How hard is it to
recognize God’s gifts?
In the Book of Exodus, the people of Israel grumble
against Moses as they make their way across the desert, believing they are
going to die of thirst in a godforsaken
land. Their concern is entirely valid; they
do need Moses to find water – tangible, liquid water – to help them
survive. The problem is that they seem
to lack faith in God, and in God’s ability to meet their very concrete,
physical need. But God intervenes
nonetheless, sending Moses, with some of
the elders of Israel and his staff,
to a rock from which water will flow
when Moses strikes it. The location for this miracle would become
legendary; Psalm 95 reminds the people, Harden
not your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the desert. The people of Israel are called by the psalmist
to do better than their fathers did, to improve on the past, and to respond more
appropriately to the gifts God provides.
In John’s Gospel,
the Samaritan woman also comes in search of water – tangible, liquid water – at
a well that Jacob had given to his son
Joseph.
There, she meets Jesus and he, against all social taboos and
restrictions, speaks to her, asking her for a drink. If he drinks from any bucket she has touched,
he will be ritually unclean, because she is a Samaritan. But Jesus subtly shifts the conversation to a
new kind of water – not the tangible, liquid water she thinks she needs, but
the living water she doesn’t yet know
is available to her. Jesus’ intervention
must appear strange to her – he has overstepped every rule of their society and
so she challenges Jesus regarding the social taboos associated with Samaritans.
Jesus responds, If you knew the gift of
God and who is saying to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. If only, that is, the woman had eyes of faith
to recognize the gift of God revealed to her in that moment! When, eventually, she thinks to ask about the
Messiah promised to the people, he tells her, I am he, who is speaking to you.
She is so moved by his words that she runs to bring others of her
community, people who have surely shunned her because of her serial husbands
and a lover, to come and meet him as well.
She doesn’t even take her water jar; she has a new gift to share, the
gift of faith.
In the end, it is
by her faith that the Samaritan woman
will be justified. In his dying and rising, Jesus aimed to bring
all of humankind to faith, where faith is the water that never leaves us
thirsty again. Because of Jesus’
sacrifice, we no longer need long for the Lord, because we know intimately the
well of the Spirit that overflows with God’s love for us. Faith, Paul tells the Romans, is a gift, a
gift from God, not something we produce on our own, but the gift by which we
are saved. It is Christ through whom we have gained access by faith
to grace. We simply need to accept that gift, and to bring graciousness to
it, an awe of the gift that is ours. The
story of the Samaritan woman is a story of grace and of conversion – her experience
transforms her faster than she can keep track.
This is what Lent is all about: conversion that is being played out in
us by the love of God, that gift that transforms us whenever we open to God’s
grace and love in our lives.
This post is based
on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
