When are you are thirsty, uncomfortable, feeling you don’t belong? Today is your day. In today’s scripture you learn that having a relationship with Jesus will fulfill your hopes. This experience of being understood and wanting to understand makes you human. This desire to satisfy your longings is the bridge where Jesus meets you. That is the conversation God wants to have with so you may go on in grace and peace.

Religious differences add fuel to the potential conflict. This woman's "five husbands" are, from a rabbinical perspective, the five tenets of Samaritan religion: belief in one God, in Moses as the one prophet, in the Torah as the only Book, in Mt. Gerizim as the one place of worship, and in final judgment. Three of these directly oppose Jewish belief in other prophets, other holy books, and Jerusalem as the only Temple. A collision course between this woman and this man seems inevitable. Instead truth brings their disparate hearts into resonance. This will not be a place of conflict but of hope.

"Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship the Father neither here at this mountain nor there in Jerusalem.

When I was studying in Ireland, my friend Olive invited me to spend a holiday weekend with her family in County Kerry. Kerry is a gorgeous mountainous area with rocky peninsulas that jut out into the sea, friendly fishing villages, lakes nestled in valleys, and trails for hiking and horseback riding.

Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

Is God really in our midst? That was the grumbling, quarrelsome, and testing question the Israelites had at Meribah and Massah, and it’s a question the other readings answer with a resounding yes. We can enter “into his presence with thanksgiving” because through Christ’s sacrifice “we have gained access by faith” to the grace of God. The Messiah is here: “I am he, the one speaking with you.” Know “that this is truly the savior of the world.”

It is estimated that in all of recorded history there have been only 230 years of worldwide peace.

God has chosen to save the world through the cross, through the shameful and powerless death of the crucified Messiah. If that shocking event is the revelation of the deepest truth about the character of God, then our whole way of seeing the world is turned upside down. —Richard Hays