The Woman at the Well
Life had been hard for the nameless woman at the well that day. We’re told she had been with five different men. With the heartache of all that there was a price to paid, the loss of her reputation. Her past was widely known. In a smalltown word gets around quickly.
Maybe that’s why she came to the well in the heat of the day instead of the cool of the morning. Alone there at the well in the heat of the day she could avoid the talk, the cold stares of the women in town who knew her past and judged her accordingly.
Sitting there at the well feeling lost and alone she spots a man she’s never seen before. He asks her for water. Who is this man who would speak to a woman he doesn’t even know? She would soon find out.
Little does she know that the man she stumbles upon that day would offer her the very thing she was looking all her life, life-giving waters that come from a deeper well, waters that could quench her thirst for love, connection, belonging and meaning.
And so, the conversation begins. A bit guarded at first but then the flood gates open. From the very place where she feels most flawed and wounded in this man she’s never met before she feels care and compassion. Her heart softens. As Max LaCado puts it, “Jesus the divine surgeon with the needle of faith and the thread of hope in the shade of the well stiches her wounded soul back together.”
From a place of longing, she finds a place of belonging. From a place of rejection, she finds acceptance, the acceptance of the one who offers her the life-giving waters she’s been looking for all her life. And from the healing of those life -giving waters she then is able to forgive those who have shunned her and all the other hursts inflicted on her.
Now free of her shame and with her dignity restored she hurries back to tell the whole town about this man who gave to her the life she had always wanted but didn’t know how to find.
As I reflect on the story of the woman at the well it hits me. Are we not all like the woman at the well? Flawed and broken as we are like the woman at the well, we too thirst for living waters, waters that bring love, connection, a sense of belonging, and meaning. Love, connection, a sense of belonging, and meaning, these are the things that are found the waters of that deeper well that only Jesus can offer.
And are not the living waters that the woman at the well encounters in the person of Jesus the same living waters that we encounter in the person of Jesus as we receive him in Eucharist? It’s in Eucharist that we drink from that deeper well.
Like the woman at the well as we open our hearts we too can experience the transformative power of the living water that only Jesus offers. It is there that we are invited to drink from that well of a love that never runs dry.
