Reflecting on the Third
Sunday in Lent

Year A

Prayer

Psalm 81

We drink from the rock

 

Sing aloud to God our strength;

shout for joy to the God of Jacob.

Raise a song, sound the tambourine,

the sweet lyre with the harp.

Blow the trumpet at the new moon,

at the full moon, on our festal day.

For it is a statute for Israel,

an ordinance of the God of Jacob.

He made it a decree in Joseph,

when he went out over the land of Egypt.

I hear a voice I had not known:

“I relieved your shoulder of the burden;

your hands were freed from the basket.

In distress you called, and I rescued you;

I answered you in the secret place of thunder;

I tested you at the waters of Meribah.    Selah

Hear, O my people, while I admonish you;

O Israel, if you would but listen to me!

There shall be no strange god among you;

you shall not bow down to a foreign god.

I am the Lord your God,

who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.

“But my people did not listen to my voice;

Israel would not submit to me.

So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,

to follow their own counsels.

O that my people would listen to me,

that Israel would walk in my ways!

Then I would quickly subdue their enemies,

and turn my hand against their foes.

Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him,

and their doom would last forever.

I would feed you with the finest of the wheat,

and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

 

Genesis 29:1-14

Rachel at the well

 

Then Jacob went on his journey, and came to the land of the people of the east. As he looked, he saw a well in the field and three flocks of sheep lying there beside it; for out of that well the flocks were watered. The stone on the well’s mouth was large, and when all the flocks were gathered there, the shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the well, and water the sheep, and put the stone back in its place on the mouth of the well.

 

Jacob said to them, “My brothers, where do you come from?” They said, “We are from Haran.” He said to them, “Do you know Laban son of Nahor?” They said, “We do.” He said to them, “Is it well with him?” “Yes,” they replied, “and here is his daughter Rachel, coming with the sheep.” He said, “Look, it is still broad daylight; it is not time for the animals to be gathered together. Water the sheep, and go, pasture them.” But they said, “We cannot until all the flocks are gathered together, and the stone is rolled from the mouth of the well; then we water the sheep.”

 

While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep; for she kept them. Now when Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of his mother’s brother Laban, and the sheep of his mother’s brother Laban, Jacob went up and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the flock of his mother’s brother Laban. Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and wept aloud. And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s kinsman, and that he was Rebekah’s son; and she ran and told her father.

 

When Laban heard the news about his sister’s son Jacob, he ran to meet him; he embraced him and kissed him, and brought him to his house. Jacob told Laban all these things, and Laban said to him, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh!” And he stayed with him a month.

 

1 Corinthians 10:1-4

Drinking from Christ, the spiritual rock

 

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.