Third Sunday of Lent-A
For those who are savvy with the liturgical calendar, Cycle A of the Sunday readings focuses on the Gospel of Matthew. As we enter the third week of Lent, the Church takes a brief detour over the next three weeks, drawing on the teachings of St. John.
St. John brings us to Samaria, where Jesus stopped to rest. The time was high noon, and the place was known as Jacob’s well. A Samaritan woman came to do what she probably did daily: draw water from the well. These circumstances are vital in understanding the encounter with Jesus and the Samaritan woman.
We are told she was drawing water from the well at high noon, the hottest part of the day. Normally, procuring water is a laborious task, and the heat of the day makes the chore even worse. When we are told she came to the well at this time, the presumption is that she cannot, for whatever reason, associate with the community. She is an outcast, and further in the passage, the suspicion is verified.
After the disciples went away to get some food, Jesus was alone with the woman at the well. Crucial to the encounter is that Jesus is the first to engage the woman. He asks her for a drink of water. Typically, a man asking to be served is not out of the ordinary, but it does become important because Jesus is asking and has nothing to do with actual water. After asking, the woman responds, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”
A brief history of the kingdoms of Israel will make the Samaritan women’s response understandable. After King Solomon died in 930 B.C., Israel was split into the northern and southern kingdoms. The northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians and repopulated through intermarriage between the Israelites and the foreign settlers. The mixture of people led to a form of worship that blended Jewish heritage and pagan practices. Jews in the southern kingdom viewed this as a corruption of true worship. There was an anomaly between the two groups.
As the story progresses, it becomes evident that the meeting is a story of conversion, in which Jesus’ initiative or grace works on the sinful woman through the vehicle of thirst. The turnabout in the story is that Jesus is no longer the one asking but the one providing. He tells her the water she thinks she needs will leave her wanting, unlike the water Jesus offers her. “The water I shall give will become in him.
a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Here, Jesus gives the woman a glimpse of goodness, or a potential for life without sin. She becomes interested and urges him to give her this water so she will not have to come out at noon to draw water. She doesn’t quite understand that Jesus’ offer is not physical or material.
To pull her further into a spiritual self-examination, Jesus tells her to come with her husband. She responds that she does not have a husband (how true). Jesus told her that she had five husbands, and the one she is living with is not her husband. Jesus coaxed her to admit her sin and to tap into her deepest hopes; there is a Messiah. Jesus reassures her that he is the one she anticipated.
Being freed from her yoke of sin, the woman returned to her people and began to proclaim the marvelous meeting with Jesus. Many in Samaria came to believe because of her testimony. Others believed because they had seen Christ for themselves. Jesus stayed with them for two days longer.
If the message is not clear enough, a brief summation might help. All of us need conversion, some greater, some smaller. The dynamic of the woman at the well is the model for how it can happen. Through sin, we are drawing our water at odd times because we have ruptured or harmed our relationships, so we are not welcome into a community.
Jesus is always the initiator, reaching out to us. We have to want to be changed by welcoming his grace and honestly looking at who we are, warts and all. The “squirrel cage” mentality of looking for things in all the wrong places never answers our ultimate desire to have life eternally. Only through drinking the water Jesus offers can one achieve this objective.
Lent is the time we use to ground ourselves again, and being reminded we are the woman at the well can help us immensely.