THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT: A. Feb 24, 2008

  Exodus 17 :3 -7 Psalm: 95 Rom: 5: 1-2, 5-8 John 4 : 5-42 Keeping faith on Life’s Journey. “The Deep Well and the Missing Bucket”

1. Today we have three journeys to consider. The first is the Journey of the People of God from Egypt into the Promised Land. They have crossed the Red Sea. They do not take the shortest route through Gaza. This route has been on our TVS a lot recently. The Lord commands Moses to lead them through the desert. Little do the people know that they will spend 40 years travelling that journey. They will face discouragements, they will choose sin rather than good, there will be personal and family disasters, there will be hurts.

 At times like these they will cry out against God and against Moses.  “Think of the fish we use to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic! Here we are wasting away, stripped of everything: there is nothing for us but manna to look at.”  Numbers 11:5-6.

 Yet it will be through these trials - (in our day we call it “carrying out cross”) that the Lord will draw them closer to God. God will declare to them, “You will be my people and I will be your God.”

1a The key symbol in  Life’s Journey is Water. If the People of God are to have life, they have to have water. The Lord provides them with Water, and our responsorial psalm gives us the exact location where this Source of life is given. It is at Massah in the Desert and at Meribah. Water is almost a miraculous object. It cleanses, it refreshes, it gives life. It not only refreshes their physical selves, but also their faith in a God that cares and provides for them in all their needs.

2. The Samaritan Woman in the Gospel also has needs on “her” journey. She comes in the heat of the noon day sun. The other women of her village come either in the early morning or late in the evening when it is cool. But with her five ex-husbands, this woman is an outcast. She is an outcast in more than one sense. First the women in the village do not trust her. She might make a move on their husbands. Secondly to the Jews of Jerusalem, she is a Samaritan, a foreigner and not all together kosher.

 Her first need is water for her physical thirst. But a deeper need is the one of any human being. She wants to love and be loved. She wants to be accepted as some one who is worthwhile. She is dubbed a “Scarlet Woman” by the women of her village, she is considered a “Loser” by the men.

3. Jesus breaks religious and political protocol. He a Jew will speak to a Samaritan. He then “ups the stakes”. He offers her Living Water. The woman like all of us falls into the trap of being practical. The well is Deep. A bucket is missing.`Her vision is limited to physical water. She does not see the divine gift of Eternal life..

 We constantly miss the Gifts of God by trying to put conditions or try to fit God and God’s works into our human framework and pigeonholes. We want a God - but there must be : no deep well, no missing bucket. God is not limited by our hurdles.

 When God offers us the Spring of Eternal Life, we have a shaky faith in our Life’s journey. How can there be a God, or how can I face God when I

• have a mother who is sick with cancer
• have a sinful habit which I cannot conquer
• have made so many bad decisions in life
• have not gone to Church in a week of Sundays.

• We think that these are barriers to God’s love. God is still very much with us in spite of our “deep wells and missing buckets”. God is not limited by our barriers.

4. The third Journey is our own. Water is very much a part of our Journey. We were baptised with water and made “a chosen race, a holy nation, a people set apart”. But we take our baptismal water for granted or we have let it run dry.

 There is also the care of our natural resources of water. We enjoy it in plenty. We know it will always be there in Canada. Recently the Fifth Estate did a rather frightening documentary on the Lack of water in far off countries like Argentina and Brazil, in Sudan and Chad. But people are also suffering for the lack of water at our doorsteps in Detroit and Cleveland. The Fifth Estate said:

There's a problem with the world's water supply. One in four people on earth doesn't have access to clean drinking water. Water and sanitation infrastructures are crumbling. We keep using more of it, yet continue to degrade and deplete it.

Powerful companies spotted a crisis and see a business opportunity in this natural resource and they want to privatize what many consider a public trust, a public heritage. People have been living a life at a sub human level - and like the Nazi holocaust no one seems to have a voice to say “this is evil”.

5. But besides this human resource, we have a lack of the water of Eternal life. Many are even ignorant of our desire for it. Both rich and poor are caught up in our insatiable desire for wealth and material pleasure that we have killed our thirst for the Living God.  We worship at the Temple of Wealth and Temple of Pleasure. We are not going to find God in either of these places, just as Jesus told the Samaritan woman she would not find God either in Samaria or Jerusalem.

 We will not find the spring of eternal life in any thing, in any theory, in any dogma, in any system, or even in any space whether sacred or secular. We will only find that Spring as Jesus tells us when we are open to truth and love. Thirst for living water will only be satisfied when like the Samaritan woman we come to Jesus even if it means coming alone and in the heat of the noon day sun. Deep well and a missing bucket are not a hindrance for the Man from Galilee.