Weekly Reflections

Gospel Reflection for the 3rd Sunday of Lent – March 12th
By Fr Brian Maher OMI

Gospel Reflection Sunday March 12th 2023, Third Sunday of Lent

If you read the longer version of this today’s Gospel, you are liable to get lost in a debate about marriage and divorce or a longer reflection on the correct place to worship God. Even the shorter version contains some of this reflection. Of the four Gospels, the Gospel of John could be described as the ‘reflective Gospel’. It was the last Gospel written and the writers had the benefit of almost one hundred years of reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ life to help them.

All of this reflection is, without doubt, interesting and educational and well worthy of thought and study. But if, like me, you search the Gospels hoping to meet the man who walked the trails and roads of Israel two thousand years ago, too much reflection can rather cloud our efforts. Today’s Gospel is a case in point.

By stripping away much of the reflection, we catch a tiny glimpse of an aspect of Jesus’ life which we easily miss but which must have been what endeared him to so many people.

The ministry of John the Baptist was based around the river Jordan, and his message was well branded to attract those who were searching for a sign of the coming Messiah, as well as the simply curious. Everything about John was ‘different’ – his dress, clothes, lifestyle – and with the Jordan as his stage he produced a daily drama where lines of people walked into the water to be baptised and publicly proclaim their repentance.

Jesus, on the other hand, had no such props or drama. He travelled, taking his message to small towns and villages, relying on only his personality and personal interaction to attract people. It must have been draining for him to maintain the level of concentration necessary to constantly be with people.

Perhaps this is why we meet him at the start of today’s Gospel so tired he cannot even join the disciples in going to buy food. It is almost noon and very hot so he sits by the public well in the central square of the village, possibly waiting for someone to come so he can ask for a drink.

The first person to show up is a Samaritan woman. As a Samaritan (despised by Jews as betrayers of the Jerusalem Temple), and also as a woman, she does not expect Jesus to talk to her. I can’t avoid the impression that she probably wasn’t overly anxious to talk to him either.

“Give me a drink.” he asks. Her answer is tinged with amused sarcasm. “Wow!…” she says, “… you must be very thirsty indeed if you, a Jew, stoop low enough to ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink.”

Jesus, of course, would have noticed the sarcasm, and he could have become angry or just shrugged and left her alone, but no, her reply touches his own sense of humour and he decided to tease her a bit. He is alone at the well, nothing to do, waiting for the disciples to return with food, so why not entertain himself with some light-hearted teasing while he’s waiting!

What follows can only be described as ‘banter’ – playful and light-hearted teasing between two people. He baits her with talk of ‘living water’; she hits back telling him that without a bucket he won’t be able to get any water!

As the conversation continues the woman begins to spot something special in Jesus. She is impressed by his knowledge and understanding of the Law – she calls him a prophet – but, more than that, he shows an openness to Samaritan beliefs, “The time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain or in Jerusalem.”

The conversation is just becoming serious between them when the disciples return and are amazed to find him talking to “a woman”! They are clearly aware of Jesus’ willingness to chat with all kinds of unwelcome people, so they do not ask him, “What do you want from her.”

The woman, needless to say, picked-up the animosity aimed at her by the disciples, and quickly withdrew to tell others of her encounter with this man who had amazed and thrilled her.

There are so many things I love in this story.

We meet Jesus as a man with a sense of humour and a quick wit, willing to banter with and gently tease a woman who is well capable of giving as much as she gets.

This is not a side of Jesus we glimpse often in the Gospels, yet he could not have been as popular as he was unless people felt comfortable and easy with him. A smile, a joking comment, not being overly serious, are all essential parts of an attractive personality.

What the woman also noticed in Jesus was a man who was open and accepting. While confident about his own beliefs, he did not scorn or make fun of her beliefs. He was prepared to chat with her, even if she was ‘the enemy’, and he treated her with respect and dignity.

One more thing worthy of note is this: This is a story with no miracle – yet a miracle happens! From two people meeting at a well who should despise each other to the entire village begging Jesus to stay on with them, so he can teach them.!

How can something like this happen when on the surface, Jesus does nothing that you or I couldn’t do? A sense of humour, openness, trust, accepting difference, respect, and dignity. Doesn’t everyone have these things? They are qualities open to all of us and claimed by most of us, yet our world is broken by prejudice, narrow-mindedness, and a fear which makes us self-centred, and inward looking.

Did Jesus know that a tired interaction with a woman at a well would, not only change her life, but the lives of many in the village? I would think not… yet it did.

It just shows what a sense of humour and a smile can achieve!

If you are still looking for something to do for Lent – try smiling at least fifty times each day between now and Easter and see how many miracles can happen.

Many thanks,

Brian.

If you have any comments, questions or thoughts on this scripture reflection, please feel welcome to email me at b.maher@oblates.ie

Gospel	John 4:5-42 ©

A spring of water welling up to eternal life

Jesus came to the Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well is there and Jesus, tired by the journey, sat straight down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘What? You are a Jew and you ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink?’ – Jews, in fact, do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus replied:

‘If you only knew what God is offering

and who it is that is saying to you:

Give me a drink, you would have been the one to ask,

and he would have given you living water.’

‘You have no bucket, sir,’ she answered ‘and the well is deep: how could you get this living water? Are you a greater man than our father Jacob who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his sons and his cattle?’ Jesus replied:

‘Whoever drinks this water

will get thirsty again;

but anyone who drinks the water that I shall give

will never be thirsty again:

the water that I shall give

will turn into a spring inside him,

welling up to eternal life.’

‘Sir,’ said the woman ‘give me some of that water, so that I may never get thirsty and never have to come here again to draw water.’ ‘Go and call your husband’ said Jesus to her ‘and come back here.’ The woman answered, ‘I have no husband.’ He said to her, ‘You are right to say, “I have no husband”; for although you have had five, the one you have now is not your husband. You spoke the truth there.’ ‘I see you are a prophet, sir’ said the woman. ‘Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, while you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.’ Jesus said:

‘Believe me, woman,

the hour is coming

when you will worship the Father

neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

You worship what you do not know;

we worship what we do know:

for salvation comes from the Jews.

But the hour will come

– in fact it is here already –

when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth:

that is the kind of worshipper the Father wants.

God is spirit,

and those who worship

must worship in spirit and truth.’

The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah – that is, Christ – is coming; and when he comes he will tell us everything.’ ‘I who am speaking to you,’ said Jesus ‘I am he.’

At this point his disciples returned, and were surprised to find him speaking to a woman, though none of them asked, ‘What do you want from her?’ or, ‘Why are you talking to her?’ The woman put down her water jar and hurried back to the town to tell the people. ‘Come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did; I wonder if he is the Christ?’ This brought people out of the town and they started walking towards him.

Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, do have something to eat; but he said, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples asked one another, ‘Has someone been bringing him food?’ But Jesus said:

‘My food is to do the will of the one who sent me,

and to complete his work.

Have you not got a saying:

Four months and then the harvest?

Well, I tell you:

Look around you, look at the fields;

already they are white, ready for harvest!

Already the reaper is being paid his wages,

already he is bringing in the grain for eternal life,

and thus sower and reaper rejoice together.

For here the proverb holds good:

one sows, another reaps;

I sent you to reap a harvest you had not worked for.

Others worked for it;

and you have come into the rewards of their trouble.’

Many Samaritans of that town had believed in him on the strength of the woman’s testimony when she said, ‘He told me all I have ever done’, so, when the Samaritans came up to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed for two days, and when he spoke to them many more came to believe; and they said to the woman, ‘Now we no longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard him ourselves and we know that he really is the saviour of the world.’

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Weekly Reflections

Gospel Reflection for the 3rd Sunday of Lent – March 12th
By Fr Brian Maher OMI

A spring of water welling up to eternal life

Prayer Intentions