Exodus 17:3-7; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8; St. John 4:5-42
I remember when I was a young child, my brother and I were digging a large hole in our garden at home - as perhaps young boys would do in the 1990s -and after awhile I remember at the bottom of our whole we dug through to what (as far as I can remember) was a small, dark opening which was pitch black, with seemingly no bottom to it - we’d accidentally came across an old buried well.
I think I felt quite excited, that this was quite interesting - but as you can imagine my parents were horrified in case we fell into it, so I think my father very quickly sealed the well up with a large sheet of strong metal and a load of soil on top.
It was no doubt a relic from the past, a time before running tap water, a structure which the people of the past would have used every day, they would have needed to live, to get their water.
Sometimes our tap water today does come from deep wells below the earth, although we’re probably not aware of it. But throughout history, and up to the present day, wells and fountains and pumps are still very central and key features in many communities throughout the world - sometimes they can be almost sacred places - places from which people get their life-giving water, places which are central for a community’s survival.
The gospel passage today is centred around a well - again a place at the centre of the community, a place from which people get something which is central to their survival. Except today in the gospel Jesus talks about a different kind of water, which is also central for survival, a living water which He gives.
Today we see Jesus at a well having a conversation with a Samaritan woman about different types of water - physical water, but also living water. The passage is one which I know very well - it was one of the set texts which we had to memorise in the original Biblical Greek when I was training to be a Priest - so I can remember many happy hours spent sitting in the library (or more often in the coffee shop) memorising this in Greek.
The woman has come to draw water, and the conversation between Jesus and the woman starts off very mundane and everyday - practical chit-chat - Jesus says “Give me a drink”, the woman says why are you asking me … you have no bucket … the well is deep.
We can perhaps imagine that the well was the centre of the community - a source of water which everyone needed, regardless of who they were - lots of people would have come to the well with ordinary needs – they want to draw water so they can drink, so they can quench their thirst, so they can live.
But Jesus then moves the conversation to a deeper level - Jesus speaks to her about thirst and about a new water, a living water - in contrast to the water from the well.
One of the core themes in the Gospel is this idea of thirst - the theme of deep thirst - not just a physiological thirst for physical water, but a spiritual thirst for something else - a thirst for a different kind of water -
for the living water which Jesus gives.
The Samaritan woman asks Jesus for this living water, so that she won’t be thirsty again, so that she won’t have to keep coming to the well - perhaps she’s still thinking about things in practical terms - imagining that Jesus will give her a magical new type of water which permanently quenches her thirst.
But Jesus promises something different, He promises a living water which is a gift which has its origins in God - what Jesus offers is not physical water but the life-giving revelation of the heavenly, which only Jesus makes known; He makes God known, and offers the possibility of eternal life to those who are born again of water and the spirit.
St Paul in our first reading says that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” - Jesus promises us God’s love, which flows into our deepest self.
Jesus slowly moves the conversation to something deeper, He moves things downward into the heart, downward into the deeper and more vulnerable aspects of the Samaritan woman and her life and background - her husband - Jesus doesn’t shame her, but He reveals something deeper to her.
And whilst all of this is happening, it’s easy to overlook something central - that Jesus is talking to a Samaritan woman. There are two good reasons why Jesus shouldn’t have spoken to the woman: firstly because she’s a woman, and secondly because she’s a Samaritan (and He’s a Jew);
and yet Jesus crosses a social boundary, a social taboo: He speaks to the woman, and He opens the discussion with a simple “give me a drink” - by the standards of the day, it’s a scandalous encounter.
But extraordinarily, by the end of the story the Samaritan woman ends up becoming a sort of missionary: she leaves her water jar and goes to her town, saying “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” and we learn that the people "went out of the town and were coming to [Jesus]”; ultimately “many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony”. So, a Samaritan woman with a complicated past becomes a missionary, a sort of evangelist.
In our first reading from Exodus, we see people who are physically thirsty. And God ends up giving them water, He gives water even to people who are complaining and moaning - and so too in the Gospel, we see that God gives water even to the marginalised, even to there Samaritan woman.
The woman moves from isolation into community; it’s easy to overlook a detail which St John includes in the story: she leaves her water jar behind when she leaves - it’s a beautiful and highly symbolic image - the thing she originally came to the well for is no longer the most important thing, she’s no longer worried about the water, but about her encounter with Christ. She’s found something much greater than water at the well.
I think the story of the woman at the well can give us many different insights during this season of Lent.
This theme of thirsting, of spiritual thirst - perhaps this deeper thirst is something which a lot of people often avoid thinking about.
Lent can be a time when God calls us to think about our deeper thirsts, to examine our deeper longings. Most of us spend a lot of our time thinking about our surface-level thirsts: maybe the thirst for success, the thirst for recognition, for fame, for money, for distraction, for comfort. But in each of us there can often be a deeper longing, a deeper thirst: the thirst to be known, the thirst to belong, the thirst to be forgiven, the thirst to be loved.
And Lent is also often a time when we traditionally focus on repentance. But the story of the woman at the well reminds us that God does not necessarily wait around for perfect people, but grace can often begin in the midst of our messy and unfinished lives; - God does not exclusively work through the respectable and the confident, but the missionary in the Gospel is someone whom society might normally dismiss and reject – the Church grows not necessarily through perfect people, but through people who have encountered Christ. And meeting Christ can naturally overflow into sharing Christ (as the woman did), through our words, our actions, and our prayers.
Perhaps a question to ask ourselves this Lent is “am I thirsty? What am I thirsty for? How will my thirst be quenched?”
Lent is a time of the Church’s year when we’re invited to bring our deeper thirsts to Christ, and Christ gives us the living water, His very self, God’s love pure out once again into each of us.
Christ continues to be poured out for us in the sacramental life of the Church - in Baptism, in the Mass, in the life of prayer - the Church is a place where Christ meets us in our thirst.
We’re invited to hear Jesus’ promise again: “whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
-Fr. Nick Archer