God's Word for the 3rd Sunday of Lent A

The water that I will give them will become in them a spring

which will provide them with life-giving water and give them eternal life.

March 27, 2011

3rd Sunday of Lent A

They put the Lord to the test by saying: Is the Lord with us, or not?

Ex 17:3-7

3 But the people were very thirsty and continued to complain to Moses. They said, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt? To kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?" 4 Moses prayed earnestly to the Lord and said, "What can I do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me." 5 The Lord said to Moses, "Take some of the leaders of Israel with you, and go on ahead of the people. Take along the stick with which you struck the Nile. 6 I will stand before you on a rock at Mount Sinai. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink." Moses did so in the presence of the leaders of Israel. 7 The place was named Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites complained and put the Lord to the test when they asked, "Is the Lord with us or not?" 

The people are in the desert and suffering both the heat and the lack of water to drink. They cannot bear it. Moses is at a loss but not God. God is never at a loss. We too need to remember this. He brings water from a rock. This is a decisive point in their wanderings showing how God cares for his people. Paul tells us that in the deeper meaning “the rock is Christ”. For those who have a personal faith in him God will always provide us with living water. We may suffer in the desert of life, but he is always there to make it bearable.

Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9

Responsorial Psalm

R. (8) If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD;
let us acclaim the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us joyfully sing psalms to him.

The love of God has been poured into our heart by the Holy Spirit.

Romans 5: 1-2. 5-8

Now that we have been put right with God through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 He has brought us by faith into this experience of God's grace, in which we now live. And so we boast of the hope we have of sharing God's glory! 5 This hope does not disappoint us, for God has poured out his love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God's gift to us. 6 For when we were still helpless, Christ died for the wicked at the time that God chose. 7 It is a difficult thing for someone to die for a righteous person. It may even be that someone might dare to die for a good person. 8 But God has shown us how much he loves us - it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us!

Here we have the essence of our faith. We are saved by accepting Jesus into our lives and obeying his Word. To be saved means to be saved from the desert of this life and be raised to live with God. St. John says “we will be like him because we will see him as he is”. This is the hope that lives within us. We will not be disappointed if we hold on to our faith in Jesus. We already feel the taste of it through experiencing the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. God loves us so much that he sent his Son and allowed him to die on the Cross even though we were not only not interested but had rebelled against him. His love knows no limits. This is something we do not understand.

Gospel

John 4:5-42

In Samaria he came to a town named Sychar, which was not far from the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ¹ 6 Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by the trip, sat down by the well. It was about noon. 7 (A Samaritan woman came to draw some water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink of water. 8 His disciples had gone into town to buy food.) 9 The woman answered, "You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan - so how can you ask me for a drink?" (Jews will not use the same cups and bowls that Samaritans use.) ^{a 2} 10 Jesus answered, "If you only knew what God gives and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would ask him, and he would give you life-giving water." 11 "Sir," the woman said, "you don't have a bucket, and the well is deep. Where would you get that life-giving water? 12 It was our ancestor Jacob who gave us this well; he and his children and his flocks all drank from it. You don't claim to be greater than Jacob, do you?" 13 Jesus answered, "Those who drink this water will get thirsty again, 14 but those who drink the water that I will give them will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give them will become in them a spring which will provide them with life-giving water and give them eternal life." 15 "Sir," the woman said, "give me that water! Then I will never be thirsty again, nor will I have to come here to draw water." 16 "Go and call your husband," Jesus told her, "and come back." 17 "I don't have a husband," she answered. Jesus replied, "You are right when you say you don't have a husband. 18 You have been married to five men, and the man you live with now is not really your husband. You have told me the truth." 19 "I see you are a prophet, sir," the woman said. 20 "My Samaritan ancestors worshiped God on this mountain, but you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place where we should worship God." 21 Jesus said to her, "Believe me, woman, the time will come when people will not worship the Father either on this mountain or in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans do not really know whom you worship; but we Jews know whom we worship, because it is from the Jews that salvation comes. 23 But the time is coming and is already here, when by the power of God's Spirit people will worship the Father as he really is, offering him the true worship that he wants. 24 God is Spirit, and only by the power of his Spirit can people worship him as he really is." 25 The woman said to him, "I know that the Messiah will come, and when he comes, he will tell us everything." 26 Jesus answered, "I am he, I who am talking with you." 27 At that moment Jesus' disciples returned, and they were greatly surprised to find him talking with a woman. But none of them said to her, "What do you want?" or asked him, "Why are you talking with her?" 28 Then the woman left her water jar, went back to the town, and said to the people there, 29 "Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done. Could he be the Messiah?" 30 So they left the town and went to Jesus. 31 In the meantime the disciples were begging Jesus, "Teacher, have something to eat!" 32 But he answered, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." 33 So the disciples started asking among themselves, "Could somebody have brought him food?" 34 "My food," Jesus said to them, "is to obey the will of the one who sent me and to finish the work he gave me to do. 35 You have a saying, "Four more months and then the harvest.' But I tell you, take a good look at the fields; the crops are now ripe and ready to be harvested! 36 The one who reaps the harvest is being paid and gathers the crops for eternal life; so the one who plants and the one who reaps will be glad together. 37 For the saying is true, "Someone plants, someone else reaps.' 38 I have sent you to reap a harvest in a field where you did not work; others worked there, and you profit from their work." 39 Many of the Samaritans in that town believed in Jesus because the woman had said, "He told me everything I have ever done." 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him to stay with them, and Jesus stayed there two days. 41 Many more believed because of his message, 42 and they told the woman, "We believe now, not because of what you said, but because we ourselves have heard him, and we know that he really is the Savior of the world."

 It’s experience or it’s nothing

Today the elect for Baptism at Easter undergo the first scrutiny. We are all preparing to receive or renew our Baptism during the Easter Vigil. The scrutiny is for us all. The Gospel is a real-life parable. Jesus comes to the well outside Shechem. He is tired and thirsty. He sits there alone, waiting. A lone woman comes to draw water. He asks her for a drink – something unexpected since he is a man and she a woman. To her way of thinking too it is something he shouldn’t do- he is a Jew and she a Samaritan. He suggests that if she knew who he was and the gift God could give her, she would ask him for a drink. She is intrigued. He has no rope, no bucket and the well is deep. Then he promises her not just ordinary water – you’ll be thirsty again - but ‘living water’, which will become a spring inside her and from that water she will receive eternal life. She wants it but misunderstands him. He touches a personal note and tells her to call her husband. Then he tells her the man she is with is not her husband and that she has had five. She recognizes him now as a prophet and opens the burning issue between Jews and Samaritans: the rival Temples, Jerusalem or Samaria. Jesus is not interested in places of worship. It is the quality of worship that concerns him. She knows that the Messiah will come one day and teach them the truth. Jesus declares that he is the Messiah. She is impressed, puts down her water pot and rushes back to the village. She calls the people and tells them about Jesus: I wonder if he could be the Messiah. Because of her testimony many go out to meet Jesus and when they hear him they believe that he is the Messiah. She casually met a man by the well and in her understanding progressed from stranger to Jew, from Jew to prophet, from prophet to Messiah and from mildly interested to disciple and from disciple to apostle.

            The question is: can you and I have the same experience? Not only can we, but if we want to receive baptism or deeply renew our baptism then we must. Our religion is to experience Jesus. Jesus has to become a real person in our lives. This demands the silence of a lonely well, a one to one meeting with Jesus in which I sit opposite him and focus on his presence and then I listen – ready to shed my illusions, ready to allow him to reveal my sins and heal me.

            Is your prayer an encounter with Jesus? Is the heart of religion your experience of Jesus? For you is it ‘simply going to church’ or ‘meeting Jesus’?

Father, may I always experience your Son Jesus in my prayer, made in spirit and in truth.