Friends
Peace be with you.
Fans of the show The Chosen probably vividly remember their depiction of this Gospel passage. For those of you who haven’t seen it, imagine an arid desert with the only visible thing being a picturesque round brick well. The well has some poles stuck in the ground surrounding it on which some cloths are strung to protect the women who would draw from the well. Sitting under the cloths is Jesus and approaching him is a woman in tattered clothes with a rather dirty, tired-looking face. Jesus asks her for water and, as in the Gospel from which it is taken, she responds wondering why a Jew would ever talk to one of her people, a Samaritan.
After a few terse exchanges, I really feel like Chosen gets to the heart of the matter when Jesus asks her what is bringing this Samaritan woman out in the hottest part of the day in search of water. At the time, people, mostly women, got their water in the early morning because it was hard work carrying it back home and you wanted to avoid the added strain of the heat of the day, a reality that, admittedly sounds rather attractive on this cold March day.. Plus, if you do it early, you may run into your friends and catch up on all the town gossip, sort of like their version of the water cooler. They could talk about the cost of fresh vegetables and why it’s so challenging to buy them right now. Or maybe why it’s been so violent, in particular in the bigger cities. Things were weird back then.
That’s when we discover the answer to why she’s out in the middle of the day, to avoid people. After all, she’s been married five times and the man she’s living with is not HER husband. Everyone in town knows it. They probably even talk about her in the morning when they’re getting their water. I really appreciate, in the Chosen, how the woman is so reluctant to interact with Jesus and how she begins to walk away when Jesus engages her about her husbands. He tells her he’s not there to judge her and then names her first husband, Ramin, who was abusive and her second husband, Farzad, who was faithful and loving and whom she left because she never felt worthy of him.
She breaks down. To be honest, I break down sitting on my couch. I know I’m tough as nails but this crazy show makes me emotional. She breaks down because Jesus knows her worst secrets, speaks her worst secrets to her, and still looks at her with love. And she knows then and there that this can only be the messiah because only the messiah could forgive her, and make her whole and so she celebrates. What does she say when she celebrates? “This man told me everything I have done”. She celebrates that Jesus knows her sins because it’s a mark that the messiah has come.
That’s when the outrageous thing happens: she runs to all those people she’s been avoiding with a mission. She has to reveal the messiah to them. Her method of evangelization is simple: tell her own story of forgiveness and then ask them if they want to have the same experience with Jesus.
We are all thirsting to be forgiven by God. We should let God reveal to us what we most want to have forgiven. We may not be entirely aware of what it is and it may go back many years and be something that has continuously plagued us or we may know it intimately because it is before we always. Regardless, we can bring it to the sacrament of reconciliation and know the joy of experiencing the mercy and forgiveness of God first hand so we may share that joy with others. He knows everything we have done already. Now it’s time for us to celebrate the forgiveness he wants to give to us. He knows everything we have done and still loves us. THAT’S worth celebrating!
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