March 12 Lenten Reflection: The Water of Eternal Life

 Today's reading focused on the Samaritan woman by the well, which is one of my favourite scripture readings of all time.

Perhaps the reason I like it the most, is that it's a dramatic piece of history.  The woman he meets is someone who has had many husbands, and lived with many men.  But Jesus doesn't condemn her, he only asks for water to drink.

This is a peculiar interaction because Jesus was breaking several social taboos to speak with her.  And the woman was probably an outcast.  She was a Samaritan, who Jews did not normally associate with (sort of a social norm of the day, I suppose) freely.  If he was someone important, he would have thought her beneath him.

Her conversation with Jesus went from being quite suspicious of Jesus' intentions, to asking other people to come see the prophet that was in town. She was never cynical or rude to Jesus, but to me this is one of the most interesting conversations in the New Testament.  It shows Jesus speaking with someone who has a lot on her mind, and perhaps might be considered a modern woman in her community, someone who was maybe a little different than the women in her community. (After all, she was on man number 6, you have to respect that tenacity to find the right one...I'm going to assume they were divorced as opposed to not alive.)

 But the description of the water in this passage, and the wording of this passage is one that is the basis for many songs and poetry:

"Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

And this description is in the middle of his banter with this woman, who gave some serious answers, and some not-so-serious answers.  But this phrase always sticks out to me: that people are thirsty, have deep desires, but those deep desires cannot be filled so easily by simple earthly pleasures.

And even though those earthen desires will still exist, we must look onwards, as vessels of souls, to where we are heading, and our orientation towards God.  It is about love, and truth and acceptance.  We are often the woman at the well, asking for God to take our cares away from us.  But God is not there to remove our cares, but only to remind us of the importance of our communities and the value of love shared and amplified through the living water.