March 8 2026 Lent 3

Exodus 17.1-7   Psalm 95   Romans 5.1-11   John 4.5-42

The Israelites were impatient and demanding when they faced ‘dry times’ on their trek through the wilderness.  They blamed Moses, and they blamed God for putting them in this situation.  How often do we react in the same way when things get tough.  We blame others, we blame inanimate objects, we blame everything and everyone, but we forget to look at ourselves, and at God.  We forget that with God on our side, we can achieve great things.  The Israelites had already been saved from slavery, they had been provided with many resources already, but at this point in time, they can only see scarcity, not divine abundance.  They could only see what they did not have, rather than the possibility embedded in their situation, including their own personal resources.  And once again, God comes to the rescue showering them with living waters despite their doubt and fearfulness.

In our gospel, Jesus crosses many ‘lines’ when he not only speaks to a woman, but speaks to a Samaritan woman and interacts with her as if it were ‘just another day’.  Jesus offers her ‘living water’, the waters of life that will never run dry, the waters of life which come from God’s Spirit moving through our spirits.  They can refresh us regardless of where we are on our life journey.  Jesus is nurtured, and nurtures, through living waters and the bread of life, which come from his living in the zone of God’s vision for his life.  When we open the door to God’s vision for our life, new and creative energies sustain us for the pilgrimage ahead and expand our own vision to include strangers and others outside our spiritual, ethnic and cultural circle.

This interaction between Jesus and the woman starts with ‘conversation’.  And through that conversation, Jesus reveals himself to this woman who, it appears, the others in her community were not willing to converse with.  Conversations are important, through them we discover things we may not have known about the other, and also about ourselves.  This conversation starts with vulnerability.  Jesus is thirsty, the woman needs the water only Jesus can provide.  And in this mutual vulnerability they both risk being known and being seen.

This conversation is probably the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in any of the Gospels.  Important conversations take time because they often come with elements of misunderstanding that need clarification.  The Samaritan woman is confused by Jesus’ offer of ‘living water’, but she does not allow that confusion to stop her questioning.  Jesus was willing to keep conversing with her, to keep exposing his identity and interest and love for this woman.  Last week Jesus spoke with Nicodemus, but that conversation was brief, Nicodemus speaks about 50 recorded words and Jesus gives a short sermon.  In this conversation, there are six substantial exchanges, discussing everything from theological differences between Jews and Samaritans to the woman’s personal history.  When Jesus met with Nicodemus, we were told who he was, this woman is unnamed.  He is a respected leader, she is a Samaritan and Jews do not associate with Samaritans.  Nicodemus came in the middle of the night, Jesus meets the woman at noon.  The conversation with Nicodemus occurs in Jerusalem, this conversation takes place in her territory, far from all Jewish power.  And when Nicodemus learns about ‘being born from above’, we are not told what he does with the information.  When the woman learns about living water, she immediately goes to share the information with her neighbours.

We often look at this story and focus on the apparent ‘sin’ of the woman – married five times, living with a man who is not her husband.  But nowhere in this conversation is any of that discussed.  What they do discuss is ethnic difference, theological difference, the purpose and meaning of life, the economic and social conditions in which they find themselves, and how to live when your life becomes illuminated by the truth.

At first, this woman misunderstands the relationship between the water in the well and living water.  She refers to all the mechanisms that we associate with water – buckets, wells, physical thirst, the toil involved in satisfying your needs.  And the disciples make a similar mistake later in the passage when they confuse the experience of hunger with the ‘food you know not of’.

In the world of this woman, the basic need for water had become entangled in social, political, and even theological conditions.  Who could drink from the well, who had access to clean water and who did not, who could offer water and to whom and who could accept.  One of the things Jesus offers this woman, which she enthusiastically accepts, is freedom from these conditions.  In essence he effectively tells her these distinctions between Jew and Samaritan, between male and female, between those with power and privilege and those without are meaningless ‘in spirit and in truth’, they are contaminating the water from Jacob’s well.  Jesus tells her the hour is coming when all that will be replaced by the realm of love, abundance and spiritual power.

The Samaritan woman saw that time as now, and she believed the living water was gushing up in her.  Her neighbours also set aside their prejudices, certainties, and histories, to enter into that moment.

What would it take for us to see our own moment as abundant in living water.  What old stories about ourselves and others do we need to surrender.  What fears would we have to release.  What future would we invite.  Jesus passes on to the woman at the well an awakening of the heart for love.   Maybe as we accompany her thirst, we can be awakened to our own awakening of the heart for love.