Sermon: March 8, 2026

Readings: John 4:5-42 / Exodus 17:1-7

In last week’s Gospel, Jesus had a conversation with Nicodemus. This week, he speaks with a woman at a well. These two conversations are very different, but they reveal the same truth.

Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, in secrecy. He was educated, respected, a religious leader — an insider who knew Scripture and tradition. Yet he struggled to understand Jesus. In that conversation Jesus spoke words that have echoed through the centuries: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

God so loved the world — not just the parts we are comfortable with, not just the people society accepts, but the whole world. No one is beyond God’s love.

But hearing that truth and living into it are not the same thing. Nicodemus struggled to let go of the assumptions and boundaries that shaped his life.

In today’s Gospel those boundaries are broken wide open.

This conversation happens at noon, in broad daylight, and not with a respected leader but with a Samaritan woman. For centuries, Jews and Samaritans distrusted and despised one another. Yet Jesus deliberately travels through Samaria and sits down at a well. When he asks this woman for water, a seven-hundred-year divide begins to crack.

The woman comes to the well alone, at the hottest hour of the day — likely because she was treated as an outsider even within her own community. Yet Jesus speaks with her. He asks her for help. And in their conversation, he reveals that he truly sees her. He knows her past and her struggles, but he does not shame her. Instead, he offers her living water — the life that flows from God and never runs dry.

There is a profound difference between being exposed and being known. To be exposed is to be shamed. To be known is to be welcomed into grace. At the well, this woman discovers that she is fully known and still loved.

That living water is not only for her. It is for a thirsty world.

We see that thirst in the divisions around us and in the violence between nations. We have watched bombs fall, and innocent lives lost — lives that bear the image of God. Every human life matters. No one is outside of God’s love.

And that means we must refuse to let our hearts harden. We must keep returning to the well.

Because the living water Christ offers is meant to flow outward. The woman who came alone becomes the first witness to her town, inviting others with simple words:

“Come and see.”

That is the invitation we carry into a thirsty world.

The Lord is among us. He is the one sitting beside the well, offering living water for everyone.

No one is outside of God’s love.

Come and see.