John 4:5 - 42
Today we have a choice of gospel
readings. We could read the story of the man born blind, which is
the cycle B reading. Or we could read the story of the Samaritan
woman at the well, which is the cycle A reading, and the reading for
the first of the scrutinies. The third, fourth and fifth Sundays of
Lent are special days when those adults who are entering the Church
are “scrutinized”. In a public ceremony associated with the
regular Sunday Mass, they are welcomed by the congregation and given
certain tokens of their Christian profession. And the readings are
supposed to teach something as well to people who are entering the
Church.
The story of the Jesus' encounter with
the Samaritan woman is unusual. Most bible scholars don't think this
was written by the writer of the Gospel of John. In some very old
manuscripts of the gospel of Luke you can find the story, but again,
it is written by someone else. But by the end of the second century,
as far as we can tell, it became part of the Gospel of John. It's an
unusual story, as well, and again, it may be that it is something
along the lines of a midrash – a commentary in the form of a story
designed to teach a lesson. So let's look at it that way.
First, we learn that Jesus meets the
woman at a well. If you were a Jew you would right away know what
that was about. Isaac sent his servant to find him a bride, and he
met Rebecca at a well. Jacob found Rachel at a well. Moses met
Zipporah, his future wife, at a well. Wells were where you went to
find a bride if you were a young man looking for one. In that time
and place, it was the woman's place to draw the water for the day's
use.
Then we notice several things. The
woman does not have a husband. In fact, Jesus points out that she is
living with a man who is not her husband. Women generally drew water
in the morning and it was a social ritual where everyone caught up on
the gossip; our Samaritan woman is there in the middle of the day,
when no one else would be around. In other words, her marital status
has probably made her an outcast.
Jesus goes on to point out that she
has had five husbands. This is significant, because after the Jewish
people who inhabited Samaria were driven out by the Assyrians, they
settled the land from five other peoples, who had also been driven
out of their lands. The goal of the Assyrians was assimilation, and
the best way to do that was to mix the people up. So the five tribes
who inhabited Samaria all had separate gods. But in those days, your
god stayed with the land, and you wanted to get on good with the
local god, who in this case was Yaweh, so the Samaritans adopted a
primitive form of Judaism, where they offered sacrifice at the old
temple and used the first five books of the bible. When Jesus says
the man she is living with is not her husband, and she has had five
husbands, people would understand that He was speaking about the
Samaritan people.
The Samaritan woman first calls Jesus
“a Jew”. She moves on to “Sir”, then recognizes that he is a
prophet, then concludes that he is the Christ. The gradual unfolding
of Jesus' identity to her leads her to drop everything to go tell the
other people in town, who after hearing Jesus, come to their own
belief that this is the Messiah.
So why does the writer of the story
have the central character a Samaritan woman? Partly because
Samaritans were sort of half Jew and half gentile; they represent in
this story that Jesus has a universal message – something he
alludes to when he talks about true worshippers, who will worship the
Father in Spirit and in truth, no longer confining their worship to
this mountain or that.
So in the story we just heard, we see
Jesus seeking out someone who is deeply mired in sin, who is shunned
by the people in the village, who despite living with someone not her
husband, really has no security at all. But Jesus seeks her out and
offers her living water. She who represents both Jew and Gentile, is
a symbol of Christ's future marriage to his church, and a symbol of
the universal message Jesus has for mankind.
It is through Jesus that her eyes are
opened and she gradually comes to recognize that He is the Christ.
But it is not enough to come to this recognition. Those who really
know Jesus as Christ feel compelled to broadcast the news, to bring
others into that realtionship, and the Samaritan woman does what the
Church will do, bringing others to faith in Christ.
And you and I are helpless to save
ourselves, but we can be sure that Jesus seeks us out, and is always
there offering his grace, his supernatural life which will give us
new life. But what we need to take away from today's gospel story is
that those who have met Jesus have received a great gift. When God
gives us gifts, they are not to be held on to, but rather, to be
given away. In that way we make room for more gifts, and others
receive God's gifts from our hands, and come to recognize Jesus as
well. So on this day let's resolve that since we have been given
living water, water that never runs dry, let us offer that to our
loved ones and all those we meet.
