5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’ 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

27Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 28Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” 30They left the city and were on their way to him.

31Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

39Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41And many more believed because of his word. 42They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

About the Artist:
Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) is an Icelandic-Danish artist known for sculptured and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's experience. In 1995 he established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research. In 2003 he installed The Weather Project, which has been described as “a milestone in contemporary art,” in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London. Eliasson has engaged in a number of projects in public space, including the intervention Green River, carried out in various cities between 1998 and 2001; the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007, London, a temporary pavilion designed with the Norwegian architect Kjetil Trædal Thorsen; and The New York City Waterfalls commissioned by Public Art Fund in 2008. Olafur was a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts from 2009 to 2014, and has been an adjunct professor at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, since 2014.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olafur_Eliasson
https://olafureliasson.net/

Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life.

This is what gives me the fundamental principle

of morality, namely,

that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and

enhancing life,

and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.

~ Albert Schweitzer

March 12, 2023    Third Sunday in Lent Sunday in Lent - Year A

First Reading Exodus 17:1-7

Psalm 95

1   O come, let us sing to the LORD; 
          let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! 
2   Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; 
          let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! 
3   For the LORD is a great God, 
          and a great King above all gods. 
4   In his hand are the depths of the earth; 
          the heights of the mountains are his also. 
5   The sea is his, for he made it, 
          and the dry land, which his hands have formed.

6   O come, let us worship and bow down, 
          let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! 
7   For he is our God, 
          and we are the people of his pasture, 
          and the sheep of his hand.

     O that today you would listen to his voice! 
8        Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, 
          as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, 
9   when your ancestors tested me, 
          and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. 
10  For forty years I loathed that generation 
          and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, 
          and they do not regard my ways.” 
11  Therefore in my anger I swore, 
          “They shall not enter my rest.”