Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast, where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Glory to you, O Lord.
Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
Jacob's well was there.
Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well.
It was about noon.
A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
Jesus said to her, give me a drink.
His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.
The Samaritan woman said to him, how can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?
For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.
Jesus answered and said to her, 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.
The woman said to him, sir, you do not even have a bucket, and the cistern is deep.
Where then can you get this living water?
Are you greater than our Father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?
Jesus answered and said to her, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.
But whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst.
The water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
The woman said to him, sir, give me this water that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.
Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come back.
The woman answered and said to him, I do not have a husband.
Jesus answered her, 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.
The woman said to him, sir, I can see that you are a prophet.
Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain.
But you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.
Jesus said to her, believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You people worship what you do not understand.
We worship what we understand because salvation is from the Jews.
But the hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.
And indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
The Woman said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ.
When he comes, he will tell us everything.
Jesus said to her, I am he the one speaking with you.
At that moment, his disciples returned and were amazed that he was talking with a woman.
But still no one said, what are you looking for?
Or why are you talking with her?
The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, come see a man who told me everything I have done.
Could he possibly be the Christ?
They went out of the town and came to him.
Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, rabbi, eat.
But he said to them, I have food to eat of which you do not know.
So the disciples said to one another, could someone have brought him something to eat?
Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.
Do you not say, in four months the. The harvest will be here?
I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest.
The reaper is already receiving payment and gathering crops for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper can rejoice together.
For here the saying is verified that one sows and another reaps.
I send you to reap what you have not worked for.
Others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work.
Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified.
He told me everything I have done.
When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.
Many more began to believe in him because of his word.
And they said to the woman, we no longer believe because of your word.
For we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world, the gospel of the Lord.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: I have come to believe that virtually all people have something about themselves that we spend every effort to hide from the rest of the world.
Things that we are embarrassed about, things that we are ashamed of, things that would make us mortified if anybody else knew that about us.
And we spend our lives trying to hide and suppress that part of who we are in the hopes that people don't think badly about us or less about us.
Well, the woman at the well there in Samaria had probably struggled. In fact, I would argue she really struggled with that same kind of feeling.
She had things about her life that she was ashamed of, things that she was embarrassed about. And my guess is so much so that she probably pulled Away from most people around her, she tended to live kind of quietly, hoping nobody noticed her.
Yet on this day, as she goes to do what her daily routine would have been to draw the water she would need for that day, she bumps into somebody she was not expecting.
And not only that, she bumps into this foreigner whom she would have hoped would have never said a word to her.
Yet that's not what happened.
Jesus reached out to her. Give me a drink.
I thirst for you.
And the scripture also says that he told her everything about herself.
Those secrets, those things she was ashamed of, those things that brought her embarrassment.
But notice a detail here.
The scripture never says she was embarrassed.
It doesn't say she was scared.
It doesn't say she was mortified.
She simply paid more attention to what Jesus had to say.
So that tells me it didn't take her long.
In fact, it was probably instantaneous to see that his presence there manifested a perfect love for her.
She wasn't afraid, she wasn't embarrassed, and she focused on everything he taught and said to her.
And the more they spent time together, the more she listened, the more she learned.
But more importantly, the more her heart was softened.
And she began to see that in Jesus she finds absolutely everything she would ever need.
She finds the depth of God's love.
Well, the reason why we proclaim this as often as we do, the reason why the church holds this bit of scripture up during the Lenten season as we bring people into the church as an example, is that that same love that looks past our brokenness, our sinfulness, our shame, is the love that Jesus has for each one of us.
He looks at us. He already knows everything about us, and he loves us anyway, and he loves us completely.
And the response that the woman at the well had, but hopefully the response we have as well, is that we take that unconditional love and we allow that to help us to change, to cast aside those things we struggle with, to be the person we're called upon to be, because we do it out of gratitude, knowing that his love is unconditional.
