On this, the Third Sunday of Lent, the readings call us to think about our thirst for eternal life and how it can be quenched only by the life-giving water of the Holy Spirit that comes to us through Jesus. We, like the Israelites, in the first reading are called to recognize God in our lives and to trust in His care for us. Paul reminds us that in spite of our sinfulness, and in the midst of our woundedness, God has justified us in Christ and poured forth His love into our hearts in the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Gospel gives us a model of conversion as Jesus goes to Samaria and reclaims a people who had strayed.

First Reading: Exodus 17: 3-7

3 Here, then, in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst with our children and our livestock?” 4 So Moses cried out to the LORD, “What shall I do with this people? A little more and they will stone me!” 5 The LORD answered Moses, “Go over there in front of the people, along with some of the elders of Israel, holding in your hand, as you go, the staff with which you struck the river. 6 I will be standing there in front of you on the rock in Horeb. Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it for the people to drink.” This Moses did, in the presence of the elders of Israel. 7 The place was called Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD in our midst or not?”

NOTES on First Reading:

* 17:3-7 The issue is not thirst but the rejection of the value of the Exodus. This is a rejection of the Divine plan. The people do not believe that God can care for them. There is no Divine rebuke, simply a command to take the elders as witnesses and to strike the rock and water will spring forth.

* 17:6 In Horeb is a reference to Exodus 3:1-5 where Moses had met God. The rock is used as an image of Christ in 1 Cor 10:4.

* 17:7 Massah and Meribah are Hebrew words meaning respectively, “the (place of the) test,” and, “the (place of the) quarreling.”

Second Reading: Romans 5:1-2, 5-8

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access (by faith) to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, 4 and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us. 6 For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

NOTES on Second Reading:

* 5:1-11 Popular thinking frequently construed reverses and troubles as punishment for sin as in John 9:2. Paul assures believers that God’s justifying action in Jesus Christ is an act of peace. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ displays God’s initiative in giving humanity unimpeded access into the Divine presence.

* 5:1 Reconciliation is God’s gift of pardon to the entire human race. Paul’s term, justification, means to benefit personally from this pardon through faith. God desires to liberate believers from the pre-Christian self as described in Romans 1-3. Because this liberation will first find completion in the believer’s resurrection, salvation is described as future in Romans 5:10. For this reason it is called the Christian hope. Paul’s Greek term for hope does not, however, suggest any note of uncertainty. Rather, God’s promise in the gospel fills believers with expectation and anticipation for the climactic gift of complete commitment in the Holy Spirit to the performance of the will of God. The persecutions that attend Christian commitment teach believers patience and strengthen this hope, which will not disappoint them because the Holy Spirit dwells in their hearts and imbues them with God’s love (Romans 5:5).

* 5:3-4 These two verses are included here for completeness but are left out of the Lectionary reading.

*5:7 In Paul’s time a “just” person would have been one who was known to be generous with others.

Gospel Reading: John 4: 5-42 or 4: 5-15,19b-26, 39a,40-42 (for short form)

5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon.

7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” 11 (The woman) said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?” 13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; 14 but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and come back.” 17 The woman answered and said to him, “I do not have a husband.” Jesus answered her, “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ 18 For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. 24 God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Anointed; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking with you.”

27 At that moment his disciples returned, and were amazed that he was talking with a woman, but still no one said, “What are you looking for?” or “Why are you talking with her?” 28 The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, 29 “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah?” 30 They went out of the town and came to him. 31 Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘In four months the harvest will be here’? I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest. 36 The reaper is already receiving his payment and gathering crops for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together. 37 For here the saying is verified that ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work.”

39 Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me everything I have done.” 40 When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 Many more began to believe in him because of his word, 42 and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”

NOTES on Gospel Reading:

* 4:5 The Old Testament is full of meetings at wells. They form a very important part of the Patriarchal narratives; see Gen 25:10; Gen 29:1; Ex 2:15. Here John uses a meeting of Jesus and a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well to show us the basic elements of conversion. She at first resists His questions and tries to change the subject. Jesus refuses to play along with her and she is empowered by His presence to face her past and begin a new life. At the end of the story she is described by John in the same words he uses in Ch.17 to describe the missionary work of the apostles. So she changes from an outcast sinner into a missionary for Christ.

* 4:6 The hour was counted from dawn so the sixth hour is about noon. Water in such a place is drawn at the end of the day or in the early morning but not in the noontime heat. She may have been trying to avoid the other women who would be found at the well during the more usual times for drawing water.

* 4:9 Jews would consider themselves to be ritually unclean if they drank from a cup that had been handled by a Samaritan woman. This is why the woman is surprised by His request.

* 4:10 The term “living water” meant a spring or a river or any water body that had the water in motion rather than stagnant. Water from such a moving source was considered much more desirable than water that had been sitting in a well. Jesus uses it in a symbolic sense as the Holy Spirit. Living water has been used often as a symbol of the Holy Spirit and for the life that stems from Him. John often used such verbal misunderstandings as a literary device to provide the opportunity to inject a further explanation. See 3:3.

* 4:11 John uses the misunderstanding as a springboard for Jesus to reach out to her and help her face the stumbling blocks from her past that had alienated her from God and from her neighbors. The woman addresses Jesus as “kyrios” which is translated as “Sir” here. This is the same word, usually translated as LORD, that was used in the Septuagint (Greek text of the Old Testament) for the Hebrew word “Adonai” as a substitute for the Hebrew Name of God, “YHWH”, also called the tetragrammaton.

* 4:14 Jesus is speaking of the Holy Spirit whose presence will infuse the believer with eternal life.

* 4:15 The woman does not understand and is still thinking of “drinking water.”

* 4:17 Jesus confronts the woman with her past and she tries to change the subject.

* 4:18 The reference to five husbands may be interpreted in at least two ways. As a personal scandal: The accepted standard was that a woman could be divorced 2 times, and a few more radical teachers would allow three times but a woman who had been divorced five times would be considered a scandal. This may have been what made the woman an outcast among the people. As a symbolic scandal: There were five waves of gentile invasions that swept through Samaria. The Samaritans accepted them and intermarried with them and accepted some of their cultural artifacts. This made them unclean in the sight of the Jews.

* 4:24 Protestants tend to interpret this as: Jesus is speaking about interior worship of the Father in the Spirit. Catholics tend to interpret this as: Jesus is talking about worship of the Father by the power of the Spirit which is found in the church. The text and grammar allow both interpretations although the Catholic view is much older. Either way, taken with verse 21 it seems that Jesus is saying that both the Temple worship of Jerusalem and the worship of the Samaritans will soon be replaced by “true worship in Spirit and truth.”

* 4:25 Apparently the Samaritans were not expecting a Messiah who would be a king but one who would be a prophet like Moses (Deut 18:15).

* 4:26 Jesus uses a term that can also be translated as “I am”, the same name that God used when He met Moses and which became identified as God’s self-revelation to His people (Exod 3:14; Isa 41:4-10, 43:3). This link will be made explicit when Jesus is shown to be greater than Abraham (8:24,28). Confession of Jesus as prophet, Messiah, Savior of the world, and equal to God will become the basis for true worship in John’s community.

* 4:27 A Jewish Rabbi would not speak to a woman in public. Jesus seems to disregard this social requirement.

* 4:28 The woman abandons the very reason that she went to the well in the first place and leaving the water behind she goes back to town to tell others about Jesus. Her actions follow the pattern of the discipleship stories presented in 1:40-49.

* 4:31-34 The disciples misunderstand Jesus’ words about “food” just as the woman misunderstood His words about “water”. Jewish tradition often described the Torah as food (Prov 9:5, Sir 24:21). Jesus makes doing God’s will His “food.” This expression is common in Jesus’ ministry (5:30.36;6:38,17:4).

* 4:35-38 John has placed a series of proverbial sayings here that parallel the agricultural imagery of the Synoptic Gospels. Jesus uses them to aim the disciples toward their task of harvesting those who come close to Jesus.

* 4:37-38 Jesus uses the saying from Mic 6:15 with the pessimistic overtones removed. He has sower and reaper rejoicing together which was taken as a sign of a new age (Lev 26:5 implies an overlap of sowing and reaping).

* 4:39-42 The woman is presented as a missionary in virtually the same words as the disciples are in Jesus’ prayer in John 17:20. The Samaritans first believe because of the words of the woman. They must have seen something vastly different in her in order to get past their previous opinion of her and actually listen. Later their belief is based upon their own experience of Jesus and His Word.

Scripture text: New American Bible with revised New Testament copyright © 1986,1970, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine.
Commentary Sources:
Vince Del Greco
The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (1990) (Eds. Brown, Fitzmyer & Murphy)