Third Sunday of Lent

Jan 14 2025

Lent as Inner Journey

Sometimes a journey of great significance covers a very short distance, geo-graphically speaking. Flannery O’Connor once said that everything important happened to her between the back door of the house and the chicken coop. Moses led the people of Israel from grumbling and complaining to a renewed faith by walking a few feet to tap a rock.

The journey in today’s Gospel is an inner journey into faith in Jesus. Notice how the woman’s perspective changes as the story progresses. With that change of perception comes a change of heart. Her first response to Jesus’ request for a drink of water is curt: “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (John 4:9). But after Jesus speaks about being able to give her living water, she sees him as one who will relieve her of the burdensome daily trip to the well, or even of ever being thirsty again.

Another shift comes after he tells her of her broken marriages. She recognizes him as a prophet. There is yet one more step to take, and Jesus helps her by offering a vision of a future time when all will worship together, and then confessing to her that he is the Messiah, the Christ. Through her witness, the village comes to meet Jesus and then finally to recognize him as savior of the world.

Lent invites us to journey with this woman and recognize Jesus in his fullness: as one who thirsts for us, who also brings us the life-giving water of baptism, who is a prophet speaking for God, who is the promised Messiah, and most especially, who has come to save us.

Consider/Discuss

What do you thirst for?
How do you relate to Jesus? Do you recognize him as truly human, as a prophet, as the promised Messiah, as the Savior and Son of God?

Responding to the Word

We can pray that Jesus will bring us to see him as living water that can satisfy us. We pray for all those preparing to be washed in the waters of baptism, that they will recognize in Jesus the source of eternal life.

Jan 14 2025

Scripture Study for

The murmuring of the people in the wilderness lays bare their resistance to the leadership of Moses, and the shallowness of their trust in God. Still, just as God delivered the people from the bondage of Egypt through the leadership of Moses, so now, again through the actions of Moses, God gives them the water they demand. One wonders how a people who were the beneficiaries of God’s abiding concern and miraculous protection could be so faithless and lacking in trust. After all that God has done, they still put God to the test. This is but another example of God’s boundless and compassionate love for sinners.

Paul’s teaching on justification is quite clear. It is based on the righteousness that originates in God, a righteousness that gives and sustains life, security, and well being. Human beings are righteous when they respect and enhance that life, security, and well being. They can only do this if they are in right relationship with God and, through this relationship, share in God’s righteousness. According to Paul, we have no right to this relationship with God. It has been given to us, won for us by the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, we have never deserved it. Yet, out of love, God gives it to us.

Jesus asks the Samaritan woman for water when in fact he is the one who will give her “living water.” His knowledge of her marital situation prompts her to call him a prophet and to engage him in a discussion about the proper place to worship God. Jesus moves this conversation from a discussion of the place of worship to one that characterizes the manner of worship. Jesus’ discussion with the woman is curious. She is a questionable member (a sinner) of a subordinate group (a woman) of a despised people (a Samaritan). Yet she is the one whom Jesus approaches; she is the one to whom he reveals himself as Messiah; and she is the one who heralds this good news to the people in the town.

Jan 08 2025

The Tender Voice of Jesus

Around the corner from my office 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 on the Notre Dame 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.

Jan 08 2025

Scripture Study for

After their deliverance from Egypt, the work of forming Israel into God’s people continues. Although they have seen God’s power to save, they have not experienced God’s ability to provide. Until they come to trust that their God is capable of meeting all of their needs, they will not be able to be faithful to the covenant relationship. The cry for water, revealing doubts that God is “in their midst,” is thus a “test” of God’s trustworthiness. God’s quick provision is intended not only to provide life-giving water, but also to inspire trust in the God with whom they will shortly enter into covenant relationship.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul explains that, whereas sin alienates us from God, faith in Christ brings about peace with God. More than this, Christ makes it possible to share in the divine life, which gives hope of future glory. This hope is firm because the believer already experiences the “love of God,” which can mean God’s love for the believer, the believer’s love of God, or both. In the first case, the Spirit and the life of grace are from God, a gift of love and a firm promise for the future. In the second case, the believer is able to love God through the transforming power of grace.

Today’s Johannine reading dramatizes a central theme found in the Prologue. Just as the Word was in the world but the world did not know or accept him (1:10–11), so at first the woman resists Jesus, “knowing” only that he is a Jew, estranged from Samaritans. But Jesus persists, declaring that if she really knew who he was she would have asked for “living water” from him, a metaphor for divine life and grace (“to those who did accept him, he gave power to become children of God” [1:12]). Eventually the woman comes to believe that he might “possibly be the Christ.” As a result of her testimony, others encounter Jesus and come to “know that he is truly the savior of the world.”

Dec 13 2024

Our Thirsty God

There are a number of thirsty people in our readings today: the Israelites out in the desert, grumbling about the lack of water and wondering why they ever left Egypt; the woman of Samaria, who has gone to the well to draw water for herself and her companion at home; and Jesus, traveling through Samaritan territory with his disciples.

The thirst of the Israelites was physical. Once again disheartened, they were grumbling that Moses had taken them out in the desert to die. It must have gotten serious because we are told that Moses himself feared for his life. God’s response is dramatic: “Take your staff, go over to that rock and strike it.” And the water flowed.

The nameless woman is shown to be thirsty on several levels. Physically, yes, but her thirst is on far deeper levels—for companionship (five husbands and now living with yet another person!) and for communion with God. Jesus promises her that people will worship God in Spirit and in truth. Indeed, the Father seeks such people.

Is it possible the one most thirsty is God? The Father thirsts for all of us to draw closer, to live fully the life that only God can give, that life celebrated on Easter, made possible by the dying and rising of Jesus. Those to be baptized enter into divine life at baptism, but all believers continue to be satisfied by the life-giving water that is Jesus.

Consider/Discuss

What are you thirsting for?
Do you approach God as one who can satisfy your deepest thirst?

Responding to the Word

Risen Lord, you came to bring us life-giving water. Such water poured over us at our baptism. We pray for those who will soon enter into this water and become sons and daughters of the Father, co-heirs with you. Strengthen them, enlighten them, guide them, encourage them, in these final days of preparation.