CEC Service Schedule :
…As directed by Bishop Jake Owensby, Christ Episcopal,
…The church building is always open and everyone is welcome to visit its’ peace anytime.
…Father Riley’s homilies will be posted as they become available. You may sign up on the BlogSpot to receive email as the BlogSpot is updated with service information and Father Riley’s or Father Jefferson’s homilies.
Father Riley's homily:
LENT III - a - 20 JOHN 4. 5-42
In last week’s gospel the Pharisee, Nicodemus came to Jesus on his own volition. Today’s passage from the gospel of John has a Samaritan woman who encounters Jesus by chance at a local well where she had gone to draw water. There a dialogue ensued that changed her life.
First, a little background.
Although they worshipped the God of Israel and were also awaiting the Messiah, they accepted only the first five books of the Old Testament, and accepted no prophets after Moses. They built their temple on
With that said, Jesus and his disciples are traveling from Judea to Galilee and take the shortest route through
A Samaritan woman came to draw water. That in itself was an unusual thing for a woman to do at that hour. Normally the women would all go to the well together early in the morning to draw water before the heat of the day. This woman was alone which may speak to her reputation.
Jesus asked her for a drink. Naturally, she hesitates. Why would a Jews ask her a Samaritan for a drink? Jesus said to her “if you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,‘ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
Like Nicodemus in last week’s passage who misunderstood and was unable to comprehend Jesus’ meaning behind being “born again,” the Samaritan woman at the well is unable to comprehend Jesus’ meaning behind “living water.”
In the ordinary sense, it means fresh, flowing from a stream or spring rather than a pond or a cistern. Here Christ means the gift of the Holy Spirit that leads to eternal life.
As Jesus challenged Nicodemus, so he now challenges the woman. “Go call your husband.” She is honest with Jesus and admits that she has no husband, although she is currently living with a man. Jesus reveals her past relationships and her present one. She perceives Jesus to be a prophet.
Here the dialogue takes a turn from race to religion. She is well aware that Jews see Samaritans differently when it comes to their worship of God, and vice a versa, as well as their place of worship. She acknowledges all of that.
Christ tells her it does not matter where one worships as long as one worships God in spirit and truth. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. Jesus’ remarks stir her inner most being.
“I know that Messiah is coming,” she tells him, “and when he comes he will proclaim all things to us.” In other words, he will settle the question. To which Jesus responds, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
Just then, the disciples return with lunch and are more than a bit surprised that Jesus is speaking to an unaccompanied woman in the middle of the day. However, they keep their thoughts to themselves. The woman leaves her water jar behind and returns to the village.
They encourage Jesus to eat but he said to them “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” Knowing that they do not understand, he explains, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” Jesus lifts up his eyes and sees the villagers approaching.
The woman’s mission had changed from that of drawing water to drawing others to Jesus. She told those in the village all that Jesus had said and how he knew everything about her present life as well as her past. Some of them believed in Jesus because of her testimony.
Others went to see and hear him for themselves. After hearing Christ speak, they too believed that he was the Savior of the world and with that their lives were changed forever. One can only begin to imagine what marvelous things Jesus must have told them about his Father and the kingdom that moved them to believe that he was the one God had sent to redeem the world.
The way that passage ends is worth pondering. Here is a woman who, a matter of an hour or so before, had been completely trapped in a life of immorality, as a social outcast.
There was no way backwards or forward for her, all she could do was to eke out a daily existence and make sure she went to the well at the time of day when there would be nobody there to sneer or mock.
Now she has become the first evangelist to the Samaritan people. Before any of Jesus’ disciples could do it, she has told them that he is the Messiah. And then, as they have come to see Jesus for themselves, they have become convinced and have given Jesus the title, Savior of the world.
Can we not see something of ourselves in both Nicodemus and the woman at the well? Sometimes we seek Jesus, as did the Pharisee with the genuine intent of knowing him better. Yet when he speaks, we fail to comprehend his message and we remain in the dark concerning God’s ways because we are afraid to step out in faith.
At other times, we meet Christ by chance, as did the woman at the well, quite unexpectedly and without warning. It is as though he seeks us out. And when he finds us, he speaks to us in ways that both challenge and liberate us at the same time. In the end, our lives are changed.
For each time we encounter Jesus, the eyes of our faith are opened more and more to a new way of seeing God, a new way of knowing God. And the encounter is one we are moved to share in the hope of drawing others to him so that they too may come to know the Saving power of His Love.
May God give us the grace, this Lenten season and beyond, to seek him in all that we do and say, and the eyes of faith to recognize Him, and the ears to hear and understand Him when he speaks, so that we may do the work we have been given to do, to love and serve God as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. AMEN+
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