Lectionary Reflection: Third Sunday in Lent

John 4:5-42
4:5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

4:6 Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

4:7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."

4:8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)

4:9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)

4:10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."

4:11 The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?

4:12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?"

4:13 Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,

4:14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."

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The lectionary text for this week is the story of Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well.  I was not consciously motivated to watch The Passion of Joan of Arc on the same day that this story was read in church, but they do compliment each other well.  In both accounts a woman is an outsider in a man's world.  But notice the stark differences in the way each woman is addressed.

According to the cultural standards of the day, a Samaritan woman would never have entered into conversation with a Jewish man in the public square. For Jesus to even acknowledge her breaks a cultural taboo.  He extends to her simple human dignity, before embarking on a teaching moment about quenching the thirst that exists in our souls.

Meanwhile, Joan is taken captive and put on trial by men who claim to represent Jesus in this world. She has no human dignity in their eyes.  They angrily demand that she recant her faith, causing Joan no measure of suffering before finally excommunicating and executing her.  They extend no measure of compassion to her.

James instructed the Jerusalem church of the first century to care for her widows and orphans. It was a defining characteristic of the early church that they cared for one another, and without such compassion the faith would have never experienced its phenomenal growth. They took to heart Jesus' teaching to the Samaritan woman that He was the living water which would quench thirsty souls. Drinking from the well of Jesus transformed the soul by cleansing it of its sinful impurities.  The legacy of the first century Jerusalem church is one that must continue to be taught in the twenty-first century if the body of Christ is to be faithful to her Lord.