Week 3: Lenten reflection

This Sunday that just passed was the First Scrutiny, a preparation ritual for the Easter catechumens. The gospel reading that accompanies this ritual is the story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. (John 4)

Jesus meets a woman at the well, and asks her for a drink. Following the prejudices of the age, the woman responds that he is a Jew, and Samaritans and Jews do not share such things. Jesus begins to tell her about a new kind of water, one whose thirst will remain quenched. He tells her in passing that he knows she has had five husbands, and is living with a man who is not her husband.

The way Jesus acts with this woman at this well has always made a big impression on me. This woman has gone through husbands like Liz Taylor! And she is with a man to whom she is not even married. I know the modern Christian reaction to such things - this is a woman to be ostracized. Cartoon bunnies like Buster would do well to stay away.

But this is NOT what Jesus does. Instead, he engages this woman in one of the deepest philosophical dialogues in the New Testament. He acknowledges her situation, but he never reproaches her for it. Indeed, he may be speaking to her because of it, for this is likely someone in need of healing. In fact it is to this woman that the Jesus of John's gospel first expresses the coming sacramental relationship he intends to establish. He does not judge. He listens, and he brings hope.

This is the true, and the only genuine, Christian calling. Condemning people is easy and a cynic can do it better than any religious person.

I recently read a modern account of this hope in action. A Jesuit named Gary Smith wrote a powerful story about the power of listening, of hope, and of the grace that is availablein the darkest hour. In 'Radical Compassion: Finding Christ in the Heart of the Poor' he pours out his diary entries concerning a middle aged man named Robert who describes himself to Smith as "manic-depressive, homosexual, drug-addicted, and HIV positive."

Smith can barely tolerate the man's infested apartment, but still forms the impression of a man with "off-the charts interior pain and an enormous reservoir of sensitivity."

Smith spends the next few months with this man, listening, and struggling to find a way to "communicate care," even though he and Robert are from very different worlds. He finds ways, however, such as taking Robert to the beach, which he is too sick to really see to on his own.

Eventually Robert confesses, "My resistance to God has always been rooted in my feelings of being dirty. Like I am always a leper. But I know that we are all lepers to some degree and that in spite of that God still loves us."

Robert would not live an awful lot longer. But through Robert, Smith drew closer to the model of service at the heart of Christianity, and Robert found meaning, hope, and even happiness in his last days.

Jesus could have rejected the woman at the well. His culture and her history would have given him ample grounds. But that was not his way. I cannot let it be my way, either, though both the cynic and the puritan are never far from the surface.

The beatitudes have something to tell me about my way. And yesterday, I heard that way lived, at a well near Sychar. Now - hopefully, I will do what I hear.