Homily for March 15, 2009 Third Sunday of Lent

I just want to take a minute to see what parts of the story struck you or particularly stand out in your memory.
Yes? So they took ownership of it. "Not by your word anymore, but we've seen for ourselves." Okay. Anything else?
[inaudible]
When he said he will give you living water and it will become a spring to provide life. And what did the woman say to that, by the way? "You don't even have a bucket. How are you going to get this water?"
Did you see the different levels on which the conversation takes place? At first it's at a very superficial level, but it gets deeper and deeper. What about the tone? I was struck by the fact that Jesus was very respectful of the woman. He could have seen her and seen only a Samaritan woman, obviously of bad reputation because she's coming alone and not when the other women come to the well. The other women, by the way, would have come early in the morning, so she obviously didn't want to be with them.
And he could have talked down to her, but he didn't. I mean, it was a straightforward conversation. She, it seemed to me, kept trying to put him off, you know. And he was trying to get close to her, and she didn't want to let him in, but yet he broke through that. And eventually he was able to communicate both that he knew her, and knew all about her, but he accepted her.
And what he was looking for was something much deeper. The image of thirst comes to mind. We thirst for all sorts of things, don't we? And we want all sorts of things. And I think in the Gospel of John and from a perspective of our faith, there's the teaching that only God can give us what we truly want and what we truly need. Do you believe that? Don't leave me hanging. We know that we're supposed to believe that, don't we? But do we really?
Well, I don't know about you, but in my 68 years, I've looked in a lot of other places than God for what I want, and I've generally been disappointed in all of those others places that I've looked. But our thirst for what only God can give us gets displaced many times.
Have you ever thought that God thirsts for us? In my letter in the bulletin this week I quote a poem by Franz Wright that I've found very moving, and it is  let me see if I can read it exactly 

I call to mind your constant unrequited.
and preemptive forgiveness.
And remember You are not
and never were the object
of my thought,
my prayer
my words
But rather I
Was the object of yours.

Think of that for a moment. God is not the object of my desire; I am the object of God's desire. God is not the object of my prayer; I'm the object of God's prayer. And God is seeking to give to me so many things, and yet I keep pushing God away. So as we pray today, maybe pray that we might break through those things.

And today we celebrate on these three Sundays of Lent, the third, fourth and fifth, scrutinies. In the old days, by the way, they were efforts to scare the bejeebers out of catechumens and drive them away, to warn them that they'd better be serious. They're not that way today, but they are prayers over those who will be baptized at the Easter vigil. We asked them to write what they thirst for, and I know what each of them said. It will be in my mind as I pray over them. But they're the things that all of us thirst for: To know God's will in our life, to know what's right, to be able to give of ourself completely, to stand before God as a good man or a good woman, and to sort through the confusions of our life and to have peace.
So I'm going to call the elect up now and if you would come up, and I hope you're able to kneel around the circle here.
And I'd like to call our sponsors up. And maybe if we could all stand and pray over them.