Third Sunday of Lent
As we approach the celebration of Christ's life-giving Resurrection and of our sharing in that life through Baptism, the Scripture readings highlight the theme of water and life. In a dry climate like that of Palestine, water is treasured; its presence or absence is, quite literally, a matter of life or death.
Today's story from Exodus illustrates that theme. Trudging through an inhospitable desert, the people are crazed with thirst, fearful for their lives. They beg Moses to provide water for them and threaten him with violence if he does not do so. Where is the poor man to get water in this parched land? Only God can do that, and to him Moses turns.
God hears his plea and brings forth water from the rock. It is a bitter-sweet experience; sweet because it brings relief, bitter because the people lack trust. The bitterness is memorialized in the names they give the place: Massah (quarreling) and Meribah (testing). The testing, the questioning of God's care for his people, is expressed in the challenging question: "Is the Lord in our midst or not?" For the author, it is a rhetorical question, the answer to which is a resounding "Yes, indeed!"
Water figures prominently in the Gospel story, too, with its deep well and Jesus's teaching on "living (life-giving) water," which only he can supply. The well is the source of life for the woman, but her trip to draw from it brings her into vital contact with him who is the source of life itself.
This despised Jew gets a curt rebuff when he asks for a drink, but instead of answering her with like rudeness, he offers her "living water." He meets her persistent challenge by explaining what he means by this water. It is a source of unfailing satisfaction, "a fountain...leaping up to provide eternal life," the life of the Spirit. Still uncomprehending, the woman thinks she is being offered natural water and envisions not having to make her tedious trips to the well.
The drama is heightened by Jesus 's request to meet her husband, which leads to the embarrassing disclosure that she has been oft-married and is now living with a man who is not her husband. Jesus's startling insight makes her acknowledge his prophetic, discerning knowledge.
Uneasy with the way the conversation is going, she abruptly changes the subject by introducing a theological controversy about the authentic place of worship: the Samaritan Mount Gerizim or the Jewish Jerusalem. Jesus goes to the heart of the question and insists that the place is irrelevant; what counts is worship in spirit and truth, in the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit. Impressed, the woman comes eventually to acknowledge him as Messiah, for the Samaritans a Moses-figure, a revealer.
When the disciples return from their shopping trip, Jesus uses their consternation to point out the readiness of the Samaritans for conversion. And indeed, on the strength of the woman's witness to Jesus, and, even more, on their own experience of him, the villagers acclaim him as "the Savior of the world!"
God's loving initiative is revealed in Jesus 's patient love for the Samaritan woman. In the reading from the Romans, Paul exults in this almost incredible love which has "justified," reconciled us to God. It is the basis for our indomitable hope: God's love for us manifested by his gift of the Spirit, which he has "poured into our hearts."
How do we know we are so loved? "It is precisely in this that God proves his love for us: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!”