IS GOD WITH US, OR NOT?

III SUNDAY OF LENT - John 4:5-42

In their long journey through the desert, time and again, the people of Israel put God to the test. And God had to put up with them until his patience reached a limit. The place where that happened was called “Massah and Meribah because of the grumbling of the sons of Israel and because they put the Lord to the test by saying, ‘Is the Lord with us, or not?’” (Ex 17:7).

This same question echoes through the centuries and is repeated in our own times. Is God with us or has he abandoned us? Maybe, we were mistaken and our trust was in vain. Maybe, there is no god to rely upon. Maybe, we are left alone in the wilderness of life. We must struggle and find our own way. Massah and Meribah remained forever as a symbol of suspicion and quarrel with God, which left God very annoyed with the people. This lack of faith and trust was insulting after all that God had done for them. It is during the hardest and difficult times that God is specially with us. Because of the pain, anguish and despair, we go through, we lose the sense of God’s presence and loving care and instead of crying to him in our suffering, we turn our backs on him and insult him. In Bemba, they address God as “Shimwitwa pakakala” - the one who is called in difficult times.

Remembering the episode of Massah and Meribah, psalm 95 advises us to listen to the word of God and put our trust in him:

O that today you would listen to his voice!

  ‘Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,

  as on that day at Massah in the desert

when your fathers put me to the test;

  when they tried me, though they saw my work.’

People could not bear anymore the thirst and Moses, at God’s command, gave them water from the rock. In the gospel, Jesus presents himself to the Samaritan woman as the rock from which we can get the water of life.

The episode of the Samaritan woman presents on one side the spiritual journey of faith towards the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Saviour and on the other the important role of the woman in evangelisation. If the woman stands for the Samaritan people, then the passage presents the evangelisation of that people, carried out by simple and common people who give witness to Jesus Christ, who is recognised as the Saviour of the world.