March 19, 2017

3rd Sunday of Lent A Exodus 17: 3-7; Romans 5: 1-2, 5-8; John 4: 5-42 Do I get in my own way trying to get closer to the Lord? In trying to realize the Lord’s closeness, do I come with my own set prejudices of who I feel God is and how He will respond to me? Do I sometimes ‘program God’ in that ‘this is the way that He does things’ and thus ‘this is the way I expect to Him to respond to me?’ Do I ‘know’ how God will present Himself to me? Am I open to any and all the ways He shows Himself? Or am I set in my ways because my ways are right? God is God. I am not God. Does God cross this chasm? Yes, He leads us to the truth of God. Is it hard for me to sort this out? Yes, so very often I am so set in my ways, imagining that I am right, that I can’t hear the gentle, loving, instructing and caring voice of God leading me. To understand today’s very lengthy passage in John’s Gospel, it is good for us to set the scene. In the last chapter, Nicodemus a Pharisee and most likely a member of the Jewish council, the Sanhedrin, came to Jesus ‘at night’ to try to understand His teaching. Jesus tells him, “What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit. You must be born from above.” Nicodemus doesn’t understand this. Jesus is talking about the spiritual life. None of the Pharisees, scribes chief priests, Sadducees or elders understood this. They were experts in the Mosaic Law and the Scriptures. They fasted twice a week, prayed publicly and wore special religious garb to show others they were teachers of Israel. Yet they missed the whole point. The Spirit is a spirit of love, mercy, justice, peace, forgiveness and much more. Nicodemus couldn’t understand this; he was an expert on the law but love is a different reality. We need to plumb the depths of love as Jesus taught. The Spirit constantly helps us in this. Am I listening? Jesus says, “If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, who will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” Jesus gives specific guidelines for living His life. He commands us to love one another, show compassion, feed the hungry, create justice for the poor, forgive one another, love our enemies and make peace with one another. Jesus summarizes this in the Sermon on the Mount with the Golden Rule: “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets.” The next section shows Jesus baptizing and people were coming to Him. But a dispute arose between John the Baptist’s disciples who seemingly were jealous as to why Jesus was taking over the baptism ministry. They didn’t understand. So Jesus left and returned to Galilee going through Samaria. What is the import here? Then we come to today’s passage of the Samaritan woman which is one of the longest most Spirit-filled conversations in the gospels. The Samaritans were the hated remnant of the ancient northern kingdom and were despised as ‘hybrid Jews’ and had excluded themselves from Jewish orthodoxy. They were regarded as worse than the Gentiles. Now a Jewish man wasn’t to greet any woman in the street, even his wife or daughter. In his morning prayer, a Jewish man blessed God ‘who hath not made me a gentile, a slave, or a woman.’ AND Jesus went against all that. He regularly associated himself with women. Today Jesus is facing a woman with a bad reputation. Because of the heat of the day, women usually came for water in the coolness at dawn or in the evening. But to avoid encounters, this Samaritan woman came at noon, certainly showing that she wanted to be avoided. She was in need, Jesus responded. She was afraid, Jesus didn’t ask her to do anything making her look inferior but asked if she could do Him a favor by giving Him a drink of water on this hot day. That would make her feel good by doing something special for someone as favors do for each of us. And Jesus taught her about His grace. She was asking in her need where she could find God. He answered that she didn’t have to go anywhere special to find God: He’s everywhere and with each person all the time. She went and told everyone that she had found a person who was perhaps the Messiah. This scorned, lonely, frustrated woman had found that God cares for her just the way she was. Jesus just doesn’t leave it like this, He comes and enables her to feel that she is important and valued. God bypasses all the prejudicial rules and regulations to let each person know that He is with them. Do I allow God to be God to me? Sr. Verna Holyhead in Building on Rock has some special questions for us. “The woman announces to her Samaritan village what she experienced with Jesus, but until they have experienced Him personally they cannot believe. Only then can He be named ‘Savior of the world.” This is the faith that calls us to a scrutiny of what quenches our deepest ‘thirsts’, what nourishes our spirits as well as our bodies. • Do pleasure, power, exclusiveness satisfy us? With what ‘enemy’ are we unwilling to sit and talk, to eat and drink? • How tolerant are we of those who belong to other religions or cultural traditions? • Do we believe in the value of creative conversion, even when exhausted, even with our own young people who may have questions—sometimes abrasive, often welling up from deep longings within them? • Can we move out of our comfort zones, leave our old ‘water jars’ behind and welcome the gifts of God that are being offered to us, especially in this privileged season of Lent? I continue my reflections: • Have I ever encountered Jesus and only later realized it? What brought me to recognize His presence? • What suffering is part of my life? What helps me deal with it? Do I ever bring it to God? • What would I ask the Lord if we were to meet face to face this week? • Have I ever had an encounter with the Lord where I was ‘burned with His love?’ • Do you think that Jesus knows everything there is to know about you? Do you sometimes act as if your life is secret from Him? • Are you ever afraid that if others knew you as well as you know yourself that they might not like you? • Lent is about our encountering the Lord’s constant presence and love. How real is God for you? Are you prepared to turn your life completely over to God? Why or why not? This woman was touched by love. Jewish law said that she should be shunned. Jesus asked Nicodemus, • “You are the teacher of Israel and you do not understand this?” • We are Christians who listen and worship yet do we understand what Jesus meant by loving, forgiving, and witnessing? Sacred Space 2017 says: “Jesus begins with His own physical thirst and ends up talking about the woman’s soul thirst. What can I learn from this conversation about sharing the good news? In speaking with a woman to whom he was not related, and to a Samaritan, who was considered apostate by the Jewish community, Jesus crossed two cultural boundaries. What boundaries do I face in a normal day?