2018 Homily, Samaritan Woman, St. Bernadette, Prospect,
When I visited my family last month I stayed with my brother and one day my nice wanted me to read a story for her. She is two-and-a-half years old. I found that, when I read her picture-book stories, she would not simply look on passively. She would interrupt and ask for example: “What is the moon doing in the sky?” Or “What is the mouse doing in the field?” In other words, her responsive, enquiring mind was not limited by the set story in front of her; and she was wanting to engage in a learning conversation. In that way, she will gain in understanding, expanding her horizons.
I was reminded of this experience when I read the Gospel story of the Samaritan woman’s encounter with Jesus at the well. She certainly did not follow the conventional script of Jesus’ ministry. He had come from a Jewish family, had surrounded himself with Jewish male followers and his ministry had hitherto been to the Jewish people. And then he encountered a non-Jewish (Samaritan) woman. And she was a woman who had lived an eventful life, having had five husbands and who was then cohabiting with a sixth man. Yet, crossing all barriers, in their weariness, in the silence of the noonday, Jesus and the woman sat awhile and talked together.
And what she showed was a responsive, enquiring mind, not limited by the conventions of her time, and that she was wanting to engage in a learning conversation. She was unafraid to ask Jesus a series of questions and to make a series of comments. And through this she expanded her horizons, growing in understanding of who Jesus is. She asks Jesus to give her his gift of living water, springing up into life everlasting. She sees him as the Christ, the one who tells all things. She then leaves Jesus. Symbolically, she also leaves behind her jar, representing her old way of life. She goes to tell her own people of what she has encountered.
In thinking of a modern-day parallel to the Samaritan woman, I came across the story of the American Rosaria Butterfield. Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, a former tenured professor of English and women’s studies at Syracuse University, converted to Christ in 1999 in what she describes as a train wreck. Rosaria earned her Ph.D. from Ohio State University, then served in the English department and women studies program at Syracuse University from 1992 to 2002.
She prided herself on being a leftist, atheist academic, and on being in a lesbian relationship. She said that “the word Jesus stuck in my throat like an elephant tusk. Those who professed the name commanded my pity and wrath”. But through her dialogue with Christians and her open, responsive, repeated reading of the Bible, she came to a radical conversion. Her life was uplifted to more than she had been. She reflected:
“The Bible got to be bigger inside me than I. And it absolutely overflowed into my world. Sometimes in crisis, we don’t really learn lessons. Sometimes the result is simpler and more profound: sometimes our character is simply transformed”.
So as we continue our Lenten journey, let us retain that child-like openness to learning and to developing that my niece shows and that has characterised unlikely converts to Christ’s way. We all have our burdens, our weariness, and our hunger for something greater. Christ is there waiting to raise us up to more than we have been
The story is told of a generation ago when an old farmer brought his family to the big city for the very first time. They had never seen buildings so tall or sights so impressive. The farmer dropped his wife off at a department store and took his son with him to the bank- the tallest of all the buildings. As they walked into the lobby, they saw something else they had never seen before. Two steel doors opened. A rather large and elderly woman walked in, and the big doors closed behind her. The dial over the door swept to the right and then back to the left. The doors opened and a beautiful young lady came walking out. The farmer was amazed. He turned to his son and said, “you wait right here. I’m going to get your mother and run her through that thing.”
At the rapture, we will be taken up. But we will be transformed and come back with resurrection bodies.
Samaritan woman brought people in her village to the life-giving water. In the first reading we heard Jewish people were thirsty in the desert and Moses brought life giving water to them. Are we giving life giving waters of God to others especially those around us? Are we like woman in the well running around to bring people to Jesus. Are you sharing love of God with others?
Song: Fill my cup Lord by Wanda Jackson 7/8/2014, 2.43 min/y tube. Reflective song