Scripture Scribbles: March 20, 2022
the Gospel
Jn 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42
Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar,
near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
Jacob’s well was there.
Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well.
It was about noon.
A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
Jesus said to her,
“Give me a drink.”
His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.
The Samaritan woman said to him,
“How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”
—For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.—
Jesus answered and said to her,
“If you knew the gift of God
and who 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 do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep;
where then can you get this living water?
Are you greater than our father Jacob,
who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself
with his children and his flocks?”
Jesus answered and said to her,
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;
but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst;
the water I shall give will become in him
a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him,
“Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty
or have to keep coming here to draw water.
“I can see that you are a prophet.
Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain;
but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus said to her,
“Believe me, woman, the hour is coming
when you will worship the Father
neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You people worship what you do not understand;
we worship what we understand,
because salvation is from the Jews.
But the hour is coming, and is now here,
when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth;
and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.
God is Spirit, and those who worship him
must worship in Spirit and truth.”
The woman said to him,
“I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ;
when he comes, he will tell us everything.”
Jesus said to her,
“I am he, the one who is speaking with you.”
Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him.
When the Samaritans came to him,
they invited him to stay with them;
and he stayed there two days.
Many more began to believe in him because of his word,
and they said to the woman,
“We no longer believe because of your word;
for we have heard for ourselves,
and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”
the devotion
Do you ever just wish you could share your faith with someone?
But you hold back?
Hold back your words, fearing they might not agree with you and the conversation could get uncomfortable. I love how the woman at the well went from being this ashamed, alone woman in the middle of the afternoon, avoiding people, by herself, and turned into one of the first evangelizers! She left her water jar and went into town to tell people. Her shame was gone, she wanted to share, she NEEDED to share. Some days when I’m learning something new about my faith, I feel it bubbling up inside me!! It feels like I might burst, I need to share, and when I can, it’s amazing. Our Faith is meant to be shared.
The Gospels are “The Good News” I mean, I love sharing good news, right? Like a new restaurant we just discovered, or someone just had a baby, someone got engaged, one of your kids just scored their first goal. Good news is fun to share. I wish I could be more bold, like the woman at the well that day. It’s almost easy to see why she can run off and tell people, she just had an encounter with Jesus, face to face. He told her “I am he, the one who is speaking with you.” She knew a Messiah was coming, she knew someone great, who would tell her everything, and now here he is, telling her everything.
He knows her, he knows me, he knows you. This exchange isn’t an accident, he went to the well to meet her.
Where does he meet us in our lives?
When I think about Heaven and my own small understanding of it, I believe it’s perfect and there is no pain, there is no sickness, no suffering and we are invited to spend eternity there. Shouldn’t I be talking about it? Shouldn’t I be inviting others to seek the narrow path with me? Shouldn’t I be evangelizing? This woman was changed, her life was forever changed, and I believe a relationship with Christ does that, I believe it makes the things of this world grow a little more dim and the things of Heaven a lot more bright. I think our faith helps us to see the goodness in others and to seek it more often than we used to. Our faith can remind us of what's really important in this world, like loving others well.
How do we love? To will the good of the other….such a good reminder. If we are not willing the good of the other, only our own good, then we are not loving them. This is hard in a world that tells us to “look out for number one.” Sometimes willing the good of the other might mean dying to ourselves, but maybe in that dying we also grow in humility and understanding of what it means to love well. This story about the woman at the well, gets unpacked differently every time I read it.
I feel it is as deep as the well, and I wonder what it makes you think of when you read it today?
Today’s devotion is written by Beth Brennan.
