Sunday March 8th, 2026 Worship

If you have ever been caught in a strong Midwest summer thunderstorm, you will understand just how much water is able to come down from the sky at one time, and it is terrifying. If you lived in Iowa in a house at the bottom of a large hill, you will also learn that inches of rain falling in a short amount of time doesn’t soak into the ground, but will instead find its way into your basement. This is how my roommate and I found ourselves bailing water from our basement entryway with snow shovels in July; not once, but many, many times. The rain and rain seemed unrelenting, as everyone would be running to one another’s houses offering a helping hand and a borrowed wet/dry vacuum. While this experience might have been frustrating and inconvenient, especially with its frequent occurrence, and never in the daytime, always late at night, looking back, I can’t help but see it as a recognition of the way that the living water cannot be contained. I can assure you, though, I was not thinking about it as some great sermon illustration as the hard rain drops pelted us during our seemingly futile task of throwing water back up the hill with a snow shovel…
But this is the promise of the Good News, of this living water that Jesus is talking about today, that it cannot be contained! That it isn’t something that is physically drawn from a well at risk of drying up or that needs to be rationed. It is something that is poured over us, whether that be in the waters of baptism or in the daily reminders we are given of our baptisms. The rain falling, more gently, thankfully, outside my window as I was writing this, the water splashed onto our faces as a part of our skincare routines, or the crashing waves blown about by the wind. When we see water, we are invited to be reminded, not just of the water, but the promises that God makes with us in those waters of baptism.
The beautiful thing about this promise is that it is for all of us, even the unlikely and the seemingly unworthy. God still provides water for the Israelites in the desert, even when they are whining and complaining, accusing Moses and God of bringing them up out of Egypt only to kill them with thirst in the desert (Exodus 17: 3). Despite all that God and Moses had to do in order to get them to this point, none of that seemed to matter in this moment. Instead of trusting in what God was doing, they wanted things to go exactly how they wanted, and they were largely just frustrated to still be in the desert. Yet, instead of punishing or ignoring them, God makes a way for Moses to provide them with water (Exodus 17: 5-6). The promises of God’s love and mercy extend to us even when we are turning from God, bringing forth our questions, or wrestling with what all of this is supposed to mean for our faith. Even in the midst of our desert periods, when we are angry and feel that God doesn’t care, God still provides water for the journey.
As difficult as it can be for us to accept at times, the living water of God’s promises extends to those we maybe wouldn’t choose to extend that grace too. The Gospel story from today is the perfect example. It’s such a fascinating story to look at because there are so many ways in which social norms and customs are broken and cast aside; the living water acts like a torrent, eroding the societal structures that limited and narrowed the way that God’s love is understood. For many reasons, this Samaritan woman is probably the least expected to be receiving and then proclaiming the Good News of the Messiah, yet she is the one through whom God works today. Yet another woman in the long line of women that God is using to turn the world around!
This woman may seem unimportant, after all, the Gospel writer doesn’t even give us her name; I would find it really hard to believe that Jesus would interact with her and ask her for a drink of water and not even know her name. Yet, through this woman, who is already at the outskirts of her society, especially because she has had five husbands and is currently with another who is not her husband, the Good News is heard among the people. She goes to her city to proclaim what she has heard, and the people believe her and want to witness it for themselves (John 4: 28-30). Their hearts are moved by her testimony, even as someone they probably wouldn’t have really listened to before this event, and whom they go back to disregarding after. There is still a lot of learning to be done around what this living water means, not just for individuals, but for communities.
It matters too that this woman isn’t just any woman, but she is a Samaritan. This group of people who were at odds with the Israelites, judged and looked down upon. For once, the disciples are wise and do not question Jesus about what he is doing in conversing with her; breaking the rules about talking to an unaccompanied woman and asking something of a Samaritan woman. So, when he goes into his teaching about the harvest, the reaping and the sowing, a tangent that seems wholly disconnected from the rest of the story, we begin to see that this isn’t about any physical crops at all. Instead, it is this metaphor about the living water has already nourished this community, even though it would be assumed that, as a Samaritan city, they are outside of God’s love. The living water cannot be dammed and kept only for a small few because it will find a way out.
This living water is something that cannot be contained! That is a promise, as terrifying as it can also sometimes be for us to realize this. This living water is with us every time we touch the water around us, and it flows through us, giving us strength for the journey ahead as we continue to receive and share the love of God. It is like a river that erodes a canyon, changing the landscape along the way, instead of like a lake or pond that is only contained for our use. We do not control where it goes or what it does, but we are able to be nourished, restored, and changed by it.
It’s why I also love the imagery of water, because as we think about the water cycle, their continues to be a promise of interconnectedness. The water that we receive here nourished people, lands, and animals, all across the globe for millennia before us, and will continue to do so even after we are gone. This living water is not only living for us, but has been and will be. If that isn’t a good metaphor for faith, I don’t know what is! It cannot be contained by us, but is for the life of the world, no matter how much we attempt to control it.
For these promises we give thanks because they remind us that God is at work in the world even when we are crying out in frustration and we feel that God has abandoned us! It means that we can continue to hope, even when everything feels bleak because it is not all left in human hands. But, there are so many ways in which God is planting seeds and nourishing them with this living water, sometimes nurtured because of our hands and sometimes despite all the ways our broken humanity has tried to get in the way. This living water is something that cannot be contained and that continues to shape the society in which we live; these are promises we can ground ourselves in, even when the downpour of other news feels overwhelming, as we trust that the living water will continue to nourish us. May we open our hands and our hearts to receive this gift that flows freely all around us.