Lent 3 Year A 2026: John 4:5-42

My first grade daughter has been learning about various habitats and the natural homes of various animals. From grasslands to savannahs to deserts, she will excitedly tell you all about what she’s been learning in school. We most often use the word habitat to describe the homes of animals, since human beings can live in almost any habitat. But the habitat of first century Jews and Samaritans is important to today’s lesson from John, which centers around a well.

Wells in Jesus’ time served multiple purposes, both physical and social. Wells were hand-dug, stone-lined, and covered with heavy stones to prevent contamination and disputes. Located in the arid Near East, they were crucial for physical survival. Due to limited rainfall, wells were the primary water source for people and livestock, making them central to life. But equally important, wells served as community hubs, meeting places for major life events (like Rebekah and Rachel), and symbols of divine provision and blessing. Wells served as gathering spots, particularly for women collecting water, and often functioned as the location for significant life-changing encounters. Wells are frequently mentioned throughout Scripture, symbolizing sustenance, life, and divine provision.

In today’s story, Jesus and his disciples stop at a well in a city. Jesus isn’t sitting alone at a well when one solitary woman comes to him. While noon would have been an unusual time to draw water, there would have been people around.

St. Ignatius of Loyola’s “holy imagination”, often termed Ignatian Contemplation, is a prayer method using the senses to enter Gospel scenes as an active participant, fostering a personal, emotional encounter with Jesus. It involves visualizing, hearing, and feeling Scripture, not just reading it. I’d like to read just Jesus’ encounter with the woman again, and invite you to choose a character to imagine yourself into the story. Are you the woman? Are you Jesus? Are you the well?

“Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The 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.) Jesus 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but 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.” The 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.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But 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. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

I find myself imagining myself as the woman. Kind of annoyed already - after all, I’m late to draw the water. Then this Jewish guy who wouldn’t normally even break bread with me has the audacity to ask me for a drink. I wonder who can see me, an unmarried woman, and him, an unmarried man, together in conversation. But he keeps pushing back on all of my solid arguments. And so I become kind of…intrigued despite myself. Not because of what he knows about me, but about how he makes me feel. About how he sees more than just what has happened around me. He sees who I am and what I am longing for.

In this story, the woman serves as a spokesperson for a particular type of faith encounter with Jesus. Her portrayal centers on how one first comes to faith and the many obstacles that stand in the way. Smarting from the injustice of Jewish treatment of Samaritan women, she rebuffs Jesus’ request for a drink. Jesus does not answer her objection but responds in terms of what he can give her: living water which she misunderstands as flowing water, contemptuously asking him if he thinks he is greater than Jacob. Ironically, Jesus is greater; but once again Jesus refuses to be sidetracked by his identity or his greatness and is more concerned about what he brings to the woman. Jesus explains that he is speaking of the water that springs up to eternal life, a water that will permanently end thirst. John shows her attracted to what Jesus says through her misunderstanding in interpreting his words literally: it would be really convenient to no longer have to come to the well. (Brown)

While misunderstanding is a classic rhetorical technique in the Gospel of John, what is important about this misunderstanding is that it shows us that it doesn’t matter what originally brings us to faith. It doesn’t matter if what initially brought us in the door or into an encounter with Jesus isn’t a deep theological hunger. There is no entrance exam. Jesus calls us from where we are to follow him, even if where we are is slightly annoyed but intrigued, in the heat of the day, drawing water from a well.

Then Jesus shifts the focus to her husband in order to make progress in another way. Her reply is a half-truth and Jesus shows that he is very aware of her five husbands and her living with a man who is not her husband. The very fact that the story continues shows that Jesus’ effort to bring her to faith will not be blocked by the obstacle of a far-from-perfect life; Jesus presses her to the point where she must acknowledge her sin. And yet still offers her living water. And in doing so, presses us to acknowledge our sins, and reassures us that no matter what they are, they cannot keep us from the love of God in Jesus.

In historical context, the woman’s string of marriages isn’t the problem that we might find in someone who has been married five times in 2026. One of my favorite one-liners came from a comedian talking about how many times his father had been married and divorced when he said, “if weddings were sandwiches, his next one would be free.” But in ancient times, marriage was not based on romantic love. This woman was not a five-time divorcee. In Jesus’ time, if your husband died, it was the responsibility of his brother to marry you. Any children coming from that union, although biologically the brother’s, were legally the first husband’s child. As you might imagine, marriage to a brother’s widow was not always undertaken cheerfully.

But confronted with such surprising knowledge of her situation, the woman finally shifts to a religious level, seeking to avoid further probing by bringing up a theological dispute between Jews and Samaritans as to whether God should be worshiped in the Jerusalem Temple or on Mount Gerizim in this very area. Again Jesus refuses to be sidetracked. Nimbly the woman once more seeks to avoid the personal issue by changing the perspective to the distant future when the Messiah comes; but Jesus will not let her escape. His “I am” confronts her for faith in the here and now. (Brown, 342-343) He says ego eimi, which translates to “I am”, one of many times in John’s Gospel that Jesus self-identifies as God. The Messiah, the Christ, is here and now; he is demanding our faith now, not at some distant day.

The woman in this story, like so many women in the Bible, is not named. She is simply “a Samaritan woman”. But throughout the years, as her following grew, an Orthodox Christian tradition also grew in which the woman was baptized by the Apostles on the first Pentecost and given the name Photini, meaning “the enlightened one”. Celebrated in the Orthodox Church as an Evangelist, “Equal to the Apostles”, a significant hagiography developed around her. She, her sisters, and her children are said to have been martyred at the command of the emperor Nero.

Over the centuries, many churches have been built at the site of Jacob’s Well. The present church building was built in 1893 by order of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem and consecrated to St. Photini. You can see the well inside of the Church of St. Photini today. It is often considered the most authentic site in the Holy Land, since you can’t pick up and move a well.

The story of St. Photini as told by the Gospel of John reminds us that while our sins do not make us irredeemable, it is important that we face them. That we address those sins. Through her, Jesus reminds us that through him there ought no longer be any separation between us. That we can all meet at the well together, and Jesus, who will not be distracted from his mission no matter what, can invigorate us all with the living water of the Spirit. Amen.