In response to coronavirus
our actions should try to serve the common good:
caring for others,
especially the weak, the fearful, and the isolated,
but also protecting our own health
and the health of those around us.
The other key responsibly for us as Christians,
as a priestly people,
is to pray daily for others:
to pray for political leaders,
and all those exercising professional judgement,
and to pray for those who die, those bereaved,
those who are ill and those who are fearful.
Don’t use two verses of Happy Birthday
to time your regular hand washing;
instead, multitask, and pray as you wash..
Say a careful Our Father, or,
if you are a bit quicker,
an Our Father and a Hail Mary.
Turning now to that beautiful gospel….
John tells us a powerful story, rich in symbolism,
involving Jesus breaking multiple taboos,
showing that his mission, his baptism, has no bounds.
[Who Jesus is unfolds in the Samaritans’ encounter:
you’re a Jew;
are you greater than Jacob;
you’re a prophet;
I wonder if he is the Christ;
and finally, and wonderfully,
he really is the saviour of the world.]
As we reflect, we are to be the Samaritan woman,
listening to Jesus introducing true life,
letting Jesus uncover how we live now,
and responding.
She goes to the well, day after day, to satisfy her need.
Jesus offers living water.
She misunderstands him,
thinking he is addressing her immediate need.
Jesus explains he is promising something much deeper,
he is not ‘about’ satisfying our immediate needs,
but about changing us inside, permanently.
Jesus offers ‘a spring inside, welling up to eternal life’,
so that our most fundamental needs are met
in an entirely new way.
He invites the woman to move away from her current beliefs:
– that is what Jacob’s well represents –
and receive something incomparably better.
She is attracted by this:
but is still unsure what is on offer,
so Jesus spells it out.
Our most fundamental need
is to be in the right relationship with God.
Once this is established,
everything else in our lives finds its right orientation.
It is this right relationship with God
that Jesus brings about in us.
This seems to me to be the central point in today’s reading.
Suppose you decide to walk to Compestella, or to Rome.
Spirit matters.
If you don’t care, don’t have the heart for it,
you won’t complete the journey.
Truth matters.
A made-up map isn’t much of a guide.
an accurate, a truthful, map,
read with care, is a good guide.
It’s the same with our journey into God.
Jesus is the truth about God: he is our map.
Jesus sends his Spirit into us: living water, bubbling up,
raising our own spirit with his strength.
Like the Samaritan woman,
we need to spend time in conversation with Jesus.
Speaking to him,
and letting him speak to us through the gospels.
Then, like her, we will want to share what we find.
As our relationship with Jesus deepens,
as we grow in delight for who he is,
so our worship grows in authenticity.
Through him, with him and in him,
we become true worshippers:
worshipping in spirit and in truth.