March 8, 2026

John 4:[1=4] 5-42

As this is a very long reading, I have posted it at the end of the sermon instead of the beginning.

Sermon

Imagine the excitement of the Samaritan woman after meeting Jesus at the well! She couldn’t keep it to herself. She had to tell everyone!

Photina, the traditional name given to this nameless woman, is often painted as wanton woman, this horrible sinner, a loose woman, sorely in need of repentance. Sermons explain that she’s at the well in the middle of the day because she’s the community pariah, ostracized, unwelcome. Of course, she would go to the well at the hottest part of the day, when all sensible people are resting in the cool of their homes in order to hide her shame, to avoid the whispers, glances, pointed fingers. 

But there’s a lot of reasons a woman could have had 5 husbands that have nothing to do with sin. 

·        Widowed

·        Divorced – because she was barren, or because her husband preferred someone else, or because she burned supper one too many times 

·        According the customs of levirate marriage, the brother of a childless widow’s late husband was to marry the widow to continue the late husband’s line. Perhaps the brother took Photina in but was unwilling to marry her.

·        Perhaps she had no one, and her only way to survive was with a man, any man who would take her in. 

·        Whatever the reason for the previous five marriages, I bet no one was in a hurry to be husband #6.

Throughout the centuries, preachers have slut-shamed her, assuming her sin was repeated adultery, when in reality, she had no control over her marital status. None at all. 

Yet she bore the pain of broken relationships – 5 of them. She lived with sorrow and at best the pity of the community, at worst their scorn.

Jesus never forgave her. In this, the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the gospel of John, he never says he forgave her, or even indicated she needed forgiveness. He saw her for who she was, a woman in need of compassion and kindness. A soul that needed to be seen and known, to see and know God loves them. 

In verse 4, just before our reading starts, John tells us Jesus HAD to go through Samaria. From a geographical standpoint he didn’t have to – he could have gone around, like all the other good Jews did. But from God’s standpoint, it was necessary for Jesus to go to Samaria. 

To meet Photina at the well. To demonstrate God’s for the world, to save and not condemn.

I think it was necessary for Photina to go to the well at noon. What if instead of assuming that she was at the well everyday at noon, this particular day, she made an unscheduled noon trip to the well. Perhaps she was led there to meet Jesus.

There in the bright light of the noon sun, Photina (the luminous one), met the Son of God, and basked in the grace of someone knowing her deepest, darkest pain. Somone who didn’t condemn her but fully knew and loved her.

Jesus words to her were living water to refresh her parched and thirsty soul. 

Her encounter with Jesus changed her, reversed all the categories that limited her life:

·      There was neither Jew nor Samaritan when Jesus asked her for a drink;

·      Neither male nor female, as they conversed, having a deeply theological conversation;

·      Not condemnation or shame, for Jesus accepted her just as she was, something that she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

Jesus had compassion on her, showed her grace and mercy, demonstrated that she too was a beloved child of God.

An encounter like that is just too good to keep to herself. She leaves the well in such a hurry that she leaves her water jar behind. Physical thirst forgotten, spiritual thirst quenched, she rushes off to tell everyone, “Hurry! Come and see!”

Her encounter with Jesus changed her community too. The came because of her testimony “He told me everything I have ever done."  They believed because they saw, they encountered Jesus. They welcomed Jesus into their town, their homes, their hearts.

Where has Jesus been waiting to meet you? What does Jesus mean to you? How has God been active in your life?

A Samaritan woman’s testimony was all that was needed to bring her whole town to faith in Jesus. It’s still like that – an individual, talking about his or her faith, sharing what God is doing in their life, imitating Jesus in showing compassion and grace and mercy to others, can make a tremendous impact in the community in which they live.

BTW – Photina had an impact far beyond her own city. She was later arrested and taken to appear before Nero in Rome. While there Photina refused to deny Jesus, converted Nero’s daughter Domnina all her servants to Christ.

In John’s gospel, Jesus invites the first disciples to ‘come and see’ - to come with him, walk alongside him and see for themselves what the kingdom of God was all about. Those first disciples hurried off to tell family and friends – “come and see.”  That’s how faith is passed on, by telling those around you what God has done for you, what Jesus means to you and inviting them to come and see for themselves.

Recent studies show that most people are willing to come to church IF invited by a family member or friend invite them. I can invite people, but when clergy invite it’s seen as more impersonal and transactional.

Photina was just an ordinary woman with a messy backstory who was changed by her encounter with Jesus. We are Photina, meeting Jesus in unexpected places.

So....where have you encountered Jesus this week?

What did he tell you about yourself?

 And who in your life needs to hear you say, “Come and see!”

John 4: [1-4] 5-42

[Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— ² although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. ³ So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

⁴ Now he had to go through Samaria.] ⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

¹⁷ “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸ The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I AM.”

²⁷ Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

²⁸ Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ²⁹ “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” ³⁰ They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

³¹ Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

³³ Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

³⁴ “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. ³⁵ Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. ³⁶ Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. ³⁷ Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

³⁹ Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. ⁴¹ And because of his words many more became believers.

⁴² They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”