You may have heard about the teenager who asked his dad if he could use the family car. The father replied, “Let's talk after you raise your grades, do your chores and get a haircut.” Three months later the teen reported his grades were up and his chores were done well. The father said, “You haven't got a haircut.” The teen replied, “Moses had long hair. Jesus too. What's the big deal?” The father noted, “They walked, so why not forget the car and walk.” The teen got a haircut.
Each Sunday in Lent reflects on life, as in a prism. The first Sunday, a hungry Jesus tells the tempter what truly nourishes life: every word from God. Last Sunday, the disciples saw the unique and awesome presence of God in Jesus. Yes, in death, God will transfigure us.
Today Jesus is life-giving water for the woman at the well. Through the waters of Baptism, God is already transforming us into new, God-like creatures.
The word of God carries us back to the exodus: the freedom of the Hebrews from their oppressors. Here they are wandering and complaining in the wilderness! Moses cries out to God, and God demonstrates his presence. The life-giving waters allude to our Baptism and the promises made to God and God to them.
Baptism is a rite of initiation into a global community of disciples of Jesus. Water can be death-threatening (think hurricane) or life-giving (imagine you’re in a desert). Baptism symbolizes a dying to a self-centered life and a rising to a new other-centered, God-centered life.
Paul in his letter to the Christian community at Rome speaks about the saving work of Jesus Christ. Through Jesus's horrendous death and glorious resurrection, we have friendship with God whose love and life is poured out upon and into us in baptism so that we can reflect the presence and glory of God in our daily lives. Paul may be wondering whether our attitudes and behaviors do precisely that.
In the Gospel, Jesus asks for water from a woman of questionable character and from a despised people, only to engage her in a conversation about thirst. Jesus reveals who he is. He is a prophet, the messiah, the source who gifts us with eternal life, living water who can satisfy our quest for meaning in life. In faith, this woman discovers new purpose in life through her encounter with Jesus, and she heralds the good news to her townsfolk.
We all thirst, like Jesus and the woman at the well. But what are we thirsty for? Some simply thirst for a decent livelihood. Others for health, wealth, pleasure, power. Still others, like the Samaritan woman, seem to thirst for purpose.
Lent is a time to ask ourselves, what on earth am I here for? What am I living for? And how integrate these questions into the here and now. Often, people imagine, My life will begin when I get a new job, when I get my degree, when I rebuild my home, when my child gets well, when I retire someday. Life will begin someday?
Naomi Levy, in her book Hope Will Find You, wrote that while caring for her critically ill child, she wondered, when could the dreams and goals she had for herself be realized. She wrote: “And just then something snapped inside my soul: This is my future: the present, the here and now.” She thought of people who were thinking life was around the bend, “fooling ourselves into thinking our lives hadn’t begun. But all of us have to learn to live inside the imperfect lives we have here and now.”
Today Jesus urges us to live to the fullest. This Lenten season is a time for finding our way out of our winters of negativity, our deserts of self-absorption, our wildernesses of disappointments.
These days before Easter are a time for deciding what we believe to be truly important and meaningful, and then acting upon them today. We can’t do anything about yesterday, and we don’t know about tomorrow.
Our Christian faith proclaims that life has meaning, that there is indeed an all-good, compassionate, and merciful God who seeks us out in our everyday experiences.
This God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. And through his death and resurrection God re-established his friendship with us and opened up to us life beyond this earthly life. This same God is alive among us today by the power of the Spirit. This is the mystery of the triune God, one yet diverse, stable yet dynamic, transcendent yet immanent!
And we can participate in God’s triune life here and now and hereafter by living a life of prayer, by fasting from attitudes and behaviors that jeopardize our relationship with God and with one another, and by enjoying a life of generous service.
That is our Lenten message. I think this quote sums it up well, and you know it:
I shall pass through this world but once:
any good therefore that I can do
or any kindness that I can show to any human being,
let me do it now, let me not defer or neglect it. Amen!
