A Homily – The Third Sunday of Lent (Year A)
First Reading - Exodus 17:3-7 ©
Responsorial
Psalm - Psalm 94(95):1-2, 6-9 ©
Second Reading – Romans 5:1-2, 5-8 ©
Gospel
Acclamation – John 4:42, 15
The Gospel According to John – 4:5 -
42 ©
(NJB)
Listen!
These cannot be presented as literalisms, because the faith of the Church cannot be built on lies. These events, while they may refer to a historical reality, they did not happen as described. We may take the narrative metaphorically; if we do we may then extract this meaning…trust God.
Trust in the divine while enduring your immediate struggle, God will not free you from it, you must bear it to the end, but trust in the divine that in the end all will be well.
Be mindful!
God is the author of our wellbeing, and God will bring us to it…in the end. The divine seed that God planted in you will blossom and come to fruition in the end, and this is true of everyone. We will be face to face with God, who is wellbeing, in the place beyond where God is all in all.
This is a sustaining hope, one that is wise to hold.
Remember.
The whole of creation belongs to God, all that is good and all that we fear, everything comes from God, and everything we experience will redound to the good.
This is the faith of that leads to the way.
Listen!
God is not a king.
It is good to show our respect for the creator and sing songs in praise of God, but God is not a lord, rather the divine person is our loving parent, active in the life of every person, preparing each of according to God’s wisdom for the divine blessing that awaits us all.
Consider the teaching of the apostle.
When we say that we are judged as righteous, and that we are at peace with God by faith; we mean to say that our trust in God’s promise of peace, and God’s promise regarding the restoration of the entire world, allows us to lead lives that are humble, just and merciful and this is the path to righteousnesss.
If we boast that our faith, this trust in God’s plan for the entire human race allows us to see the coming of God, it is only because we know that God dwells within us already, and in the relationships we have with each other. We know that when we look into each other’s hearts, we are able to see the beauty of the divine, the same divine spirit present in ourselves, and fully manifest in the love care we show toward each other.
Understand this!
Contrary to what the apostle taught and the church upholds, Jesus was not a sacrificial victim. His blood did not have magic powers. God, does not love holocausts and burnt offerings. The slaughter of Jesus, and his death on the cross was not a “type” of, or even the “type” of the paschal ritual in the Hebrew cult of animal sacrifice.
God loves mercy and God love justice, not blood and guts burning in the fire. Jesus himself preached from the prophetic tradition that taught this.
What Jesus did was to act mercifully and with full regard for his followers when he allowed himself to be taken to the cross, many would have died if he had not and he had thousands of followers. He gave his life to save them, to save them in their own time and place, he did not give his life as a cosmic sacrifice for the sins of the world.
Jesus was a man, and this is the truth, and the Church must contend with it.
Consider the gospel for today.
This is not a story about who Jesus is. Though most readers and interpreters of the sacred text treat it as such. This is not a story about the Messiah or the Christ or living water, and it is not a story about baptism or even the benevolent mercy of Jesus. In sitting down with the woman by the well Jesus was not doing anything extraordinary. He was simply following the way; teaching its principles through simple actions.
This is a story about discipleship, and the first Apostle of the Christian Church; she was a woman, she was a woman without a husband, she was an outsider and a she was Samaritan.
It is clear from the text that this Samaritan woman was a person of influence in her community, we know this because after she met Jesus she went to speak with the people of her town, and on the strength of her testimony we are told that the entire community converted to the faith.
This community became the very first organized group of Christians, they are an an entire community of believers, formed by the witness of this woman, who shared with them a story about the compassion of Jesus, which opened their hearts to the way.
Jesus says to the disciples who arrived late in the day, after his encounter with his first apostle; he tells them that the harvest is already coming in, speaking of the work that he had just begun with this woman and without them. Jesus and the woman by the well had sewn the field, with honesty and kindness, and the harvest was gathered without delay.
This is why Jesus told the disciples that they would take credit for the work that others had done, because even though this story endured, the woman by the well is not given credit for the work she did in forming this first Christian community, one or another of the disciples took the credit in the end.
Be mindful of this, follow Jesus in the way, do not emulate the prideful nature of the disciples.
First Reading - Exodus 17:3-7 ©
Strike
the Rock, and Water Will Flow from It
Tormented
by thirst, the people complained against Moses. ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt?’
they said. ‘Was it so that I should die of thirst, my children too, and my
cattle?’
Moses
appealed to the Lord. ‘How am I to deal with this people?” he said. ‘A little
more and they will stone me!’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take with you some of
the elders of Israel and move on to the forefront of the people; take in your
hand the staff with which you struck the river, and go. I shall be standing
before you there on the rock, at Horeb. You must strike the rock, and water
will flow from it for the people to drink.’ This is what Moses did, in the
sight of the elders of Israel. The place was named Massah and Meribah because
of the grumbling of the sons of Israel and because they put the Lord to the
test by saying, ‘Is the Lord with us, or not?’
Responsorial
Psalm - Psalm 94(95):1-2, 6-9 ©
O
that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’
Come,
ring out our joy to the Lord;
hail the rock who saves us.
Let
us come before him, giving thanks,
with songs let us hail the Lord.
O
that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’
Come
in; let us bow and bend low;
let us kneel before the God who made us:
for
he is our God and we
the people who belong to his pasture,
the flock that is led by his hand.
O
that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’
O
that today you would listen to his voice!
‘Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as on that day at Massah in the desert
when
your fathers put me to the test;
when they tried me, though they saw my work.’
O
that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’
Second
Reading – Romans 5:1-2, 5-8 ©
The
Love of God Has Been Poured Into Our Hearts
Through
our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith we are judged righteous and at peace with God,
since it is by faith and through Jesus that we have entered this state of grace
in which we can boast about looking forward to God’s glory. And this hope is
not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the
Holy Spirit which has been given us. We were still helpless when at his
appointed moment Christ died for sinful men. It is not easy to die even for a
good man – though of course for someone really worthy, a man might be prepared
to die – but what proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us while we
were still sinners.
Gospel
Acclamation – John 4:42, 15
Glory
to you, O Christ, you are the Word of God!
Lord,
you are really the saviour of the world: give me the living water, so that I
may never get thirsty.
Glory
to you, O Christ, you are the Word of God!
The Gospel According to John – 4:5 -
42 ©
A
Spring of Water Welling Up to Eternal Life
Jesus
came to the Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob gave to his
son Joseph. Jacob’s well is there and Jesus, tired by the journey, sat straight
down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman 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, ‘What? You are a Jew and you ask me, a Samaritan,
for a drink?’ – Jews, in fact, do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus
replied:
‘If
you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying to you:
Give
me a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you
living water.’ ‘You have no bucket, sir,’ she answered ‘and the well is deep:
how
could you get this living water? Are you a greater man than our father Jacob
who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his sons and his cattle?’
Jesus
replied:
‘Whoever
drinks this water will get thirsty again; but anyone who drinks the water that
I shall give will never be thirsty again:
the
water that I shall give will turn into a spring inside him, welling up to
eternal life.’
‘Sir,’
said the woman ‘give me some of that water, so that I may never get thirsty and
never have to come here again to draw water.’
‘Go
and call your husband’ said Jesus to her ‘and come back here.’
The
woman answered, ‘I have no husband.’
He
said to her, ‘You are right to say, “I have no husband”; for although you have
had five, the one you have now is not your husband. You spoke the truth there.’
‘I
see you are a prophet, sir’ said the woman. ‘Our fathers worshipped on this
mountain, while you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to
worship.’ Jesus said:
‘Believe
me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this
mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we
do know:
for
salvation comes from the Jews. But the hour will come – in fact it is here
already – when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and
truth:
that
is the kind of worshipper the Father wants. God is spirit, and those who
worship must worship in spirit and truth.’
The
woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah – that is, Christ – is
coming; and when he comes he will tell us everything.’
‘I
who am speaking to you,’ said Jesus ‘I am he.’
At
this point his disciples returned, and were surprised to find him speaking to a
woman, though none of them asked, ‘What do you want from her?’ or, ‘Why are you
talking to her?’
The
woman put down her water jar and hurried back to the town to tell the people.
‘Come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did; I wonder if he is
the Christ?’ This brought people out of the town and they started walking
towards him.
Meanwhile,
the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, do have something to eat; but he said,
‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples asked one
another, ‘Has someone been bringing him food?’
But
Jesus said:
‘My
food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work.
Have
you not got a saying:
Four
months and then the harvest? Well, I tell you:
Look
around you, look at the fields; already they are white, ready for harvest!
Already
the reaper is being paid his wages, already he is bringing in the grain for
eternal life, and thus sower and reaper rejoice together.
For
here the proverb holds good:
one
sows, another reaps; I sent you to reap a harvest you had not worked for. Others
worked for it; and you have come into the rewards of their trouble.’
Many
Samaritans of that town had believed in him on the strength of the woman’s
testimony when she said, ‘He told me all I have ever done’, so, when the
Samaritans came up to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed for two
days, and when he spoke to them many more came to believe; and they said to the
woman, ‘Now we no longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard him
ourselves and we know that he really is the saviour of the world.’
The Third Sunday of Lent (Year A)
