Reflection on the Third Sunday of Lent

Exodus 17:3-7             Romans 5:1-8             John 4:5-42

When speaking of the Scriptures, there is always a choice to be made between the familiar and a search for fresh perspectives. Today’s Gospel, drawn from the Mass for Catechumens, promises new perspectives, or at least a glimpse of what is importantly new for individuals at the beginning of their faith journey, or looking to refresh their faith in new ways.

When I began preparing a couple of weeks ago, I imagined myself as a  catechumen, a new convert, possibly a person new to Christianity.  How would I be listening this morning to the story of the woman at the well?  

I think as a seeker or a new believer, I would be listening for guidance, I’d be hoping for strong, reliable direction in how to act in today’s world of animosity, divisiveness and deep confusion. More than anything, I’d be looking for a trustworthy guide.  And in the end, isn’t that what we all crave, whether our faith is just budding or being renewed in a fresh spring.

In the penitential context of Lent, I could easily hear the account of the woman at the well as the story of Jesus’ compassionate interaction with a woman prickly with defensiveness and a guilty conscience.  She herself is certainly focused on “all that I have ever done.” The water promised by the stranger at the well might represent cleansing to her and to me.  Another focus of the story is Jesus’ reaching out to a non-believing community, including the whole village of Samaritans in the good news intended for the Jewish community.  The universality of water is a good image for such inclusiveness and as a catechumen, I might understand my coming baptism as being included in the community.

The woman at the well exclaims, “This man is the Messiah we have been waiting for!”  In a similar way, a catechumen might exclaim, “Thank God, I think I have at last found someone I can trust; within this believing community, I have found a true guide to God.”  
In my preparations, I found another way to understand today’s Gospel, in the writings of John Dominic Crossan. Crossan proposes a meaning that deeply satisfies me, renewing my faith as though I were a new catechumen. He believes that the essential historical Jesus is faithfully revealed when the scriptural words and actions of Jesus are combined with the earliest images created by believing Christians. Focusing on the story of the woman at the well, Jesus’ words and actions, combined with early catacomb images reveal Jesus as the teacher who relieves our thirst for God.  Jesus himself tells us later in John’s Gospel that he is the “Way, the Truth and the Life,” the guide for our times as much as for the woman at the well and her Samaritan community.