March 20, 2014
The following is a homily for the weekend of Sunday, March 23.
Boy, dating has sure gotten complicated. We have eharmony.com, and now ChristianMingle.com – their ads are on TV all the time. “He’s my second chance,” the woman literally cries into the TV camera. And match.com. And, as I see at so many of the Catholic conventions I attend, we also have CatholicMatch.com. All these options, and it used to be so simple. Young men and women would run into each other at work, or at church, or at a party, or at the bowling alley, as I learned when I was first ordained in 1972. So what’s with this dot-com dating thing?
Perhaps young folks are working so hard these days that by the time they are ready to get serious, they feel time has run out. Or, and this is frightening, perhaps people think the computer can do better at picking a mate than good old human instinct. They can find the logarithms and equations to scientifically find us a match rather than rely on the basic process of meeting and liking someone. Of course, folks put out false pictures and blown-up resumes on these sites, so maybe the computer can be dumb too. Who knew how hard to find a date?
The Samaritan woman wasn’t looking for a date. She was out getting water at mid-day, instead of the early morning as most other women did. That’s how much of an outcast she was. And you can see from her dialogue with Jesus why she was an outcast. Her problem wasn’t getting a date; it was getting too many dates. In a world where men put women out, she’d been put out five times already. “Get me your husband,” Jesus says. “I have no husband.” Yes, Jesus says, you surely don’t. You’ve never found the endless well of love that sustains life. I will give that to you.
And what’s the price for this? One thing. Not money. Not influence. Not looks. Not charm. She only has to give of herself, to trust enough, to show her broken crazy life to Jesus. Get rid of the fake resume and the deceptive picture. Show God yourself. Once she does this, she lets his flood of true love, of divine acceptance, flow into her without limit. “Give me something to drink,” Jesus asked at the beginning of their date; she finally gives Jesus the water of her life in exchange for which Jesus will give the water of divine love, of the Holy Spirit, of union with God. How does Paul put it in his letter to the Romans: “The love of God has been poured into our hearts.” We only have to open them.
Are we envious of this woman? We should not be. Nothing has happened to her that has not, or cannot, happen to us as well. So many things can block our relationship with God – and, maybe most of all, our pretentions. The way we think we don’t need God that much. Or can keep from God the scars of our souls. Or do not trust God enough to reveal all that needs to be loved, healed, and graced in our lives.
Lent is an opportunity to drop the pretentions, to stand vulnerable and open before the Lord, to acknowledge sins so that God can overcome them, to experience a deeper level of discipleship. Of all the people I have to hide from, God is the last one of all. Come, let’s go on a date, says God. Let me show you the truth of my love. At this time of conversion, hundreds of thousands of people across the world are preparing for the sacraments of conversion – modeling for us the earnestness of fresh love that can be part of our lives when we let the Spirit touch us.
We’ve bought the illusion that whatever we can do in life, we can do better over a computer. Our dot-coms will save us. We just need to find the right app. But God needs no app. God is ready to flood us with love. We just have to take off the umbrella of self-pretention, and the raincoat of false security, to discovery the One who tells us everything we ever did, and who loves us nonetheless.