3rd SUNDAY OF LENT–3/27/11 by Msgr. Eric R. Barr
READINGS: EXODUS 17:3-7; ROMANS 5:1-2, 5-8; JOHN 4:5-42
I. What Do You Thirst For This Lent?
A. Have you ever gone camping and run out of water from a canteen? What kind of water do you look for? While you are thinking of that question remember: 1. Jacob’s well, where that Samaritan woman was talking with Jesus was a well of standing, still water. 2. Jesus says to the woman, "I have living water, (meaning running water) to give you if you only ask." B. Back to the question–when you are camping and looking for water, what kind of water do you look for? 1. Good campers just don’t look for stagnant, still pools of water. Why? a. Have you ever seen what grows in those pools? Look at a drop of that water under a microscope. There’s lots of little critters in there, and they are better there than in your body. Not to mention those great big globs of slimy algae that always seem to congregate whenever the water is still. b. A drop of running water under the microscope is so much more disappointing–the water is much purer. 2. The answer is simple. If you want to live in the wild, running water has a greater chance of being pure than standing water. C. Do you catch the hint of Jesus in the Gospel today? He’s offering this Samaritan woman a purer life, a real life. After fussing and fuming and being indignant and giving all sorts of excuses–she decides that Jesus, the Living Water, is going to give her real life. D. What are you longing for in your life right now? What do you want to change? What do you want to be different in your life? What do you thirst for? II. Putting Aside Our Stagnant Life And Accepting The Risk Of Living Water A. In our lives, we have some stagnant pools lying around. Only our stagnant pools aren’t filled with the slime of algae; they are filled with sin. And if there is one thing anybody who walks in the woods knows, a pool of water filled with slime isn’t going to clear itself up. It needs emergency treatment, fresh water sources. Our lives are like that. B. Lent is the time to get rid of the decay and slime of sin. We cannot do it by ourselves. Christ is there to do it for us, but it is painful. Just as running water sweeps away the garbage that’s been lying around, so Christ is going to clean house if we let him enter our lives. But it’s painful. Sometimes the slime of sin is a pretty comfortable blanket, and we are scared to let it go. C. Just like the Samaritan woman, we question Christ about why we should change when we are so comfortable. Unlike the Samaritan woman, many of us have yet to hear the offer Jesus is giving us, the offer of a new kind of life, purer, fresher, holier, and infinitely more rewarding. The Samaritan woman’s Lent was nothing more than that time between Christ’s offer and her acceptance. Once she changed, her Easter had already begun. For us, we have forty days. D. How do we go about accepting this Living Water Christ offers? How about confession this Lent/ How about a little extra penance? How about inviting Christ into your heart? If you ask Christ into your life, it will be like standing before a flood. You can’t stand before a flood. You’ll be swept along with the flowing waters. But you won’t die. Instead, you will be swept away in a flood of love, a flood of light, a flood cleansing you of any stain of sin, any decay. Christ is the Living Water. Come to the waters of Life.
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