Lent III, Year A

Exodus 17:1-7
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-26,39-42

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

      Last Sunday the gospel was the story of Nicodemus coming to Jesus under the cover of night. I mentioned that I find Nicodemus to be a sympathetic character. He's among the elite of Israel, learned and relatively powerful, interested in Jesus, despite Jesus being a clear threat to his own authority and prestige, despite Jesus challenging him to change his ways radically and to grow in his love of God. Among those in the inner circle of the religious establishment, Nicodemus is far more open to God acting in new ways.

      That said, Nicodemus is no apostle. He's far too cautious, he's got far too dependent upon his wealth, status, and power to leave all that he has and to follow Jesus. He's not a fisher of men. He's far too furtive, too worried about making a real commitment. He engages in conversation with Jesus, but he doesn't really pursue and question Jesus. He's tentative. His encounter with Jesus does not provoke a lively dialogue, but quickly dissolves into an extended monologue from Jesus.

      Nicodemus, however, does take some small risks. A few chapters after he comes to Jesus by night, the chief priests and the Pharisees are plotting against Jesus, and Nicodemus musters the courage to ask a question in defense of Jesus: "Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?" (Jn 7:51) To which, the others mock Nicodemus, "Are you from Galilee, too?" "Are you that naive, that simple?" To this bullying, Nicodemus does not stand up for Jesus, or even for himself.

      The last time we hear of Nicodemus he's bringing about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to help Joseph of Arimathea bury Jesus. S. John reports that Joseph of Arimathea "was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews." (Jn 19:38f) The same might be said of Nicodemus. He's gradually become a secret disciple, fearful of what others might think, of what he might lose. Commitment is frightening.

      The story of Nicodemus sets the stage for this week's gospel, taken from the next chapter of John's gospel. Again, it's a story about someone's encounter with Jesus. Most of us are probably more likely to identify with Nicodemus than with the Samaritan woman. Jesus meets her in the middle of day, and she engages him in an extended and spirited dialogue. She's remarkable: she engages with this mysterious stranger, who ought to know better than to talk to her; she listens to him; she seriously considers what he has to say; and despite being quick-witted and suspicious, she's humble in recognizing the limits of her understanding. She's willing to think outside her pre-conceptions of God. She's open to growth, to God working in her life.

      John wants us to respond to Jesus as the Samaritan woman did—not as Nicodemus did. At the end of today's gospel, she has discovered that Jesus is the Messiah. She returns to her city and tells people about Jesus. She's excited about him, and she's sharing what she's received. She's an evangelist, a preacher of the good news. Her witness convinces other Samaritans to welcome Jesus and to confess: "we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world." This Samaritan woman, not Nicodemus, is what we ought to be.

      But the Samaritan woman is also thrice condemned to be an outcast. She lives on the margins of society. First, she is a she. In ancient Israel, women were second class citizens —not quite chattel, but certainly subordinate to men. A verse omitted from today's gospel says that when the disciples arrived at the scene, "they were shocked that he was talking with a woman." (Jn 4:27) Rabbinic documents warned against speaking to women in public.1

      Second, she was a goy, an alien, an outsider. Jews considered Samaritans as wholly unacceptable and had no dealings with them. Jews despised Samaritans and believed their worship was false, although Samaritans generally shared their beliefs and practices and scripture. The Samaritans, however, didn't recognize the claims of the Temple at Jerusalem. The Samaritans had their own Temple on Mount Gerizim, near the modern West Bank city of Nablus, about forty or fifty miles north of Jerusalem. When Alexander the Great built the Samaritans a Temple there in the late fourth century before Christ, the competition and rivalry between Zion and Gerizim increased tremendously.2 Enmity developed and intensified during the centuries before Christ.

      An irony here is that Samaritans were fiercely conservative in their approach to religion. They regarded only the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, as scripture. They insisted that God's holy mountain was Gerizim, not Zion, because it had more ancient credentials than Jerusalem. Abraham had built his first altar in Canaan at Gerizim, and Moses had made it the place to declare blessings.3 The Samaritans were "deeply distrustful of anything that smacked of innovation and modernizing."4 Nonetheless, this Samaritan woman was open to the radical and innovative gospel of Jesus.

      This woman's third outcast characteristic is that she seems to have had, as it were, a past. John seems to imply that she was something of a scandal. She had five husbands and was currently shacking up with another man. Even in our jaded, self-satisfied world, Elizabeth Taylor is ridiculed; her past offends some sensibilities. Presumably, the ancient world was less tolerant.

      Despite the Samaritan woman's disrepute, Jesus reaches out to her. He knows her past. He knows her idolatry. But he offers her the possibility of new life. Jesus knows her for what she is, and he accepts her. This is a great encouragement for us. Though we tend to think of ourselves more like the upright, respectable Nicodemus, each of us is probably a lot more like the Samaritan woman than we appreciate. So often we hide our past and pretend to be something we're not because we fear rejection. Jesus knows us as we are —our conceits, our falsity, our infidelity, and he accepts us. He loves us. He offers new life. Jesus says, "I'm after mercy, not ritual purity. I'm here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders."5 (Mt 9:13)

      Fundamentally, today's gospel is about reconciliation. Jesus reconciles ancient enemies; he heals wounds; he resolves divisions; he transforms the hatred of Jew and Samaritan. In Jesus humanity may have unity and harmony, holiness and wholeness. In Jesus, every human being has dignity and value, all enjoy God's love, his favor, his acceptance.

      In recent weeks as Pope John Paul II has fought illness. I've been impressed once again that this is a great man, regardless of whether we agree where he's led the Church, regardless of whether we agree with him about all of the issues. Above all else, one story about him suggests to me that he's a man of remarkable character, that he has witnessed to God's love, to the good news.

      In May 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca fired two bullets at the Pope, who was struck in the abdomen. The Pope very nearly died. A couple years after the attack, the Holy Father visited Agca in his cell. Incredibly, Agca told the Pope that he feared that

Our Lady of Fatima was going to wreak vengeance upon him. The assassination attempt and Agca's escape had been planned so perfectly that Agca was astounded to find himself in prison and had come to attribute the Pope's survival and his imprisonment to a supernatural power. He had read in prison that the assassination attempt had taken place on the anniversary of the apparition [of S. Mary] at Fatima, and had concluded that [what he called] the "goddess of Fatima" who had saved the Pope was now going to do away with him. [After hearing Agca share his fears,] John Paul patiently explained that Mary, whom many Muslims venerated, was the Mother of God, that she loved all people, and that Agca shouldn't be afraid.6

That's what Christians are trying to be. "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God." (Mt 5:9)

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, I-XII, Doubleday (1966), p. 173.
2. Gerard Sloyan, John, John Knox Press (1988), p. 53.
3. Jeffrey K. Lott, "Mount Gerizim" in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 2, David Noel
Freedman, ed., Doubleday (1992), p. 993.
4. Richard Coggins article on ‘Samaritans’ in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Bruce
Metzger and Michael Coogan, eds., OUP (1993), p. 672.
5. Translation is a combination of The Message and notes from Daniel J. Harrington, S. J., The Gospel of Matthew, The Liturgical Press (1991), p. 126.
6. George Weigel, Witness to Hope, HarperCollins (1999), p. 474.