Good Shepherd Catholic Parish

Third Sunday of Lent (Year A)

          Peace be with you and welcome to our celebration of the Mass for the Third Sunday of Lent.  I hope your Lenten journeys are going well so far.  After all, Easter is only four weeks away, and it finally feels like winter is almost over, with wild temperature swings between the mid 70’s and low 30’s in the same week, it feels like spring in Northern Alabama.  It could be worse I guess; I could be standing up here giving this homily in International Falls, MN right now.

          So, what about these three readings we just heard today?  You know, this is one of those Sundays where it is hard to give a homily because all three readings are so full of great spiritual potential.  It’s a little difficult to narrow things down.  Certainly, the reading from Exodus with God giving those whining Israelites water from the rock is a story with a message for us all.  And Paul’s Letter to the Romans with its wonderfully hopeful phrase; “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”  This truly is one of those standout verses in the Bible every single Christian should embrace with gratitude.  The Church tells homilists; however, when we’re met with this dilemma of too much to talk about, we should always focus on the Gospel reading first. 

          This Gospel we just heard from Saint John the evangelist is very special indeed.  The Church says this specific Gospel reading and the two we’ll hear on the 4^th and 5^th Sundays of Lent, should always be read whenever our community has adults walking the path for inclusion into our Catholic family of Faith.  These three Gospels are read during their final phase of Purification and Enlightenment before the Easter Vigil Mass, when they’ll come into full communion with the Church.  For them, these three Sundays are referred to as the Scrutinies and one of the great graces of our Church of course is, all of us are invited to walk with the elect on their beautiful spiritual journeys. 

          So why would this story of the Samaritan woman at the well be the Gospel reading selected for their first Scrutiny Sunday?  Simply stated the rite tells us; “Their spirit is filled with Christ the Redeemer, who is the living water” and this reading absolutely does portray Jesus as the “living water.”  There is much more to this Gospel reading than this, however.  John gives us a ton of Good News to ponder here in this story.

          Hopefully, we all remember the Samaritans were despised by the Jews, but Jesus’ encounter is even more unusual because it is with a woman and the time of day it takes place.  The Gospel says it was about noon and Scripture Scholars tell us this probably means, for some reason, the woman at the well was shunned by her own Samaritan community also.  You see, woman of that time would not normally go to the well for water during the heat of the day nor would they normally go alone.  So not only do we have Jesus sitting down alone with one of those hated Samaritans but the whole encounter is compounded by the fact, it is with a woman, and she apparently seems to be a woman in disgrace.  Do you get my drift here?  At that moment, when Jesus asks her for a drink from her water jar, he shatters a whole list of Jewish Mosaic taboos with his one simple request. 

          BTW, another bit of Biblical trivia, this scene between Jesus Christ and an unnamed Samaritan woman is the longest single one-on-one conversation he has with anyone in the Bible.  In fact, as I was reading it just now from the pulpit, you were probably hoping I’d read the shorter version, right?  This is not Peter, or James, or John, or even his own mother he is talking to.  It is a woman who, from a Jewish perspective, makes everything she touches ritually unclean.  It is a woman who even seems to be an outcast in her own community.  There is almost no way to express in words, as we sit here comfortably in our 21^st Century Western Culture, how completely unacceptable this whole scene would be in Jesus’ own culture.  So, do you think something important might be happening here?  It is certainly clear that this is a scene of Jesus’ self-revelation as the Messiah when he plainly states, “I am he, the one speaking with you.”  This statement is absolutely incredible, but there is still more for us to take home today.

          We’re confident John’s was the last Gospel written and it was probably finished very late in the 1^st Century AD.  Subsequently, scholars have written volumes on why it is so different from the other three Gospels.  One of the theories I personally like is this; John was inspired by the Holy Spirit to complete Jesus’s story so to speak, where questions remained with Matthew, Mark, and Luke, especially regarding Jesus’ own divinity.  John seems to have answered this divinity of Jesus question conclusively with his beautiful prolog, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Then he gave us Jesus’ definitive “I Am” proclamations.  In fact, we have one of those in today’s reading.

          So, here we have this Samaritan Woman at the well episode from Jesus’ public ministry.  None of the other three evangelists chose to mention this scene at all.  And it was written in the late 1^st Century while the infant Church was still forming.  An outcast woman from a hated minority becomes the catalyst for a major conversion event.  Do you think the Holy Spirit might have been sending a message here to the infant Church about inclusion, acceptance, and forgiveness?  When you consider the impact, this Samaritan woman ultimately had on the conversion story of her own community, she should probably be ranked amongst some of Jesus’ most elite disciples.  2000 years later, this story should give all of us a pause, anytime we tend to become judgmental and refuse to listen, based solely on our own personal cultural norms.

          Friends, one of the dictionaries’ definitions for theology is this, “theology is faith seeking understanding.”  Therefore, given that definition, I guess, that should make most of us here today a theologian.  So, here is what one theologian is taking home from today’s Gospel reading.  No matter how repulsive, disgusting, or horrible a person may seem, he or she just may be Jesus Christ trying to tell me something important.  A wise man once said this about evangelization; “an evangelist is one starving person telling another starving person – where to find bread.”