Sunday 8 March 2026 Lectio Divina:*
Psalm
32(33)
2 Timothy 1:8-10
John
4:5-42
Meditatio:
“If you knew the gift of God” (John 4:10)
Commentary:
Typical of Lent as we
draw closer to The Great Feast of Easter the tone and length of Sunday gospel
reading become heavier and longer. Enter John this Sunday.
Jesus crosses a ‘frictionless and seamless border’ as he left Judea and started
back to Galilee going through Samaria.
Now we are sitting
near a well in a place called Sychar. It is a special place of religious
significance. It is in the middle of the day. A traveller stops there for rest
and for some of that precious cool water. ‘Give me a drink’ says the
traveller. That was fairly direct and concise! The conversation
opens up. There is a play on words with deep, deep significance like the well
of Jacob. Jesus reveals himself as an unusual Jew. He is speaking in a
public place to a woman and a Samaritan woman at that (‘They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman’ - v. 27).
Now, Samaritans were a
somewhat different breed to the Jews but not that different as not to share
Jacob as their common ancestor and the first five books of what we know as the
Bible as authoritative scripture. In other words, they were very much outside
the pale as far as Jews were concerned but they were frustratingly near enough
in theology, expectation and ethnic roots. Does any of this even sound remotely
familiar to an observer of religious-political-ethnic identity on the island of
Ireland?
What do I thirst
for?
When Jesus said to the
Samaritan woman ‘Give me a drink’ he was about to prompt a discussion that led
from the ordinary and immediate thirst for water to a deeper, spiritual and
lasting thirst for new life. On the latter point, it is us – the Samaritan
woman and everyone no matter what tribe or creed or colour or orientation – who
thirst. We thirst to be understood. We thirst to be set free of the images and
representations that in which others may try incarcerate us.
The conversation at
the well leads to a realisation on the part of the Samaritan that she is
speaking to someone extraordinary. She returns to her family and tribe and
something has started. Other outsiders from this Samaritan tribe seek out this
unusual Jew. They invite him to stay in their town and Jesus ‘stayed
there for two days’. We have no further details but we may assume that,
according to John, at least, there were some interesting conversations
happening over 48 hours or so. They knew, also, that they had encountered
something wonderful and precious for ‘many more believed because of his word’
(v. 41).
They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer
because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and
we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.’ (v. 42).
There are many strands
to this story from the 4th chapter of John but we should not
miss that point that Jesus is, here, signalling a new departure from the
religious culture he grew up in. He is reaching out to other tribes and
‘religions’. It sits uncomfortably with the way we might want to represent
Christ through our own particular tribal or nationalistic lens.
Talking and
hanging out with the ‘wrong’ people
Talking to people who
are very different by reason of background, orientation, status or outlook in
life says something about us. Not infrequently, to be seen talking and
associating with the wrong people – people who do not belong to ‘us’ or who
come from the opposite or even enemy side in whatever stance, struggle or
contestation ‘we’ are part of – attracts negative comment. Taken to its
extreme, expulsion or marginalisation may be the price of ‘talking to the other
side’ or sharing in their feasts. Hard borders and high walls run deep in our
societies and in our hearts. The physical and visible borders and walls are not
even as significant as those invisible ones that separate us from each other.
This is where enmity and strife originate.
The unfortunate aspect
of many human associations and belongings is that such belonging can be
exclusive, excluding and sectarian. We are right; they are wrong. Justice and
truth is on our side; wickedness, folly and betrayal is on the other.
Even today, many who
claim to follow Jesus operate like as if they are part of a doctrinally pure,
liturgically valid-only and error-excluding self-contained island. The One True
Island with the drawbridges pulled up and everyone safe and cosy on the inside.
Sharing the Table of our Master’s Word let alone his Bread is seen as betrayal
of first principles. One must ask what principles and whose principles?
Honesty with
ourselves
For the approaching week we might reflect on the very first line of the ‘Confessions’ of the
spiritual patron of our island:
I, Patrick, a
sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most
contemptible to man.
(see also 1
Timothy 1:15).
Perhaps a ruthlessly
honest appraisal of where one is at is the best antidote to sectarianism,
superiority, presumption and exclusion.
We would do well to
aim to live by the Wesleyian maxim of ‘friends of all; enemies of none’ even if
it is not possible to fulfil this at all times and with all peoples. It is
worth the try.
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