Third Sunday of Lent

Jan 29 2025

The Woman of Sychar

When I saw him coming, I was afraid. I had just dropped my bucket into the well and was pulling it up. What was a Jew doing here? Sychar was not a stopover for the Jews. It was in Samaritan territory. Jews hated Samaritans, and the feeling was returned. This went back centuries.

I could tell he was tired. It was almost noon and a scorching day. When he asked for a drink, I couldn’t refuse. Even so, I asked him, “How can you, a Jew and a man, ask me, a Samaritan and a woman, for a drink?” “You have the bucket,” he said, smiling.

As I was handing him a ladle of water, he said: “If you knew who was saying, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked me for one.” I just stared at this riddle maker. Then I pointed out the facts: I had the bucket and the well was deep. End of discussion.

But it wasn’t. He began to talk about water that satisfies thirst and water that doesn’t. And then he said, “Whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst. I will give them water that gushes up into eternal life.”

You know, I believed him. I can’t explain why. That’s not all he said that day. We talked about my life, his work, and a day when Jews and Samaritans would be able to worship together. That was really a dream, I told him. But it wasn’t. After his death—and resurrection—it came about. It turned out he was living water after all.

Consider/Discuss

What do you thirst for?
How is Jesus life-giving water for you?

Responding to the Word

Jesus, you are life-giving water that quenches our soul’s thirst. You continue to meet us during our days, speaking to us so we might know you and what you would do for us. Like the Samaritan woman, may we welcome you and speak to you from our hearts.

Jan 29 2025

Scripture Study for

God responds to the people’s murmuring with the miracle of water from the rock. These were the very people whom God had miraculously delivered out of Egyptian bondage. Yet they suggest that their rescue was done, not out of God’s loving-kindness, but so that they will die of thirst in the wilderness. In their insolence they cry out their challenge: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” (Exodus 17:7). Since the people did not recognize God’s reassurance in the signs and wonders of the past, God performs yet another one. Why does God endure such thanklessness, rebellion, and audacity? Because God is kind and merciful. Paul tells the Christians in Rome that they have not justified themselves. Any righteousness they might possess originates in God. In fact, they were sinners, alienated from God, when Christ died for them and gained access for them to the grace that placed them in right relationship with God. Through his sacrifice, Jesus opened the way for them to approach God. They may have been brought by Jesus to the threshold of God’s presence, but they themselves must take the step over that threshold. They do this by faith. With this step of faith they no longer stand in enmity; they now stand in grace, in peace with God. This is true righteousness. The story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman includes the discourse on living water. He asks for water when in fact he is the one who will give water. “Living water” refers to divine bounty, suggesting that this living water seems to have a very special character. The living water metaphor itself has a long and rich history in the religious tradition of Israel. It was a gift from God when the people were thirsting in the wilderness (Exodus 17:3–7). The prophets employed it to refer to the spiritual refreshment that flowed from the temple (Ezekiel 47:1; Zechariah 14:80). In each of these instances, living water is a principle of spiritual life.

Jan 29 2025

Jesus as Action Hero

As a boy, I loved this Gospel story. Suddenly Jesus was a superhero. Watch out, Clark Kent! Gentle Jesus is now revealed as Super-J! Red with rage, one strong arm cracking that whip while the other overturns the tables. Sheep and oxen scattering, doves heading for the highest columns of the temple, coins spilling down the steps, some merchants cowering, others heading out the gate. Kapow! Kazaam!

Age has brought me a more refined understanding of this scene. Recorded in all four Gospels, John places it closer to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, rather than during his last days. Some see it as the act of a prophet enraged at the commercialization of the house of the Lord; others as a sign of the coming of the messianic age when anything inappropriate to the true nature of the temple as a place for encountering God will be purged and purified.

For our reflection during Lent, we might take it as a wake-up call to all the compromises we have settled for in our lives that are unworthy of our being the temple of God’s Holy Spirit, made so by baptism. In light of the first reading reminding us of God’s covenant with Israel at Mt. Sinai, we too are called to live lives that honor God as our only God and to live with all others in a just and loving manner. We do this when we proclaim Christ crucified in our own bodies by living for others.

Consider/Discuss

How do you react to this portrayal of Jesus cleansing the temple?
How do you relate this action to the final words today about Jesus not trusting himself to those who were beginning to believe in his name because he “understood human nature well”?

Responding to the Word

Lord Jesus, you call us to live as children of the Father, offering our very lives as a spiritual sacrifice. We do this when we replace our selfish desires with a will ingness to listen to the cries of the poor. Continue to shape us into your dwelling place in our world.

Jan 29 2025

Scripture Study for

The Ten Commandments are considered the foundation of Israelite law. They include the basic conditions for covenant membership. They begin with a self proclamation by the God who has already acted on behalf of the people. The stipulations are absolute and applicable in any situation; sanctions for violation of them are severe. These commandments were really meant to be observed by all. Basically, they provided a sketch of the God with whom the people were in covenant, and they outlined how these covenanted people were to revere their God and live with each other.

In the short reading from First Corinthians, Paul accomplishes several things. He argues that neither the signs and wonders cherished by the Jews nor the philosophy acclaimed by the Greeks is an adequate standard for evaluation. He insists that the crucified Christ is the standard against which everything is judged. The customary wisdom of these two cultures would reject a crucified Christ. However, God’s ways frequently reverse human standards. Paul insists that the ridiculed and despised Christ is actually the wisdom of God. What the Jews and the Greeks rejected as foolishness was indeed authentic wisdom, and what they cherished as wisdom was really misguided folly.

Jesus’ actions in the temple are acted-out prophecy and his words are prophetic proclamation. He accuses the merchants of making the temple a market place. But a part of it was a marketplace. The explanation of his behavior is found both in an allusion to a passage from the prophet Zechariah (14:21), who said that at the endtime there would be no need for merchants in the house of the Lord, and in a psalm text that states that zeal for God’s house makes the psalmist vulnerable to the scorn and abuse of others (Psalm 69:9). By driving the merchants out of the temple precincts, Jesus announces the approach of the time of fulfillment. By identifying God as his Father, Jesus affirms his right to make such a claim and to act in accord with it.

Jan 24 2025

The Tender Voice of Jesus

Around the corner from my office at Notre Dame is a statue by sculptor Ivan Mestrovic of the encounter between Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well. The Lord is looking straight at the woman. The woman is clinging to a large jar and looking down. It is midday. What did this woman expect when she woke up that day? Another dry and empty day as the pariah of the town? In Mosaic law, it is the husband who divorces the wife, so she has already been cast off five times. And her current live-in has not married her. Yet here is a bone-weary male Jewish stranger, asking her for a drink. Asking her for a drink. Apparently from her bucket. No wonder she is looking down.

This statue campus freezes time right there. But in the Gospel, we hear Jesus tenderly poke and prod and speak to her until she opens up and lifts her head. He holds out to her an abundance of the water of life, greater than she has ever imagined. And she takes it.

She drops her bucket (to which she clings so tightly in the statue) and runs to tell the news about the stranger. When she comes back, she doesn’t bring a bucket; she brings a whole village!

In art, we look at spaces, not just objects. What most impresses me about Mestrovic’s statue is the tenderness in the space between the two characters. Some of us are preachers, some are teachers. Whatever our ministry in life, when we seek to help people come to God, it is that tone of tenderness that crosses divides. More important than words, come into the space with gentleness. Living water will flow.

Consider/Discuss

Jesus also entrusts his thirst to us. We encounter him in order to be filled. Yet he has no bucket but ours. What is our role in fulfilling Jesus’ mission to the thirsty world in which we live?
Read through the Gospel again, this time imagining great tenderness in the voice of Jesus. How do you hear the passage differently?

Living and Praying with the Word

Like the woman at the well and the Israelites in the desert, Lord, sometimes we wonder if you—or anyone—cares. Yet you continue to tenderly poke and prod and speak to us. Help us to raise our eyes and see you looking at us with love. As we continue on through this Lent, bring us to repentance and to glory, but also deepen our tenderness in our mission to bring living water to those who thirst for you.