(Third Sunday of Lent-Year A; This homily was given on March 15, 2020 in Rome, Italy; See John 4: 5-42)
There is a powerful Country song by the artist, Kathy Mattea, named “Knee Deep in a River.” Like many Country songs it is tragic and beautiful at the same time, because it describes life as we often find it. The song is about the abundance of relationships and possibilities for fulfillment, and the truth that we very often fail to make those essential connections. Instead of being fulfilled by what is already in our lives, we seek something else and are left wanting. The song begins:
Friends I could count on, I could count on one hand
With a leftover finger or two
I took ‘em for granted, let ‘em all slip away
Now where they are I wish I knew
They roll by just like water
And I guess we never learn
Go through life parched and empty
Standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst
In our Gospel this weekend we hear that familiar and moving story of the woman at the well. In many ways she is a woman standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst. She comes to the well to draw water and, unknowingly, finds herself standing before the Messiah. He engages her in a profoundly personal conversation and declares to her even the most intimate details of her life. When he invites her to go and call her husband, the woman replies, “I do not have a husband.” Jesus responds, “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true” (John 4:17-18). In all of those relationships she has not been able to find the fulfillment and the peace that she is seeking. She is standing knee deep in a river, and dying of thirst.
What is more, we learn that she has come to the well at noon time. No one comes to draw water at noon in that part of the world! Women in Palestine in the time of Christ came to draw water in the morning, or perhaps late afternoon, when it was cooler. They would likely come in numbers because it was safer. But this woman would not have felt either welcome or comfortable among that number. She comes to the well at noon because she is alone, isolated from the relationships and the community to which she belongs.
Yet in the midst of her thirst, and precisely in the place of greatest vulnerability, she finds the source of living water that is Christ Himself. It is an amazing and hope-filled story of encounter and transformation. I would suggest that it is especially compelling for us in at least two specific ways.
Firstly, it is compelling because we see this woman connected not only to the source of living water that is Christ; we also see her reconnected to all of the relationships that were already present in her life. By the end of the Gospel, we hear that she has returned to the town and become an ambassador for Jesus Christ. She tells them all that Jesus has said to her, asking “Could he possibly be the Christ?” (John 4:29). Not only does she return with confidence and announce the Messiah to them with boldness; importantly, they truly listen to her. They take this woman very seriously, and are inwardly moved by what she has told them.
Secondly, this story is compelling because we have all been there, we have all been that thirsty. We all know what it is like to have such an abundance of possibilities for being fulfilled, so many relationships and graces that we experience on so many different levels, and still find ourselves unhappy and thirsty for the love and contentment that God alone can provide.
There is a wonderful book called, The Little Prince, which has been translated into several hundred languages and has delighted children and adults for decades. It is tale about an aviator whose plane breaks down in the desert. There in that place he meets the Little Prince, who is visiting Earth from his own small planet. They become friends and begin to go on adventures together. At one point their source of water runs out and they become quite thirsty. Suddenly, in the middle of the desert, they discover a well! The aviator draws some water for the Prince and is struck by the simplicity and serenity with which his little friend consumes it. He thinks to himself that seeing the Prince enjoying that water is like a holiday; it gave the aviator pleasure just to watch how content that Little Prince was. Suddenly his little friend turns to him and says:
“The men where you live raise five thousand roses in the same garden—and they do not find in it what they are looking for . . . And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water.”
The aviator concedes, perhaps from personal experience, that this is true; we are often left unsatisfied, despite the great abundance of what we have been given. The prince then declares that they eyes are blind, and “one has to look with the heart.”
We are called to seek Christ, the living water, who alone can satisfy us. God invites us to open our hearts and our souls, and to drink deeply from Christ, the source of living water. Here in the Eucharist we arrive at the well, at the place where Christ fulfills our deepest desires. But, like the woman at the well, He also longs to reconnect us to others and to make us more aware of the many possibilities for being in communion with the people that are already a part of our lives. Will we cooperate with that holy longing?
The final verse of that Kathy Mattea song is as tragic and poignant as the beginning:
So the sidewalk is crowded, the city goes by,
And I rush through another day
And a world full of strangers turn their eyes to me,
But I just look the other way
They roll by just like water
And I guess we never learn
Go through life parched and empty
Standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst
Drinking deeply here at this well, strengthened in the body and blood of Christ, we ask for the grace not to turn the other way, but to help others to find that same source of living water that is Christ. In particular in these days, as the people we encounter turn to us, perhaps it is only the eyes that we will see. In the midst of the current pandemic of the coronavirus COVID-19, peoples faces are often partially covered with a protective mask and their eyes alone are visible. How essential that we do not look the other way, but instead engage them and help them to have hope and faith in the midst of this crisis. May the God who met the woman at the well meet each of us this week, quenching our thirst for true peace and fulfillment and granting our deep desire for healing and new life.
