Wycliffe College

Gospel Meditation and Prayer for  Lent
Week 4: Third Sunday in Lent
John 4:5-42  (NRSV)

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

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The 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.) Jesus 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but 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.”

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Reflection
Your sin is safe with him

          One of the negative uses of social media is public shaming. Sometimes the person shamed has not even done anything wrong; rather, that individual becomes an unwitting tragic target. Sometimes, of course, the person hounded over the Internet has in fact done something wrong. Despite how evil that person’s deeds may be, the public humiliation can be equally wicked in its cruelty. That person’s sin is laid out for anyone to see and the shame goes on and on. Hell on earth. The exposure of their sin is for the sole purpose of long-term hurting and humiliation.

          How much different is Jesus’ reaction to sin. In a private moment he gently informs the Samaritan woman that he knows that the man she is living with is not her husband, and that prior to him she has had five husbands. Interestingly, Jesus never names this situation sinful. And he uses the remaining time he has with this woman to give her privileged information about his identity and its significance.  Jesus honours her—this woman who could so easily have been a target for shaming.

          The Samaritan woman is glad that Jesus knows all about her. She goes back to the city and broadcasts that this man “told me all that I ever did.” It is this wonder that opens her eyes to the truth that Jesus is the Christ. The Messiah, Jesus, knows and hears her sin and does not shame her. He honours her. Her sin is safe with him.

          This wonder is at the heart of our faith. Jesus Christ, the human face of God, knows our sin (even more than we—or those we live with—do) and rather than shaming us, saves us. The words earlier in John’s gospel summarize the theme of the story of the Samaritan woman: God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

Prayer
Loving God, we will never have enough moments to thank you for loving us in the midst of our sin. Amen. 
Ann Jervis, Professor of New Testament

Ann Jervis teaches New Testament and is a priest who works at Church of the Redeemer.
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