THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT
Prayer of the Day: Merciful God, the fountain of living water, you quench our thirst and wash away our sin. Give us this water always. Bring us to drink from the well that flows with the beauty of your truth through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
In this Sunday’s gospel reading we find Jesus slumped against the façade of Jacob’s well, famished, exhausted and thirsty. The journey through hostile Samaritan territory from Galilee to Judea did not afford much in the way of comforts. The Samaritan villages along the way could hardly be expected to offer hospitality or even staples such as food and water to a band of Jewish travelers. It seems the disciples had to go some distance out of their way to get food-perhaps a detour into a more friendly Jewish enclave? In any event, Jesus was evidently too worn out to accompany them.
We are not accustomed to thinking of Jesus as weak, vulnerable and at the mercy of strangers. But that is the way the woman from Samaria found him. I can imagine the smirk on her face as she answered Jesus call for a drink, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” I can hear her thinking to herself or perhaps even saying, “guess you must be pretty thirsty mister high and mighty rabbi to beg a filthy Samaritan woman for a drink.” She must have been amused to hear Jesus offer her living water. “Well isn’t that just like one of you holier than thou Jews. Think you’re the one in control? Think you hold all the cards? Well guess what? I’m the one with the bucket. If anyone here is going to get water, it’s going to come from my bucket.”
Jesus then tells her to call her husband only to be told that she has none. Then, Jesus reveals that he knows her better than she thinks anyone could. It is here that I think the preaching of this story goes off the rails. Too often, the fact that the woman has been married five times and is now living with a man who is not her husband draws moral disapproval from us moderns. We assume that she is a floozie, a loose woman, an adulteress with a torrid sexual history. But that is hardly likely. In the first century, divorce was the sole prerogative of men and, as evidenced by Jesus’ dealings with religious authorities elsewhere in the gospels, there were some who believed that it was “lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause.” Matthew 19:3. The Samaritan woman might have been divorced due to a health condition that made her sexually undesirable. She might have been unable to conceive and bear children and thus incapable of continuing the family line. Or perhaps she was, like the luckless woman described by Jesus’ opponents in the dispute over the resurrection, passed through a succession of brothers, all of whom predeceased her. Mark 12:18-23. Whatever the case may have been it is obvious that this woman has known repeated rejection and her failure to remarry marks her as “damaged goods.” In spite of all this, which is somehow known to Jesus, Jesus is genuinely interested in her. The woman, for her part, is beginning to take an interest in this strange Jewish rabbi.
Now the woman poses a question to Jesus: “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” So, which is it? It was hardly an idle question. The subject had been a matter of fierce dispute ever since the northern Israelite tribes broke away from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin to become the Northern Kingdom of Israel a millennium ago. Perhaps she was expecting a lengthy dissertation on why the temple in Jerusalem is the only legitimate place of worship and that the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim was an idolatrous sham. What she got was a startling admission on Jesus’ part that neither the Temple in Jerusalem nor the Jewish nation hold a monopoly on genuine worship. “The hour is coming and is now here,” says Jesus, “when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.” Did this Jew just say that Samaritans, too, can be genuine worshipers of God? The thought is almost too big to get one’s head around. “I know that Messiah is coming,” says the woman. It seems she wants to be done with this conversation. “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” To this, Jesus replies, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
At this point, the disciples return and wonder why Jesus is speaking with a woman of Samaria and what he could possibly want with her. The woman takes her leave at this point. Significantly, I think, she leaves her bucket behind, thereby enabling Jesus to access the water from Jacob’s well, a small act of compassion toward the one she so recently deemed a de facto enemy. Moreover, she invites the people of her village to come and see this remarkable teacher who saw her, knew her and expressed a passionate interest in her. The Samaritans come out in force to meet Jesus, inviting him and his disciples to stay with them. Jesus “remains” with them for a full two days.
The Greek word “meno” meaning “to remain” is a significant one in John’s gospel. John the Baptizer announces that Jesus was known to him by the witness of the Holy Spirit that both descended and “remained” upon Jesus. John 1:32. In his final words to his disciples, Jesus urged his disciples to “abide in me as I abide in you.” John 15:4. Here the English word “abide” is but another translation of the Greek word, “meno.” Thus, you could translate the verse as “remain in me as I remain in you.” As God loves God’s beloved Son, so the Son loves us and invites us to “abide” or “remain” in God’s love. John 15:9. In Sunday’s gospel, the love of God that stubbornly abides in Jesus penetrates the heart of a women that ought to have been an enemy. The inroads made into her heart opened up a crack in the wall of historic enmity between Jew and Samaritan, allowing the living waters of reconciliation and healing to flow freely and bring new life.
There is an old saying, the source of which I have not been able to ascertain, that “an enemy is a person whose story you have not heard.” Saint Paul reminds us that our “struggle is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12. The weapons we are given to resist them are truthful speech, righteous integrity, the way of peace, prayer and the good news of God’s redemptive intent for our world. Ephesians 6:14-18. We wage peace rather than war, forgiveness rather than retribution, prayer rather than threats. We know that those who display aggressiveness, utter threats and commit violence do so from profound hurt, desperate fear and deep seated insecurity. Loving one’s neighbor (which includes the enemy) as oneself requires that one get inside the other’s skin, try to see the world through their eyes and understand the journey that led them to where they are. Such love requires one to look past whatever harm the other has done, whatever hateful views the other might express and whatever threat they may appear to present in order to touch with a healing hand the places where they are hurting. As Jesus demonstrates, such love requires one to become vulnerable, helpless and open to the other.
As again Saint Paul reminds us, this way of Jesus appears as folly to those who believe that strength consists in raw coercive power. I Corinthians 1:18-25. But we are witnessing today the tragic consequences of employing raw coercive power to achieve justice and peace throughout the middle east. Violence does not end violence. It only begets more violence spiraling out of control and drawing ever more victims into its vortex of death and destruction. Today, as has always been the case, Jesus’ way is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus and his way of the cross are the only way out of our self destructive path. It is not for nothing the Samaritan villagers recognized in Jesus “the savior of the world.”
Here is a brief poetic fragment by Edwin Markham that illustrates in one broad stroke the way of Jesus as it appears in our gospel lesson for this coming Sunday.
He drew a circle that shut me out –
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.
Source: This poem is in the public domain. Edwin Markham (1852—1940) was born in Oregon City, Oregon and was the youngest of 10 children. At the age of four and following his parent’s divorce, he moved with his mother to Lagoon Valley in Solano County, California. Markham attended San Jose Normal School (now San Jose State University) graduating in 1872. Markham’s most famous poem, “The Man with the Hoe,” which accented laborers’ hardships, was first presented at a public poetry reading in 1898. His main inspiration was a French painting of the same name (in French, L’homme à la houe) by Jean-François Millet. Markham’s poem was published and achieved instant popularity. Throughout Markham’s life, many readers viewed him as an important voice in American poetry, a position signified by honors such as his election in 1908 to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. You can read more about Edwin Markham and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 