Second Sunday of Lent, March 08, 2026

Lectionary readings: exodus 17:1-7, Romans 5:1-5, psalm 95, John 4:5-42

                                         Life-Sustaining, Living Water.

Water plays significantly in two of today’s readings. In the reading from exodus, (17:1-7) During the exodus from Egypt the Israelites thirsting for water to drink, grumble with Moses, “why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us, our children and livestock with thirst?  Their grumbling while it is about water, not having water to drink, it was more about where is God, why isn’t he doing something? Moses in desperation finally do go to God, asking what to do with the people and God’s response is to show that he is with them telling Moses to strike the rock at Horeb with his staff, and water will pour from the rock for them to drink. God provides. 

In the gospel we have another one who is thirsty, and this time it is Jesus himself, tired and thirsty, seeing a Samaritan women coming to draw water he asks her for a drink.

This women coming at noon, was likely not expecting to meet anyone there. The other Women would have come early in the morning or evening to draw water not at the hottest time of day. So her being there at that hour likely meant she was isolated, not accepted, not  wanted, she was cast out as such by the other women. 

And while Jesus may have taken her on aware asking her for a drink, her reaction to him Likely stems from the long lasting  descension that have existed between the Jews and the Samaritan’s.  “How is it that you a Jew ask me a Samaritan woman for a drink?”

Not only did the Jews want nothing to do with the Samaritan’s, they would even go an whole days journey around Samaria rather than through it to avoid the Samaritans; they especially because of purity laws would not share eating or drinking vessels with the Samaritian, and yet Jesus asks her for a drink. And so the woman’s hesitance in giving Jesus a drink is understandable.

Not only did Jesus in interacting with her cross cultural boundaries and expectations of the day, but he did so not only to satisfy a need he had for water, but that he might offer her life-giving, life-sustaining, living water.

The woman though she was curious when Jesus tells her about this living water, she was not however convinced and says  “ sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep, where do you get this living water?are you greater than Jacob our ancestor who gave us this well, and his sons and flock drank from it.” 

The well they were standing by was Jacob’s well, and it is said the water would bubble up in it and overflow, providing an abundance of water for all of them to drink.

Unlike the water she would draw from the well, only to have to come back for more, “those who drink of the water that I gives, Jesus says,  will never thirst again. The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

Perhaps it was the thought of what this water could do for her, gushing up from within her, she would not have to come draw water again and have to likely endure the stares of the other women, or the way they would gossip about her.  Longing for this water she says, “sir, give me this water so that I may never be thirsty or have to come to draw water here again.”  

Jesus says to her “go get her husband and come back.” Letting her know he knew everything about her. 

In the culture of that day for a woman to have had five husbands as she did, if through divorce it was likely she had been cast aside, as one unwanted, of no value: in that day a man could divorce a woman for almost any reason, and a woman having no other way to support herself would marry again; not only was it a grave injustice against her, but likely she would have been shamed in the community because of it; or if it was the case that her husband having died, it was the brother of her dead husband who was to take her as his wife; if this woman had married five brothers and they had all died, not only was this a terrible burden of loss for her to bear, but likely she would have been condemned in the community as one cursed because of it, either way it was a tragic injustice. 

Jesus however did not condemn or shame this woman as others had probably done,  but crossing the cultural boundaries as he did, he being a Jew and she a Samaritian woman,  not only did he show her acceptance and welcome, but also that she mattered, he cared enough to cross those boundaries, and defy the religious purity laws for her.

And that too should tell us what our God is willing to do for each of us, he will not stand with those who do injury and harm to others, but will stand onside with the persecuted, the broken, the least, and so we should too. We should not be ok with injustice as is in the world today, that say to someone you are not valued, you are not accepted, you are not respected; but work to take down the oppressive systems that exclude, condemn, and does harm to others, as Jesus did, acting in ways that are life giving, life sustaining and not taking from life. 

That is what Jesus did for this woman in the gospel, taking the time she needed so she would understand the life-giving, life-sustaining, living source of water he was for her life, he showed her she mattered.

When Jesus discloses to her that he is the messiah, the woman leaves her jar behind at the well, and I love that. She no longer needs it. The thirst that had brought her to the well for drink,  has been satisfied through the living, soul quenching drink, that Jesus gives, when we let him be the source we drink from.

This woman goes back to her community, no longer isolated or as one cast out as before,  but now as one accepted, loved, she is transformed through her encounter with Jesus.  And now restored to her community she becomes a conduit of his grace for the people there. 

 “Come and see, a man who told me everything about me, ‘she says’, he could not be the Messiah, can he.”

As the disciples had done, she now does for those who were there, ‘come and see’, inviting them to experience what she had, in a living relationship with Christ. 

They go and come back, having found the Lord.

God’s grace is available to all, not for some, but for all, and that too should be the way we view others in the world, no matter what differences there may be, that all are acceptable to God, and so too should be to us. 

May it be our God we seek after always for the life giving, living water source we need for our lives, becoming conduits of his grace in the world, trusting always in the goodness of our God. 

Amen, God Bless

Hannah+