Lent 3(A) – The root of our longings (John 4: 5-42)

During this Lent, we hear several stories from John’s Gospel about Jesus meeting with people. Of course, there are plenty of stories in the Gospel about Jesus meeting people, but John’s stories are different because these people, although not always named, are very distinctive and they engage in long conversations with Jesus. Actually you may have thought that the passage we have just heard was long, and rightly so, we have heard today the longest conversation Jesus has throughout the whole Gospel. And it’s kind of cool I think to realize that the longest conversation Jesus’s ever had wasn’t with a theologian, a teacher or a rabbi like Nicodemus, and you’ve heard this story last week, rather the longest conversation Jesus’s ever had is with such an unexpected person. Think about it: She’s a simple woman, poor enough to have to go get water by herself in the middle of the day, a woman who was not in her prime, having been married (and divorced) five times, she was probably middle age which, at the time, meant old, a woman who’s obviously not a saint, quite disillusioned, a skeptic, and to top it all off, she was a foreigner.

Now actually, it’s quite inexact to say that she was a foreigner, rather in this case Jesus was the foreigner, since he was traveling in the land of Samaria. And one thing John wants to make sure we get is that the Samaritans were the enemies of the Jews (He says: “Jews do not share anything in common with the Samaritans”). You may wonder why the Samaritans were enemies of the Jews, well in fact they were enemies due to religious differences. North Israel had been invaded by pagan nations in the 8^th century BC, and since then, the Judeans (from the South, the Jews) considered that the Northern people had mixed the purity of their religion with paganism. For example, and the woman talks about that with Jesus, they didn’t worship in the Temple in Jerusalem, but had their own Temple on the mountain. It is interesting to learn that the Jews considered that the Samaritans had worshiped five idols (2 Kings 17:30–31), “Baals” which means “gods” but also “lords” and “husbands”, so the woman with her five marriages is like an embodiment of the wanderings of her people. Some have even observed that “the one she is living now who isn’t her husband” could have been a reference to the God of Israel. The Samaritans worshiped YHWH like the Jews, but they weren’t “married” because they didn’t observe the covenant in the same way the Jews did.

But enough about that, my point, rather John’s point, is that Jesus engages in conversation not only with people who are radically different from him, but even dangerously different, considered unfaithful, seen as the enemy. And would it be only for that, there is already so much for us to learn in the example Jesus sets for us and his disciples (It’s in fact funny that Jesus starts this conversation when the disciples are away, because they would probably not have approved). Jesus, instead of avoiding people who don’t practice his religion, seeks them out and talks with them. He takes the first step, asking for a small favor, and gets to know the woman, rather than lecturing her. He does not assume the Samaritans are bad people because they have different beliefs. And I really like that because we often make this equation, right? And people at the time often made the equation: You have different beliefs so you must be a bad person. But Jesus does not judge the woman for her beliefs and he does not even judge her for her lifestyle. He does not feel compelled to avoid her because of what people probably think of her that could reflect badly on him (What is he doing, alone, with this woman who lives in sin?). And it’s true that sometimes we think we are more faithful to our religion if we stay away from other faith, but Jesus does not feel threatened by other people’s beliefs, rather he comes closer. In the meantime, and it’s important we notice that, Jesus does not go to the other extreme, as we also often do in our days, when we claim that all beliefs or all religions are equal. Jesus says plainly that the Samaritans “worship what they do not know” while the Jews “worship what [they] know” and he says “salvation comes from the Jews” because the Messiah is a Jew. So we see that for Jesus, the supposed “unfaithfulness” of the Samaritans is more like a lack of knowledge, and Jesus also acknowledges the limits of his own religion. He says that what will matter in the end is to worship “in spirit and truth”. Now there are a lot of interpretations of what this might mean, but I think we come pretty close if we translate that Jesus invites us to worship in the love of God and the love of neighbor. That would mean that the true idolatry, the real unfaithfulness would be to worship a God who isn’t a God of love, the error would be to worship a God who would not lead us to respect, honor and serve our neighbors, even those we consider our enemies.

So that’s already something to think about I guess, especially in our days when we see people using their religion and our religion to fuel their hate or rejection of others. Let’s leave it at that for today.

Now there is another part of the story we have to consider, because that’s always the case in John’s Gospel, beyond the strictly religious questions, there is always a strong spiritual message and I would like us to unpack that a little bit. As we’ve noticed, the woman embodies her people and yet, more deeply for John, the woman could also be each one of us and that’s what we need to consider now. I’ve started this by telling you that John gives much importance to where the story happens, in Samaria, yet another thing that would have been very obvious to first century readers is that the story takes place at a well. Why is it significant? Because fetching water was a woman’s job, especially a young woman’s job and so that’s where a lot of eligible men could meet their bride to be. In the Scriptures, Moses encountered his wife Zipporah at the well, Abraham’s servant found Rebekah for Isaac at a well, and the well is of course where Jacob, who is mentioned in our passage, met his wife Rachel. Today though the bride is a strange bride, she’s already had five husbands, and counting. But it’s interesting to notice that there is no moral judgment upon her, whether by the narrator or even by Jesus. We may want to remember that at the time women couldn’t initiate divorce, so it’s more likely that she had been rejected. Who knows. Yet what really matters in the story is this woman’s loneliness, her unfulfillment, her longing that has never been quenched and that is made obvious in her thirst. She comes to get some water at noon says John, when the sun is at his peak, and she has to keep coming every day because every day the water runs out and she’s tired. She’s an image of the soul searching for what she never finds.

In this, of course, she may reminds us of ourselves. We talked about that two weeks ago, if you remember, we talked about our quest for power, pleasure or control, that leaves us exhausted and empty. And as we noticed that, we also said than rather than frustrate us, God wants to take this weight off our shoulders, the weight of keeping running after idols, false promises, and not only the bad, but also the good that still will never be enough for us. You may know this famous quote from St Augustine when he says to Christ: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you”. Well, this is really what the story is about, right? This woman, she’s never found the love, the acceptance and the safety she needed. She is a wandering soul who still somewhat understands that only the Messiah will fill this emptiness, she says he is the one who understands all things and explains all things. John makes a clear distinction between the still water, that she needs to come back for in her thirst, those earthly things that never fill us, and the living water Jesus offers that is like a spring on the inside, leading towards eternal life. What Jesus offers is a desire that stops wandering from one thing to another but rather elevates us towards who we are meant to be and whom we are meant for, God – who is often identified in the Jewish Scriptures as the real husband, the husband of the soul.

So indeed this is very spiritual. What does it means for us today, especially in this time of Lent? I have three quick points to conclude:

1 – At the root of our quests is always a desire to be loved and accepted. Our time in the wilderness, in Lent, is not meant to punish ourselves, or even to deprive ourselves of “all the bad things”, rather it’s an invitation to drink from God’s well. If we go through Lent turning away from small pleasures but don’t use this discipline to spend intentional time in prayer or in activities that bring us close to God then we miss what it is all about. We don’t have so much to renounce the things we like, we are invited to reorient all our being towards God and to let God fill us.

2 – We often engage in prayer by asking for ourselves the minimum, the bare minimum to survive when we actually are invited to ask for the maximum, the fullness of life. Now it’s not about asking for wealth and fame of course, and not even maybe about miraculous healing or a terrific ministry, we should ask to come closer to God. Jesus wants to give us more than we will ever dare to ask, not the earthly, still water, but the eternal, springing water. In John’s the springing water in the one that is poured from Jesus’s heart at the time of his death, it represents God’s love for us, this love at the root of all our longings.

3 – It’s also an invitation to deepen our faith, like the woman, by asking questions and daring asking questions, and then sharing our faith, even if we’re still in the process of learning and figuring things out (“He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”). It’s not about teaching everything about our beliefs, but sharing our experience of encountering Jesus, but we’ll talk more about it next week.