Water and food in a time of coronavirus - John 4:5-42

KAALAGAD Gospel Reflection -  March 15, 2020

Third Week of Lent

John 4:5-42

Water and food in a time of coronavirus

In this global pandemic, we are like Israelites wandering in the wilderness, fearful and angry, finding no place and no one safe. Gone from the shops are alcohol, masks and other things we believe would protect us. We observe social distance, avoiding places frequented by people known to have been infected.  In church, we consider the most hygienic way to give and receive the Eucharist. If things worsen, we may not even be able to gather.

Yet it is crowded in the margins of life.  Public transportation is packed and the alleys along which cramped shanties huddle are narrow. Instructions to wash hands with soap and water, singing Happy Birthday 2x are good, but is there water in the taps? Exhausted and underpaid, thousands of workers have no sick leave benefits. The reality for most is no work, no pay. Disease knows no borders but ultimately, the poor more vulnerable. Already stretched for resources, the social distance required during this time becomes isolation, and for the poor almost certain illness and possibly death. What will sustain us all through this time?

It is in this context that the Good News of living water comes to us -and directly too. Surely, Jesus enters our lives and our cities. In the same way he chose to go via Synchar, taking that direct route rather than the longer one used by other Jews to avoid the Samaritan town, He comes to us where people hunger and thirst. At the well, he engages with a woman infected by prejudice and shame. He does not stay away. As the conversation goes on, the woman realizes that Jesus has actually seen her, her needs, her longings. At the well, she finds another place so unlike the fearful, anxious, small one she has experienced.  There is something about the hospitality Jesus offers. She grasps a radically new way of viewing life, flowing and limitless.

The apostles who later arrive are clueless. They wonder why he is engaged in inappropriate behaviour (speaking with a woman), but avoid the topic asking whether he has eaten at all.  Jesus keeps to the essential: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.

”What is that food? What is this drink? What is God’s will for us to live out in our time? Jesus speaks of the living water that is the sharing in God’s life. It is to burst beyond the constraints of fear and self-preservation, to go outside our little isolated lives into the vast realm of God’s eternal, untamed Spirit. It is to go beyond the steps to keep disease at bay to care for self and others.  Could it be for a world that is more aware of how we all are actually so closely connected, of how what affects one, so easily can affect the other. New health practices might adopted not only in homes, but also in communities. In government budgets health-for-all becomes a priority. National security becomes primarily human and ecological wellbeing.  With production and imports slowing down, we would have less junk in dumpsites and lower carbon emissions. We would produce local and buy local, stimulating livelihoods within communities instead of giving power to large corporations. Community gardens could become more a standard feature of food security for neighbourhoods.  We could have economies that are more life-giving for people, and local communities where ecosystems can regenerate.  Perhaps we might realize that after all, our small, fragile world could provide abundant life for everyone.

In a world grown sick and fearful, the constant movement of the Spirit could move us all to envision and work for a new creation of wholeness and abundance. “Look around you,” Jesus tells his disciples and us. The world waits the Good News, “look, see how the fields are ripe for harvesting” (v.35).

Rev Sophia Lizares

Uniting Church in Australia

The Gospel Passage (John 4:5-42)

5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10Jesus answered 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.” 11The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”

13Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”

17The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”

19The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

27Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”

28Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” 30They left the city and were on their way to him.

31Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

39Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41And many more believed because of his word. 42They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”