Matthew Skinner asks "What does it look like when God defies the restrictions we assume are in place?" In the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone recorded in the gospels, Jesus shows us. In his encounter with the woman at the well, Jesus defies accepted customs and behavior. He talks with a woman other than a relative in public, and a Samaritan woman at that. Samaritans were considered impure when, after the Assyrians conquered Israel, they inter-married with non-Jews. He cuts through differences in where we should worship saying that we should worship in spirit and in truth, not in the temple in Jerusalem, as Jews, or at Shechem, as the Samaritans. And when she says the Messiah will come and set things straight. He says "I am," who is speaking to you. God is the great "I am." Skinner, In "You Ought to Leave the Church," tells us God will not be confined to the walls of the Church. Do we take God outside our walls? Do we invite Him in?
In "The Third Sunday in Lent," Marjorie Suchocki compares the water gushing from the rock struck by Moses at Massah and Meribah (which means "test" and "quarrelsome") given to a contentious people who put God to the test, and the living water God gives through his Christ who is betrayed, struck, abused and put to a cruel death by men. The difference is the living water Jesus gives us "gushing up to eternal life," and reconciling us to God, and each other.
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