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"...and the Well is deep"
Third Sunday of Lent
March 3, 2024
In those days, in their thirst for water,
the people grumbled against Moses,
saying, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?
Was it just to have us die here of thirst
with our children and our livestock?”
So Moses cried out to the LORD,
“What shall I do with this people?
a little more and they will stone me!”
The LORD answered Moses,
“Go over there in front of the people,
along with some of the elders of Israel,
holding in your hand, as you go,
the staff with which you struck the river.
I will be standing there in front of you on the rock in Horeb.
Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it
for the people to drink.”
This Moses did, in the presence of the elders of Israel.
The place was called Massah and Meribah,
because the Israelites quarreled there
and tested the LORD, saying,
“Is the LORD in our midst or not?”
Brothers and sisters:
Since we have been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have gained access by faith
to this grace in which we stand,
and we boast in hope of the glory of God.
And hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For Christ, while we were still helpless,
died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them 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 won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
“I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
The disciples return
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
Many Samaritans believe
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.
They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
"...and the Well is deep"
Water as metaphor for life hardly needs explaining since it is the necessary environment for any form of life on earth. Scientists tell us that a planet with no water could not have life on it. Chapter 4 of John's gospel seems to be a self-contained story (supposing it is historical), providing a whole other perspective on the mysterious figure of Jesus from Nazareth.
The text we have is dessicated, shriveled like dried tomato, with the ribs showing clearly but requiring to be re-hydrated to get the feel and taste of it. I imagine the gospel texts being like a speaker's notes, a precis of previous lectures but in itself a mere outline to be expanded. It is unfortunate that we hear and read the bare text so often that it becomes the story, cartoon sketches of people and aphorisms without context, one remove from life. Let's try to expand some parts of the story as an example.
Jesus was not far from Jericho, somewhere along the lower Jordan where his disciples were baptising. Hearing of this John sent messengers to his cousin asking if he were the one, or not. John at the time was up north closer to the Sea of Galilee. After sending back a coded message in the form of a reference to the prophet Isaiah, Jesus decided to move back to Galilee. To go over the hills through Samaria, rather than take the easy road up the valley, would avoid risking a clash with John's disciples.
Samaria is the region on the high ground between the Jordan and the sea. It is a long haul up the road winding across the bald face of those great rounded hillsides. On foot it would have been exhausting, so when they reached Sychar about noon they were tired.
Jesus, for some reason, stayed by the well when the disciples went on into the village to buy something for lunch. Sitting there on the wall of the well, lost in thought, he was surprised when a woman came along the path alone, a water jar on her shoulder. Why was she alone? he wondered Stopping at a safe distance she eyed the stranger cautiously. When he didn't move away to allow her access to the well, she had to take the risk, and she got her leather bucket ready. Avoiding eye contact she dropped in the bucket on its long rope and proceeded to haul up and fill her jar. It was her turn to be astonished when Jesus spoke to her. "Could you give me a drink," he said. Jews did not associate with Samaritans. It was an egregious breach of protocol, the first of many taboos broken by Jesus in this story.
“You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” she retorted, an edge of censure in her voice.
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
She laughs at him now. "Sir, you've nothing to draw water with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?
This is the cue for John to launch into an explanation of water's significance in the sign language of the times. Early Christians would make the connection with the many other references to water, especially the remarkable witness John himself had given of what he saw when one of the soldiers pierced the side of Jesus with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of water and blood. (Jn 19:34-35) In his first letter he will spell out the significance of this:
This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. There are three witnesses: the water and the blood and the spirit. (1 Jn 5:6-8)
We need to sit with these words and those of Jesus to the woman, along with the Exodus imagery in today's first reading, with John's witness at the crucifixion, and with Jesus' words recorded in Jn 7:37-39:
On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
*****
You may choose to stop at this point, reflecting on the gift of water - the gift of Life which is there for the asking. One thing some of these texts have in common is that the water offered is not as a flood we would drown in, but as a fountain for drinking - if you are thirsty. To get the water we have to go out from where we feel secure, as did the women of Sychar - and the well is deep.
In the reflections thread last week Bruce posted some comments on relationships, concluding with the remark that "Today for most of us these issues are more secular, but no less deep." To which I rudely quipped: "And being deep, they are not so secular after all!" (Forgive me, Bruce.)
Tennyson, ends his account of the death of King Arthur with a 'strange saying' that came into his head: "From the great deep to the great deep he goes."
The Deep is synonymous with the Sublime or Spiritual, with that dimension of life which is not corporeal, not measured by time or place, not beginning with the minor death of birthing and ending with the finality of bodily decay.
The 'Deep' is that dimension of being where being one with Being is a face to face experience, as personal as child to Mother, Father, Brother.
You don't get more deep than that.
*****
The woman was well practised in the art of avoidance. When Jesus promised that the water he would give would cure your thirst forever, she made a joke of it: “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” To jolt her out of her shallow thinking he challenged her abruptly: Go and bring your husband here.
Instinctively she shot off a defensive reply: "I have no husband," immediately realising she had fallen into a trap of her own making. "True, because you've had five husbands, and the one you're with now is not your husband," Jesus quietly murmured.
How could this be? In those small villages, always under the watchful eye of the devout keepers of the Law, how did she escape being stoned to death? The woman must have moved from place to place as each relationship soured and she tried to make a fresh start. Always on edge with the need to guard her secret, denial had become second nature to her, but denial is deadly.
Her defensiveness began to crumble. "I see you are a prophet...". But she was not done yet, pushing the conversation to a theoretical level about the proper place to worship. This gives John the chance to enuntiate one of the fundamental principles of the New Testament: "Worship will be neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth!" Denial is so habitual in our tradition that this 'saying' of Jesus is regularly ignored. We like our temple worship. To believe that ritual properly performed is capable of making changes in the hearts of participants is easier than to personally break out of the prison of self-interest by metanoia and then, with heart that is pure, to offer the gift of love in return for love divine.
*****
The disciples return, and are scandalised that Jeshua is talking to a woman alone, and a Samaritan at that. "What's he talking to her for?" they whisper to one another. The woman panics, forgets her water jar, and takes off for home. By the time she reaches the town square she has decided on a face-saving strategy. Tell everyone she has found a prophet; Could he be the one? As the word spreads her strategy works. They ignore her and stream out to to see this man for themselves.
Meanwhile the disciples urge Jeshua to have something to eat, and he replies with another riddle: "I've got bread you don't know about." I should think the disciples would have been offended that he might be secretly carrying a parcel of food for himself, but he quickly added: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work."
Another basic principle for life: that if we choose to do the good, putting everything into it, we will find we are reinvigorated every day, endlessly. I don't need to find examples; such people are all around. It's when we shilly-shally, half-hearted, wanting to be good but "not yet", as Augustine said, that our thirst is never quenched, our hunger never ends, leaving us feeling just too weak.
*****
There's no end to this reflecting, but that's enough to be reading now. To anyone who has persevered this far, thank you. I leave you explore further and look into some of the points I have passed over.
One final key point among John's lessons: The townsfolk say, "Now we believe because we have seen him for ourselves." Personal experience makes for real believing; just learning what is taught can do no more than raise our curiosity.
And the breaking of another taboo: Jeshua accepts the invitation to stay with these people, “and he stayed two days!” John's amazement still echoes in his words. During those two days Jeshua went into their houses, he took a place at their table, he slept under their roof! And they were not just listening to his instructions from morning till night. There was small talk and gossip, and at times bitter grumbling about Jews who would come through the town in large groups, a few toughs among them, and any man found outside by himself would, like as not, get properly roughed up. When they chose not to pay full price for food they bought, you had to keep your mouth shut or they'd trash your shop. Still today the stronger treat the weaker like scum, just for the sport of it. Is it any wonder we thirst for justice to the point of despair?
But do not despair. Do not deny your need. Say a whole-hearted YES to loving the 'good', and live each moment to the full. Loving is willing giving.