Ex 17:3-7; Rom 5: 1-2, 5-8; Jn 4: 5-42 Rev. Randall D. Bell tells a powerful
story about a pastor who stood in court beside a member of his congregation--an individual
who had been “out with the boys,” and had had too much to drink. As he was driving
home on the rain-soaked streets and through the dense fog, he turned a corner and
heard a sickening clash of metal and breaking glass. Two young people lay dead.
They had been thrown from their motorcycle. He was charged with manslaughter and
driving under the influence of alcohol. He sat in court trembling after days of testimony.
The judge was about to speak. It could mean years of prison, loss of job, and poverty
for his family. The judge spoke: The test for drunkenness had not been properly done;
the motorcycle had no proper lights; the jury was ordered to render a not guilty verdict.
All that was ominous and foreboding was now gone. He was a free man. The court declared
him “not guilty.” His family kissed him--they could go on with their life, all because
he had been declared innocent. Then Rev. Bell adds these words, “Now maybe this story
and the way it ended angers you, because you hurt over those young people who were
killed. But know this--you and I are that man. His story is our story. We are the
sinner who finds himself in the presence of God the Eternal Judge . . . .” You see,
not only are we blinded by our prejudices against people like the Samaritan woman
with her unseemly life style, we are also blinded to the fact that we are the Samaritan
woman. We, too, have fallen short of the grace of God, but the hand of grace is reached
out to us as well. Introduction:Today’s readings are centered
on Baptism and new life. Today's liturgy makes use of the symbol of water to refer
to our relationship with God. Water represents God’s Spirit which comes to us in Baptism.
It is the outward, symbolic sign of a deep reality, the coming of God as a Force penetrating
every aspect of a person’s life. The Spirit quenches our spiritual thirst. Just as
water in the desert was life-giving for the wandering Israelites, the water of a true,
loving relationship with Jesus is life-giving for those who accept him as Lord and
Savior. We are assembled here in the church to share in this water of eternal life
and salvation. The Holy Spirit of God, the Word of God and the Sacraments of God
in the Church are the primary sources for the living water of divine grace. Washed
in it at Baptism, renewed by its abundance at each Eucharist, invited to it in every
proclamation of the Word, and daily empowered by the Spirit, we are challenged by
today’s Gospel to remain thirsty for the living water which only God can give. The
first reading describes how God provided water to the ungrateful complainers of
Israel, thus placing Jesus’ promise within the context of the Exodus account of water
coming from the rock at Horeb. The responsorial, Psalm 95, refers both to
the Rock of our salvation and also to our hardened hearts. It reminds us that our
hard hearts need to be softened by God through our grace-prompted and -assisted prayer,
fasting and works of mercy which enable us to receive the living water of the Holy
Spirit, salvation and eternal life from the Rock of our salvation. In the second
reading, Saint Paul asserts that, as the Savior of mankind, Jesus poured the living
water of the gift of the Holy Spirit into our hearts. In the Gospel, an unclean Samaritan
woman is given an opportunity to receive living water. Today's Gospel tells
us how Jesus awakened in the woman at the well a thirst for the wholeness and integrity
which she had lost, a thirst which He had come to satisfy. The water that Jesus promises
is closely linked to conversion and the forgiveness of sin. Here is a woman who comes
to faith and becomes a missionary who brings others to Jesus. Jesus recognizes the
gifts and ministries of women in his future Church. This is also a narrative about
God wooing the outsider or, as Paul will say, “the godless.” The Samaritans, who were
considered godless, end up in this town confessing Jesus as the Savior of “the world.”
Gospel passage also gives us Jesus' revelation about Himself as the Source of Living
Water and teaches us that we need the grace of Jesus Christ for eternal life because
He is that life-giving water. The first reading:Today's
Gospel is Jesus' revelation of Himself as the Source of Living Water. Hence, the passage
chosen from Exodus tells of the Jews’ complaining about their thirst, a figure of
human longing for God and spiritual satisfaction. The rock which Moses strikes represents
God who gives the water (God’s own life), essential for our spiritual life. This
reading shows us a time when God's people literally thirsted, and God satisfied them.
The Israelites had been slaves for several generations in Egypt, and for the most
part had forgotten their ancestral religion and their God’s Covenant with their patriarch
Abraham. Now their new leader, Moses, was telling them that their ancient Lord had
at last heard their cries, and was now leading their escape from Egypt back to their
homeland. In spite of the mighty deeds God had done for their liberation from Egypt,
the former slaves complained that in Egypt they at least were not thirsty. It is astounding
to see their lack of faith. The second reading: In the second reading,
Saint Paul asserts that, as the Savior of mankind, Jesus poured the living water,
or the gift of the Holy Spirit, into our hearts. We need the Holy Spirit to sustain
us spiritually, just as we need water to sustain us physically. Through Jesus, God
gave us the Spirit when we were dying of thirst. Paul realized that he and all the
Jews who kept the Law of Moses were trying to become justified on their own. But
keeping the Law is not an adequate means of justification because we are unable to
make ourselves worthy of God's favor, by good works, keeping the commandments, rituals
or prayers. Grace means the gratuitous, unearned, undeserved love and favor of God
for us. By living water in today’s Gospel, Jesus is referring to this grace or relationship
with God and participation in His life. According to Paul, redemption or justification
is the gratuitous gift of God manifested in Jesus’ saving death on the cross. By
virtue of his death, Jesus has made just, or put in right relationship with God, every
sinner who will appropriate His saving gifts by faith. Faith, then, is the admission
that one cannot justify oneself and that it is God who will grant us justification
by His grace. Exegesis:Jesus’ mission trip from Judea to
Galilee: Palestine is only 120 miles long from north to south. Judea is in
the extreme south, Samaria in the middle and Galilee in the extreme North. In order
to avoid the controversy about baptism, Jesus decided to concentrate his ministry
in Galilee. The usual route around Samaria, normally taken by the Jews to avoid the
hated Samaritans, took six days. The shortcut (three days’ journey), from Judea to
Galilee crossed through Samaria and, on the way to the town of Sychar, passed Jacob’s
well. The well itself was more than 100 feet deep. It was located on a piece of
land that had been bought by Jacob (Gen.33:18-19), and later bequeathed to Joseph
(Gen.48:22).
Jesus’ encounter with an outcast sinner:
When Jesus and his disciples reached the well, it was a hot midday, and Jesus was
weary and thirsty from traveling. Ignoring the racial barriers and traditional hostility
between Samaritans and Jews, Jesus sent his disciples to buy some food in the Samaritan
town. It was at this point that a Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water.
She had probably been driven away, as a moral outcast, from the common well in the
town of Sychar by the other women. It was this woman whom Jesus asked for water,
and it is no wonder that she was surprised, because the petitioner was a Jew who hated
her people as polluted outcasts and betrayers of Judaism. The scene recalls Old Testament
meetings between future spouses at wells. Jacob meets Rebekah at the well of Haran,
and Moses and Zipporah meet at a well in Midian.
The background history:
This mutual hostility had begun centuries earlier, when the Assyrians carried
the northern tribes of Israel into captivity. The Jewish slaves betrayed their heritage
by intermarrying with the Assyrians, thus diluting their bloodline and creating a
“mongrel race” called the Samaritans. The Assyrian men who were relocated to Israel
married Jewish women, thus producing a mixed race in Israel as well. Hence, southern
Jews considered all Samaritan bloodlines and their heritage impure. By the time the
Samaritan Jews returned to their homeland, their views of God had been greatly contaminated.
By contrast, when the southern Hebrew tribes were carried off into captivity, they
stubbornly resisted the Babylonian culture. They returned from Babylon to Jerusalem,
proud that they had compromised neither their religious convictions nor their culture.
So when the Samaritans offered to help to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple, the southern
Jews who had returned from exile vehemently rejected Samaritan assistance. Consequently,
the rejected and ostracized Samaritans built their own temple on Mount Gerizim. But
in 129 B.C. a Jewish general destroyed it, a slap to Samaritan dignity that stung
for centuries, deepening the mutual scorn and hostility between Samaritans and Jews.
The Divine touch and conversion: So the water-seeking
Samaritan woman who faced Jesus that day belonged to a heritage rejected by the Jews.
In addition, she expected scorn simply because she was a woman, for in the ancient
Middle East, men systematically degraded women. Finally, this Samaritan woman seemed
unwanted by her own people. Since she had had five “husbands,” and was living with
a sixth “lover,” she seems to have been considered by fellow villagers a social leper,
and she seems to have been driven from the common well of the town by the decent women.
Perhaps she had not stopped wishing that somewhere, sometime, some way, God would
touch His people — that He would touch her! Jesus deliberately placed himself face
to face with this person whom, apparently, no one else wanted. Jesus saw in this
social outcast and moral wreck a person who mattered to God. The Samaritan woman
must have unburdened her soul to this stranger because she had found one Jew with
kindness in his eyes instead of an air of critical superiority. She was thirsting
for love that would last, love that would fill her full and give purpose to her life.
The conversion leading to witnessing: Jesus not only talked
with the woman, but in a carefully orchestrated, seven-part dialogue he guided her
progressively from ignorance to enlightenment, from misunderstanding to clearer understanding,
thus making her the most carefully and intensely catechized person in this entire
Gospel. Jesus always has a way of coming into our personal lives. When Jesus became
personal with this woman and started asking embarrassing questions about her five
husbands, she cleverly tried to change the subject and talk about religion. She didn’t
want Jesus to get personal. But Jesus wanted to free her, forgive her, shape her
life in a new direction, and change her. He wanted to offer this woman living water.
At the end of the long heart-to-heart conversation Jesus revealed himself to her as
the Messiah, which in turn led her to faith in him. This growth in understanding
on the part of the woman moved through several stages: first, she called him a Jew,
then Sir or Lord, then Prophet, and finally Messiah. When the Samaritans came to
hear Jesus because of her testimony, the affirmation of faith reached its climax as
they declared that Jesus was the Savior of the world. Step-by-step Jesus was leading
her in her faith journey. This marginalized woman's enthusiastic response, powerful
personal testimony and brave witnessing stand in dramatic contrast to Nicodemus' hesitance
(3:9), the crowd's demand for proof (6:25-34) and the Pharisees' refusal to acknowledge
the hand of God in the healing of a blind man (9:24-34). Life messages:
1) We need to allow Jesus free entry into our personal lives. A sign that
God is active in our lives is His entering in to our personal, “private” lives. Jesus
wants to get personal with us, especially during this Lenten season. Jesus wants
to get into our “private” lives. We have a “private” personal life which is contrary
to the will of God. Christ wishes to come into that “private” life, not to embarrass
us, not to judge or condemn us, not to be unkind or malicious to us. Rather, Christ
comes into our “private” personal life to free us, to change us and to offer us what
we really need: living water. The living water is the Holy Spirit. The living water
is the Spirit of Jesus and his love. We human beings are composed of four parts:
mind, body, emotions and spirit. When we let God’s Spirit come into us and take control
of our thinking, our physical activity, our emotions and our spirit, He can bring
harmony to the way we live with all four parts of our humanity. We can find this living
water in the Sacraments, in prayer and in the Holy Bible. 2) We need to be witnesses
to Jesus like the Samaritan woman. Let us have the courage to "be" Jesus for
others, especially in those "unexpected" places for unwanted people. Let us also
have the courage of our Christian convictions to stand for truth and justice in our
day-to-day life. 3) We need to be open to others and accept others as they
are, just as Jesus did. We have been baptized into a community of faith so that
we may become one with each other as brothers and sisters of Jesus and as children
of God. To live this oneness demands that we open ourselves to others and listen
to one another. We need to provide the atmosphere, the room, for all to be honestly
what they really are: the children of God. It is the ministry of Jesus that we inherit
and share. Jesus did not allow the woman’s status, past, attitude, or anything else
to obstruct his ability to love her. And loving her, he freed her and made her whole,
made her the child of God she already was. Let us also open our hearts to one another
and accept each other as God’s gifts to us. Thus, we’ll experience resurrection in
our own lives and in the lives of our brothers and sisters. 4) We need to leave
the “husbands” behind during Lent as the Samaritan woman did. Today’s Gospel
message challenges us to get rid of our unholy attachments and the evil habits that
keep us enslaved and idolatrous. Lent is the time to learn from our mistakes of over-indulgence
in food, drink, drugs, gambling, promiscuity, or any other addiction that may keep
us from coming to the living waters of a right relationship with God. We all have
our short list, don't we? And we all know, honest to God, what it is we need to leave
behind before we come to the Living Water and the Bread of Heaven. Let us make an
earnest attempt to do so during this Lenten season. 5) We need to turn to Jesus:
When guilt plagues us and we upset for falling for the same temptations again
and again; when we make choices that turn out to be all wrong; when our relationships
with others fall in a heap; when we feel lonely, sick and tired of the way people
are treating us; when we are depressed and upset and can’t see anything good in ourselves;
when our faith is at rock bottom and we feel as if the church and religion aren’t
doing anything for us; when we beat ourselves up for lack of enthusiasm to be true
disciples of Jesus ready to do anything for him, and for days that go by without a
word of prayer; when all we feel is failure and defeat isn’t it great to read a story
like this one about Jesus and his love and acceptance of the woman at the well. Let
us rest assured that Jesus is there to warmly accept us and help us to see that he
will give us the strength and the power we need to overcome whatever it is that is
grieving us. (Source: Homilies of Fr. Tony Kadavil)