All Is Well
Of the many stories that have captured my heart over the years, this one stays with me:
Back in late 1990s, a freshman at a large suburban Los Angeles high school had decided one day in mid-November to pack-up his book bag at the end of the day and head home. At least that is what he told others he was doing should they ask why he seemed to be carrying every possession he owned on his back and in his arms.
The truth is: he had decided to check-out not only from school but from life. He was tired of all of it. He was done.
As he was crossing the large expanse of neatly-manicured athletic fields – unsure of where he would go next: maybe home? Maybe the bridge that crosses the aqueduct? – thefreshman was suddenly blindsided by the football team who wasrunning past him, practicing their drills. One player shoved him to the ground, his book bag and the sundry items cradled in his arms flying across the turf. Others laughed and mocked him as they ran past. In this moment, everything inside him was shattered: his pride, his heart, his dignity.
He truly had reached rock-bottom.
This high school freshman had much in common with the Samaritan woman who came to the well at noon to fetch water, the one Jesus speaks of in today’s Gospel. The time mentioned – noon – is not a throw-away detail. In some ways, it says everything: no woman came in the blistering heat of the desert sun to gather water; that task was done in the early morning as the sun was rising. It was a social gathering spot for all the women of Samaria: they chatted about their families and frustrations; they gossiped and laughed.
This woman, however, was not a part of that. She always came alone. She was isolated and shunned. She had her own demons and struggles that kept her apart.
And it is exactly where the Lord met her … and he came there first. He waited there, knowing that she would be coming with a heavy heart and crushed spirit. And into that space, he asked for a drink of water.
Should he have? No. Jews and Samaritans didn’t engage for a variety of religious, political and social reasons, many of them based on past hurts and prejudices. Nevertheless, Jesus was not afraid to break that taboo because he knew that one’s heart being healed was much more important than a religious custom being followed. He knew that she needed God – even though she herself didn’t know it – and so he asked her for water.
She questioned and challenged this man, of course. Who does he think he is? What is this water that he keeps talking about? Doesn’t he know that she thinks his religious beliefs are stupid and wrong, often both at once? He didn’t care: all he wanted was her heart. And so, he kept asking if she would accept that which was “living” and flowing from him.
Her response is telling: “Please, sir, give me this water so I don’t have to keep coming back here again.”
This was more than the woman turning Jesus into the local public water supply company. She was not asking for a convenient water-gathering system. Rather, her heart was expressing the depth of pain she was carrying around that no one else could see: “I don’t want to keep coming to the place where I feel so alone and abandoned; the place where I come at noon because I am shamed and hated and ignored.” In that moment at the well, His heart cradled her broken heart and began the healing process in order to set her free to run.
First, he asked her for her complete honesty: to turn over to him anything and everything that was weighing her down, including – and most especially – her broken and messy relationships. Yes, it can come across rather harshly that the Lord is calling her out on her 5 past husbands, but he was not doing this to embarrass her: he was doing it so that she could honestly bring to him the very things that chained her to shame. And give her credit: she was honest with him. She shared her truth and her pain.
Isn’t that exactly where the Lord meets us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation?
And once this grace came to her alongside the well of her brokenness, she left all of her past sin and shame behind and went running with joy, symbolized by the bucket she left behind. One can’t soar if one is weighed down to the past or to sin. One can’t find resurrection and new life if one isn’t given the freedom to move forward untethered.
Back in Los Angeles, that freshman who struggled to get-up from the ground that afternoon, who was shamed and broken in every way possible, suddenly had a moment in which another football player – a different one from the shover and themockers — came to the spot where he lay, offered his hand and lifted him up, not only putting him back on his feet but also beginning to heal him with these words: “I’m sorry that happened to you. We’re not all like that jerk who shoved you. You’ll be okay, I promise.” Then, very quietly, that player trotted back to the line where his teammates continued to practice.
Something right then shifted in the wounded heart of that 14-year-old. He felt seen. He felt respected. He was no longer lost. Someone came to his well and rescued him with the simple act of an outstretched hand and gentle word.
Four years later, that same freshman was now a graduating senior, and was standing before hundreds of his peers and their families as valedictorian of the high school he had once hated. To them, according to the account of that day, he stated: “I shouldn’t be here right now. Four years ago, I was ready to check-out of life, and was truly at my lowest when one act of humble, simple love met me and lifted me up. One brave football player unafraid to step-out of the crowd saw my pain and rescued me. From that moment on, I knew my life’s mission – to do the very same.”
That mission is the very same for us, too, as disciples of Jesus Christ. Like the unnamed LA football player and the Samaritan woman who went running from the well, we too must go into the hearts and lives of those who are hungry for God’s mercy, many of them unaware of what it is they really seek. We mustn’t be afraid to run to the very ones who often have shown us hatred or who have caused us hurt, even if that “running” to them is offered as a prayer that they find God and the healing they need. There all, after all, many ways to run from the well and bring new life in God’s Name.
Almost thirty years later, I sometimes wonder whenever I retell this story whatever happened to that LA freshman. What became of him? Has he spent his life meeting others at the wells of their brokenness? It is, after all, not an impossible task: we already have been given the Living Water in the One who gives us all we need from the Cross, from this Altar and from His Merciful Heart. Like the Samaritan woman, let’s go running! There’s an entire town and university awaiting us.