Third Sunday in Lent – Cycle A
Reflecting on John 4: 5-42
Give me a drink. Seriously, Jesus. I’m asking.
I’m thirsty, and I know that’s the very thing you want to hear. My emptiness is the password that unlocks your grace, and oh how I need it.
I suppose that, like your great Samaritan disciple, I’ve had five husbands too. Hers were the five religions practiced by the slaves the Assyrians brought in to populate Samaria seven hundred years earlier. The inhabitants of Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hammath, and Sepharvaim knew nothing about Jacob or Moses, or the great prophets Amos and Hosea.
Well, to be honest, even Amos and Hosea couldn’t pierce the deafness of the inhabitants of Samaria all those years ago. They had the very well that their ancestor Jacob dug, and they gave lip service to the laws of Moses, but still they burned their children alive on altars dedicated to the Canaanite gods. So there were definitely wide open spaces in their hearts for the allure of the gods of the foreigners who came in with the Assyrians.
I left myself wide open for five husbands too, and they enslaved me. Their names are Comfort, and Food, and Safety, and People who Look Like Me, and, my most powerful master, The Positive Regard of Everyone I Meet.
I’ve drunk deeply from those wells, but they only made me thirsty again. Comfort and Food and Safety left me listless and useless. And the truth is, the faces of your poor look nothing like me, and those who care for them care only about YOUR positive regard. Give me a sip from the well from which THEY drink and are so satisfied.
Fill my cup, Lord. I’m finally lifting it up.
What “husbands” have left you unsatisfied?
I loved the line “My emptiness is the password that unlocks your grace, and oh how I need it.” Oh how true! And when I think of to what I have wed myself to fill this emptiness you got them all! (Comfort, food, safety, positive regard) I was just talking to a friend the other day about the concept that we want everyone to like us and oh how the Gospel concept of persecution contradicts this desire! May this time of Lent (Fasting, Almsgiving, Prayer) help me to seek HIM, who can truly fulfill my hearts desire.