Are you willing to settle for the tangible? Or are you holding out for more?
Our first reading this Sunday, from Exodus, shows us the
Israelites on a journey through the desert, struggling with their faith as they
complain to Moses of their thirst: Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst? Their spiritual condition is undermined by
their physical condition; their bond with God is tenuous, since they seem to assume
God will not be there to help. As Psalm 95 reminds us, their hearts are hardened… Yet God does intervene in the Israelites’
plight nonetheless, providing what they ask for: tangible water
for the people to drink. Such direct
intervention should be sufficient to allow them to come to an awareness of
God’s care for them, but in fact their spiritual life is unchanged, and they
will soon be building a golden calf to worship in God’s place. Their ability to trust God – their faith – is
limited by their human parameters.
The Samaritan woman in John’s Gospel is likewise limited, at
first at least, by her own human parameters.
Jesus breaks every rule in the book by asking her for water, placing
himself on par with her, though he is a man and a Jew and should not be
conversing alone with this Samaritan woman.
He then tells her she should herself be asking for living water – not merely life-sustaining water, but a new kind of
water, welling up from the spring that is Jesus himself, intangibly, something
she can hold onto only in her heart.
We too are on a journey; we struggle with faith. What does it take to find the faith we need,
and to maintain it? We are often willing
to settle for what we can hold in our hands, the tangible. But God offers us eternal life, love,
infinite and forever, in the person of Jesus.
Only Jesus can slake our thirst for God. To worship God in spirit and truth is to enter into
God’s place, into real relationship, to enter into who God is — I AM —, not just our concept of who
God is. Because of Jesus’s death on the
Cross, there is no longer any barrier:
God is accessible. We enter into
relationship because the Spirit acts; it is God’s action. But we have to be ready to receive the gift,
to enter into where God draws us, embracing fully the fullness of God revealed
in Jesus, whether we understand it completely or not. Jesus wants to draw the woman at the well out
of the tangible to something more: living water. Our
faith constantly calls us to that more that is the love of God poured out into our hearts (Romans). And it’s not tangible. But it is perfect.
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
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