Today’s question is for those of you who watch TV. My question is this: How many of you watch Lost on TV? (Good … apparently a few of you have TV tastes like mine.) And secondly, how many of you understand all of the many plot lines and time shifts and have guessed how everything is going to come together in the end? It seems to me today’s Gospel Reading is much like an episode of Lost. There’s a great deal of complexity in the story.
In today’s gospel, events are happening on many different levels. The story of the woman at the well appears to have both symbolic and theological implications. It also has a central theme relevant not only to the early Christians who first heard and responded to this story but a theme which is relevant to us, today, as we reflect on what we’ve heard.
Today’s gospel story tells us about a woman’s personal encounter with Jesus the Christ and how, following such an interaction, the woman felt she must spread the news to others so they, too, might encounter him directly. The implication is that we, also, must meet Christ in a personal interaction and must spread the word of this encounter so others will want to meet him as well. Having said this, perhaps I should now just sit down, rather than elaborate on this conclusion. After all, what is really left to say other then: we need to meet Christ and to tell others of our meeting so they, too, can meet him. This is, indeed, the center of what it means to be a Christian.
However, there is something else we need to realize about our meeting with him. Much of the time we believe we must go in search of Jesus in order to encounter him. However, we should also realize there are times when we do not need to search for him. Rather, he seeks us. It is at such times we must be open to him.
Remember: the Samaritan woman did not go to the well to meet Jesus. She went there to draw water. Water that would quench her thirst. She went there at high noon, when she knew others from the town would not be there, since everyone else would usually appear at the well early in the morning, before the heat of the day had arrived. Apparently, she was an outsider, one with five consecutive husbands, one who was looked down upon by the community.
Yet, when she arrived at the well, she found someone waiting for her. Jesus was there, alone. He met her while she was doing her routine, daily tasks of living. He met her when she, too, was alone, when she seemed to be an outcast, separated from the other members of her community. He met her with her own, unspoken needs and he initiated a dialog, a conversation, with her, even though she did not expect one. In fact, she thought it would be extremely unlikely for a Jewish man to address a Samaritan woman.
However, she was open to the dialogue. She asked her own questions. She listened to what he had to say and was amazed by what he revealed to her about herself. And in the process, she acknowledged he was the Messiah, the one who came to save her and her people. Her people who viewed her as an outcast. Her people whom she now felt compelled to tell of her meeting with him, there at the well. And because of her newly found life, the other Samaritans, who may have been skeptical of this woman with her many husbands, (these Samaritans) went to encounter Jesus and to begin their own new lives of belief in him.
Perhaps, the same encounter can happen for us. Perhaps this season of Lent offers each of us an opportunity to allow Jesus the Christ to meet with us as we go about our daily routines in silent living, in silent longing, in searching for water to quench our thirst. Could this be the time for each of us to be open to him as he finds us sitting at a quiet wellspring in our life?
Is this the time for us to meet him in daily prayer, in a daily personal encounter where we are alone with him? It is then that we can listen to him tell us who we really are and not who the world thinks we are? Is this the time for us to meet him in a new reconciliation, individually or sacramentally? It is then that we can recognize we are no longer outcasts, separated from others, from God, and from ourselves. Is this the time for us to meet him more frequently in a Eucharistic celebration? It is then that, partaking of his body and blood, we can become messengers who draw others to his presence.
At the beginning of our lives as Christians, we were bathed in the living waters of baptism and first encountered our Trinitarian God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each year at the outset of this penitential season of Lent, we are reminded we are human, we are capable of being sinners and equally able of being redeemed.
Here as we approach the middle of this Lenten Season, here as we approach the high noon of our forty days, sitting alone by a well in the desert, and here as we await the Vigil of Easter with its renewed waters of life, it is here and now that we can begin our encounter with the one who confirms the truth of whom we really are and the reality of whom we can become. And rising from this encounter, we can rush to tell others of the marvelous news: here is the Messiah.
Yes, unlike the TV adventures of Lost where the concluding scenes may result in still unanswered questions, we can respond as did those Samaritans some two thousand years ago. We, too, can say: “… we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”
Third Sunday of Lent; March 15, 2009
Ex17:3-7; Rom 5:1-2, 5-8; Jn 4:5-42