The Third Sunday in Lent, March 12, 2023

John 4, 5–42

Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon.  A woman of Samaria 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, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” —For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.  Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”  Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and come back.” The woman answered and said to him, “I do not have a husband.” Jesus answered her, “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one speaking with you.”  At that moment his disciples returned, and were amazed that he was talking with a woman, but still no one said, “What are you looking for?” or “Why are you talking with her?” The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Christ?” They went out of the town and came to him. Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” So the disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘In four months the harvest will be here’? I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest. The reaper is already receiving payment and gathering crops for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For here the saying is verified that ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work.”  Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me everything I have done.” When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. Many more began to believe in him because of his word, and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.” 

We might wonder that the Lord entered the territory of the Samaritans because of the enmity between the Jews and the people of that country, but Jesus and other Jews needed to pass through it when they made their way between Galilee and Judea during the course of the year.  According to the Law, the Jews did not eat nor shelter with those who were not Jews, and the Jews did not regard the Samaritans as Jews, but the Law allowed them to buy food from them and the Gentiles.  Thus, we find the Apostles going to the town to buy food while the Lord rests.  We can only imagine how exhausted the Lord must have been that he stayed outside the town, for one thing the Gospels make clear, if nothing else, that the Lord was continuously on the move and seldom rested, often foregoing a night’s rest in order to spend the time in prayer with his Father.  His resting, though, served another purpose here.  He sat at the well outside of the town of Sychar (known in the Old Testament as Shechem).  John reports a tradition that Jacob had dug a well there, but this is not found in the relevant verses in Genesis.  It is clear, however, that Jacob did dwell there for some time.

“Give me a drink.”  Normally among the people of that place and time, men and women who were unrelated did not speak together in public.  The Lord puts himself in a position of need that allows him to speak to the Samaritan woman who comes to the well.  We might compare this strategy of getting her to a gate with him with how parents will persuade their small children to perform some action by making it seem that the child would be doing them a favor.  We should note here that though the Lord asks for water, he does not receive any from her during the whole time he is with her.  At the end of the conversation, the woman hurried back to the town, leaving her water jar behind.

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  The woman at first speaks to Jesus out of a certain pride, as though she had found someone even worse off than herself.  We should note her speaking of Jacob as the father of the Samaritans, knowing how this would incite a Jew: “Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?”  The Lord does not react as she expected but instead turned the conversation around to show that he had water greater even than that of Jacob’s well.  He is speaking of supernatural grace for which water is a sign, as in the Sacrament of Baptism.  As a share in the very life of Almighty God, it does indeed become a spring — that is, as a source of life — which enables us to live in heaven with the angels and the saints.

“Go call your husband and come back.”  Several times St. John shows in his Gospel incidences of the Lord’s ability to know what was hidden.  He does this first with the calling of Nathanael, when the Lord revealed to the future Apostle that he saw him under a fig tree.  Nathanael’s response to this was to call Jesus the Son of God.  The final time he shows this is at the Last Supper when the Lord points out that Judas is the one who would betray him.  For John and the early Christians this sign of omniscience powerfully pointed to him as divine.  By drawing attention to her own moral situation, Jesus also recalls her to proper humility, thus dousing the pride she had originally shown as a supposed daughter of Jacob.

“My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.”  The Lord eats only so that he may do the Father’s will, which is to call all people to repentance and to die for their sins so that they may have grace and be saved.  He makes himself food for us in Holy Communion so that this may be true for us as well: our food is to do the will of the one who created us, put us in the world, and has given us the gift of faith.

“Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified.”  A Christian community did exist in the town and its environs during the time of the Apostles.  It would have dispersed during the Jewish revolt against the Romans (66-70 A.D.), but it reconstituted itself and from its ranks arose St. Justin, one of the most important of the early Christian writers.   

“We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”  The woman’s word leads others to faith in the Lord Jesus.  Now, while the Lord did tell her to go and return with her husband, he did not tell her to go and evangelize the town.  And she need not have done this, but she did, and brought many to believe in him.   She prefigures Mary Magdalene, who went from the empty tomb to tell the Apostles that the Lord had risen.

The Lord placed himself at the well where he knew he would encounter the Samaritan woman and bring her to believe in him.  The Lord also places us where he knows we will encounter others so that we might bring the faith to them as well.