This Sunday’s
Gospel has Jesus reaching out to a social outcast within a land of social
outcasts. The encounter between Jesus and the woman at the well happens in
Samaria. It is a place that the Jewish people avoided like the plague. They saw
the Samaritans as ritually unclean; too polluted for respectable, God-fearing
people to be around.
Yet Jesus
goes into this place, sits down at a well and carries on a conversation with an
unaccompanied woman. In those days, and particularly in that part of the world
a woman out by herself was considered an outcast even by her own people.
But this
woman has bigger issues. She’s been married five times and is now living with a
sixth person. Her own people look down upon her and, from her conversation with
Jesus, it is apparent that she has little self-esteem.
Despite
her lifestyle and self-alienation, Jesus reaches out to her and offers her living water, the presence of God. And
this woman, this social outcast, this sinner, recognizes and accepts Jesus as
Lord; while his own people, the upstanding people of the Mosaic Law do not. And
she is so moved that she runs back to her village to bring her fellow outcasts
to meet him.
Society,
and our institutional structures and sadly maybe even our own families,
sometimes throw people out; sometimes it's other people, sometimes it's even ourselves.
And maybe
we buy into it; we see ourselves, and others, as unworthy of God's love – because
we or they are different, because we or they don't quite fit in. But even then,
God comes into our darkest places to find us and to give us the living water of
his love - like he did for that Samaritan woman in today’s gospel.
As we
continue our journey through Lent, let us recognize that in spite of our bad
choices, our mistakes and even our sins, God loves us very much. And let us go
out into the Samarias of our own life, and love and accept others as God loves
and accepts us.
3rd Sunday of Lent
………………………………………………………………………………..
Readers
of this blog might enjoy these books by Deacon Lex. Both are available on
Amazon.com:
Just to Follow My Friend: Experiencing God’s Presence in Everyday
Life
Synchronicity as the Work of the Holy Spirit: Jungian Insights for
Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Ministry
http://www.amazon.com/Synchronicity-Work-Holy-Spirit-Spiritual/dp/1463518781/
No comments:
Post a Comment