The Third Sunday of Lent
Year A

A Wellspring of Water

Readings: Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42 

Although the route through Samaria was the quickest way to Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples usually took the longer trip down through Jericho.  One day however something made them take the short cut.  It was a dusty, dry route, but it passed through a village where there was a well with the purest, freshest water.  Jacob had dug the well so that he and his family could survive in this dry region with their flocks.  Still centuries later it produced an abundant supply of fresh water. 

A well in a desert country is a good meeting place.  It was not only those who were thirsting for water who ended up at Jacob’s well.  Many a lonely soul thirsting for a chat also went there. 

But Jesus wanted water.  After the long walk his mouth was dry.  How frustrating it was to see the cool water in the well below, and be unable to get any.  The heat of the day was an unlikely time for anyone to come along.  But He waited. 

Finally a woman came.  Jesus watched as she lowered the bucket into the well and brought it up overflowing with pure, clear, sparkling water. 

“Please, give me a drink!” he requested.  She found it a surprising request even given the heat of the day, for a Jew will have nothing to do with a Samaritan.  They have not gotten along over the centuries, not since the return from the Babylonian captivity.  The Jews don’t consider the Samaritans to be Jewish at all.  After all they intermarried with their Assyrian captors.  They even built a rival temple on Mount Gerazim and refused to recognize the temple at Jerusalem.  It was a bitter contention between them. 

But the woman could see that he was thirsty.  So she handed the bucket to Jesus who drank gratefully.  When he finally raised his head she said, “You were thirsty!”

“Yes, I was, but now thanks to you I’m fine,” he said.  “But you are thirsty too!”

“That’s why I came to the well for water,” she replied. 

“I’m not talking about that kind of thirst,” Jesus said.  “I’m talking about another kind of thirst.” 

“I don’t understand,” she said. 

“I think you do.”

She began to reflect on her life.  On the emptiness, on the unhappiness that had been with her all her life.  Deep inside her, she felt an ache, a pain, a longing, a sense that there was more to life than she was getting out of it.  So much more.   She remembered the hurt, the abandonment she had felt when her first husband had left her.  That had been followed by a search for another who would look after her.  But he too abandoned her after a short time.  It was not easy to be dependent on a husband.  And yet how else could a woman and her children live! And so she had had seven husbands. 

“Yes, I am thirsty,” she said.  “And it just seems to get worse and worse.”

“What you are experiencing is an inner thirst, a thirst of the heart and the spirit.  You’re not the only one to feel that way.  Everyone experiences this thirst.”

“Everyone?”

“Yes, everyone!”

“I thought there must be something wrong with me.  Is there a way to satisfy my thirst?” She asked him. 

“Only with the kind of water God gives,” Jesus answered her. 

“What must I do to earn this water?”

“Nothing!  It is a free gift of God.  God gives it to those who ask.  I can give it to you.” 

“Oh please.  Give me some water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come to the well again,” she said eagerly. 

“You still don’t understand, do you?” Jesus said to her.  “You’re talking about ordinary water.  It can’t even begin to quench the kind of thirst you’re experiencing.  But if you drink the water that God gives, it will be like an eternal spring within you.  You will never be spiritually thirsty again.”

“Please give me that kind of water.” 

“You already have it.”

“But I don’t understand.  I’m still thirsty.”

“The spring is there.  It is just out of your reach.  Like the well water was for me until you came along with your bucket and gave me some.”

They talked and talked.  And when she finally started back to the village, she realized that she felt differently about herself.  That terrible gnawing ache was lifted from inside of her.  It had been replaced by a wonderful feeling, the feeling that something new and mysterious was happening.  It was like something awakening inside of her, like a bubbling up of a spring, a spring of new life and new beginning.  She could hardly wait to share her good news with the others in the village. 

It is our human experience to thirst – for hope, for peace, for meaning in our lives.  Marvellous things happen when people begin to awaken to the gifts that God has placed within them.  They receive the Spirit in word, and in sacrament, and then they begin to live it out in their lives.  It bubbles out of them as care and concern for others. 

Water sustains and nourishes life.  It refreshes and restores.  It is no mistake that it is to the Christian the symbol of our baptism, of our new life in Christ.  In baptism we are immersed in water as a sign of death, the death of the old person.  We rise up from the water of baptism to new life.  Our faith deepens as we experience Christ present in the community, in the word, proclaimed and lived, and in the sacraments of the church.  That living water is within each of us.  That grace of God is given in our Baptism and renewed through the life-giving Spirit of God.