3L20.   “In those days, in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses.” “The place was called Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord in our midst or not?’” Obviously, the Israelites were experiencing something of a lack of water and so they complained about not having an adequate supply of water.  In effect they were demanding that God miraculously supply the water.  In effect they were testing God to prove that he was with them and truly cared for his People.  It was then and still considered sacrilegious to demand that the Almighty must do what human beings tell him to do. This event was remembered often later to show the hard-heartedness and doubt that the Israelites had at times, despite the fact that the Lord had often show his goodness to his People.

John 4:5-42.   Jesus, tired because of his long journey, stopped to rest at the well that Jacob, long ago had given to his son Joseph.  The water from the well which God had given to Jacob to sustain human life is now superseded in importance by the grace that gives spiritual life that is given by Jesus, who sits at the same well.  John’s gospel often relates two levels of thought at the same time: the first, simply the plot of an ordinary event, such as just Jesus setting at a well; the second, a lesson with a deep spiritual meaning, such as Jesus is now the one who is giving the water or grace of eternal spiritual life which is infinitely more important than the water that sustains physical life.  This sinful woman does not dare draw water in the cool of the morning because the other women that draw water then would mock her for her sinfulness.  So she comes at noon in the high heat of the day to avoid them.  Her thirst for ‘the living water’ is even greater because of her sinfulness.  Jesus clearly reveals himself to be the Messiah, the Christ.  Jesus speaks on that deeper level of meaning, when his disciples try to get him to eat physical, saying, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.”  Next he speaks of the one who sows the seed of faith, the sower and secondly, the reaper, who gathers the crops for eternal life, i.e. the people who have grown spiritually, who are ready to receive the rewards of eternal life.  Jesus then sows the seed of eternal life by preaching to the Samaritans “who began to believe in him because of his word.”

Romans 5:1-2, 5-8.  Jesus says, “Through our Lord Jesus Christ” “we have gained access by faith” to the grace of “peace with God” that gives us “hope in the glory of God.”  “And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” “God proves his love for us in that while we still sinners Christ died for us.”  The water that gives us grace, a share in his divine life, is the love that God has for us.  Jesus dwells in us giving us his love, his life to us so that daily we grow in him.