Re- member Yourself.

The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” John 4. 5 - 42

There are many ways to look at this long passage from the Gospel of John, Jesus's longest conversation with anyone in scripture, and not just with anyone, but with an unnamed Samaritan woman. They speak of faith and blessing and secrets and religion. But Pádraig Ó Tuama, in his study of this passage*, focuses on woman's unresolved story which Jesus resolves.

How many of us are drawn to "repeating and projecting our past compulsively" and letting that past taint our future? Certainly this Samaritan woman illustrates her past by being out at the well in the noonday sun. Clearly shunned by her community, she comes to the well when no one else would, and she responds honestly to Jesus when he inquires why. And Jesus "meets her with hospitality at the deepest place of her isolation" as he acknowledges not only that she has no husband now, but that she has had five husbands in the past.

The Living Water that Jesus offers this woman allows her to "open up a window into something that needs to be remembered in a new way" Ó Tuama suggests. And so it can for all of us. We are anointed by this Living Water so we might remember our past in a new way, not letting it haunt or isolate us. In the discussion questions following his study, Ó Tuama asks, "What role can vulnerability, spontaneity, freedom and conversation have in this imaginative re-membering?"

Now that is a healthy question to ponder as we journey through Lent!

This prayer of Pádraig's ends the chapter, and I pray it will bring Living Water to each of us.

Thirsty Jesus,

you sat by a well and instead of reaching in yourself

created community with someone who came seeking solitude.

In all our solitudes, meet us,

especially in the solitudes where we cannot recognize

how we are repeating the same dry story.

Because yours is the water

that refreshes our dry stories

so that they may spring up

with new life

and give life to many.

Amen.

*what were you arguing about along the way?: Gospel Reflections for Advent, Christmas, Lent, Holy Week and Easter. from the Spirituality of Conflict project. edited by Pat Bennett, Introduced by Pádraig Ó Tuama.