Third Sunday of Lent

“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.” Jn: 4, 42

I will never forget the experience of meeting Vin Scully, the famous LA Dodger announcer. It happened in a totally unexpected way while attending a baseball game in San Diego 44 years ago!

The Dodgers were playing the Padres. By chance I mentioned to an usher at the ball park what a thrill it would be to get to talk to, in the opinion of many, the greatest announcer in baseball history. A few minutes later, the usher came back and told me Mr. Scully would be delighted to meet with me, and gave me directions to the broadcasting booth!

For some 40 minutes, I got to sit at the feet of a near-god in the sports world – a celebrity who, incidentally, could not have been more gracious and welcoming.

The opportunity of a lifetime!

Completely unexpected. Totally out of the ordinary.

The woman in today’s gospel story also had a completely surprising, chance encounter – one far more significant than mine, to say the least. But both encounters have something in common:

Good news, and even transforming events, can happen in the most unexpected places and in the most unusual of circumstances.

The treasure for us today is that we are privileged to eavesdrop on the longest recorded conversation Jesus ever had with anyone!

To top it off, it’s a dialog that has several unexpected and extraordinary twists to it – a Jew talking to a Samaritan, and a man talking to a serially married woman who is drawing water from a well.

Several social boundaries were violated in this discussion. But, both Jesus and the woman decide that these long-held restrictions were insignificant considering the importance of this chance encounter.

As it turns out, the primary focus is something as ordinary as water.

Water is a life essential. But Jesus wants, even insists on helping the woman recognize its more profound meaning.

He has her full attention – and ours, as well.

Jesus goes on to say that the water he is talking about is a different kind of water, a water with a deeper meaning, a water for which she will never thirst again.

Jesus calls it “living water;” a water that will result in a “gushing up to eternal life.”

This dialogue strongly suggests the gift of baptism and its importance in the life of a follower of Jesus. It signifies a plunging into life with a new kind of purpose.

At first, the woman doesn’t get it – as often we don’t either. She doesn’t understand that Jesus is inviting her into a whole new way of seeing and living life.

And yet, she’s hooked. She wants to hear more. There’s a hunger within her that keeps her in the conversation. She realizes that this is not just an everyday person. There’s something about this man who is talking to her that sets him apart.

Little by little, she begins to have an awakening. And a thirst develops within her.  She even says: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Next Jesus reveals that he is fully aware of her history of failed marriages. She then graduates from calling him “Sir” to realizing that he is a “prophet.” Then Jesus takes her a step further and shares with her a much deeper insight into who God is, the “Father in Spirit and truth.”

The woman is increasingly overwhelmed by the depth of revelation Jesus is offering to her. She now takes another step towards understanding, and refers to Jesus as not just another man, or even a prophet. She now comes to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the one who “will tell us everything.”

The woman is so transformed by this dialogue that she is filled with excitement and cannot help but leave her water jar, run back to the town, and, bursting with excitement, announce to the people “Come see a man who told me everything I have done.”

This famous interaction between Jesus and a Samaritan woman – who is never named – concludes with the report that “Many more began to believe in him … 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.’”

The many-times married woman with no name becomes for us a model of what true conversion looks like.

She represents the growth that can take place for each of us: knowing Jesus first as a man, and then progressing to the recognition that he is a prophet, and then the Messiah, and finally the “savior of the world.”

It’s what we are called to in our own experience of water – the water of baptism, the water that symbolizes our immersion into a person whose life becomes like that of the Samaritan woman – someone who steadily grows into an understanding of who Jesus truly is and falls in love with that experience.

Out of a thoroughly unexpected event, the joy of getting to meet “the savior of the world” takes place.

Along with it also comes the joy of realizing that even an unnamed woman of a religious sect that we hardly understand can meet the Lord and have her life transformed.

And then, we get it:

The same unexpected encounter can happen for us too!

Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.

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3/16/17