The Third Sunday of Lent
March 3, 2013
We are steadily making our way through the
desert of Lent and, happily, today’s readings bring us to a kind of oasis,
to cool refreshing waters. The reading from Exodus took us to the wondrous
waters that gushed forth from the rock at Meriba in the desert: waters that
revived the faith of some very tired and thirsty and disillusioned
Israelites. And the gospel brought us to the waters of Jacob’s well where
Jesus revealed himself to the Samaritan woman as Living Water, more abundant
and more life-giving by far than water from any well.
Both readings tell of water’s power to bring
life and to make new: water, that wonderful metaphor for the life of grace,
the life God shares with us in such abundance. Like water, grace is
free-flowing, unpredictable, uncontainable, overflowing. No wonder
Jesus in his conversation with the Samaritan woman was able so quickly to
turn talk of well water into talk of what he called “living water.”
The water of Jacob’s well, he said, refreshing though it was, would still
leave the drinker thirsty, but living water would become for the one who
drank, “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Scripture scholars assure us that, as with most
stories in John’s Gospel, there is more here than first meets the eye.
It is one of the richest passages in John’s gospel, with many layers, open
to many interpretations. It is a story about how Jesus puts people
first: ahead of laws or social conventions; a story about Jesus’
revolutionary attitude toward women – Jesus who flaunted social convention
and engaged in prolonged and public conversation with a woman, and a
Samaritan woman – a sinful Samaritan woman at that! It is also a
conversion story, and it’s a story about what true worship really is -- and
isn’t -- and it’s a story about how God loves all people without exception.
But because of the large group of people in our parish who are preparing for
baptism at Easter, and because the rest of us should be trying to wake up to
our baptism during these Lenten days, I want simply to let water tell the
story: the water of Jacob’s Well, and the Living Water that is Jesus.
Think of the water of Jacob’s well as whatever
it is you crave or yearn for, whatever it is you set your heart on and
believe will bring you happiness. There are lots of possibilities,
aren’t there? – not all terribly worthy -- such as pleasure or popularity,
power or prestige; or maybe comfort or a secure future. These, and others
like them, seem like such promising waters. Who could fault us for thirsting
for them? But there is a problem: the more we do, the thirstier we
get. They are deceptive waters: cunning whirlpools that suck us in, swirling
rapids that can sweep us along and carry us downstream.
Jesus offered the Samaritan woman a better kind
of water and he offers the same to us. In her thirst, she had been
seeking love and acceptance wherever she could find it, but time and again,
husband after husband, she ended up lonely and isolated, and still very
thirsty. And we, in our own search for love and acceptance -- restless
and often selfish -- we, too, end up lonely, isolated, unsatisfied, and
still very thirsty. Cardinal Newman captured this beautifully in one
of his sermons when he said, “God who made the heart is alone sufficient for
it.” He was echoing the great St. Augustine who, when he finally awakened to
the real thirst of his own life, found himself crying out, “You have made us
for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you!”
Augustine knew what he was talking about. He had spent years trying to
satisfy his thirst: seeking fulfillment in pursuits of the mind and
pleasures of the flesh. And whenever he would begin to awaken to what he was
truly seeking, even then he was afraid to find it. “Make me chaste,
Lord,” he would pray, “but not yet...!”
Can
you relate to that? I think we all can in one way or another. We want
to center our lives on Christ – we wouldn’t be coming here Sunday after
Sunday if we didn’t -- and our friends who are preparing for baptism: they
wouldn’t be taking this step if they didn’t want to center their lives on
Christ. All of us want to say “yes” to Jesus, but our yes to him is not
always our only yes. We hedge our bets and keep drinking from more
than one well. All too easily, we forget that Jesus said that it is the pure
of heart who will see God. And who are the pure of heart? Jesus
was not talking about physical or moral purity; he was talking about the
single-minded. That’s who the pure of heart are. The great Danish
philosopher and theologian, Soren Kirkegaard, had it exactly right when he
entitled his book, “Purity Of Heart Is To Will One Thing.” Or, we
might say today, “purity of heart is to drink from one well.”
This single-mindedness, this purity of heart,
this willing one thing and one thing only, has personal implications for
each of us, of course, but it also has powerful implications for those
entrusted with the enormous responsibility of choosing a new leader for our
Church. As they go about their task they, too, will need the encounter
– the honest, soul-searching, liberating, encounter with Jesus that the
Samaritan woman had, the encounter that can open their eyes, like hers, to
the truth, to living water, to “the gift of God” (as Jesus called it), to
the fields out there that are “ripe for the harvest.”
My friends, as we celebrate this Eucharist
we come every bit as close to Jesus as the Samaritan woman did. With her,
may we, and may our leaders, drop all defenses, face the truth, listen to
Jesus, and take him at his word. Only in this way will there be life
for us and for our Church: abundant life, and transformation, and hope
beyond our imagining, for “Whoever drinks the water I give will never be
thirsty; the water I give shall become a fountain within, springing up to
eternal life.”
Father Michael G. Ryan
