'The' Well Scene
Notes
Transcript
Encounter
Encounter
Someone is doing something we don’t think they should be doing. Today, the woman is dating a bunch of different guys. WE ALL HAVE OPINIONS ON WHO SHOULD DATE WHO! And the hard part of life is knowing when to express our opinions, when to let others make their own mistakes, how to be understanding, and how to preach the truth with love.
And Christ, I’m sure, is very interested in our opinions, but even He exceeds our expectations, of 1) What we would have thought of this woman and 2) What he intends to convey by this meeting.
Could share story of Dan and Shauntel.
Today in the Gospel Christ approaches a woman by the well. Keep in mind that the well is, well, the place of romance.
Moses met his wife at the well. He attractively fought off those nasty shepherds and their livestock.
Isaac’s servant met Rebekah at the well and fell in love with her, for Isaac.
His game was to ask for a drink of water and the one who slaked his thirst would be the one!
Jacob fell in love with Rachel at the well.
The apostles are good Jews, so they knew the connotation!
“Guys, we left him alone for five minutes and their he is talking to a woman! Peter! I thought you were on guard duty!”
Genesis 29:9–12 (NABRE)
While he was still talking with them, Rachel arrived with her father’s sheep, for she was the one who tended them. As soon as Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of his mother’s brother Laban, and the sheep of Laban, he went up, rolled the stone away from the mouth of the well, and watered Laban’s sheep. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and wept aloud. Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s relative, Rebekah’s son. So she ran to tell her father.
And its not that Christ did this at the well because the patriarchs did such things. Its that Christ would one day do this and those other patriarchs were pointing forward to this great moment!
Let’s summarize the Gospel, Christ is thirsty, So is the woman, He asks for a drink (just like Isaac’s servant) and she wonders why He thinks He is greater than Jacob. He offers her living water (That she might become the woman from Songs), She wants it, but doubts, He comments on her marital situation, she changes the subject and notes his prophetic powers, She accepts him as the Messiah, the disciples distract him with food! “He’ll forget about her if we give him some snacks!” “I have food that you don’t know of! Just look out there! The fields are ripe for the picking.” And then many came to believe through the testimony of this woman that Jesus is the Messiah.
The man says about the woman in Song of Songs (Chapter 4)
M 12 A garden enclosed, my sister, my bride, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed!
New American Bible: Revised Edition Chapter 4
15 A garden fountain, a well of living water,
streams flowing from Lebanon.
16 Awake, north wind!
Come, south wind!
Blow upon my garden
that its perfumes may spread abroad.
Since St. John plays with the Song of Songs, what is going on here is a marriage. There is a marriage proposal between the Non-Jews and Christ. His plan wasn’t to make them Jewish and worship correctly, his plan was to marry the Samaritans, and she is standing in the place for them all. He said there would be a new worship, in Spirit and Truth. And we’ve been celebrating the new worship, the faith of Peter and the Apostles since Christ’s death and Resurrection and Ascension.
And this is why Christ is celibate, because He needed to point out that the Church, the whole Church, is His bride, but so that this woman would know that He is God whom her heart was made for.
In the television series, “The Chosen,” she says, “I’m going to tell everybody” Christ says, “I was counting on it!”(https://youtu.be/ordhsDeAt60?t=378)
Now that’s one angle, that Christ came that He might meet up with her exactly when she was alone at the well, but Christ didn’t just intend this moment to get her to evangelize. Christ is telling us something beautiful by his actions. He is coming to tell us that He is the bridegroom of our souls! That HE stands in the place, that 1, 2, or 5 husbands never could!
See, The Samaritans blended their religion with the pagan cultures, especially the Assyrians around them, that they weren’t just worshipping the one God, but Him, along with that other God of the Assyrians, along with the other God of the Babylonians, etc. The five husbands surely were her shady past, but also stood as symbolical for all the other “gods” aka “false husbands” that the people who used to be the heritage of the Hebrew, Jacob, who had escaped from Egypt, had fallen into relationship with other false husbands. 2 Kings 17:30–31 (NABRE): 30 The Babylonians made Sukkot-Benot; the people of Cuth made Nergal; those from Hamath made Ashima; 31 those from Avva made Nibhaz and Tartak; and those from Sepharvaim immolated their children by fire to their city gods, King Hadad and King Anu
God used to feed these people with water in the desert! that’s the first reading, “and the Rock was Christ!” But now, His people had stopped drinking from Him.
Mark 9:2–3 (NABRE)
After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
Revelation 19:8 (NABRE)
She was allowed to wear a bright, clean linen garment.” (The linen represents the righteous deeds of the holy ones.)
Thus you were adorned with gold and silver; your garments made of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth. Fine flour, honey, and olive oil were your food. You were very, very beautiful, fit for royalty.
For I will re-establish my covenant with you, that you may know that I am the Lord, that you may remember and be ashamed, and never again open your mouth because of your disgrace, when I pardon you for all you have done—oracle of the Lord God.
Christ stands as God who is not satisfied with his bride forsaking the Covenant. He comes back to win back the bride. So He goes to the well precisely to tell all of us, I have come to wed my bride again, to tell Her that I never left her, but that I will also bring those who were not my people into that covenant relationship.
This is why the Church allows us to enter into marriages with non-Catholics, with even non-Baptized! Because this is what Christ did with us, and through our faith, the non-Catholics of the world might come to see the beauty of the intimacy with Christ that we have and desire to be a part of this great love story!
Its not to point out what everyone is doing wrong, which is not what Christ did with the woman! But we don’t see with the eyes of Christ and see into the heart of people. Thus we ought to be slow to judge and quick to pray.
Because see, God doesn’t just want to give us little sips of His grace, but in the 2nd Reading we heard Romans 5:5
the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us.
"He does not ration his gift of the Spirit" John 3:34
The Formula for Absolution in confession has also just been changed to reflect this, from “God has sent the holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins” to “God has poured out the Holy Spirit among us...”
God doesn’t just want you to survive, He wants you to live off of him. He has food to give us that we don’t understand. He has water to give us that we can’t obtain on our own.
So we remain with Him this Lent in the desert, drinking from Him the rock, the garden fountain, the well brimming up unto eternal life, we don’t understand this love, but we were made for it and we want it! “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty.”