THEMES AND CONTEXT
EXODUS 17:3-7
José Galarreta S.J.
This fragment is one of many in which the people of Israel, journeying
through the desert find themselves without water and violently protest against
Moses, all the while longing for Egypt, the land of their slavery. Moses goes before
the Lord and draws water from the rock for the people. But the deepest
meaning is found in the final phrase.
Israel asks:”Is the Lord in the midst of
us or not?” This is the fundamental question of the man of Faith, of one who
has put his faith in God, but is always tempted to give up half way.
THE TEXT OF THE LETTER TO THE
ROMANS
The message of this text, complex as are all those of Paul, is clear:
the hope of the children of God is founded on Jesus, on the death of Jesus, the
proof that God loves us. The relation of God with human beings is love: the
love shown in Jesus. The Spirit makes Jesus, the presence of the love of God,
capable of going all the way, even to death. And this fact is the foundation of
our faith. If the first text ended asking: Is the Lord in our midst or not?
Paul finds the answer in Jesus, in the fact that we see the presence of God in
our midst.
THE TEXT OF JOHN
It is one of the most beautiful and famous texts of the Gospel of John.
The marvelous staging of the scene, the development of the dialogue, the many
details that place the story perfectly in its setting...Far more important to
us, however, is its meaning. Jesus is the living water. They may seem to be
stories, they very probably narrate details that took place, but they are above
all treatises of theology.
The event most likely happened, the details capture
the atmosphere perfectly in all its details. Jesus’s passing through Samaria on the way to
Jerusalem is not mentioned in any other gospel, but it is not impossible: the
well could be that “of Jaco”, even though it’s location of Sychar has caused
discussions. The text also reflects perfectly the religious position of the
Samaritans with regard to the Jews.
On this story John builds his
“Theology of Living Water”. It would seem to be an invitation to speak of
baptism; the text, however, has a much wider baptismal implication. Water is
taken in a more biblical meaning, as appears in the Book of Exodus, exactly as
we see it in the first reading today. It doesn’t mean to submerge oneself, to
wash oneself, but “to “drink”. In this sense, the text throws light on baptism,
because there we begin to drink the water of Jesus.
On these three Sundays of Lent (3rd, 4th, and 5th),
we are going to read three narratives of the fourth Gospel. Today we read the
one of the Samaritan woman, the theme of which is “the living water”. On the
Fourth Sunday it is the man born blind, whose theme is “light”. The fifth
Sunday is the resurrection of Lazarus, the theme of which is “Life”. The three
are perfect symbols of Jesus and through him, of God.
R E F L E C T I O N
Jesus and the Samaritan woman: a world full of surprises. Jesus is tired
and thirsty, and he cannot draw water because the well is deep. Our faith is
not founded on Jesus as a magician, free of getting tired and weaknesses. We
will never tire of insisting too much on the fact that we believe in
that man.
Jesus speaks with a woman, with a Samaritan woman, and moreover with a
woman of bad repute. Even his disciples are surprised. But take into account
that he is a doctor, he has come to heal, to save, he has to be where the sick
are. Wonderful picture of God. Jesus is least interested in the Temple, in
external acts of worship; he is interested in seeing the woman setting her life
right. Jesus dreams of saving the whole world: but he needs help. This fact
defines our mission: do you want to help God
to see his children live as children? Yes, that of Jesus is different.
LIVING WATER
What water is to normal life, Jesus is to human life. Jesus is Water,
Jesus is the Word, Jesus is the one who gives the Spirit. Jesus is not a well
where one goes occasionally to drink water. He is a fountain of the spirit: he
who drinks from Jesus is a fountain. He himself feels gushing from within
him/herself the water that wells out to eternal life, and does not thirst any
more for any other kind of water, because Jesus quenches the thirst for all
other things.
It is important we acquire the way of speaking of the Bible. We always
function through concepts, and we want to comprehend reality through them with precision and clarity. But
we are speaking of God and the whole Bible and the Gospels speak of him through
images. And what marvelous images they are! The major part of our organism is
water. We cannot live without water. Thirst is the greatest agony. To find
water in the desert is an incredible miracle. That is what God means in our
lives, that is the Gospel. It would be wonderful to be able to say without
being surprised, “let’s go to drink from the Gospel of Mark.”
All these symbols express very well the condition of being human,
someone who needs food, light and water... to walk the road. It’s once more
confirmation of the image of God Jesus gives us. We prefer using other terms:
Eternal, Creator, Judge... But Jesus uses terms within our reach: water, light,
life, bread, shepherd, door, doctor, father. All of them underline the same
tendency: Jesus presents God as an ally, in the same terms as the most ancient
Revelation. Man has to walk a road. God is his best help on the road. The Word of
Jesus is the best light, water, bread for the road, God is the shepherd and the
doctor. We are used to addressing God by saying “My God”. We even say:”Father”.
It would be wonderful if it wouldn’t sound strange to call upon him saying: “Oh
my Water!”
When the Samaritan woman understands that Jesus is offering her more
than water from the well, she immediately changes over to raising customary
religious problems that Jesus isn’t interested in: the Messiah, the temple of
Jerusalem or the one on Garizim... But all that isn’t the water of Jesus. The
water of Jesus is in that true worshipers adore in spirit and in truth. And
this is not limited to saying that there must be true worship in the temple by
a surrender of the spirit to God, but that there must be true worship that downplays
the temple and changes all life into worship.
This “novelty of Jesus” had already been sown in the Old Testament, and
Jesus himself quotes the saying of the prophet Hosea “I want mercy and not
sacrifices.” But it is in Jesus that it appears most powerfully and in its most
radical meaning. God is not in the temple, like a lord living in a palace. He
is everywhere and above all in all his children, all human beings’; that’s
where we must serve God. Temples and religious places have been for religions
places to enclose gods, besides whom there are no others. Hence, for
traditional religious concepts there is a difference between the sacred and the
profane. With Jesus, this difference disappears, because there in nothing
profane. Further still, if life is not sacred, the temple is profane, because
it is useless.
A final reflection uniting the two themes we have proposed. The world
needs water, it is thirsty. It is thirsty for physical water, for physical
bread, for physical housing, and it is thirsty for Living Water, to know God,
to know who he is, which is his home. This is the sacred space for those who
follow Jesus, this is their worship, this is the Word of which they are the
bearers. Too often have we thought that to take the Word to the nations is to
preach religion to them. This is all a caricature, a belittling of the The
Word. The Word is not our words: The Word is Jesus, a different way of living,
a new way of relating to others, a new relationship to God. All this is
explained in words, but is only transmitted through deeds. It’s the reason why
water appears again in the last “parable”, the final judgment. In it what has
value is separated from what is worthless not by what has been preached, nor by
juridical belonging to the Church, but by the best of all the phrases that
anyone can understand:
“Because I was thirsty and you gave me to drink.”
The fact is that Jesus changes everything: our relationship with God,
the Living Water: our relationship with the others, with those with whom we
have to share our Water, the very concept of religion, which is the water that
makes the life of human beings fertile.
“IS THE LORD IN OUR MIDST OR IS HE NOT?”
This doubt of the people of Israel is perhaps also ours. Where is your
God? In a world filled with so much misery and so much evil, where is God? One
needs a very strong faith to continue to speak of a God father of all, to
continue to assert that he exists, that he knows what’s happening, that he
loves us... Why does he continue to allow so much evil his children endure?
Jesus has not explained to us the reason for this. Jesus has told us what the
Father wants to do, and that he needs us to do it. Jesus has not spoken of the
Creator, neither has he explained why the Father allows each one of our hairs
to fall, and also allows so much evil. But certainly Jesus has told us that in
this desert, the Water, the light, the salt, the bread ... is the Word of God.
This is our faith. And it is not easy to communicate it. But it is a mission we
have been entrusted with. To offer water in the desert. To be water in the desert.
This would take us back to “you are the salt...”
Christ is the proof of all this. Our faith in the divinity of Jesus is
going to be put to the test on seeing his humanity. To see him suffer and die
is a scandal. Can such a thing happen to God? “If you are the Son of God, come
down from the cross.” The same thing happens to us on seeing the cross of so
many crucified people on earth. It’s the strongest challenge to our faith. If,
after the cross, we continue to believe in God, it’s because we know that
precisely on that account he did not come down from the cross...Our faith is in
a crucified Jesus, that is: we believe in the love of God, in spite of evil in
the world, in spite of the desert, because we have seen Jesus give his life for
us, for sinful men, simply because we need to believe in love, in spite of the
fact that we see evil, hatred. Perhaps for that reason we do not have the Risen
Christ as a symbol, but of Jesus crucified. Remember the perfect saying of John
3,16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,” endorsed by Paul in
his letter to the Romans 8,32 “God, who
did not even keep back his only Son, but offered him for us all!”
I KNOW WHOM I HAVE TRUSTED
The Israelites kept asking in the desert: “Is the Lord in our midst?
Is he or is he not?” It’s the
fundamental question of faith? Can I trust? Is all this true? We read the story
of the Samaritan woman and from our hearts the fountain of faith in Jesus
flows. I can certainly trust this One. There is no Teacher like this, no Word
like this, , no Religion like this. If this is who God is, this is Water for my
life, this is what I can trust, put my faith in.
FOR OUR PRAYER
1. A simple way of praying is to re-read the
passage from John. Everyone of his words can lift our spirit. Repeat the
reading, very slowly, stop at words, savor them, allow them to penetrate your
spirit.
Jesus and the Samaritan woman. It’s a whole new world. Jesus is tired
and thirsty, and he cannot draw water. This is the man we believe in. Jesus
speaks to heretics, with a woman of doubtful morals, Jesus saves all he comes
into touch with. Jesus does not speak of external worship nor of petty
differences between forms of worship.
And how wonderfully well Jesus
handles the conversation! From the thirst of the body to the need for God, from
the pseudo-religious talk on useless topics, to the most serious point of his
message, the urgent need for conversion.
2. The disciples surprise Jesus dreaming of the
salvation of the world.
Jesus is dreaming of quenching the thirst of the whole world; the whole
world is thirsty, the harvest is ready, and there is need of laborers for so
much work. Jesus has no thirst for any of the things for which we thirst so
much. Whoever drinks of the water Jesus gives no longer wants any other;
whoever finds the treasure of the Kingdom no longer wants any other wealth.
Let us contemplate this scene. We are seated next to Him, and we regard
the world, so full of men, women, and children, being born, needing things,
suffering, dying, needing Water from God without knowing it. Dream with Jesus
of the salvation of the world, in the happiness of all people. Listen to Jesus
who says: Look at the fields glistening golden with the harvest. The harvest is
great, but the laborers are few.
You lack one thing: come, follow me. Come with me, I will make you
fishers of men.
As the Father sent me, so I send you
3. And so, we too are surprised : we speak to God
to have him solve our problems and we find ourselves faced with an unexpected
answer: Do you want to help me save?
4. Prayer of petition for our desert. Ask God for
water for our lives. Ask the Father confidently, beginning with all our needs,
knowing that He hears me, knowing that he will give it to me, making an act of
faith in that he knows all that I need and that he gives me even more. And I
think him.
MY
WORDS FOR YOU
Psalm 42-43
An exiled priest longs for his priestly duty in
the temple, yearns for the House of the Lord:
As a deer longs for running streams, so my soul yearns for You, my God.
