Third Sunday of Lent - Hearts Burning Within

The Season of Lent

Lent is intended to be a joyful walk toward Easter, a progression of the Church toward the summit of the liturgical year. The focus is on uncovering and rejecting everything that tarnishes or warps Christ’s image within us, all that keeps us from being closer to Christ. In this time, we are all focused inward but it is very much a communal journey.

The purpose of Lent is to prepare the people of God for the Paschal feast. So of every reading we might legitimately ask: how does this prepare me for the Paschal feast?

Lent is a time for the fiery love of the Holy Spirit to burn away what we do not need, releasing new energy for growth. It’s not about becoming a better person but rather becoming more and more consumed by the love of Christ.

Lent is a time we naturally begin to think of the things we have done wrong and the ways we have separated ourself from God. This is important and we must root these things out of our lives. But we must also balance this with God’s love. There is nothing we can do to make God love us any more just as there is nothing we can do to make God love us any less. We must be secure in that love, have faith in it. Lent motivates us to draw ever closer to a God who loves us.

Lent, The Lectionary and Scripture Interpretation

Exodus 17:3-7

The book of Exodus is not an independent book but is an integral part of the Torah, which narrates the story of Israel from creation to the death of Moses. Chapter 12 recounts the Exodus from Egypt and chapters 13-14 tell the story of crossing the Sea of Reeds. Once they make it to the desert, there are three tests. Chapter 15 is the first test with bitter water. God provides pure water to drink. Chapter 16 is the second test of lack of food. God provides manna. Chapter 17:1-7 is the third test: a lack of water again. In today’s passage we see Moses stretching out his hand to strike the rock so that God can provide water once more.

All these testings in the wilderness stem from lack of trust in God. Time and again the freed slaves meet with hardship and look back with rose-colored glasses on their time in slavery. Despite God making God’s self known again and again, the Israelites question God’s love. They question whether God will continue to provide for them as God has done in the past.

Trivia for the day: The Torah is divided into 5 separate books because the length of a single scroll could not contain it all. Each book is the length of a scroll.

Many fundamental beliefs and practices of Judaism are rooted in Exodus.

An interesting feature of Exodus: the book does not mention any names of Pharaohs but does mention the names of the midwives who saved babies from those Pharaohs (1:15).

In verse 7 Meribah plays on the Hebrew word “to quarrel” while Massah is derived from the Hebrew word “to test.”

Is the Lord around? Or has he abandoned me? Think back on times in your life when you felt abandoned by God. Can you look back on those times now and see God at work despite how you felt? What helped you through those times?

Romans 5:1-2, 5-8

Romans 5:1-11 announce Paul’s major theme: that the love of God assures salvation to all those justified by faith.

In verse 1 he says the primary effect of being reconciled to God / justified by faith is peace.

In verse 2 he uses the imagery of “gaining access.” Think of a royal receiving room where someone petitioning the king is led into the inner chamber and royal presence. Christ is the one who brings us into the throne room as it were. This imagery made sense in a culture of empire and kings but no longer speaks so strongly to us today. What is your primary image of God and how does the idea of “gaining access” to God through Christ fit into that image?

In verse 5 he says the love of God is poured out on us. Throughout the Old Testament, the outpouring of gifts such as wisdom, grace, and mercy is a common attribute of God. In the New Testament it is the outpouring of the Spirit that demonstrates God’s presence

Verse 8 is a key verse for Paul. There is no quid pro quo. God demands nothing but gives all.

Where is the love of God flowing freely through you? What hinders this love from being poured out on you?

John 4:5-42

Almost from the start of Christianity, this story held significance for those entering the church through baptism. This reading is used for the first RCIA Scrutiny Rite. The First scrutiny invites the Elect (those seeking baptism) and the entire community to reflect on our individual and personal sinfulness. This is one of three ways the scrutinies invite us to look at the ways sin and evil can wound and separate human life from God.

Jesus has a dangerous disregard for the social barriers that would keep him apart from this woman.

The Samaritan woman has gotten a bad rap in church history for being a “sinner.” It’s commonly assumed she was a woman of loose morals to have gone through five husbands, but that is an interpretation through the lens of modern life. In her ancient culture, there was only one way a woman could leave a marriage and that was for the husband to either die or divorce her. If a husband died, getting another husband was not exactly an easy proposition. The woman might become a second or third wife, bearing the brunt of the physical labor for a large household. If a husband divorced the woman, she would carry a stigma and it was unlikely that she would find another man to marry her. A husband could divorce a wife for infidelity but more often, it was because she had not born children. The woman in today’s story had this happen to her five times. It was probably a miracle she was able to find a husband that many times! But it was little wonder that she couldn’t find another one and had to take up a protector without benefit of marriage. Like many women of her culture, she was forced into a situation in order to survive, about which Jesus did not rebuke her. He simply stated her situation.

In light of the above, go back and reread verses 17-18. Is Jesus’ tone different now, perhaps more compassionate? Does the woman’s response in verse 19 take on more significance now?

The Samaritan woman was in Jesus’ physical presence. We may think on that and envy her the proximity. Of course it was easy for her – she was right there in his presence! But let’s not be too quick to dismiss the fact that we, also, are in Jesus presence – a resurrected presence that is always with us. Ignatian spirituality provides a wonderful vehicle for becoming more aware of this presence, called imaginative prayer. Saint Ignatius valued our God-given gift of imagination and frequently employed it to enhance his prayer life. In this type of prayer, we imagine ourselves in the story as concretely as possible. Maybe we play the story through and star as the Samaritan woman ourselves – conversing with Jesus and slowly making the connections. Or maybe we are a bystander, watching and noting. This type of prayer can be used powerfully by God to lead us into a deeper relationship with him and experience his presence in a more tangible way. Take some time this week to give it a try.

Verses 19-20 reference Mt. Gerizim which was where the Samaritans worshiped rather than Jerusalem. They expected the Messiah to vindicate this as the correct location for worship over Jerusalem. As he so often does, Jesus takes expectations to a whole different level. He relocates the standard of worship from a place to a person.

In verse 25 the woman begins to understand who Jesus is and suggests he might actually be the Messiah. Verse 26 would be more literally translated “I AM. I AM is speaking with you.” I AM is the Greek translation for the Hebrew name of God, YHWH, revealed to Moses at the burning bush. Jesus declares his full identity to the woman. Her response in verse 28 is to leave everything (a tool for drawing water in the desert is equivalent to everything!) and share the good news.

We know that the author of this gospel is a consummate story-teller. But verse 27 feels like a clunky and abrupt distraction, doesn’t it? We’re tempted to skip some verses and get back to the story at hand. It’s interesting that the lectionary does not do this. Why not?

There are actually parallels between Jesus’ conversation with the disciples and his earlier one with the woman. In both, Jesus begins at a very surface level with water or food. He quickly progresses to equating the physical with the spiritual. The woman doesn’t get it right away but she is at least willing to engage and grapple with it until she understands. The disciples don’t get it either but they seem content to keep things at the physical, easy to grasp level. Jesus tells them to pay attention to what happens to those who are willing to engage in the work of coming to know him, demonstrated by the arrival of the town to see for themselves what the woman has testified about. The woman did the hard, vulnerable work of sowing; the disciples have only to stand and reap and yet that, too, is a vital task.

Several times in John’s gospel he says that people “began to believe” in Jesus and we see that in verse 39. Faith is progressive. It’s never a “one and done” sort of thing!

Who are the witnesses to the faith that have led you to a deeper encounter with God? Do you serve that role for anyone?

Questions to ponder

What is your primary image of God and how does the idea of “gaining access” to God through Christ fit into that image?