The Rev. Dr. Brandon Perrine
Lent 3A
John 4:5-42
March 8, 2026
So [Jesus] came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink” . . . The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria” . . . Jesus 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but 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.” The 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.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship God neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship in spirit and truth, for God seeks such as these. God is spirit, and those who worship must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you” . . .
Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him . . .
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They 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.”
~o~
A second-grader was reading about Jesus turning water into wine. When the teacher asked what they learned, the child said, “I learned that I should invite Jesus and Mary to my party.”
Which, honestly, isn’t bad theology. Because the people in our readings this morning could have used Jesus at their party—or at least at their campsite or their well. They were thirsty. And I imagine they would have settled for water or wine… or even church coffee.
Moses was trying to stave off an outright mutiny in the wilderness of Sin where the people had no water to drink. They weren’t being unreasonable. They were just thirsty and worried about their kids and their livestock. Moses was their leader—he’d guided them out of Egypt and right into the desert! If they didn’t get water soon, they’d all die. So they asked the only question that made sense: Was God with them or not?
And Jesus was thirsty too, but he showed up to the well without bucket to draw the water. Luckily, he wasn’t the only thirsty person at the well and the woman came better prepared. She was surprised when he asked her for a drink. She was a woman, after all, and women and men didn’t usually speak in public. Furthermore, she was a Samaritan and Jesus was Jewish. The two groups were famously at odds. Unable even to worship God together, Samaritans worshipped on Mt. Gerizim and Jewish people worshipped on Mt. Moriah. Where, exactly, was God to be found?
As if responding to both to the thirsty Hebrews and to the Samaritan woman, Jesus basically says, “You’re asking the wrong question.” God shows up wherever thirsty people are—in the dessert, at wells, in moments of chaos, conflict, or concern. God shows up wherever thirsty people are. God is found among those who are suffering. Or, as Frederick Buechner once wrote, “When things are at their worst, God is not beyond them but right in the thick of them.” Which means thirsty people in the desert, or a woman at a well, or a nation grieving as bombs rain down on it. God is there—right in the thick of it.
On the other side of her encounter with Jesus at the well, the woman becomes the first evangelist—the one who runs back to her neighbors saying, “Come and see.” Her thirst turns into testimony.
And I know that as we’re gathered here today, there are thirsty ones among us too: those verging on burnout, longing for rest and refreshment; those thirsting for connection and authentic relationship; those longing for justice and peace in a world that seems to value power and brutality; those thirsting for health and wholeness; those longing simply to belong.
Some of us are still asking the same question the Israelites asked in the wilderness: “Is God among us or not?” And I wish I could promise that the Holy would always respond the way Exodus tells it—with water bursting from rock, with a mighty stream of justice, with a torrent of peace. But more often, like Jesus at the well, the Holy shows up in quieter ways—in the presence of another person. A listening ear. A hand on your shoulder. Someone willing to sit beside you in the heat of the day. Harold S. Kushner once imagined God responding to us this way: You are a good person, and you deserve better. Let me sit with you so you will know you are not alone.1 And sometimes—maybe more often than we realize—we get to be that holy presence for someone else.
Maybe faith, in moments like these—moments of thirst, moments of wondering if God is anywhere to be found at all—maybe faith is simply saying it out loud:
I’m thirsty. Give me living water. God, are you here or not?
And then trusting that somewhere—in a desert, at a well, in a hospital room, across a kitchen table—a cup of cool water is already being placed into our hands. Because the Holy so often comes to us that way. Not always with miracles. But with presence. With people. With love that refuses to leave.
May we drink deeply. And may we become living water for one another.
Amen.
1Harold S. Kushner. When Bad Things Happen to Good People, New York: Anchor Books, 2004, pg. 157.
