Homily

Mother’s Day is next Sunday, and I stumbled across an ad for a truly unique gift for mom. It’s a bracelet of blue-colored beads and in the center of the bracelet is a tiny little round container with a clear plastic top, filled with a bit of sand. Here is the description of this gift:

It’s called the Sentimental Sand Custom Karma Bracelet. There is an actual list of many hundreds of beaches around the world from which you can choose your sand to put into the bracelet capsule. You can even choose from several beaches. Mix and match sand is no problem for Holly. What it has to do with karma or your relationship to the universe is completely unclear, but it’s only $52.00.

A while back, I heard a story of a village in Africa where Catholic Relief Services dug a well for the people. No more travelling a half mile to the river to get water for all your daily needs in buckets. One woman quoted was so happy that there was a water tap in her neighborhood she could hardly talk. "And, oh, I can't believe how good this water tastes," she said. Now that's quite a different perspective from our experience, where tap water was hardly given a second thought if you live in a city. And I bet that woman never even thought about sending light and love back into the universe for the sake of karma. What a contrast in cultures.

The well in Africa made me think of the Samaritan woman, who also had to come to a well to get water. We don't know anything about her home except that she kept stocking it with different men, most likely because she thought they would fill the holes in her life, smooth over the rough spots of her dissatisfaction, provide a support for her life and maybe even be a source of loving care.

I think Jesus had a great compassion for her, sensing her great need as she came to the well. She wasn't thirsting after more and better material goods, and, although she is intrigued by the idea of never having to carry water again in buckets from a well, that is not her real problem.

In his conversation, Jesus pulls her out of her regular, everyday perspective, away from her relationships, away from the everyday work of hauling water, away even from her own identity as a Samaritan and a woman. He is able to get her to put all that aside for this moment, so that she can truly and really see Him for Who He is. And when He tells here that He is the messiah, she believes. She now has a whole new perspective on her life. She's found living water! She's so excited about her new understanding, her new perspective on life that she wants to share it with everybody and tells all the people in town to come and see Jesus for themselves. She's converted, she has changed.

Here's how I think it goes: as people become more prosperous and wealthy, they tend to buy more things, and more expensive things. It is a natural human tendency to guard, look after, and protect the things we have, and so the more things we have, the more time, effort, and energy we devote to them. The more time, effort, and energy we devote to them, the more they fill up our lives. Jesus says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will also be." It is true. The more these things fill up our lives, the less room we have, the less attention we may give, to our hearts and especially to our souls.

A wealth of material goods can weaken our lives and dry up our souls if we're not careful. I'm sure most of us would say, "Well, I'm not wealthy," and I understand that. But if any of us, any of us made that claim in front of the African woman whose village has one water tap, she might have a different idea of what it means to be wealthy. And if we showed her the ad for the Sentimental Sand Custom Karma Bracelet, what do you think she might say?

As our country has grown more and more prosperous, we have become less and less satisfied, and is it any surprise then that we have, with all of our material comforts, looked less and less for comfort in Christ? We have let our stuff lead us astray, we've allowed that which perishes and rusts to overtake that which is eternal, we've paid more attention to bottled water than to living water, because we can control and carry bottled water, we buy it, we own it, we drink it, but living water cannot be bought or owned. It demands our faith. You would think that the wealthiest nation on earth would be the happiest nation on earth, but it is not so. You would think the wealthiest nation on earth would be the most grateful to God, but it is not so.

Jesus led the woman at the well past the circumstances of her life, past the hardship of water-carrying, the men, the national identity, the physical place to worship—He led her past all those external things so that she could see Him. She saw. She was converted. May we have the wisdom to remember to see that whether there is only one tap in our village, or two sinks in every bathroom in our house, there is only One Source of living water, and if we don't want to die of thirst, we'd better be sure we are always and sincerely coming to Him, the lover of mankind. Think of the millions of people in Africa who do not have single faucet of fresh water to use. Think of all the many people right now in India who are suffering and dying for lack of medicine and hospital beds. And here we are, my friends, so blessed in so many ways. I make the contrast not to bring up feelings of guilt, but instead to bring up prayers of gratitude to God for the blessings we enjoy.

All that we have is a gift, even if we think we are the ones who earned it. And it is only truly useful if somehow, directly or indirectly, it helps lead us to Christ, or it helps us to serve our family and our neighbor. It is not a sin to have comfort in life, but it is a dangerous thing to allow comfort to crowd Christ out of our daily affairs. We can lose sight of Him so easily as we try to run our lives. We need to have the clear vision that the Samaritan woman came to see: Jesus is the only source of living water for thirsty souls. And that would be us.