Seeing in a Fresh Way
Third Sunday in Lent
Reflection By Rob Hirschfeld
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
- John 4:15
Except when the Merrimack River in New Hampshire is frozen, I row in a single sculling shell almost every day. I row upstream a few miles, turn around, and row back downstream. It’s an activity I’ve “enjoyed” for over fifty years now. It sounds monotonous, more like chore than recreation. Sometimes I’m asked, “Isn’t it just so dull to go up and down the same body of water every day?”
I see the point. There is some tedium to this lonely sport. But then I notice that it’s always a different body of water on a river. Sometimes there’s mist. The greens of the trees, from early spring to full spring, to summer vary from day to day. Often a blue heron shows up on the riverbank. It’s not the same river each day, though it is. Either full of energy or tired, I am not the same sculler from day to day, though I am.
There’s no such leisure or recreational activity for the woman at the well. She goes back and forth in the monotonous drudgery of getting water for her household. She carries with her memories she would rather not share and just as soon forget. Her life, even her love life—if we can call it that—probably seems a chore, a series of tedious repetitions in the empty hope that something new might arise. What would it be like not to carry the weight of the tedious awareness of past traumas, past patterns, past sins with their accumulated shame?
Perhaps I am drawn to water—rivers, ponds, streams, or lakes—because they have a way of praying me, of cleansing my soul. This life-changing encounter between Jesus and the woman of Samaria has to take place by a well. It has to involve water. The well where Jesus meets her is really a kind of baptismal font where she is given a new way to see her life.
Jesus’ acceptance of us gives us our tainted stories back to us but without the stigma of shame that keeps us from being in community with God and each other. As we approach the celebration of baptism at Easter, we are invited to see our lives sprung from the monotony of our sense of sin. Though we don’t forget our past and the moral complexities of life, our lives are seen in a fresh way.
Our stories are drawn into God’s own memory. The best re-creation of all.