3rd Sunday in Lent (A)
Running The Amazing Race

Readings: Exodus 17:3-7; Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8; John 4:5-42 or 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42

Recently, I managed to catch parts of the last episode of The Amazing Race Asia. It featured snippets from earlier segments of the popular TV show. What I found amazing was the fact that even though the contestants were well aware that cameras were constantly being trained on them, there were many occasions when they still couldn’t help revealing something of their inner selves.

I’m reminded, for example, of the pair of mothers, who were described by their fellow contestants as always being in game mode. Yet, even though they were obviously very serious about the race, they couldn’t help being moved to tears by the joyful reaction of the African orphans and their caregivers when they presented them with a check for US$5,000 after having helped to paint their school. The tears were still flowing even as the pair drove away. And fresh tears where shed at the interview after the race.

The stresses and strains of the race also uncovered negative feelings that tested relationships to breaking point. One contestant, for example, blew up at her teammate, once for not being able to climb a wall, and again for misreading a map and sending them more than a hundred miles in the wrong direction. I can’t trust you anymore, she told her friend. And they were not the only ones who had problems. Another pair of contestants, a couple married for thirteen years, had such a big fight when they got lost that the husband couldn’t keep from breaking down at the post-race interview.

As exciting as it was to watch the different teams competing in so many exotic countries, what was perhaps most amazing about the race was the way it showed how difficulties and trials can often reveal our deeper dispositions and motivations, those parts of us that we usually keep safely concealed under a veneer of common courtesy. Sometimes what is uncovered can be soft and soothing. But it can also be hard and hostile.

Although we are only halfway through the season of Lent, like that final episode of The Amazing Race, our readings today offer us an opportunity to take a closer look at the kind of race we are running over these Forty Days. They do this by presenting us with two stories, which are really different versions of a single story. This is a story that speaks to us of a desert and a rock, of a people and their God.

In the first reading, God has freed his people from slavery in Egypt and is leading them on an amazing race to the Promised Land, where milk and honey flow. But they have first to undergo the trials and tribulations of the desert. They arrive at Mount Horeb, where they are parched with thirst. But here there is only sand and the rock-hard face of the mountain. The people begin to buckle under the pressure.

It is not just Moses that they question. They are really grumbling against God. Why did you make us leave Egypt? Was it to have us die here of thirst? The stresses and strains of their race through the desert lay bare the solid surface of their hardened hearts. They thirst for water more than they thirst for their God.

We see something similar in the story of the Samaritan woman in the gospel. She too has been running a race. But hers is the race of ordinary human living. And she too has been undergoing the trials of the desert, trials that are expressed so poignantly in Jesus’ words to her: you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. It is probably because of this painfully difficult marital situation that she chooses to go to the well to draw water at the hottest part of the day, when no one else will be there. She hardens her heart to avoid being hurt by the merciless gossip of others.

But while hardening may protect us from experiencing hurt and further disappointment, it also hinders us from experiencing the touch of God. Isn’t this why God tells Moses to strike the rock with his staff? Isn’t this a sign of what we must all undergo in order to experience the healing waters of God’s mercy? Doesn’t the striking of the rock remind us of how some of us still strike our breast when we pray the I Confess at the beginning of Mass? I have sinned through my own fault… For the Israelites, this invitation to be struck is found in the words of the responsorial psalm: Oh, that today you would hear his voice: ‘harden not your hearts as… in the desert’ For the Samaritan woman, it is found in Jesus’ apparently innocent request: go call your husband and come back… Here is a gentle summons to allow God to penetrate our defenses, to submit to God’s healing touch.

This is, of course, not an easy invitation to accept. Our thirst for ordinary water can be too great. The hurt we have suffered can be too deep, our desire to protect ourselves too strong. Thankfully, the rock that is struck in the desert is not only an image of our interior condition. It also calls to mind another scene, one that has the power to move us, to soften and even to melt our hardened hearts.

The rock in the desert points also to Christ, the Rock of our salvation. He is the One who freely enters the desert of our earthly exile and offers to us the waters of eternal life. And, on the Cross, Christ the Rock is struck by a soldier’s lance so that from his side flows blood and water. The second reading reminds us of the significance of this crucifixion scene. It is in this way that God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Through Christ's sacrifice, the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. The Rock is struck so that our thirsty hearts might enjoy the living waters of the Holy Spirit, the same waters into which we have been baptized, and for which the catechumens are preparing this Lent.

Even so, this is not the end of our race. Amazingly, the waters of God’s love quench our thirst only to replace it with a new hunger. Jesus speaks about this in today’s gospel, when his disciples offer him something to eat. My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, says Jesus, and to finish his work. It is this same hunger to do his Father’s will that prompts Jesus to call his disciples' attention to the fields ripe for the harvest. For this yearning for God is also a hunger for souls, a hunger to share God’s love with others. It is this same hunger that moves the Samaritan woman to leave her pitcher at the well, and to run off into town, to the very people she had been avoiding, in order to tell them about Jesus.

This, then, is what our Lenten race is all about. It is a race to rediscover the heart of what it means to be a Christian. It is a race into the desert of our trials and tribulations, where the hardness of our hearts can be uncovered and pierced with the staff of contrition. It is a race to discover anew the tender mercies of God in the sacrifice of his Son and the outpouring of the Spirit. It is a race away from the all-consuming thirst of selfishness into the joyful hunger to share the love of God with others.

My sisters and brothers, how are we being invited to continue running this amazing race today?