3rd Sunday of Lent (23.03.14)
The Christlike Choice
Centuries ago the village well provided more than water. It was the meeting place for the exchange of news and views, where relationships were fostered and community links strengthened. Village wells were also known as ‘watering holes’ meaning that gossip also flourished around them. The electronic water-cooler in today’s office or work place fulfils a similar function. It provides a focus where people meet and information is often exchanged.
We are called, purposefully, on a Sunday to the inexhaustible ‘well’ of God’s Word. There is a clear water theme in God’s Word to us this 3rd Sunday of Lent. The Exodus passage’s depiction of human complaint (1st. Reading) is timeless and immediately intelligible. John’s Gospel reveals this Evangelist’s unique report of a well-side conversation involving Jesus and Samaritan woman.
Fresh drinking water, essential for life, is a precious commodity. In the developed world people remain alarmingly casual about wasting water. Simultaneously, in the Third World, millions struggle with, at best, contaminated water. The Palestinian/Israeli conflict, which is at the heart of all the world’s wars today, is about drinking water not oil. The Israelis hold power by their control of the water supply to Palestinians.
The Exodus extract exemplifies the shallowness of faith that has, historically, characterised the human response to God’s abundance of love. The Chosen People had adapted themselves too closely with their Egyptian enslavers. The temptation to compromise, Satan’s favourite tactic, had undermined faith of the Jewish people with ample food and a dumbing down of true religious commitment. Some disturbing comparisons could be made with central European Christians today. Had UK Catholics, for example, having in earlier centuries suffered unjust persecution chosen to blend in to the population as a means of allaying fears. Perhaps, this emphasis on ‘fitting in’ has gone too far. We may have come to prefer a comfortable compromise, with all ‘mod cons’, to the real demands of the faith-pilgrimage to which God calls us daily through our Baptism. Meanwhile, sisters and brothers in other lands face daily, severe hardship not excluding death. The Exodus passage calls on us to trust God more than our own ingenuity.
The Samaritan woman’s encounter with Jesus (John 4:5-42) reveals a different type of thirst. Emotionally and spiritually dehydrated by a way of life she had come to loathe, the Samaritan woman’s faith may have become buried beneath her pain but it remained in earshot of Jesus. By a confluence of unpredictability – or providence – the Apostles’ absence obtaining provisions, the well being deserted because of the time of the day – the Samaritan outcast approached Jacob’s watering hole to collect water when she expected to encounter nobody and, instead, she encountered Jesus!
He opened the salvific dialogue. He broke Judaic law and the conventions of the time. His basic request was for some water to drink. The unconventional elements consisted in a Jew conversing with a Samaritan and, even more seriously, an unaccompanied woman. The Samaritan woman could have feigned deafness or simply fled.
Vision and hearing impact strongly and immediately on our instantaneous decision-making. These two senses combine with previously made choices and life experience, to guide us when a decision is urgently needed. Among our fundamental choices is our basic relationship with God because, even though some may deny it, no one is completely indifferent to the Divine.
At Jacob’s well, those centuries ago, a life-changing dialogue developed. The tenor of the stranger’s voice, his choice of wording, his body language are each simultaneously and instantly scanned by sight and hearing. In seconds, a decision is reached. In the case of the Samaritan woman, the decision was to enter into what became a truly redemptive experience.
Jesus is often encountered in many unlikely places and situations that cannot even remotely be described as ‘church’. Life brings us to many types of ‘watering-hole’. At these we will be in the company of the spiritually, as well as the emotionally and physically, dehydrated. By the infusion of God’s grace, through daily prayer and the Sacraments, our sight and hearing may be sensitized to a spiritual underlying need in another which that person may either not recognise or feel unable to deal with. How do we choose to respond? Baptism calls us to open our life in Christ to others. We are living members of Christ’s Body on earth, the Church, we represent Christ wherever we are.
Jesus gave us the example when he invited that conversation at Jacob’s well. A little while back, Pope Francis, following on from one of his Wednesday general audiences in St. Peter’s Square, made one-to-one contact with a man with a painful and disfiguring condition. St. Peter’s Square is a very special place in the world of ‘watering-holes’, a place alive with a history of life-supporting healing. In case you haven’t read the man’s own account of what happened, here is his story.