for some reason I never got around to putting this one up during Lent, here it is now for your enjoyment… (just close your eyes and imagine its spring, I mean after you’ve finished reading, because you can’t read with your eyes closed)

When I was little it seemed I was always in trouble, going barefoot when I was supposed to keep my shoes on, wandering in the woods and forgetting to tell anyone where I was going, reading when I was supposed to be doing homework, always getting dirty and making messes, half the time I could be found up a tree and the other half coming home with bloody knees and elbows from wiping out on my bike. When Michael Domizio called me ‘bossy’ in the fourth grade he said it as if it meant exile – nobody likes a bossy girl. and in fifth grade after a series of trips to the principal’s office for getting in fist fights with boys I knew he must be right. All the pictures and statues in church showed girls and women with downcast eyes and pristine robes. No grass stains on their knees, not a single dirty fingernail. We sang songs of obedient Mary, meek and mild. I was sure there was no hope for me.

I love today’s gospel story, though my past is not nearly as colorful the Samaritan woman, this woman at the well is someone I can identify with. Cantankerous, argumentative, someone who had quit trying to fit in because she knew it just wasn’t going to happen. But none of that seems to be a hindrance to Jesus, he almost seems to relish her rebelliousness.

It’s easy to hear this story with modern ears and miss the absolute impossibility of it. This woman, and Jesus, are breaking all the rules. She doesn’t belong at the well at midday, all the respectable women have come early in the morning to get their water. He shouldn’t be talking to her she is his enemy, a Samaritan, one of those who practiced an impure and adulterated version of Judaism AND she is a woman, unaccompanied. The risk and scandal of this conversation is difficult for us to grasp.

John’s Gospel offers us this conversion story on two levels. On a Grand symbolic level John explores important themes:

–the new life brought to all by Jesus,

–right worship –the “five husbands” Jesus references may represent the other Gods the Samaritans serve instead of following the covenant of the One God-

–the well in the Hebrew scriptures is a symbol for wisdom and for the law and a gift from God;

But also on a literal and very concrete level John’s story reveals to us:

- an outcast who becomes the first missionary when she shares her encounter with the others in her town

- an enemy who believes in Jesus Messiahship before the disciples themselves begin to understand,

- a person looking for love in all the wrong places and finding something worth so much more in what Jesus offers her

Jesus looks through her eyes and into her soul as if to say: I know who you are, I know where you’ve been, and I want to offer you something better, I invite you to drink in a love and a promise and a fullness of life, unsurpassed. Jesus repurposes her anger and turns it into a fire that shares the zeal of her discovery, that he himself is the messiah, the living water.

Jesus gift IS greater than Jacob’s. Jesus will replace God’s gifts with himself. The old locations for prayer, limited by geography and ritual will be swept away and people will worship ‘in spirit and in truth’. Now the living waters will be an internal spring of Jesus teaching and the Holy Spirit. It will be IN the faithful as God’s gift to them.

Today is the third Sunday of Lent-that point in our preparation and penitence where we can get tired and lose heart. Like those grumbly Israelites in the desert. We need to be reminded of God’s constant, daily, hourly, moment by moment providence from the love in our lives to each breath that we take. We fast and pray and sacrifice so that we will not fall victim to the false notion that what we accomplish is all our own doing. As much as we might prefer to be something else- as human creatures we are fragile, dependent, needy. Letting ourselves become hungry and thirsty reminds us – we are limited – it allows us hear the call of psalmist: ‘harden not your hearts’

The closer we get to Easter the more we are called to a change of heart. Over the next few weeks we’ll hear a series of conversion stories- each more dramatic than the one before- this weekend’s story of the Samaritan woman at the well, next week the man born blind is read, and then the story of Lazarus being raised. The gospel readings move us from sin to holiness, from blindness to sight, from death to life.

Each of us can stand in the place of the Samaritan woman, and in the place of the Israelites, each of us has challenged, grumbled, turned from what God has called us to, taken God’s goodness for granted, but may this Lent be our heart changing encounter with Jesus at the well: whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst.

May this Lent be our conversion: the water I give will become in YOU a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

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