Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Lent, A

The woman’s story moves in a new direction when she meets Jesus at the well. There is an essential interplay here. It’s not just our thirst, but God’s thirst for us.

I am away this weekend. 

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Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. 

Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." His disciples had gone into town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, "How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?" For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans. 

Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God and who was saying to you, Give me a drink? You would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you do not even have a bucket, and this well is deep. Where will you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, with his children and his flocks?" Jesus answered and said to her, "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 them a spring of water, welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water." 

"I can see you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem." Jesus said to her," Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do not understand. We worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews, the hour is coming and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. And indeed, the Father seeks such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ. When he comes, he will tell us everything." Jesus said, "I am," the one who is speaking with you."

 Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him. When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. Many more began to believe in him because of his word, and they said to the woman, "We no longer believe because of your word, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world." 

The Gospel of the Lord. 

In a little over a month, I'm leading a group of pilgrims to northern France and Paris. We'll end our pilgrimage at the Spiritual Well of Lourdes. Every year, six million people make this same pilgrimage to the sacred waters of Lourdes, nestled at the base of the Pyrenees Mountains. We all come for the water, and we all leave with so much more. I first went to Lourdes two years ago. What impressed me more than the crowds of people who came for healing was the massive army of volunteers who come for a week or two, maybe longer, to be companions for the sick and disabled. There are also many priests who volunteer as confessors to celebrate the healing sacrament of penance with the pilgrims. 

These companions remind me of the faithful friends who, when they couldn't get in through the door of the house where Jesus was teaching, lowered the paralyzed man through the roof. When Jesus saw their faith, the faith of the friends, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven." We cannot separate the healing of the paralytic from his friends. Without them, there is no healing. In the same way, the woman's story moves in a new direction. when she meets Jesus at the well. There's an essential interplay here. It's not just our thirst, but God's thirst for us. 

When the woman from the Samaritan town of Sychor made her own pilgrimage to a well for water, the story took an unexpected turn. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." The verse just before today's gospel reads, "Jesus left Judea and started back to Galilee, but he had to go through Samaria." Jesus had to go through Samaria because he's the fullness of God roaming the world, looking for someone to receive it. God's desire is to gather all who are scattered. As Jesus says in John 12, verse 32, "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."

St. Augustine says that God thirsts that we might thirst for him. We thirst for God, as the psalmist writes, like the dry land thirsts for water. We see a similar movement in Luke's gospel in the story we call the prodigal son. When the prodigal son was making his way back home, the father caught sight of him while he was still a long way off. The father thirsted that his son might thirst for him. 

Rachel Held Evans in her book, "Inspired, Slaying Dragons, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again," wrote, "Wells are where God starts something new." Inside all of us is a great longing, an emptiness, a hole that only God can fill. This holy longing is part of our humanity, a dimension of our spiritual life. In the desert, it was the lack of water that started the Israelites grumbling, first against Moses, but really the question was, "Is the Lord in our midst or not?" Our deepest longing, our greatest thirst, is for God. 

What did that Samaritan woman find at the well that day? What will you and I find if we bring our heart's container to God? 

At the end of John's Gospel, we find Jesus thirsting again at a different hour, at the hour of the cross, John 19, verse 28. "After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said, 'I thirst.'" Is the cross the well? The drink was common wine, not like the good wine of Cana. It is soaked up in a sponge and held up on a branch of hyssop. "When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, 'It is finished.' And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit." The work of the one who sent him is finished. Creation is completed. St. Paul reminds us, "the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." 

God's Spirit is poured out like living water, bringing the Samaritan woman to faith, but she can't keep it to herself. "Come, see a man who told me everything I have done." She becomes a missionary who brings others to Jesus. Coming to faith today involves immersion in the living water of baptism and rising up to bring others to Christ. 

In his book, Anam Cara, John O'Donohue gives a picture of our life of faith. "Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the low lands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. Where before there was anonymity, now there is intimacy. Where before there was fear, now there is courage. Where before in your life there was awkwardness, now there is a rhythm of grace and gracefulness. Where before you used to be jagged, now you are elegant and in rhythm with yourself. When love awakens in your life, it is like the dawn breaking within you."