March 8, 2026 Sermon
Sermon Title: “The Woman at the Well”
Scripture: John 4:5-42
(Other lectionary suggestions include Exodus 17:1-7, Psalm 95, and Romans 5:1-11.)
John 4:5-42
5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10Jesus 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." 11The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but 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.” 15The 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.” 16Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” 27Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 28Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” 30They left the city and were on their way to him. 31Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” 39Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41And many more believed because of his word. 42They 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.”
This story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well has always been one of my favorites. One reason is that Jesus DARES to speak to a Samaritan, who happens to be FEMALE. We are told that “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans,” but Jesus DOESN’T CARE! I like that about Jesus: he goes against the social norms of his day! And something else: Jesus tells the woman that the man she is with now is NOT her husband! But he doesn’t send her away in shame! In Eugene Peterson’s book “The Message,” the Gospel in modern-day language, when the woman says, the man I am with is not my husband, Jesus says, “That’s nicely put: ‘I have no husband.’ You’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now isn’t even your husband. You spoke the truth there, sure enough.” In Peterson’s book, Jesus pulls no punches, and I like that!
Did you notice that the disciples were shocked when they found Jesus talking to a WOMAN? But no one said anything. Again, it took the disciples some time before they could welcome those whom they considered outsiders. And a footnote: we are told that Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. That’s why the story of the Good Samaritan, told in Luke, is so shocking. I’m sure Jesus’s listeners to that parable must have been shocked that there could be some person who was GOOD at the same time that he was a Samaritan! It would almost be as if you and I discovered a GOOD Iranian! Not possible, our culture makes us think! How about an Israeli who discovers a good member of HAMAS? Not possible, most Israelis probably think! Jesus does urge each one of us to look beyond what we have been told since birth: there ARE good people on “the other side,” and what is “the other side”?
One point I’d like to make is that the Gospel of John was written AFTER the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So, the picture we get of Jesus in John’s Gospel is almost “magical,” and what I mean by that is that he seems more “other worldly” than he seems in the first three or Synoptic gospels. That’s not good or bad. It’s just that the further away we get from the historical Jesus, the “wiser” he seems or the more “Godlike” he seems. Look at his relationship with the Samaritan woman. He tells her, “The time is coming - it has, in fact, come - when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly THEMSELVES before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself - Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.” The woman then tells him, “Well, I’m not sure about that. But I do know that the Messiah is coming. When he arrives, we’ll get the whole story.” Then Jesus says, “I am he. You don’t have to wait any longer or look any further.” Did you hear Jesus? In Matthew, Mark, or Luke he would NEVER say he was the Messiah. But here in John’s Gospel, he does.
Peterson ends his translation of this passage this way. They asked him to stay with them, and so Jesus stayed with them a couple of days. “A lot more people entrusted their lives to him when they heard what he had to say. They said to the woman, ‘We’re no longer taking this on your say-so. We’ve heard it for ourselves and know it for sure. He’s the Savior of the world!’”
Interesting, isn’t it? This outcast Samaritan woman, the one with five or so husbands, brings more people to Jesus than anyone else! What do you think? Amen.
Pastor Skip
