Monday, 9 March 2026
SERMON 232 - SUNDAY 8 MARCH 2026 - THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT
Sermon at St. Mary’s Church Parish Church, West Dean – 3rd Sunday in Lent – Sunday 8th March 2026
John 4 : 1-42
The
Samaritan Woman at the Well in Sychar.
A
Meditative Reflection based on John 4:6-10 (Soul Sisters, Edwina Gateley
p65)
I waited
for all the other women to return from the well – chattering and laughing,
carelessly spilling drops of their precious water as they balanced their jugs
on sloping shoulders. They walked
together – they always do – clustering around a story, a bit of news, some
whispering gossip, about me, perhaps. Yes – most probably about me.
Again, at
sunset, the day’s heat cooled, and jugs long emptied, they set out, sharing
stories and laughing, sometimes weeping and consoling. For this is woman-time.
I must go
alone at noon. When the village eats and
rests behind closed doors I open mine, and furtive, like my clients, I slip
into the light and heat alone. Balancing my jug, I move swiftly not daring a
slow or leisured pace …
Close to
the well I stop, scarce believing what I see – a man resting there in woman’s
sacred space. I cannot hide, nor return
with an empty jug. But I know I will be condemned … by this brief encounter. I must not speak. It is not my place. I have sinned enough.
But it is
not I who breaks the rules – the man, a Jew, dares to speak to me! Does he not know the law? Does he not know?
Yet, softly, he speaks to me.
“Water,
give me water”
He – a man
– a Jew –
Asking me
for water! I can scarce hide my
shock. Ah, but no one has ever looked
upon me so tenderly!
I must
tell him, it is not done, that he should speak to me – but he does.
He begins
to tell me strange things about “Living Water” – but he has no bucket – how can
he give water – he offers water of a different kind, welling up within, an
eternal spring that would never dry up.
From my
deep place of longing, I cry out aloud – “Ah, give it to me”
A short
extempore homily (summarised below) followed this passage reminding us that Jesus went out of his way to
travel through Samaria (occupied by people who had a mutual hatred of Jews) at
a time of the day when he would meet up with this woman, an outcast within her
own society – in fact a meeting of two outcasts as far as the religious
Samaritans were concerned – a Jew and a woman of dubious morality.
The whole of
the reading – John 4:1-42 - reminds us that as Christians we are expected to
love all our fellow humans even those who are not like ourselves as well as
avoiding prejudice and judgement against those who are different, and to ask
ourselves - have we treated people unlike ourselves differently and less
favourably in our own lives? Do we still
do so?
In today’s
world, we are seeing increasingly right-wing leaders and politicians exercising
the kind of prejudices which Jesus, literally, went out of his way to
stop. An increasingly worrying trend is
the rise of “Christian Nationalism” which seeks to use, or rather abuse
Christianity as a weapon against those it seeks to persecute, for political
gain or maintenance, in the name of restoring Christian principles in our
multicultural society.
As true
Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, we are instructed by him to continue to
spread the true gospel of peace and love, not hatred and war.
Amen MFB/232/08032026
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