3rd Sunday Lent A - Homily 1

Homily 1 – 2005

I suggest that you sit down for the gospel.  It is quite a long reading, and there are a number of points for us to notice.  What I shall do is to read it a section at a time and make a few comments, rather than save them all for the end.

John’s Gospel is essentially a work of theology that he gets across through stories and conversations. What we have is certainly not the accurate transcripts of interviews.  Today’s gospel, along with a whole lot of other things, offers us a succession of images, that give us a good chance to reflect on our own experience.

Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well.  It was about noon.  A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”  (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)   The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)   Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that 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 have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?  Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”   Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”  The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

With this rich imagery John is effectively asking: Does the image of a spring of water welling up inside you tap into your own experience? Is your experience one of thirst satisfied, permanently? Has it been transforming?

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”  The woman answered him, “I have no husband.”  Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no 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 see that you are a prophet.  Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”  Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.  But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”  

The woman thinks of Jesus in terms familiar to herself: she calls him a prophet.  But she wants to understand better, and raises the issue of where to worship.  By having her do this, John invites us to go deeper: Would we use the word worship of our relationship with God? Jesus certainly speaks of a relationship that is totally involving: worship in spirit and in truth... engaging the real me with the real God.

The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”  Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

To make sense of this little section, it is helpful to know that Samaritans, like Jews, did also expect a future Messiah.  One of the things they expected of their Messiah was that he would know the secrets of their hearts.  John’s message is that Jesus is more than a clairvoyant, more even than a Messiah.  Jesus claims for himself the divine title: I am.  We probably imagine that we have no problem with that... but do we, deep in our bones, see the stamp of God, for example, in the response of Jesus to the evil and violence of the world: to oppose it (and indeed overcome it) with love that expressed itself in non-violent action and forgiveness?

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”  Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people,  “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”  They left the city and were on their way to him.  

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”  But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”  So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?”  Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.  For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’  I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

This section allows John to depth the inner world of Jesus.  For Jesus, doing the will of God, getting close to and carefully tuning in to the heart of God, was what sustained his spirit, gave purpose and meaning to his life, and enabled him to cope with anything.  My food, what nourishes me, is to do the will of the one who sent me. He goes on to speak of the harvest, already there for those who know how to look.  I am reminded of a rhyme I heard in childhood: “Two men looked forth from their rison bars: One saw mud, the other saw stars.”  Can we regard our world with a spirit of hope?

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.”  So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word.   They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

The townspeople move quickly to faith: We know that he is the Saviour of the world.  Jesus is, indeed, more than a Messiah for Samaritans, more than a Messiah for Jews.  He is the one who turns life around, who turns the world around, who moves people beyond closed communities with their clearly defined boundaries, to a universal inclusiveness.  He is the Saviour of the world.  Do we seek to own Jesus as though he were ours? or do we see him as the saviour for all, at work, then, not just among Catholics, Christians, but also among Muslims, Buddhists, whoever? Do we see him at work already:  the fields are ripe for harvesting!