The Rev’d Jacky Sewell

All Saints Howick 8th March 2026, 3rd Sunday in Lent
John 4:5-42

What is it that you thirst for.

Kindness? Understanding? Dignity? A sense of worthfulness?
Maybe you thirst for recognition in your job. Enough income to pay the mortgage or the rent and still have enough left over to live a decent life.

Maybe its the presence of loved ones who are far away.

Or perhaps you thirst for a certainty that God really does hear you and really is holding this awful situation you find yourself in.

We thirst on so many levels. All of them real, valid. All of them held by and heard by God.
Our cup seems half full, so much of the time, and sometimes we have to really focus to recall a time that it was full to the brim and runnning over.

This woman. This Samaritan woman.

When was the last time her cup was full to the brim and running over? Reading between the lines, she’s had an awful lot go wrong in her life. Husband after husband – her security – her guarantee of survival – have left her – died, divorced. For whatever reason.

And now here she is, the object of gossip and social exclusion, not even able to come with the other women in the cool of the early morning to draw water and enjoy company but forced to avoid them all and come on her own in the heat of the midday sun.

Kindness? Understanding? Dignity? A sense of worthfulness? She may be no saint herself – there may be a good reason why her husbands divorced or left her – but she is still a human being. Who thirsts.

Then one day she comes to the well and finds this Jewish man sitting there. Is she self conscious? Does she excuse herself? Try and keep in the background?

Not a chance, even if she wished it! His outrageous request, breaking all social and religious conventions, demands that she meets him and engages with him.

Their subsequent conversation bubbles and fizzes with wit and intelligence. And for once – for once – she has a conversation with another human being who treats her as an intelligent, capable adult who is well able to understand tradition and theology and who recognises her own, well-disguised, deep spiritual yearning.

The arrival back on the scene of Jesus’ other Jewish companions breaks up their conversation. They may not have asked Jesus what in the world was he thinking of, talking with an unaccompanied woman and sharing the drinking vessel of a Samaritan, but the way John tells the story it’s written all over their faces.

She stops, sees their disapproval, and then does something totally unexpected.

She does not allow this new sense – that someone sees and understands and offers her her dignity back – to evapourate like water poured onto hot sand.

There is no humiliating retreat back to her home, hoping no-one finds out she’s just broken religious prohibitions. Oh no. She walks straight back into the town square and tells anyone she can find exactly what has just happened.
Oh well done, you brave and faithful woman! New, living waters have been poured out for you and have become a spring of water, gushing up to eternal life!

I find it curious that this story crops up in our lectionary during Lent. Why? In what ways does this very long, profoundly rich, well-loved narrative help us in the journey from Ash Wednesday to Holy Week?

It’s one of a series of astounding and detailed stories that are only found in John’s Gospel and that are intentionally crafted into our lectionary for this season. Let me do a quick recap and map out the territory.

The first Sunday on Lent is exactly what we would expect. The gospel story of Jesus, in the wilderness for 40 days, and tempted by Satan. It sets the scene and leads us into a time that we are encouraged to use for intense private prayer and self-examination and devotion, before Easter breaks in upon us.

But then the 2nd Sunday in Lent arrives, and instead of more injunctions to pray and fast we have Jesus in profound conversation with Nicodemus, telling him to be born again by the Spirit.

Then we are in the 3rd Sunday in Lent and Jesus is in deep conversation with a Samaritan woman, telling her she needs to drink deeply of Living Waters.

Next week – the 4th Sunday in Lent – we will hear of the encounter beween Jesus and the man born blind – more breaking of religious prohibitions and Jesus telling him to open his eyes to the Light.

The 5th Sunday in Lent is often overtaken by Passion Sunday but the regular lectionary is the story of the Raising of Lazarus – Jesus telling Martha that if you believe, you will live.

Then finally we reach the 6th Sunday of Lent – Palm Sunday – and Holy Week begins.

These four encounters – Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, the blind man, Martha. These are not Gospel narratives of sin and repentance and injunctures to prayer and fasting. They are narratives of abundant promise and the vision of abundant life, overflowing, more than we could ever hope for or imagine.

You were old but now you are born anew!
You were thirsty but now your thirst is quenched!
You were blind but now you see!
You were dead but now you live!

In many ways this is the opposite of fasting in the wilderness. Instead, our hearts and minds and spirits are bidden to rejoice and grasp the richness of the promises of Christ.

Take your half-full, half empty glass, and drink, deep, without the fear that it will run dry. Trust that Christ, the Living Water, will renew you from within and pour into you the grace and courage to see that the well-spring has not, and will not, run dry.
I could finish this sermon and stop, right there. It would be a good ending!

But there is one thing more to be said.

There are four little verses towards the end of this gospel story that can easily be overlooked amidst the power of the story of the Samaritan woman. Without them, this story, and our story, is incomplete.

Remember that the disciples come back from town with food for Jesus and urge him to eat – presumably so they can get some energy back and move quickly through this ungodly territory?

Jesus, true to form, responds with a cryptic parable: I have food already. My food is to complete the work of God. Look how ripe the fields of wheat are, so early in the season! Get out there and get working!

Its one of Jesus’ more cryptic and illogical parables. Surely working hard exhausts us, it doesn’t replenish us? It sounds topsey-turvey. Jesus will be fed, his thirst quenched, by working hard. Huh?

Think of it as building spiritual muscle. Muscles are fed by eating nutrients and protein, sure. But they only build up by being used. Using muscle builds muscle.

Doing the gospel feeds our very being.

I believe that herein lies the completion of this gospel story and the true completion of our thirst.

We began with a woman, a thirsty, isolated, brave, intelligent woman. And with ourselves, thirsty for fulfilment of our deepest longings.

She, and we, are met by Jesus, pouring Living Water into our lives, filling our half-full glasses to the brim.
But Jesus didn’t stop there – he promised more than just the immediate quenching of our thirst. Those same Living Waters will become a well-spring that pours out of us, becoming in turn Living Waters for others.

Kindness, understanding, dignity, worthfulness.

These things do not exist unto themselves. They transform our lives and the way we live and our relationships with those around us.

Did the Samaritan woman take her new-found sense of kindness and worthfulness and quietly go back to her home? Kindness exists to spill over. Dignity exists to be poured out. Understanding exists to create understanding.

What is poured into us becomes that which is poured out of us.

What we are fed with becomes the living gospel, reaping a harvest, satisfying our deepest hunger, our deepest thirst.
May you find in Jesus the One who sees and understands the true depths of your thirsting.

May you open your heart and lives as water vessels, rejoicing at the Living Waters, finding that true wellspring, gushing up within you, through you, overflowing to become life for the world, the life that truly satisfies.
Amen.