an influx of Assyrians and other nationalities flooded into the region, setting up residence there. As is the case in most such circumstances, it was not long before inter-marriage took place, and these new inhabitants brought with them both cultural traditions and religiouso bservances—including the worshipping of multiple foreign deities.

For this reason, the citizens of the Southern Kingdom, Judah, who continued to worship at the Temple in their capital city, Jerusalem, according to the prescriptions of the Mosaic Law, came to view their northern neighbors as having adulterated both the faith and the bloodline. A central part of Jewish identity had been the continual line of blood from Abraham and Isaac down through the Israelites of the unified Kingdom, and every time that the people of God had gotten themselves into trouble, that is, violated their unique Covenant with the Lord, it was because they had inter-married with outsiders and begun to worship foreign deities.

Thus, the people of the North, a region that came to be called Samaria, were utterly anathema to the Jews of the South, and the animosity grew still more intense during the period of Captivity, which began in 538, when the Southern Kingdom fell to the Babylonian Empire. The Jews who were carted off into Babylon obstinately refused to participate in pagan religious practices, instead clinging tenaciously to the Law of Moses, and so their disdain for the Samaritan Israelites, who had been so quick to forsake their Jewish beliefs and integrate foreign religious ritual, only worsened.

Once the Babylonians released the Jews to return to Judah, they immediately set about reconstructing the Temple at Jerusalem. Upon learning of this endeavor, the Samaritans offered their assistance, but the inhabitants of the South bitterly refused the help, believing that the Samaritans had broken the Covenant, polluting themselves and insulting God. Thus, the Samaritans established their own Temple on Mount Gerizim, located in the North, for the Jews would not allow them to worship at Jerusalem. Later on, a little more than a century before the time of Jesus, a Jewish General actually led an attack on the North and attempted to destroy the Samaritan holy site at Gerizim. Needless to say, this sort of hostility served only to exacerbate the extant enmity between the two peoples, and the blood feud burned every bit as hot in the time of Jesus as it had in the century prior.

Another fact worth noting is that the region of Samaria sits geographically between Judah and Galilee—the region where Jesus was from. So in order to get from Jerusalem and the area of the Holy Land where most Jews lived to the area around the Sea of Galilee where Jesus was from, one had two choices: either walk straight through Samaria (the shortest route); or take a circuitous route that added two full days to the journey. Hence, the Jews and Samaritans had plenty of opportunities to continue to add fuel to the long-burning fire of hatred, because people were constantly coming into contact with one another along these routes. (It is for this reason that the story of the “Good Samaritan” told by Jesus is so powerful an example; it would have been a very realistic scenario—walking along the road from Judah to Capernum—but the depiction of the Samaritan as being the protagonist is something that literally would have rendered his audience mute in disbelief. (It would be akin to a parable describing a member of Al Qaeda as assisting a wounded US soldier in an Afghan village.)

It is with this historical context that we situate the scene of Jesus encountering a woman at the well of Jacob, which was located within Samaritan territory on the road from Judah to Galilee.

Reflection
The story of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well is a remarkable one for myriad reasons, but perhaps the most salient facet is its epitomization of Jesus’ penchant for shattering stereotypes, breaking down barriers, and violating established social norms in order to bring his message to those on the margins of society, and the underlying lesson remains pertinent to our contemporary encounters with Christ.

The woman in this story is drawing water over a half-mile from her village, a village that archaeological digs and historical records indicate had its own water supply—a fact that begins to establish her status as an outsider. Too, the fact that she is at the well in the middle of the day—by herself—is an enormously important detail to the story and informs the reader that she lived outside of society. Women never traveled anywhere alone—to do so would be to invite danger—and they certainly never would have gone to a well to draw water (an arduous task) in the middle of the day, when the sun was at its highest and the temperature in the desert land would have been unbearable.

Drawing water from a well was a social activity for women of a village—they went together early in the morning or late in the evening, when the air was cool, and they would gather to converse, bond, and gossip. Clearly, the Gospel author wishes to emphasize to his audience that this woman was a pariah. For a man of Jesus’ time to speak to a strange woman (that is, not a member of his household) at all would have been to invite scrutiny and scandal. For him to address a woman who was so egregiously morally tarnished by her own community would have been to risk discrediting his entire public ministry. That she is a Samaritan is the final detail to hammer home the point—this person is the human embodiment of all that was evil and shameful and to be avoided. Thus, the reaction of the disciples to arrive on the scene and see Jesus conversing casually with this woman is difficult to communicate. The best way to categorize their response would probably be: abject horror and utter confusion. It would be like a group of US Marines coming back from a patrol and finding their commanding officer sitting in his tent sharing coffee with a senior Al Qaeda officer. Words would fail to describe how mind-blowing such a discovery would be.

Nowhere in all of Scripture do we see more clearly Jesus’ willingness to defy social norms and reach out to people, regardless of their moral standing in the eyes of their society. But beyond the significance of Jesus talking to this woman is the content of their conversation and what it compels this person to, with respect to the rest of her life. We have already established that Jesus will stop at nothing to reach every single one of us, regardless of what others around us may think of us. That is a radical and life-changing reality, i.e. that all we need do is allow the conversation to happen. Remember, this scene takes place in Samaria, a place that Jews regarded as unclean and inimical to an encounter with God. Jesus goes TO THIS PLACE, he does not make the woman come to him in order to have this encounter. He meets us where we are, even if that is a physical place society regards as antithetical to religion or an interior emotional/psychological space that seems incompatible with a positive experience with Christ. But once we allow this conversation to happen, Jesus forces us to confront our shortcomings; although he begins the interaction in a non-threatening way, in order to get the woman comfortable with their conversation, he abruptly thrusts to the forefront the part of her life that is preventing her from living in communion with God and right relationship with those around her.

This cannot be overstated—Jesus is not satisfied merely to meet us where we are at; he requires us to acknowledge honestly those parts of our current way-of-living that are incompatible with a life of flourishing. Recognizing our shortcomings and struggles is an unavoidable and necessary part of coming into a fulfilling relationship with God and a healthy way of being with others. Jesus meets us where we are—but it is his love that compels him to be dissatisfied with a less than fully flourishing version of ourselves, and therefore insists that we undertake a sincere conversion of heart and reformation of habit.

Once we have had this powerful encounter with Jesus, it is all we can do to run immediately to others and spread the word. Encountering Jesus in a real, intimate, personal manner is transformative and life-changing. And it impels us to try and let others know just how life-changing it can be. An encounter with Jesus never ends at our own personal relationship with Jesus—it always drives us outward, out of a robust hope that others might have the same encounter and thus be similarly transformed and made whole. Accepting Jesus into our life does not merely entail acknowledging our sin and modifying our behavior; it necessarily compels us to witness and evangelism. An interior experience with Jesus results in an exterior way of being in relation to others, a reality that is as true for us today in OUR relationship with Jesus as it was for this woman in hers.

Reflection Questions

1) Where have you, personally, encountered Jesus? Do you feel like Jesus comes to you, where you are, or do you feel like you’ve had to seek him out?

2) In your own prayer life, do you ever engage in dialogue with Jesus? What sorts of things does he say?

3) If Jesus were to have this conversation with you, what might he hold up as something for you to work on, that is preventing you from being fully happy and having a good relationship with God and others?

4) How are you called to go out, like the woman of the well, and share your experience with others? What does that specifically look like?