LENT 3 YEAR A 2014 When you live in a place where you can turn on the tap and get buckets of pure drinking water - which you can use for any purpose you like, even washing the car, the biblical stories about water lose some of their punch. In our Exodus reading we read of the people of Israel in the desert, they have sinned and rebelled against God, and so their punishment will be to spend 40 years wandering about in the desert, before they can cross the Jordan and enter the land of promise. Poor Moses, what a job he had! In the wilderness the people grumble against Moses and against God, they even begin to long to go back to slavery in Egypt! So, God tells Moses and some of the elders are told to go to a place which God will show him and there God will make for them a spring of fresh water. So Moses is led to the rock at Horeb and there God tells him to strike the rock with his staff and water gushes from the rock. Today in the Jordan desert, near Petra, is a village at Wadi Musa, and there, from a rock, gushes forth fresh water that supplies the village – the Muslims believe this to be the rock Moses (Musa) struck with his staff. I have seen it, in such a barren and unlikely place it is hard to argue with them about their claim. On the nearby mountains, is the mountain with a white domed tomb, they claim to be Horeb and the burial place of Aaron. And today it continues as an important place of pilgrimage. We don’t know, but there was something very special about Wadi Musa and its mountains. In our Gospel reading we have another “water” story, here, in Samaria a woman has come to the well to draw water, water for the daily purposes of washing, cooking and drinking. And, the water out of these wells, is pretty murky, like dishwater, I never tasted it - bit risky I thought: but that is what so many people still live with today – dirty water, and having to draw it up from a well or water course and carting it to their house. Some of the Sudanese women I worked with told their stories of how they had to cart their water anything up to 5-10 kilometres - every day: and we can just turn on a tap. Little wonder the woman at the well said: 15The 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.’ Oh! To be relieved of the burden of having to cart water every day, but Jesus was speaking of something else altogether. The story of Jesus, and the woman at the well, is a wonderful story of journey, of journey from no faith, to partial faith to full faith. 1
This story is one that is set to shock its hearers: Jesus speaks firstly to a woman – Jewish men, especially Rabbis did not do so in public – it was a moral outrage! Secondly, he is speaking to a Samaritan, another outrage, Jews travelling from Jerusalem, north, to Galilee would often go “the long way” rather than walk through Samaria – such was the ill feeling. For the Jew, Samaritans were mixed race heretics – they were to be avoided and despised. Jesus, openly speaks with the woman and offers her “life giving” water; all she can think of is ordinary water slaking her immediate thirst. ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’ And now the story moves on from the ordinary to deeper things and ultimately to belief. Jesus, by coming into Samaria, is showing that his proclamation of the good news is not only to the house of Israel, but it is also for all people. After his resurrection Jesus said to His disciples: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The Good News is for all people. After a chat about her marital status, the conversation moves quickly on about the nature of worship, and indeed where the proper place to worship is: is it as the Samaritans claim on Mt Gerizim or, as the Jews claim, the Temple in Jerusalem. The woman moves through an understanding that the man she is talking to is a prophet, but no, more than a prophet, is he in fact, The Messiah. After the return of the disciples, the woman goes back into the village and tells them all about this man: concluding with the question: “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” The villagers now go to the well and discover for themselves that this man is more than a prophet: “and now we know this is truly the saviour of the world.” They believe on the basis of Jesus’ “word”. Last week we spoke about the power of words. Is Jesus proclamation enough “word” for you to believe? In the story we see the journey of the woman and the villagers where they come from no faith, through partial faith to real faith. Francis Moloney SDB writes: “We too are capable of repeating the experience of the Samaritan woman. Often we simply do not hear the word of Jesus because we are too concerned with pour own needs. Most of the time, however, we are happy to believe in 2
Jesus. But, if we reflect upon the quality of our faith we will see that, like the Samaritan woman again, we commit ourselves to faith in the Jesus of our expectations. As long as he is our prophet and the messiah we are waiting for, we are comfortable. Only occasionally we listen to the word of Jesus and risk everything in confessing that he is the Saviour of the world.� Most of us sit somewhere on the continuum of apostasy and holiness. We would like to be stronger in faith, more risk taking in our discipleship but seem to lack the courage. The Gospel stories allow us to recognise the limitations of our faith, they help us to see the possibilities of an unconditional commitment to Jesus, the Word of God, and they encourage us to take risks and journey on into a saintliness that reflects ever more strongly the life of Jesus to the world about us.
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