Living Water in a Divided World

John 4: 4 – 42

There’s something about meeting Jesus at high noon.

In the ancient world, in the arid climate of Israel, noon was not the hour you casually ran errands. It was hot. It was bright. And if you drew water at that hour, it was because you had to—or because you preferred the solitude. The woman we meet in John 4 comes to Jacob’s Well alone, in the heat of the day, expecting an ordinary chore in an ordinary moment. But her experience there turns out to be anything but ordinary.

 

And maybe that’s where some of us are today.  We show up carrying the weight of division—division in our nation, in the Church, in our own neighborhoods and even in in our families. We show up just trying to make it through another day, another headline, another reason to feel weary. We stand in the midst of a deeply divided America… in the midst of a deeply divided western Christianity. And perhaps, like that woman, we arrive at the well, heads down, simply hoping to get through the moment without much interaction.

 

But Scripture has a habit of turning ordinary moments into holy encounters.

 

Last week, Nicodemus came to Jesus at night—powerful, educated, well‑connected. He sought Jesus privately, on his own terms, wrapped in the comfort of darkness.

Today, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman in full daylight—an unnamed woman without status, without protection, without power. The Gospel writer wants us to notice the contrast between these encounters.

 

Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the dark.
Jesus comes to this woman in the light.

 

That shift in direction—from Nicodemus seeking to Jesus seeking—is the hinge of the story. Jesus does not wait for the right people to approach him. Jesus goes to the ones the world overlooks. We can learn a lot from just that.

 

Wells in Scripture carry echoes of biblical romance—Isaac, Jacob, and Moses met their future spouses at wells. But here, there is no romance, only revelation. A widening of God’s family. An expansion of belonging.

And the setting matters deeply.

The setting: Samaria—land of shared history without shared worship, shared ancestry without shared trust, shared roots without shared reconciliation.

Sound familiar?

Two groups, each convinced of their rightness.
Communities shaped by the same story but pulled apart by the same wound.

This is not a story locked in ancient history. It reflects our own fractured landscape.

 

Jesus begins with a simple request of the woman: “Give me a drink.”

 

And suddenly a deep theological conversation emerges around living water. She misunderstands him at first—just like Nicodemus misunderstood being “born again.”

 

We misunderstand Jesus, too, don’t we?

We want to fill our bucket with something concrete – with effort, knowledge, certainty—when Jesus is offering something far deeper. Something not drawn from the well but something rising from within. Something that transforms, heals, and renews….something that makes us whole.

 

And then there comes a beautiful detail that we cannot overlook:
The woman, after talking with Jesus about living water and being the Messiah, leaves the well without her water jar—the very object she came to fill.

 

Perhaps because she has become the vessel.
A vessel for living water received from Jesus.

 

I want to address an historic mis-interpretation of this story.  Perhaps you were taught that this woman was an adulterer, or a loose woman. But in historical context, the woman’s history—five husbands—does not mark her as morally suspect. She has been shaped by a patriarchal economic system in which she was essentially property, passed from man to man, perhaps through Levirate marriage. Her life has been shaped by loss and limited choices. Jesus names her story not to shame her but to demonstrate that he sees her.

 

Then—astonishingly—this woman becomes the first evangelist in John’s Gospel. The first to proclaim Jesus to her community.

 

While she is running back to town overflowing with joy, the disciples return, worried about lunch. They want to know whether Jesus has eaten. Jesus answers them with a metaphor about harvest: open your eyes; look around you—the fields are ready.

Or in today’s language:
Don’t let your small concerns eclipse God’s big work that is unfolding right in front of you.

 

At a well in the noonday sun, the gospel writer reveals some key things about God and Jesus that echo themes we’ve already heard in John’s gospel:

• First, Jerusalem or Gezarim – these locations are not where God dwells. Jesus is the place where God dwells—God will not be confined to temple or mountain but is present in spirit and in truth.
• Like Nathaneal, like Nicodemus, Jesus already knows this woman—knows her history, pain, limitations—and draws near to all of it.
• Finally, Jesus reveals himself plainly as the Messiah, echoing the divine name “I AM”, another echo of the Exodus story, like last week’s allusion to the snake in the wilderness.

 

So…if Jesus is the place where God dwells, if Jesus knows people and keeps showing up, if Jesus is the Messiah, then this story demonstrates that God will cross boundaries to meet those who least expect it.

 

And if God crosses boundaries—shouldn’t we?

 

Beloved, we are not reading these stories, we are not seeking the wisdom of the gospel for our intellectual edification or for our own moral comfort, right? In the midst of our world today, what is here for us? What is here to guide our steps right now?

 

What does it mean to read this story under the specter of violence against immigrants and those who support them?

 

It means the Gospel still lives and speaks in places of tension.
It means Jesus still meets people in the heat of the day.
It means God still reveals truth to those the world pushes aside.
And it means we who follow Jesus are called to this same work.

 

This is not a metaphorical calling.
It is a lived one.

 

We cannot be Christians who carry water jars to the well and leave unchanged.
We must be Christians who encounter Jesus and then go back into our communities overflowing with living water.

What does that look like in this moment in time?

• When we hear harmful rhetoric about migrants or refugees, when we hear people being “othered,” let’s speak up—with compassion and truth. Let’s speak to who God is and who and how God loves.
• When we witness division—political, racial, religious—let’s be the ones who reach across the boundary, not with false peace but with a firm commitment to justice and compassion.
• When someone’s story is twisted by assumptions, let’s be the voice that restores dignity.
• When fear becomes the language of our culture, let’s choose instead to love well.

 

This week, to that last point, the Holy Spirit has really been bugging me. I heard someone this week speak to how much post-apocalyptic literature and art there is available to us right now. But what about using that same imagination to cast vision of the Kin-dom of God. What about using that same imagination to bring about paradise right here and now?

 

Beloved, hear these earlier words again: when fear becomes the language of our culture, choose to love well. Imagine what love can do.

 

And let’s be very clear:

Loving is not passive.
It is active.
It is intentional.
It is courageous.
And it is our baptismal calling.

Jesus met a woman divided from her community, divided from power, divided from hope—and offered her a source of new life. And she carried that source of new life back home, overflowing, to share with others.

 

May we do the same.

Amen.