3rd Sunday of Lent; March 23, 2014
M. Rebecca
Jn 4:1-42
At Vigils
we have been reading from the book of Exodus about Israel’s journey from an
alien land in Egypt to a promised kingdom – a journey from slavery to salvation. In today’s gospel we read of a woman who is
making this “exodus journey” as well.
She, too, is moving from the bonds of slavery to the new horizons of a
land of promise. They are the same journey in many ways – one
as a community and the other as an individual.
We each make this journey as well – both as individuals and as community. This last week with our Visitation, it was a
time to communally examine our journey to God – where is our community needing to
go or the Spirit leading us - where to improve, where to encourage, where to
change, and where to praise God with gratitude.
Lent is a time for us to do the same on a personal level – where does
the Spirit want to lead me, where to improve, encourage, change, and where to
praise God with gratitude. So, how fitting
that our Visitation coincided with this Lenten Season. The Samaritan woman at the well was
discovering her life, or more precisely, she was discovering Jesus Christ in her life. The Israelites in the desert were discovering
who they were as community – or more precisely, discovering God in their midst. Through the struggle of the desert they were
finding their uniqueness, their values, their goals, and their desires. We, too, must continually make this journey -
this discovery – an exodus from any forms of slavery to a promised kingdom…which
is none other than God Himself in our midst.
What is a similarity
in the exodus of Israel and the exodus of the Samaritan woman? One is that they must discover their incongruencies. Brought face to face with themselves, they
discover places in their lives where “what they are meant to be” does not
coincide with what they “do”. St Paul
defines these incongruencies as sin. He
says plainly: “I do not do what I want to do but I do the very things I hate”. (Rom7:15)
But as the Samaritan woman teaches us, discovering these places within
does not bring us to shame but to love!
Jesus Christ is right there at the well offering us springs of living water – and doing so eagerly, desperately, and
gently. In the same way, God was right
there in the desert as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to lead his
people to the Promised Place of Paradise. And Jesus Christ is here today in our cloister
as well. And so, the desert, and the well, and the cloister
are places of reflection…places of discovery.
Another
similarity I see is that both Israel and the Samaritan woman needed reminding
of where their journey was going: their
goal and hope. Both lost sight…therefore,
both lost hope. Their incongruencies made
them a broken people and so their convictions turned to complaints, their desires
into doubts. God comes to the people of
Israel who are broken and powerless by slavery.
Jesus comes to an outcast woman who
is left with a broken self-image. She
is a woman hiding – hiding, ironically, in the midday sun, a time when no one
would be out or see her. But there Jesus
was…waiting…waiting patiently…because He “thirsted”!
Despite all
our brokenness and incongruencies, our beautiful God entrusted Himself to
Israel who had lost trust in Him, as
well as in their journey. Jesus
approaches the Samaritan woman as a beggar and puts his trust in a woman who
had lost trust in herself. In other words, Jesus became like us in order
to heal us and help us. He becomes
thirsty to reveal to us our own
thirst - our thirst for meaning, acceptance, belonging, and love. To do this they, and we, must take risks,
must be vulnerable. We must be willing
to trust, to be open, and to be humble.
The promise of Jesus can only come about if we are humble and recognize
our poverty and brokenness as Israel and the Samaritan woman did.
In our
Visitation we also came face to face with our own communal poverty………But what
the Israelites and the Samaritan woman teach us is that it is in these very
places of poverty that we find God. We
realize that our helplessness is the place where Jesus does his best work. It is the very crosses we carry that bring us
to hope and grace. At our Visitation Fr
Mark observed that even though we are aware of our personal and communal
limitations, most of us still carry a sense of “happiness and inward peace as
well as an outward calm and cheerfulness”.
This should be a great
affirmation to us as community. The
Spirit is very much alive and active in our midst! Fr Mark also pointed out in the Visitation
card (quote) “a general understanding
among us that a primary source of personal and communal healing is each one’s
choice for gratitude over against complaining”.
This attitude takes great humility and trust. He saw this on a communal level but how are
you doing with this on a personal level?
Are there places we can improve, encourage, change, or praise God with gratitude?
The water
God gave to the Israelites from “the rock who is Christ” and the water of life
springing up within the wellspring of the woman is Christ’s Presence and Love –
this alone quenches the pangs of loneliness, fear, anxiety, shame. The fountain is Love and if we dare to drink
from it, we will become more loving. The
fountain is the Holy Spirit and if we dare to drink from it, we will be like
Jesus Christ – living in His Spirit. But we must keep in mind: It is how we understand the life we chose and
receive that will determine the life we will give…to others and to God. Therefore, we need daily to go into the
desert – the broken and empty spaces of our heart…taking nothing with us – and
sit by the well of Scripture to drink deeply.
This is the message of our Lenten Season, of our Visitation, and of the
gospel. Let us not be afraid today to
enter the desert and sit by the well.
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