Thoughts on Today’s Lessons for March 19, 2017
Christ And The Samaritan Woman At The Well. Painting by Lorenzo Lippi (1606-1665), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
We may thirst for righteousness, mercy and justice, but when we are thirsty and need water, this simple human need takes precedence. Sunday’s readings tell of of thirst, from the thirsty Israelites in the desert to Jesus stopping for water and rest in a Samaritan town. In this Exodus reading, the Israelites are no longer hungry – in previous verses, they have just received miraculous manna – but they still have no water, and their thirst makes them so angry that they wish they were back in slavery in Egypt, where at least these basic needs of life were met. Moses is angry and outdone with them, but God provides a miracle to quench their thirst.
Our Psalm opens with the joyful hymn of praise that we also know as the Venite, a familiar reading in Morning Prayer. We sing and shout with joy to God, our creator, who made the land and sea; we are the people of God’s pasture and the sheep that God made to fill it. But then the tone of the prayer changes as we remember the cranky Israelites, whose ungrateful acts caused God to “loathe” them and, in angry response, to condemn them to 40 years wandering in the desert.
Second Reading: Romans 5:1-11
The infant church in Rome has known suffering. Some of its members were forced into exile, and the entire congregation was at risk for its faith. But Paul reminds them that their suffering gives them the opportunity to learn endurance and build their character through hope in the love that God pours into their hearts through the Spirit. Even though they are sinners, they are justified through faith and saved through Jesus’s death on the cross.
Gospel: John 4:5-42
We see a very human side of Jesus in John’s Gospel today. Jesus, worried that the Pharisees were angry because he was making and baptizing more disciples than his cousin John had done, decided to go back to Galilee, a journey that required him to pass through the country of the Samaritans, who were not on good terms with the Jews. Tired and thirsty, he stopped in a Samaritan village, where he broke protocol by not only asking a Samaritan woman for a drink but striking up a conversation with her. Much to the surprise of his disciples, he stayed in the village for two days and made believers of many of the Samaritans.