3rd Sunday Lent A - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2014

(I shall read the shorter version of today’s Gospel, as we have it on the Bulletin.  It is still long, and covers a number of wonderful points.  So I shall read it section by section, commenting as I go along. [I invite you to sit.])

“Jesus came to the Samaritan town called Sychar ….  associate with Samaritans.”

What has the Gospel passage shown us so far about Jesus? He casually broke two taboos; he crossed two boundaries. He started a conversation with a woman he did not know.  In the patriarchal cultures of the Mediterranean, that was a serious contravention of personal male honour. What is more, the woman was Samaritan. As far as Jews were concerned, Samaritans were the enemy, the “not-us”. How, or why, could he be so dismissive of such strong nationalistic and cultural barriers?

We shall read on: “Jesus replied; If you only knew … welling up to eternal life.”

If we get through Jesus’ symbolic language, he basically claimed that he possessed, and was prepared to share, something that satisfied the deepest human thirst. What is our deepest human thirst? the unsatisfied thirst that drives all our hopes, our desires, our plans? What do we most long for? Each of us has to answer that for ourselves. Jesus identified it as eternal life. But someone else’s answer, even Jesus’ answer, is not enough. Perhaps, until we identify that deep thirst for ourselves, there is not much point in going further.

The Gospel continued: “‘Sir’, said the woman, ‘give me some … I see you are a prophet’.”

The woman did not understand what Jesus said. Not surprisingly, she took him literally. Yet she sensed something in Jesus that intrigued her, and that led her to think that he might have something worthwhile to say to her: I see that you are a prophet. What intrigued her? Jesus had related to her, adult to adult, respectfully, warmly – despite the nationalistic and cultural proscriptions.

Perhaps we ourselves could take that further. He loves. And he loves inclusively. His love totally disregards our worthiness or otherwise. [They are quite irrelevant to his openness to us, and to his instinctively warm acceptance of us.] He offered the woman access to eternal life – because that was how he lived himself. Eternal life is life proper to God. Since God's life is loving, eternal life is our sharing in God's loving.  Jesus offers us that possibility – a possibility that can become increasingly actual to the extent that we allow it, and seek it, across life.

When I ask myself what is it that I instinctively thirst for, I think that my answer goes something like this: Not just to be loved, to be loved even by God; but to be free enough, fearless enough, detached enough, mature enough to love myself and others inclusively – no boxes, no “us/them”, no deserving/undeserving – just free to, and wanting to, love. Just as it is with God, sharing in God's loving – eternal life. The thirst is still hesitant, but stirring there somewhere.

We shall read on.  “Our fathers worshipped … I am he.”

That is worth thinking about, but I shall leave it for now, and read the last bit.

Many Samaritans … saviour of the world.”

The woman’s encounter with the intriguing Jesus seems to have led her to a growing encounter with herself.  Her deeper thirst had stirred, and she had begun to feel an unexpected, unfamiliar joy bubbling within her. She could not keep it to herself. She had to share it with her neighbours. And it seems her joy was contagious.

Pope Francis has recently invited us all to refresh and to deepen our encounter with Jesus. He wants us to notice and to identify our deepest heart-longings. He wants us to touch again into our joy, and to share the Good News, the Gospel, with our friends and neighbours – giving them a taste of our deepening, unthreatened, all-embracing respect and love.