Third Sunday Of Lent
JOHN 4:5-42 (Exodus 17:3-7; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8)
This gospel reading is the first of three from the Gospel of John imported into Matthew’s year, Cycle A. These three are: Jesus’ encounter with Samaritans; his creation of sight for a man born blind; the resurrection of Lazarus. These gospel readings are especially adaptable to the instruction of prospective converts preparing for baptism at the end of Lent. In the gospel reading of this Sunday’s liturgy Jesus is en route from Jerusalem in the south, the site of the temple in Judea, to Galilee, his home in the north. Between Judea and Galilee lay the province of Samaria. Although there was an alternate route from Judea to Galilee, the most direct route was through Samaria, and this was a problem.
Hostility between the Samaritans and the Jews of Judea and Galilee was of long standing, probably going back as far as an accepted division between the ten northern tribes and the two southern tribes. They were united under King David sometime between 1000-960 B.C. The union lasted till the end of the reign of Solomon, David’s son and successor, who died in 922 B.C. Rival temples, two in the north, and the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem intensified hostility. Assyria conquered the north in 722 B.C. They deported to the east many inhabitants of the north, (thus becoming the ten lost tribes), and imported five nations (peoples) from the east. Intermarriage between remaining Israelites and the imported peoples produced a mixed race called Samaritans from their capital city, Samaria.
Various conflicts between these people and the Judeans to the south led to hatred and hostility reaching into the time of Jesus. This is noted by the Samaritan woman, when she says to Jesus, “Why do you, a Jew (Judean), ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Typical of John’s style, the woman of Samaria plays the role of the dummy who asks questions which Jesus will spin in a spiritual direction. Jesus tells her that, if she would know who asked her for a drink, she would instead have asked, and he would have given her “living water.” True to John’s style, the woman pursues that answer with another “dummy” question, “How can you give me a drink. You have no container with which to pull water out of this deep well?” The water which Jesus offers is a reference to the Holy Spirit, an interpretation based on John 7:37-39.
When she recalls that the well was dug by their common ancestor, the patriarch Jacob, she opens the discussion to comparison between Jesus and Jacob, and a clue to Jesus’ identity. Thus far in this story Jesus has been identified as a Jew. He will now identify himself as “greater than our father Jacob.” Later in the gospel Jesus will be compared with Jacob’s grandfather Abraham, and his ultimate identity will be revealed in the statement, “Before Abraham came to be, I AM,” that is, the eternally existing God.
The next point in the story is a discussion about true worship. The discussion begins with a reference to the woman’s husband. She says she has no husband. Jesus says, “Right you are! You have had five, and the one you now have is not yours.” The story is highly symbolic and theological with a basis in biblical history. The five husbands she has had are a reference to the five tribes imported into the area by the Samaritans after 722 B.C., as noted above. They brought with them their own gods besides worshipping the Lord God of the Judeans (Jews). Samaria was thus home not only to a mixed race but to a mixed religion. Being “tainted,” of mixed race and mixed religion, led the Jews to conclude that the Samaritans were idolaters, that is, “the husband she now had was not hers.”
The Johannine Jesus explains, “You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” Christians must never forget that Christianity is a daughter, a continuation, and an updating of Jewish worship of God. John however justifies Christian worship as greater than the worship offered to God in Old Testament times when he depicts Jesus saying that the time had come when “true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” This part of the dialogue between Jesus and the woman also identifies Jesus as a prophet and beyond that, as Messiah/Christ.
The disciples had gone to town to buy food. They return and find Jesus speaking not only with a woman, but this woman was a Samaritan. In Jewish popular and prejudicial opinion Samaritan women were “unclean” from birth and forever. No respectable Jew would be seen speaking alone with a Samaritan woman. But Jesus is not bound by prejudice.
When the disciples offer him food, he replies that he has food of which they know nothing. It is their turn to act the dummy part with a question, to which Jesus answers that his food is to do the will of his Father, which is his entire mission (and the mission of every Christian). The woman has returned to her town and described Jesus and their conversation. Result: the whole town of Samaritans streams out to the well, listens to Jesus, and proclaims him “Savior of the world.” The importance of this title is that John thereby proclaims Jesus not only Savior of his own people, but of all nations.
