Thirsting for Love

The Third Sunday of Lent, March 15, 2020.  Gospel of St. John 4:5-42. Theme: Thirsting for Love

In today’s Gospel St. John takes us to Samaria, a place despised by the Jews as morally unclean and spiritually unworthy of God’s presence. And there we meet a Samaritan Woman who, because of her lifestyle, is considered even by her townsfolk to be unclean and unworthy.  She is an Outcast who is shunned by a people who are Outcasts. You cannot get much lower than that in the mind of 1^st century Jews who are the original hearers of this story. And that’s a theme that St. John wants us to keep in mind as we ponder this story.

We are informed that the woman is coming to Jacob’s well at noontime. This reinforces the fact that she is an Outcast. It would strike the hearers of the story as extremely odd because they all knew that the women go to wells early in the morning or late in the evening so that they can escape the intense heat of the noonday sun.  There is only one reason why the woman would go at that time: to avoid her gossiping neighbors. She did not want to encounter yet again their condemning stares nor the screaming silence of their shunning.

And why did they treat her this way? Well, St. John rounds out the picture by telling us that she was living with a man who was 5^th in a string of lovers who had replaced her original husband. He lets us in on this aspect of her life so that we can understand that she is someone who desperately seeks to be loved and accepted. She is someone who desperately needs the healing touch of Christ to pierce through the darkness and emptiness in her life.

But really, in all of this, St. John is saying to us: this woman is you and me. This woman stands for each one of us and of our deep need to encounter Jesus. For like her, we all Outcasts in one way or another, at least we often feel that way. We look for love and happiness in persons, events or materials things that fail to satisfy. And while these substitutes might quench our desire for a while they soon enough leave us still empty and wanting more. They cannot truly satisfy our innermost thirst to love and to be loved.

St. John wants us to realize that Jesus reaches out to us as he did to this woman. He knows every detail of our past and present lives just as he knew hers. And knowing this he does not avoid us but precisely because of our need, he comes to us, to sit down with us, so to speak, in a heart-to-heart conversation.  Our weakness and wounds, our sins and failings, are like shavings of iron that attract the magnet of his merciful love. If we give him our time and attention as did the Samaritan Woman, he will speak the truth to us about who we are, about what we have done with our lives and what we can become. But this is a revelation about us and our lives that is filled with hope.

By not hiding the truth about where she had gone wrong in her life, Christ led her from her physical need to her spiritual need for the Living Water of God’s love, the Living Water of the Holy Spirit. And like her we, too, must face the truth about ourselves in the presence of Jesus. Like her, we must ignore the false voices around us and those inside of us, that keep telling us we are outcasts, that we are unworthy of love. Like the Samaritan Woman we need to spend time with Jesus. Asking him questions. Listening to his word. This is what we Christians call “prayer”. 

Like this woman, we can also meet the One who alone is able to satisfy our deepest longing and desire for acceptance and love. She shows us that we don’t need to have a perfect understanding of who Jesus is in order to receive his grace and blessings. Just look at how she progressed in her knowledge of him. She starts off thinking he’s just a normal Jewish man and so she is surprised that he would speak with her, a woman and a Samaritan. Then she realizes that perhaps he is a learned rabbi and so respectfully calls him, “Sir”. Finally, she sees more and considers him a prophet until she arrives at the truth: that he is the Messiah sent by God!

In the same way, each one of us may be at very different places when it comes to our relationship with Christ. We may not all be on the same page in our understanding of who Jesus is and what he can do for us. But this doesn’t matter to him. What he looks at is the sincerity of our hearts, our reaching out for mercy and hope, so that the empty jars and deep wells of our lives can be filled with the Living Water of unconditional love and eternal life that bubbles up and never runs dry. He is more than willing and able to give us this Living Water freely if we but ask for it and trust in him as the Christ, that is, as the One sent by God to heal us of sin and restore us to God’s grace.

Through sincere prayer from the heart we can truly have an encounter with Christ today.  Through an honest and humble confession of our sins we can experience the spiritual freedom needed to live new lives.  Through the devout reception of the Lord Jesus really present in Holy Communion, we can personally meet and embrace Jesus as Savior. Then we, too, like the Samaritan Woman will find ourselves so filled with the joy and grace of the Holy Spirit that we will want to tell others about this Christ whom we have met and who has made all the difference in the world to our lives!