“Wellspring of Hope” Colchester Federated Church,March 8, 2026, Third Sunday in Lent (John 4:5-42)
As we continue on in this season, we find ourselves with Jesus and his disciples at a well in Samaria on the Third Sunday in Lent. Jesus’ disciples go into the city of Sychar to buy some food. Jesus stays alone at the well because he’s tired from his journey. We often focus on Jesus’ divinity, but this Gospel story highlights his humanity. Jesus is tired. It’s about noon, so he sits down in the heat of the day to rest. Along comes a Samaritan woman alone. She had come to the well to draw water. Jesus asks for a drink, and a remarkable conversation ensues. This is another one-on-one encounter where Jesus offers new life. Just like Jesus did with Nicodemus last Sunday and just like Jesus will do next Sunday when he encounters a man born blind from birth.
I once attended a leadership conference at Church of the Resurrection—a United Methodist megachurch with multiple campuses around Kansas City. One of the conference workshops was led by Biblical Preaching Professor Karoline Lewis of Luther Seminary. Professor Lewis wrote this fabulous commentary on the Gospel of John and she left a lasting impression on me with her insights (which I will do my best to share to help us understand the power of this story and why it still matters).
For our purposes, Professor Lewis explains that it’s not necessary for Jesus and his disciples to go through Samaria to get from Judea to Galilee from a geographical perspective. Jews like Jesus and his disciples would most likely not travel out of the way to Samaria because of the risk of running into Samaritans. The history of the feud between the Samaritans and Jews is multifaceted. Basically Jews considered Samaritans outsiders and even idolaters. However the Samaritans understood themselves to be descendants of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.[1] The Samaritans (yes, they are still around!) still hold as sacred the Five Books of Moses. And the Samaritans considered their place of worship Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem. Some of these different perspectives helped maintain this schism. At the end of the day, Samaria would be the last place that Jesus as a Jewish man would ever be expected to journey to show people how deeply God loves our world. Though remember what we heard Jesus say to Nicodemus, “God didn’t send [God’s] Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”[2]
Out there in the wider world is where we find Jesus today. We find Jesus in Samaria (of all places) alone with a Samaritan woman at the well. We’re supposed to feel a little nervous when we hear this story because so many boundaries are being crossed. As Professor Lewis explains, “We have a man speaking to a woman, a rabbi speaking to a woman, a Jew speaking with a Samaritan, a Jewish rabbi speaking with a Samaritan, and now, we find out, they are alone.”[3] This is all happening in public in the middle of the day for anyone who happened to pass by to see! This would have been scandalous!
Yet one of the boundaries not being crossed are “moral boundaries.” This is not a story about Jesus (the pure and sinless Son of God) speaking to this sinful woman with a sketchy past. Often people interpret this woman as having “loose morals” because she’s had five husbands. Given sexism present in society that interpretation is not a surprise. In actuality, the Samaritan woman was probably barren and had husbands either divorce her or die over the years of her own life. Women could not divorce men, and barrenness was always blamed on the woman. When Jesus says that she is living with a man who’s not her husband it means that she’s most likely living with her dead husband’s brother which was stipulated in Deuteronomy. (Remember that Samaritans adhered to the Five Books of Moses). All of this shows the vulnerability and marginalization of this woman.
We can notice that Jesus does not say to her (like the woman caught in adultery in John 8 for instance)— “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”[4] Jesus doesn’t have to tell the Samaritan woman at the well to not sin again because she’s the victim here! The victim of this patriarchal society where she gets passed from one man to another because she’s seen as damaged goods or defective for not having children. Too often we judge her when we hear this woman’s story even today.
We have clues that this woman had a hard life because it was the duty of women to get water for the family. Women would typically fetch water twice a day—early in the morning and in the evening when it was cooler. In some parts of the world, this is still the case. Though water fetching is a communal activity that women often do with other women. Carrying jars of water from the town well back to one’s home could be a long journey after all. But having company to chat with during this arduous task can make it a little easier, right? Not to mention that there can be safety in numbers so it makes sense to go with a group when performing this necessary task for one’s household. Sometimes we use the phrase around here at CFC that “many hands make light work.” We use that phrase because it’s true!
Meanwhile, this Samaritan woman is by herself at the well at about noon. In the heat of the day she’s walking alone to the well and then presumably walking back alone to her home. Here at the well she encounters Jesus of Nazareth feeling tired because of his own journey. One can imagine her as marginalized within the community of Samaritans who were themselves marginalized within the larger Jewish context. Other women were probably cruel to her—she’s had five husbands and no children, what’s wrong with her? People can do incredible damage when we tear one another down. And we can resist the temptation to tear somebody else down in order to build ourselves up. That is misguided thinking anyway for all people are made in the image and likeness of God.
In our Gospel story, we see that this Samaritan woman does not deal with those petty mean girls who gossip. Instead, she trudges out to the well by herself in the heat of the day to get her water in peace and go back home to an uncertain future. But one day a remarkable Jewish man named Jesus of Nazareth is just sitting there resting at the well. Jesus truly sees her. Jesus talks to her and fundamentally changes her life by offering living water— “a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.”[5]
Jesus startles her with this good news, and she leaves her water jar behind to go back to the city to tell people (yes, even those people who may have made her life miserable) “come and see.” These are the same words Jesus uses in John’s Gospel to call his own disciples which we just heard a few weeks ago during the season of Epiphany: “come and see.”[6] As Professor Lewis writes, “She leaves behind her ostracism, her marginalization, her loneliness, because Jesus has brought her into his fold. She leaves behind her disgrace, her disregard, and the disrespect she has endured to enter into a new reality, a new life that is abundant life.”[7]
This Gospel story is one of encounter and relationship. Made all the more compelling considering the many boundaries that were crossed in order to have this relationship begin in the first place. Boundaries crossed in a good way to have the living water offered from Jesus to the Samaritan woman at the well. And that new life extended by Christ was accepted by her so that she (this Samaritan woman whose name we will never know) received new life in abundance.
We can ask ourselves who are those among us living on the margins? How do we come to truly see these folks as Jesus saw this woman at the well? As disciples of Jesus Christ out in the world God so loves, how do we offer this spirit of abundance? How do we stand in solidarity? For today we are offered this living water—the water that Jesus gives that will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into new life. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Karoline Lewis, John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries, pg. 53.
[2] John 3:17, CEB.
[3] Lewis, John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries, pg. 56.
[4] John 8:11, NRSVUE.
[5] John 4:14, CEB.
[6] John 4:29 and 1:39, NRSVUE.
[7] Lewis, John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries, pg. 64.
Lauren Ostrout ~ on being made well 