+ Thoughts on the 3rd
Sunday of Lent (08/03/26) +
Exodus 17.1–7; Psalm 95;
Romans 5.1–11; John 4.5–42
There is so
much in today’s readings. They are so rich on so many levels that it’s
difficult to know where to start. Whichever way I choose to unpack them I am
going to be leaving lots behind. The Word of God really is a banquet we can
never consume in its entirety. It’s a life’s work.
Let’s start
by saying that you all know that there are different kinds of water don’t you?
And there are different kinds of rocks? Just like there are different kinds of
desert and different kinds of wells.
There’s
plain water and then there’s Living Water which is a way of describing the Holy
Spirit; there are plain rocks and then there is the Rock of Ages who is Christ;
there are plain deserts and then there is the desert we are in at the moment
called the desert of Lent; there are plain wells and then there is the Well
whose waters gush up to eternal life, which is also a symbol of the Holy
Spirit, given by Jesus.
There are
also different ways of interpreting the Holy Scriptures.
I hope you
will indulge me as I get a little theological. You can take a teacher out of
the classroom but you can’t take the classroom out of a teacher… I am going to
explain an important principle to bear in mind when we approach the Bible.
The writers
and the early readers of the Bible loved something called ‘typology’. It was
their favourite way of looking at the Scriptures, and for my money it’s by far
the most rewarding.
What this
means is that they used, and looked for, certain ‘types’ of people, and things
and situations, that somehow prefigured a person, thing or situation that would
come later.
So for
example the Book of Deuteronomy says that when the Messiah comes he would be
someone like (or a type of) Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15-18). The OT is also full
of references to the Messiah being a type of new King David, who slew Goliath.
When the Apostles
and the Early Church Fathers looked at the story of Adam and Eve they saw in
those characters types of Jesus, who gets called the New Adam, and types of
Mary, who is the New Eve.
When they
revisited the story of the Israelites crossing the red sea to escape slavery in Egypt,
they said it was a type of Baptism, where we go through the water to escape
from our own kinds of slavery, whatever they might be. The Passover sacrifice
and celebration meal is a type of the Eucharist. We could go on and on – the
bible is littered with examples.
This
shouldn’t puzzle us at all because we also indulge in typology (or typological
thinking) all the time. If I describe someone to you and say, That bloke
fancies himself as a real Mike Tyson, or George Clooney, or Winston Churchill,
you will know exactly what I am referring to. Or if I say that a woman is a
proper Mrs Bouquet (Bucket!), or Princess Diana or Beyonce you won’t be in any
doubt what I am saying.
That’s exactly
what they did, using examples from their own histories.
Lesson over.
Now for today’s readings. I wonder if we can spot some typology in action?
In our
reading from the Book of Exodus we are presented with what seems like a
straightforward account; that’s if a miracle story can ever be called a
straightforward account. A bunch of thirsty people grumbling to Moses that they
are dying of thirst, leads God to command water to gush from the rock at Horeb
on Moses’ command. The rock, obedient to God as ever, gushes water out from its
belly.
Our earliest
commentary on this passage comes from the mouth of St Paul who, writing typologically
in his 1st Letter to the Corinthians, says that the rock in question
is none other than Christ: For I do not want you to be unaware,
brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and
all passed through the sea, and all were
baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all
ate the same spiritual food, and all
drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that
followed them, and the Rock was Christ (10:1-4).
You know we
won’t even begin to harvest the honey of the scriptures unless we begin to
develop a certain fluency in this kind of typological or symbolic way of
thinking.
In our 2nd
reading there’s another reference to water. St Paul says that God’s love has
been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given
to us. I didn’t know that you could ‘pour’ a spirit into hearts, but it
makes sense doesn’t it, to those of us who know what it is to have a thirsty
heart that longs for love.
Talking of a
longing for love brings us to our long Gospel passage, where we meet Jesus,
deep in intimate conversation with a Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar – a
well originally dug by Jacob, the great patriarch and father of the 12 tribes
of Israel.
The first
thing to notice is that Jesus was tired and that it was about noon so it’s hot
and he would have been thirsty.
But more importantly the story reminds us of two earlier stories in Israelite history (typology again). It’s very similar to the story of 2 betrothals: both Isaac and his son Jacob met their brides to be at a well, and on both occasions it is the woman who draws water to slake the thirst of the male suitor.
Our passage
suggests that Jesus is the suitor – the bridegroom to be – who tires himself
out in pursuit of those he loves, and for whom he thirsts. Remember that ‘I
thirst’ is one of the last things he said on the cross? (John 19:28). Many
saints have claimed that Jesus’ thirst on the cross was a thirst for souls – he
was thirsting with love for us, right to the end.
The woman is
a Samaritan. Most of you probably know this but the Samaritans were a
class of people despised by the Jews.
They practiced a sort of heretical Judaism, and they had historically interbred
with the Assyrians and so they were a half-Jewish, half-Gentile hybrid. The
Jews considered them ‘unclean’.
She’s most
definitely the ‘wrong sort of person’ but that doesn’t stop Jesus from pursuing
her. I hope that will give us all some hope – it does me because I have always
suspected that there’s a part of me that’s the ‘wrong sort of person’.
The woman
also reaches for a typological way of understanding who Jesus is doesn’t she?
She says to him: Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the
well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ She doesn’t quite
know what to make of this strange, enigmatic Jew who talks to her even though
she’s a Samaritan and he’s a Jew. So she reaches for examples to make sense of
him: is this a new type of Jacob character?
Well in some
sense Jesus is the new Jacob and he’s more than the new Jacob. Jacob fathered
the 12 tribes of Israel, the foundation of the nation of Israel; Jesus adopts
12 Apostles, the foundation of the new Israel, the Church.
Then
everything shifts because what happens is that Jesus begins to show her that he
knows everything about her. He knows her intimately, just as he knows us
intimately.
He knows all
her secrets and one of her secrets is that she has had 5 husbands, and even
that wasn’t enough because she’s on to her 6th man.
I don’t know
the history of her love life, or the details (perhaps they all died and she was
faithful to all of them?) but this strikes me as a person thirsting for love,
and never being able to quite slake her thirst. She’s what we call a ‘serial
monogamist’ these days.
She’s been
drinking deep from the wells of love (6 different wells to be clear) but none
of them have satisfied. Jesus doesn’t shame her for a second, does he? What he
does instead is offer her the only kind of love that can truly satisfy her. He offers
her the Living Water, the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy
Spirit, which is the only water that can ever satisfy the deepest thirst of the
human heart.
Here’s what
he says: ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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.’
Jesus, the
Rock himself, offers a water with a difference and her response is an example to
us all, even though she seems caught up in a literal way of thinking: The
woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or
have to keep coming here to draw water.’
She’s got a
little way to go, hasn’t she? She can’t quite shake her literal-mindedness yet
because she doesn’t yet grasp the fact that Jesus is not talking about literal
water from a literal well.
He’s talking
about the Well of the Water of Life itself, and he’s talking about
understanding things in a symbolic and spiritual way, because actually symbolic
and spiritual realities are far more true than mere facts and literal meanings.
They are eternal truths.
He says, the
hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the
Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship
him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and
truth.’
Like our
woman at the well, we must begin to understand the spiritual meanings behind
much of what we are presented with as Christians if we are to grow and develop
in our faith.
So here’s a
teaser for you to contemplate and unpack if you’d like to: What if you’ve been
at that Well yourselves at some point, perhaps without realising it? What if as
well as being a story about Jesus pursuing a Samaritan women at a well and
filling her heart with the love of God by the Holy Spirit, it’s also a story
about Jesus pursuing you, and filling you with the only love that can ever
truly slake your heart’s thirst?
And what if,
in some way, this is also story about your baptism? What if your baptism was
more than just a naming ceremony at a symbolic well? More than just the pouring
of ordinary water on an ordinary baby at a font? What if, at this stage, Jesus
wants to open your eyes to the true and spiritual significance of that event
even though you might be many years on from that day?
Food for
thought perhaps?
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus,
give us the Living Water. The water that will become in us a spring of water
gushing up to eternal life.
Give us the
Holy Spirit and pour the love of God into our hearts, so that we may never be
thirsty for love again because we will have your love.
Amen.
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