Session 3 - At the Well: Our Deepest Thirst (John 3:1–4:42)

 Scripture Handouts 

Scripture handouts for last week and this week:

• Thurs 4/23 - Session 3 - At the Well: Our Deepest Thirst (John 3:1–4:42)
• Thurs 4/30 - Session 4 - “Believe in Me”: Trust and Surrender (John 4:43–6:71)

Links

Baptism & Being Born Again

• What are the Origins of Baptism? - Short video by Tim Staples at Catholic Answers re: Jewish roots of baptism
• Born Again – The Bible Way - Article by Tim Staples at Catholic Answers

Samaritans

• The Rift between Jews and Samaritans - Article by Pat McCloskey, OFM at Franciscan Media

Jesus's "Thirst" For Us

• “I Thirst” – Mother Teresa’s Devotion to the Thirsting Jesus - Article by Dr. Sri on his website
• Guided Meditation on Jesus's "I Thirst" - Meditation at Missionaries of Charity Fathers (Mother Teresa's order of priests)

Was Mary Magdalene a former prostitute?

The first two articles argue "yes", and the third one argues "no".

• Was Mary Magdalene a Former Prostitute? - Short article by Clement Harrold at St. Paul Center
• A Retrieval of the Traditional View of Mary Magdalene - Longer article by Clement Harrold at Church Life Journal 
• Who Is Mary Magdalene? - Article by Jimmy Akin at Catholic Answers

Commentary on John 3:1–4:42

Below are some notes related to last week's discussion adapted from The Gospel of John (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture) by Francis Martin and William M. Wright IV

Nicodemus (3:1-21)

• Immediately preceded by cleansing of the temple. (2:13-25)
• The Gospel records four visits of Jesus to Jerusalem for Jewish religious festivals (2:13; 5:1; 7:10; 12:12). During this first trip, Jesus starts his public ministry with a dramatic, prophetic action in the Jerusalem temple, the most important institution in the most important biblical city (2:13–22).
• Several things in Jesus’ command, Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace, provide insight into John’s theological understanding of the temple incident. 
• Of the four Gospel accounts of this incident, only John has Jesus calling the temple my Father’s house.
• This unique phrase reveals that John understands Jesus’ action here in terms of his relationship with the Father. Jesus is the Son of God, and his relationship with the Father legitimates his astonishing action, which disrupts the business related to sacrificial offerings (and implies a claim to have control over the temple). 
• By disrupting the sacrificial system, Jesus symbolically announces changes to come in the worship of God. 
• Just as the water of Sinai was transformed into the wine of the gospel at Cana, so will the worship of God be transposed into the worship of the new †covenant, “worship in Spirit and truth” (4:24). 
• Only in John’s account does Jesus speak of the commerce in the temple as turning it into a “marketplace.” This could be a subtle allusion to the end-time vision in Zech 14. There the prophet envisions the day of the Lord, when he will come in power to rescue his people, defeat their enemies, and establish a perfect state of affairs in the world. God will so sanctify his people that they will have no need to purchase animals for sacrifices in the temple: “No longer will there be merchants in the house of the LORD of hosts on that day” (Zech 14:21). Jesus’ command that the commerce in the temple must stop could be a prophetic indication that the Lord has now come with the salvation for his people that Zechariah foretold.

• Darkness/Light
• Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. Since night can be taken literally as meaning after sundown, this meeting is not necessarily a clandestine encounter but a respectful visit. Given John’s use of light and dark symbolism, however, night can also symbolize Nicodemus’s initial state of unbelief and misunderstanding.
• Later in the Gospel, John speaks of some Jewish authorities who believed in Jesus but did not acknowledge him “openly in order not to be expelled from the †synagogue” (12:42). Joseph of Arimathea seems to have been one such person (19:38), and Nicodemus may also be included in this group. Nicodemus appears twice more in John: in 7:50–52, where he defends Jesus somewhat before other Pharisees, and in 19:39, where he finally manifests his allegiance to Jesus by bringing a huge amount of precious spices to Jesus’ burial.
• Born again/from above

 ". . . no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit."

John’s Gospel sometimes uses a word that has two rather different meanings in order to teach something related to each of those meanings. Here, the Greek word anōthen means both “from above” and “again.” Accordingly, this birth of which Jesus speaks is both heavenly in origin (“from above”) and a second birth (“again”). Jesus teaches that human beings need to receive a new, spiritual life from heaven. Not to receive this new life means failure to experience (“see”) the kingdom, the reigning of God as king in Jesus. Although the †Synoptics record Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom of God as the core of his message, the phrase “kingdom of God” occurs only twice in John’s Gospel, both times in this episode (3:3, 5). However, the theme of Jesus as king is prominent in John’s passion narrative. The Evangelist, writing many years after Jesus’ ministry, shows a deep spiritual understanding of the substance of Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom. For John, the kingdom, or God’s kingly rule in the world, is in Jesus himself. As Benedict XVI puts it, “The new proximity of the Kingdom of which Jesus speaks—the distinguishing feature of his message—is to be found in Jesus himself. . . . He himself is the treasure; communion with him is the pearl of great price.”7 In order to see God’s kingly rule in Jesus, one must be born again, from above.

In 1:33, the Baptist had testified that the one coming after him “will baptize with the holy Spirit.” With the solemn phrase “Amen, amen, I say to you,” Jesus speaks of the fulfillment of the Baptist’s witness. This second birth from heaven is baptism, which is an action of the Holy Spirit. Through the water rite, the believer is joined to Jesus’ death and resurrection (Rom 6:4–5) and receives the indwelling Holy Spirit. If the kingdom of God is Jesus himself, then to enter the kingdom is to be given a share in Jesus’ own divine life. By means of baptism, we are born into communion with Jesus and the Father through the Holy Spirit. This birth of water and Spirit also alludes further back to God’s promise through Ezekiel. The prophet taught that when God works his great act of salvation, he will cleanse his people with “clean water” and put his “spirit within” them (Ezek 36:25, 27). God will give his redeemed people a “new heart and . . . a new spirit” (36:26), hearts that are receptive and capable of love. God thus promises to form an obedient people by putting his Spirit within them. John develops this symbolic connection between water and the Holy Spirit throughout the Gospel (see 4:10, 13–14; 7:37–39).

"What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit."

This is the heart of Jesus’ message to Nicodemus and to the world, and its basic principle was set forth in the Prologue: “But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God” (1:12–13). Through faith and baptism, believers are born into a spiritual life as children of God, sharing in Jesus’ own life as the Son (compare Rom 8:14–17). This new heavenly life is a gift from God, not a matter of physical descent or human choosing.

Woman at the Well (4:1-30)

• While other routes were available for Jews to take in order to avoid Samaria, Jesus had to pass through Samaria. John often uses the expression “had to” to indicate a necessity due to the Father’s will.2 He thus hints that the ensuing dialogue with a woman and conversion of a Samaritan town were part of the Father’s saving plan.
• Nuptial symbolism 
• The comment that Jesus stopped to rest at a well evokes a familiar scene in the Bible: a meeting at a well that leads to marriage. In Gen 24:10–53, Abraham’s servant, who was sent to find a wife for Isaac, meets Rebekah at a well, and she, having been thus identified by divine sign, agrees to become Isaac’s wife. Similarly, Isaac’s son Jacob meets Rachel, the love of his life, at a well (Gen 29:1–14). Exodus 2:15–21 tells of Moses, who protects the daughters of “the priest of Midian” at a well, and this event leads to the priest giving his daughter Zipporah in marriage to Moses.
• “Give Me a Drink”
• Jesus  asks  for  a  drink  two  times  in  the  Gospel   of   John:   at   the   well   with   the   Samaritan  woman,  when  he  says,  “Give  me a drink” (4:7), and at the Cross, when he says, “I thirst” (19:28). Blessed Teresa of  Calcutta  (Mother  Teresa)  saw  in  these  words  Jesus’  thirst,  not  for  water,  but  for  our souls: for our attention, our devotion, and our love. 

At this most difficult time, he proclaimed, “I   thirst.”   And   people   thought   he   was   thirsty  in  an  ordinary  way  and  they  gave  him  vinegar  straight  away;  but  it  was  not  for  that  thirst;  it  was  for  our  love,  our  affection, that intimate attachment to him, and  that  sharing  of  his  passion.  He  used,  “I  thirst,”  instead  of,  “Give  me  your  love”  ...  “I  thirst.”  Let  us  hear  him  saying  it  to  me  and saying it to you

• "The water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
• This water from Jesus is the Holy Spirit, an interior source of blessing and refreshment. The Holy Spirit imparts a participation in the divine life, lifting human existence to a level far beyond natural life and giving a person an eternal existence that begins now.
• "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain"
• Realizing Jesus’ prophetic insight, she asks his opinion on one of the most controversial aspects of Samaritan-Jewish relations: the place of worship
• "You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand."
• The word translated by the NABRE as “understand” is the Greek word for “know.”9 In the biblical sense, knowing involves not just intellectual apprehension but also a kind of union between the knower and the known. Origen describes this deeper dimension of knowing: Scripture says that “those who have been made one with and united with something know that with which they have been made one and have been involved.”10 By virtue of their †covenant, the †Jews know the one God in a way that the Samaritans do not.
• "in spirit and in truth"
• Jesus says that God is Spirit and, accordingly, those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth. He explained to Nicodemus that to see and enter God’s kingdom, one must be “born of water and Spirit” (3:5), receive a new heavenly life through the Spirit in baptism. As the †incarnate Word, Jesus himself is “the truth” (14:6), the revelation of God, and he “came into the world, to testify to the truth” (18:37; see 8:40). To worship in Spirit and truth means to worship God as revealed in Jesus, who is the Truth, and animated by the Holy Spirit, who imparts new heavenly life and understanding of Jesus’ revelation. 
• “Spirit and truth” does not imply that this worship is only interior or immaterial. Jesus has already explained to Nicodemus that a person must be born anew by “water and Spirit” (3:5, emphasis added), and he will instruct his disciples to eat his body and drink his blood in the Eucharist (6:53). 
• St. Paul describes such prayer to the Father as a gift of the Spirit: “God has sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’ ” (Gal 4:6; see Rom 8:15–16). The Letter of Jude also urges us: “build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the holy Spirit” (20). To worship in Spirit and truth, our prayer must be animated by the Holy Spirit in response to Jesus’ revelation of the Father.12
• "I am he"
• In response, Jesus openly declares his identity, revealing not only his messianic vocation but much more: I am he, the one who is speaking with you. The expression “I am he” renders a Greek phrase (egō eimi) that is literally “I am.”