Third Sunday of Lent

White-throated Sparrow

Oh, that today you would hear his voice:
“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works.”

The story of Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman evokes the ancient tradition begun by Hosea. The woman is the beloved people; the man is God. It is a story of tender mercy, outrageous betrayal, jealous wrath, and gracious reconciliation. Hosea, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the psalmists, and the author of the Song of Songs develop the theme in the Old Testament; Saint Paul and Saint John of Patmos celebrate it in the New. The author of Saint John’s Gospel has a special genius for investing what appears to be an ordinary event, a chance meeting where women often gather, with extraordinary depth. No sooner do we hear:

Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well.
It was about noon.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water…

than we should recall Moses’ meeting his future wife Zipporah at a well (Exodus 2: 15-22), and Jacob’s bold greeting of Rachel (Genesis 29: 9-12). This is no chance encounter; it is the fulfillment of long expectation.

But first, let’s flirt:

“Woman, give me a drink!”

“Since when do Jewish men ask Samaritan women for water?”
“I can give you living water!”

“You have no bucket! What makes you so special?”

“I can give you such water that you’ll never thirst again!”

“Then give me some!”

“Go call your husband.”

“I have no husband.”

Yeah, right. It’s getting downright steamy here. Better back off a bit.

“You’ve had five husbands, not counting your latest lover.”

“Yipes, the man’s a prophet. Alright, Buster, you want to quarrel? Let’s quarrel: you people think you’re so special in Jerusalem, but we have kept the faith on this holy mountain!”

“The hour is coming when we will worship together in the Spirit.”

“I know that hour will come. We Samaritans also hope for the Messiah!”

“I am he.”

Saint John says, “at that moment” the disciples arrived with food. But how long did that consummate moment last? It is an epiphany, a moment of divine revelation when Jesus says what he has said to no other person. He is in fact her seventh man, her long awaited husband.  

You have to notice she leaves her bucket at the well and Jesus is no longer hungry. Their conversation has meandered from flirtation to quarrel to romance and ecstatic union. Both have been deeply satisfied by their conversation.

They have found within themselves that water, of which he later speaks:

"Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: 'Rivers of living water will flow from within him.' (John 7: 37-38)

Rivers flow from the Samaritan woman as she becomes his first missionary. She runs back to the village to tell her people about Jesus and they rush up the hill to meet him.

Lent invites us to remember the intense longing we feel for the Messiah. The problems in Libya and the mid-east, the ongoing tragedy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the tsunami of woes that has swept over Japan are not going to be solved by human ingenuity. Rather, we must be swept up and into the flow of living water which Jesus provides. We thirst for the Seventh Man. 


I've written a poem in heroic couplets about the Woman at the Well. You might enjoy it: Mysterium tremendum et fascinans