|
1. The
reading from the Gospel of Saint John for this, the third
Sunday of Lent, is quite a contrast to the sections of the
Gospel of Saint Matthew that we read on the first two
Sundays of Lent. On those two Sundays we recalled two
extraordinary events in the life of Jesus. The first, was
about the time he spent alone in the desert just before he
began his public ministry and the second was about three
years later, almost at the end of his life, when he was
transfigured on the mountaintop in the presence of Peter,
James and John. Reflecting on those two extraordinary
happenings, we saw that both of those events served to
strengthen Jesus’ resolve, in the first instance for the
work he was about to begin and in the second for the cruel
way in which his life was to come to a close. On both
occasions a voice from heaven is heard affirming – “This
is my beloved Son” Today’s Gospel is altogether
different. There is nothing out of the ordinary, no
strange happening, no voice from heaven. It’s a simple
story of a conversation that took place one day during the
public ministry of Jesus. On the surface it seems to be a
casual conversation between Jesus and a Samaritan woman,
whose name we do not know. It certainly began in a very
homely and human way with John telling us that – “Jesus
wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the
well.” It’s a nice touch, bringing home to us that Jesus
(of whom John has no doubt at all that he is the Son of
God, the Word made flesh) could be every bit as tired and
thirsty as we ourselves can be. It emphasizes the fact
that Jesus comes to meet us at the level of our physical /
bodily humanity. It is there that contact is made, not on
some esoteric, mystical or spiritual plane.
2. And
so it was with the woman who comes to draw water from the
well beside which Jesus is resting. He simply says to her
– “Give me a drink”. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could hear
the tone of his voice, see the expression on his face, as
he addressed her; if we could see exactly how this
encounter between two strangers began. But all we know are
the words which were spoken. The woman, from the outset,
seems to have been at her ease with the stranger whom she
met at the well. At least she had no hesitation in
speaking plainly and frankly – “How is it that you, a Jew,
ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” There were two
good reasons why she might have hesitated about speaking
with the stranger. The first reason is the one which she
herself mentions in her reply to Jesus’ request for a
drink, and upon which John comments – “For Jews have no
dealings with Samaritans.” And the second reason was, as
John remarks later on when the disciples returned – “They
marveled that he was talking with a woman.
So, there were two very solid reasons why the woman
might have shied away from entering into a conversation
with Jesus. But, she didn’t! And John gives us to
understand that it was a rather lengthy and, at times,
quite an intimate conversation that took place between
them. That it was so can only have been because the woman
felt at home, at ease with this stranger. He must have
made a very favourable impression on her from the very
beginning if she felt able to talk with him so freely. She
must have felt freed, liberated, from the inhibitions
which the customs of her times would have imposed on
her. The fact that she was a Samaritan and he a Jew, that
she was a woman and he was a man, did not seem to matter
any longer.
We
can only conclude that the very presence of Jesus, his
attitude, his behaviour, far from being threatening, must
have had a liberating effect on the woman. She obviously
felt free to be herself, no longer afraid or constrained
by the restrictions which the world of her time would have
placed upon her. Here was someone with whom she could
speak freely and openly about the secrets of her life and
the deepest thoughts of her heart. All, it seemed, could
be talked about without her feeling put down or belittled
in any way. On the contrary, it was an encounter and a
conversation which was affirmative and uplifting. It must
have seemed to her that the experience was indeed like
living water for a parched spirit. No wonder Jesus was
able to say at one stage – “…. whoever drinks of this
water that I shall give him will never thirst again; the
water that I shall give will become a spring of water
welling up to eternal life.” The whole story as told by
John gives a sense of freshness and freedom, of something
precious being found which gives great pleasure; it gives
the impression of a life being made whole again.
3. In
our own times, conscious of the way women have been
mistreated and denied their rights down through the ages
and even today, we speak of “empowering” women. I am not
sure if that is the word we should be using at all; at
least we have to be careful how we understand it and what
we mean when we use it. There might be a tendency to think
of “empowering” in the sense of giving women a share in
the power which men have until now appropriated to
themselves. We men might think that we were now giving to
women a share in all that, as if it were a gift we were
bestowing on them. And we might think how enlightened,
benevolent and generous we are in giving women a greater
say in how we run the world.
There is no trace of that kind of arrogance in the
story of Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman. What
happened in that encounter is that Jesus gently led the
woman to an awareness of her own dignity and to a
realization of her own inner resources. The gift of living
water of which he spoke is a gift of God, not some human
concession. It is a gift, like the gift of life itself,
given in such a way that it belongs to the woman as a
birthright; it is not something for which she needs to
thank anybody other than God. It’s an inner spring,
welling up from the depths of her own being.
Gustavo Guttierez, the father of liberation theology
has, more recently, written a book with the evocative
title – They Drink from their own Wells. Surely the
woman who met Jesus at Jacob’s well, and who gave him to
drink from that well, must have felt that day that a new
source of life had begun to well up within her and that,
from then on, she could ‘drink from her own well’, the
well of her own spirit. She was no longer dependent on
other people’s wisdom and guidance to give meaning to her
life.
4. In
his Apostolic Letter for the Jubilee Year 2000, Pope John
Paul II mentioned several ways in which people of our own
time need to be emancipated, set free. He mentioned
specifically – “the problems connected with respect for
women’s rights….” (no 51) It need hardly be stressed that
the full emancipation of women still has a long way to go
before they enjoy their rightful place in the human
family. We Christians, following the example of Jesus,
should do all that we can to help them to recover an
awareness of their God-given birthright.
|
