Third Sunday of Lent – A
Gospel: John 4: 5 – 42 – Story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well
The Homily
African Experience
I wonder how many of you have been at a well before. Reflecting on this Gospel passage triggered memories of my early life growing up in a rural village in Uganda. I could easily draw up images in my head of Jesus standing at the well looking down at the Samaritan woman as she draws water. I could visualize the scene based on my knowledge and experience of well.
The Samaritan woman and well scene kept me imagining women and young girls trekking in the bushes and fields of corn or banana plantation (and even sometimes during the dark) to fetch water from the well.
In the dry season, when some shallow wells dry up, these women have to walk miles and miles to find a well still holding up against the drought. This is a task that consumes thousands and thousands of hours a year for these women. And it’s a risky business– some girls or women get raped at the wells. It is actually advised to go in pairs.
You have probably seen in movies or pictures from Africa – how women balance a jerrycan of water on their heads without touching it. Amazing, uhha!!
Here in America, we are used to turning to the other side of the room and flip a node and right there and then the water flows. So, it may be hard to imagine how it was like for Jesus asking for water.
In Jesus’ day Samaria, things were quite different. We see him asking for water to drink from a Samarian woman at the well. In our first reading, the Israelites grumble in the desert complaining why God brought them out there to die of thirst. Today, going on such a journey, you would probably carry a load of bottled water.
Actually what Jesus is doing is not something unheard of even today in some parts of the world. I can remember from my own days in Uganda, we would be coming back from school and it is so hot (it can be like 90 degrees out there) and you are thirsty. You pass by a well and when you find someone drawing water, you would ask them for water to drink from their container –they draw it for you. If there is no body, then you can sip it out with your palms joined and drink it that way. This is why we have lost kids to drowning in wells.
Awareness of Water Crisis
Water is a very critical life-giving resource. We can’t do without it. It may be hard for us to imagine but over 884 million people around the globe lack access to safe drinking water. That’s approximately 1 in 8 people. Imagine it could be you or I but we have been blessed.
Waterborne diseases kill over 1.4 million children every year. (stats from water.org)
To put it in some perspective; when we take a five minute shower, we use more water than a typical person in a developing country uses in an entire day. Some of us shower twice a day. Something to ponder!
Living Water
Brethren, as you can see water in itself, is life-giving. Because of the troubles associated with getting it, the Samaritan woman was very anxious to be relieved of the burden. But the living water Christ gives a different kind of life and quenches a different kind of thirst.
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The wells I am familiar with, dry out during prolonged droughts and probably some of the wells in Samaria may have dried out too. Besides, that water relieves the thirst only temporarily.
Jesus promises this new ‘magical water’ –when you drink it, you can never thirst again. The Samaritan woman is like, wow; what a relief!! If I can only get hold of that water, then I won’t have to walk these many miles every day to come to the well.
The African women would definitely be excited –they would no longer worry about wells drying up and walking miles to the next village to find water. How wonderful would life be!
But of course Jesus was not speaking of this literal natural water. So, we can ask, what was this kind of water? The waters of everlasting life are spiritual and life giving. We experience these waters in Baptism where we receive the spirit of adoption to become children of God. And as children of God, we become co-heirs with Christ of the life eternal in the everlasting kingdom.
This new life is a gift of God’s grace. Jesus tells the woman it is a gift. We can’t work out our salvation—as Jesus says “you reap what you have not worked for” and we are sharing the fruits of others—the fruits of Jesus’ blood and suffering and the faith of those who came before us.
We see the woman at the well receiving the gift of faith and professing it: “Sir, I can see you are a prophet.”—the expected Messiah. The life of Faith is both a gift and an obligation. We receive this gift to build up the kingdom of God.
Like the Samaritan woman, we have received the gift and we have obligation by virtue of our baptism to share the good news with others in our town—at work place, at home, at school. We have to live in a Christian way that is inviting others to Christ.
Many people in her town came to believe after hearing the testimony of the Samaritan woman. She extended an invitation to them: “Come see the man who has told me everything I have done. Could this be possibly the Christ?” They were moved by her accounts of the encounter with Jesus and their own witness to him.
As the natural water is a gift, the living water is a gift as well. Since it is a gift, God intends to reach out to all his children—Jews or Gentile alike. The nationalities, races, or cultures don’t matter. Salvation is open for all human beings; we just have to accept it.
Christ always desires us to be one as he and the Father are one. As a body of Christ, there are no more divisions but one people of God. Even the new Samaritan believers proclaim Christ with conviction: “this is truly the saviour of the world.” God also desires that we all have access to both the natural water as well as this living water that Chris gives.
Lenten Reflection
We are now three weeks into Lent. We have had time to make our Lenten resolutions and we are hopefully keeping our Lenten observances. Lent is a time to look inside ourselves and see areas where we thirst. And we are invited to come to the Lord to quench our thirst – our thirst from concerns of the world, our thirst from the sins tormenting our souls, thirst caused by divisions among the people of God, our thirst to be reconciled to Christ and others we have wronged, and of course our thirst for living water.
It is an opportunity for all of us to recommit ourselves to Christ and renew our baptismal promises with the help of the spirit we received with the waters of Baptism. This is a time to lay aside prejudices, anger, resentment we hold against other people and make effort to promote unity. Jesus gives an example of breaking the prejudices that Jews had against the Samaritans. The waters of Baptism cleanse us from our old selves and make us new creatures with a calling to worship the Creator in both spirit and truth. He is the one who quenches our thirst.
During this Lenten season, I invite all of us to humble ourselves and think of our fellow sisters and brothers within our community and around the world who are thirsty for natural water and those thirsty for the living water. There are different ministries we can get involved with in our church and communities around us to reach out to those thirsting for natural water and many of our brethren thirsting for that life giving water that Christ gives. Perhaps Lent can be an opportunity to look at ways we use the gifts of our natural resources and other blessings in our lives and evaluate how good of stewards we have been.