Back in the 90's, I saw a quote that has stayed with me over the years. The quote said: Christianity is not a religion. It is a proposal of marriage. In many ways, those few words capture the essence of our faith.
In the Old Testament, the relationship between God and Israel is often depicted as a marriage. Israel is the bride, many times unfaithful, and God is the aggrieved husband who keeps calling his beloved back to him. As Scripture scholar Brant Pitre expounds in his book Jesus the Bridegroom, the marriage metaphor continues in the New Testament.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus is very intentionally depicted as the bridegroom of Israel. For example, he begins his public ministry by transforming water into wine at a wedding. The bridegroom getting married is conspicuously absent from the narrative. Instead, Jesus takes center stage through his lavish miracle. Also, at the Last Supper, Jesus tells the disciples that he will go to prepare a place for them, after which he will return to take them home. In Jewish marriage customs, after the engagement, the groom would spend time preparing a home where he could begin life with his bride, and only when the home was ready for them to move in would the wedding take place. The wedding metaphor imagery culminates in The Book of Revelation, where the Church is depicted as a bride who is married to Christ in a heavenly wedding.
From Old Testament times, God has been inviting the Israelites into this profound relationship with him. With the coming of Christ, the invitation is now extended not just to the people of Israel, but to the whole world. We see the opening of the invitation to those beyond Israel in the account of the Samaritan woman at the well.
The Gospel of John has various layers of meaning. On one level of interpretation, the woman symbolizes the Samaritans as a people. The Samaritans were ancient enemies of the Jewish people. They came from a common ancestry, but the Samaritans had branched off in a different direction. Though they still worshipped God, they did so in a way that departed from the Mosaic Law. Over time, a deep sense of animosity developed between the two groups. Samaria, where the Samaritans lived, lay between Galilee, where Jesus started his ministry, and Judea, where Jerusalem stood. Whenever Jews wanted to travel between Galilee and Judea, they would usually take a longer road to avoid Samaria altogether. If they ventured into Samaria, they risked encountering some deep hostility.
But in today's passage, Jesus is not only traveling through Samaria but asks the Samaritan woman for water. By doing so, Jesus violates deep social taboos. As a Jew, he is not supposed to have anything in common with the Samaritans. As a man, he is not supposed to interact with an unchaperoned woman in public, let alone one who, as he knows, does not have a good reputation. He sets those social restrictions aside and asks her to give him water from the well.
In the Old Testament, wells were a place where romance began. Three key meetings take place at wells. The servant of Abraham meets Rebecca, who will become the wife of Isaac. Jacob meets Rachel, his future wife. Moses meets Zipporah, whom he will marry. Now Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at a well, at the well of Jacob, no less. The implication is not that Jesus is entering into a relationship with the woman herself, but that God is inviting the Samaritan people into the same profound relationship that he has had with the people of Israel.
The five husbands of the woman symbolize five false gods that the Samaritans had worshipped in their history. The current relationship of the woman symbolizes the Samaritan's relationship with God. They worship him, but they have not entered into the same marriage relationship with him as Israel, because their worship has been corrupted by their history. Jesus is now calling them to true worship, where they too can enter into that profound relationship with God symbolized by marriage.
The invitation to the Samaritans is just the beginning. Christ invites all nations, all peoples. All of us individually. God extends to every one of us his proposal of marriage. The structures of our religion exit to help us enter into that eternal marriage with God. The prayers, the creeds, the rituals, the sacraments all help us enter more and more deeply into that complete union of love with God, who is the only source of our ultimate joy and fulfillment. This Lent, in the midst of our various disciplines and practices, let us say two simple words to God: I do.
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The readings for the Third Suday of Lent, Cycle A, are:
Ex 17:3-7
Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9
Rom 5:1-2, 5-8
Jn 4:5-42
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: Mary's Well in Nazereth by Zoltan Abraham (c) 2016.