Monday in the second week of Lent: Come and see again

Monday in the second week of Lent: Come and see again

John 4:(1-26) and 27-42

I have long loved this Samaritan woman who both knows so much and so little. Her life has been complex, her journey perhaps wounding. There have been so many husbands, so many false starts and endings. Beneath must be an inner struggle we will never see. Jesus asks, listens, responds both to the asked questions and something he senses beneath her defensive repartee. And yet when the disciples show up,she vanishes into the Village.

But once there she does something of hidden joy. "Come and see the man who told me all I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" Something happened that made her secure enough to issue this invitation, something to do with his insightful involvement with her personal story. She has touched on her longing in the line, "When the Messiah comes he will show us all things." "I who speak to you am he."  More than the words have convinced her.  Perhaps the authority of listening and listening deeper. If we are blessed we know that feeling, that of our lives heard. Too often people hear over our lives and not into them. Too seldom do we know deep intimacy and perhaps all those husbands amounted to intimacy overlooked, not found. Perhaps.

But what excites here is not only that she invites other to meet this possible Messiah, but that they go out, they listen, he stays two days more. It all ends with a report back to her: "It is no longer because of your words that we believe,for we heard for ourselves, and we know this is indeed the Savior of the world."   What excitement and hope.   And so we learn the point of our encounter with Christ in his "Word."  It is to listen deep, to hear and be heard, to invite others to follow this pattern and thus to know and be known.

And yet I wonder. Was this nameless Samaritan woman remembered because the disciples remembered something of this encounter or was it because some one in Samaria remembered this as a story of personal conversion? Is she without a name because once Jesus moved on she was no longer judged suitable for other's society, a too often married woman whose lifestyle threatened others or displeased them Is there more here to see?  Just the same she is remembered as the one who first heard and invited.

Perhaps today I need just to remember who first invited me to see Jesus. Perhaps I need to recall whose society I judge as unworthy of me. Perhaps I am to forgive this error in my being so I can begin anew and be better in both my invitation to others and my judgement of both self and others.

Her words linger in our bring: "Come and see!" Come and be seen as well.