Third Sunday of Lent
Scrutiny Year A Reading
It was a blazing hot day at high noon, and I had left the shade of my home to take my pitcher to Jacob’s well, where I could draw water out of the dry, cracked earth. It was always silent and dusty and still. The other women would come to the well in the cool of early morning, but I would come at this time of day – to be alone.
I liked to be alone because it was better than being surrounded by women who refused to speak to me. They did not accept me and decidedly ignored me. If they spoke about me at all, it was stinging gossip. And not all of it was imagined. Most of it was true. They knew about all five of the husbands I’ve had, and the shame I brought upon myself in living with yet another. I’ve made many mistakes in my life and I am not proud. When I was a young girl, I never imagined my life would turn out this way since I had desired to live a life of virtue. I had expected my life to be happy and filled with contentment, but the reality was very different and filled with hurt and brokenness. But the other women didn’t know that part, and I thought they wouldn’t care if they did. They would insist that my suffering was my fault, and perhaps it was.
The years had blurred by, and life had spiraled so far from what I thought it would be. I hated myself and wanted to be invisible — and that is why I left to draw water from the desert at the hottest time of day, when no one else was around.
This day, however, the well was not deserted. There was a man sitting on the stones, and he seemed to be waiting for someone. I was nervous that the man would be annoyed and impatient because I was there. Worse yet, when I got closer, I could see he was not from Samaria – he was a Jew, and of course we do not associate. Imagine my surprise when he spoke to me and asked me for a drink of water. Naturally, I assumed he meant to insult or humiliate me in some way. I responded sharply hoping to ward him off. “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” I sunk my bucket deep into the well and lowered it as swiftly as I could. The man was not frightened away. He pressed on, “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.”
Something in his voice caused me to halt my work. A bead of sweat trailed down the side of my face though I suddenly didn’t feel hot as goose bumps rose on my arms. I turned his words over in my mind. Gift from God. Living water. What did he mean by that? Just another man playing tricks? I decided to respond superficially. “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water?” When he responded, there was something about his demeanor that surprised and disarmed me. There was no sarcasm or arrogance. I felt in my core that he was not looking down on me; for the first time in my life, a man was speaking to me with reverence.
Normally, no one speaks to me. I move through life feeling as if I might as well be a smudge on the ground – overlooked and missed by everyone. But this man actually saw me. He spoke to me, and his words amazed me. He explained that the living water he had to offer would never run out and that I would never thirst. It was clear to me we were no longer talking about mere water, but the thirst I was experiencing in the depths of my being, hoping and longing for something more than the shadow of a life I had been living. The man told me that I was free to take this water –and that it would let me live forever. As his gaze locked into mine, I realized he could read into my heart and could see my fears. He spoke softly to me about everything I had done and the secrets I had locked in my heart, which I had never spoken aloud to anyone. There was compassion and understanding in his voice instead of the disgust I would have expected.
The man told me he was the Messiah we have been waiting for, and I believe him! Everything is different now. I am different. I remember the way he spoke to me as if I mattered a great deal and now, I am no longer afraid to speak to people in the marketplace. I am telling everyone that I have met the messiah. Have you encountered him? If you haven’t, you may yet. Do not be surprised if he goes out of his way to find you like he did for me.