What can I give Jesus?

This reflection focuses on the Exodus reading and the John reading the full readings for the Third Sunday in Lent, March 27 2011. Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42.

There is much water in today’s readings!
The Exodus reading reminds us that once again the people of Israel who have:
• been delivered rejoicing out of Egypt
• been delivered from the Egyptians at the Red Sea
• been delivered from hunger and thiurst in the wilderness
Have once again forgotten that God has acted time and time again to bless them and care for them
and in the face of trial
stand faithless and unbelieveing
crying that God has let them down.

God does heed their cry
by bringing water out of stone
BUT we are told..that God does not look too kindly on this
Having been faithful to the people time and time again
they reciprocate with little faith
indeed quite the reverse.
We are told therefore this placed is called Quarreling and Testing
and time and time again we will be reminded that it shows a faithless heart on behalf of the people.
Though God had continuously delivered them
yet at the slightest little obstacle they chose to act faithlessly.
This pattern…I will not rejoice in God’s goodness
I will only bemoan when things get tough
Betrays a faithless heart on our behalf.
Is this how we treat God?

What can I give Jesus?
In the second story
Jesus meets a woman at a well
In the first moments of this encounter he breaks a range of religious prohibitions: he talks to a woman alone, she is a Samaritan, and he asks her to give him drink which as a Jew he should not receive from a Samaritan.

What we may miss in this story, because so often we are focused on God giving to us
is that Jesus ask the woman to
Give to him
“Give me a drink!”
We don’t often think of Jesus as being in need of anything from us.
So I find myself asking:
If Jesus was going to ask me for something what would it be?
What does Jesus want from you or me?

Let that question be with you during this week.

In the Exodus story we read how the people shut down their relationship with God because they do not give they only take
Here we have Jesus reversing that dynamic
if you give to me then I can give to you.
When the woman responds he is able to say to her:
If you do this simple act of kindness to me
then I can give you the gift of God?
In the old story they are shutting down the relationship with God.
In the new story, Jesus is opening it up.

What can I give Jesus?
We (like the woman) can find all sorts of reasons not to do it
but faith invites us to trust God and then God can respond to our slightly open door

This week
If Jesus was to say “Give me….” what is he asking for, what can I give ?
Will I do it?

Is there one thing I can give to Jesus this week.

I want us to note, too, when she gives to Jesus and allows a certain openness
Then Jesus goes right to a very key question in her life
What’s happening in your marriage?
And he uncovers a whole can of worms that suggests that, maybe, this woman’s needs are not disembodied spirituality…but very much in her human relationships
However we might make it ‘religious’ it is in our life that we might God.
Our throats may be parched, but our real thirst is spiritual,
we are alive both spiritually and physically they are intenconnected
and both thirsts need quenched