What We Have

Third Sunday of Lent
    A recent song that I heard frequently a few months ago was thought provoking, and even brought me to some soul searching.  The song is “What I Have” by an up-and-coming country star named Kelsea Ballerini.  She reflects on this constant drive to have more and more, and then juxtaposes it with what she has.  The last two lines of the refrain are, “I’m doing alright right where I’m at / With what I have.”  And then the last refrain has a slight twist from the earlier ones: “I got the air, good eyes to see / Got so much more than I’ll even need. / Even the bad days ain’t all that bad / With what I have.”  
    What do you have?  What do you need?  Our readings point us to three things that we need: water, hope, and living water.  The Israelites are on their way to Mt. Sinai, but are tired of walking.  They saw mighty works from God, including the crossing of the Red Sea, but they doubt God’s care for them, so they cry out for water.  God, in turn, gives them water when Moses strikes the rock.  But the place still garners the name Massah and Meribah “because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the Lord.”  They chose to doubt God, even though He had taken care of them and led them out of slavery in Egypt, and then saved them at the Red Sea and crushed their enemies.  They weren’t content with what they had, which was God.  

    And our Gospel shows us the exchange between a Samaritan, a non-Israelite, and Jesus.  The Samaritan woman doesn’t know what she has, or better, whom she has.  First she wants the living water that Jesus describes, but then she balks when Jesus starts to confront her past and call her to conversion.  She tries to steer the conversation away from her, and engages in what is still the easiest way to get people distracted in conversation: bring up a contentious point of doctrine.  She has the Messiah, but doesn’t realize it at first.  Jesus knows both what she has, but also what she lacks, and seeks to fill up what she lacks so that she can be satisfied, just as He gave the Chosen People what they lacked in the desert when they were going to the Promised Land.
    We are arguably the most affluent society in human history.  This is not to make light of the real struggles of the poor, the homeless, the hungry and thirsty, but so many of us have more than what we need.  We have clothes, and often buy clothes that we don’t even need.  We have a house, and some even have two or three.  We have modes of transportation that are, more or less, reliable, and can take us across States and countries.  Most people have a phone which can bring up any type of information that we desire at a moment’s notice.  We have grocery stores that provide food, not only what is in-season locally, but foods from exotic parts of the world that we could never grow here.  Many of us are used to taking vacations when we feel like it.  
    And yet, with all that we have, in 2020, 45,979 Americans died from suicide, out of 1.2 million attempts.  Suicide is the 12th leading cause of death of Americans.  How could so many who have so much seek to end their own lives?  At least part of the answer is connected to how many people have stopped practicing their faith, have walked away from God.  They are like the Samaritan woman at the well, she’s thirsty, but no matter how many times she draws water, it never satisfies.  And then along comes this stranger, this foreigner, who promises her a water which will satisfy, but she can’t bring herself to accept it at first, because she won’t trust in God’s help.  She’d rather argue about where to worship and who the Messiah is at first than accept the gift of new life that God is offering.
    St. Paul says that we have hope, a hope which does not disappoint, “because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  Hope is one of the greatest things we can have (though it’s not really a commodity) because it keeps us going.  And we do not have hope because of our affluence, or even because of what we have achieved, but because of what God has done for us.  “For Christ, while we were still helpless, died at the appointed time for the ungodly.”  Jesus sacrificed Himself so that we could have the one thing we truly need: Him.  He had been doing that from the beginning.  Indeed, St. Paul writes about the first reading we heard in his first letter to the Corinthians: [the Jews] “drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.”  Even in the Old Testament, Christ was prefiguring the gift of Himself when God provided water for the Jews in the desert.  That same gift, the gift of Himself, Jesus gave to the Samaritan woman at the well, and she eventually allowed herself to receive it, which gave her so great a joy that she forgot about the water she had gone to draw from the well.  
    [My dear Elect and Candidate: throughout this past year, you have noted your need for God.  You have sensed Him offering you the living water, and you have responded.  As you celebrate this first scrutiny, Christ seeks to have you acknowledge your past sins, not to condemn you, but that He might heal them in you.  For it is only when we acknowledge that we have strayed from God, that God can heal us and draw us back to Him.  God wants you to have Him, because if you have Him, you have all that you truly need.  And even if you had everything tangible thing the world had to offer, if you don’t have Him, you have nothing.]
    We all have a lot more than any other previous generation had.  The temptations to focus on what we don’t have or what our neighbors have can easily trip us up.  Instead, let’s focus on strengthening what we truly need to be happy: God.  Because as long as we have God, “I’m doing alright right where I’m at / With what I have.”