Because you don't go to a well at noon unless
you don't want to. You see, the hour tells the
story before the woman ever speaks. Jesus wasn't
waiting at that well by accident. The sun is
still hanging high over Jacob's well, pressing
heat into stone and silence into the air. Ajar
sits unforgotten. Ajar, sits forgotten in the
dust. Two strangers remain, one who came to avoid
the crowd and one who crossed every line to meet
her there. The rope is still coiled, the water
is still deep, but something has shifted. Thirst
has been named, truth has been spoken without
a raised voice, and the Messiah has revealed
himself, not in a temple, not on a throne. but
in an ordinary place in the glare of noon. And
now here we are, plates scraped clean in the
small town fellowship hall, the hum of conversation
fading, chairs scooting back into place. Supper's
over now, the word is next. And wherever you
come from tonight, farm road, highway, hospital
shift, hard day, you've stepped into this room
with us. So open your Bible, set your jar down
for a minute. Tonight, we're going to go to the
well with Jesus and the Samaritan woman, and
I will see you on the other side. And I think
that makes us all a little bit skeptical, trying
to find our way back in faith and dealing with,
I mean, the truth of the matter is a lot of people
have spiritual trauma from growing up in bad
situations. And it's real, yeah? All right, Wayne
is giving me his thumbs up. I'm going to go ahead
and begin. We're going to talk tonight about
Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. And
we're going to start off with setting the scene,
okay? So it's noon. Now, I start with that because
that actually matters more than most sermons
actually recognize. And let's imagine why. Noon
is important to us. The sun is straight overhead,
pinning everything in place like a thumb pressing
a moth against a wall. No long shadows to soften
the edges. No cool morning air to make conversation
linger a little longer. The stones around Jacob's
well have been baking all morning, holding their
heat the way old places hold on to memory. Not
because they choose to, because that's what stones
do. It absorbs. It endures. It doesn't get to
vote. The ground gives off this dry mineral smell
that tells you rain isn't coming anytime soon.
The kind of air that sticks to the back of your
throat reminds you thirst isn't just a metaphor
out here. It's a clock. Cause. Nobody sensible.
goes to a well at noon. Morning is when the women
come together. Morning is when the jars clink
against the lip of the stone and voices overlap
and news gets traded quietly along with the water.
Morning is when community happens without anyone
calling it that, a sacrament disguised as routine,
a liturgy of rope and play and gossip. Noon is
when you come when you don't want to be noticed.
You've learned the math of avoidance the way
some people learn a skill. You know when the
village empties out. You know how long it takes
to draw water without rushing but also without
lingering. You know to keep your eyes forward
and your answers short and your story tight.
As a garment, you never unfold in public. You
have rehearsed invisibility so thoroughly it
has become your default setting. Your jar hangs
heavy at your side, not full yet, but already
a burden. You've carried it enough times to know
exactly where it will bruise your hip if you
carry it wrong. You've carried other things too,
arrangements, reputations, the weight of a name
that gets said in rooms you're no longer welcome
in. You've been carrying so long, you've forgotten
what your hands feel like when they're empty.
And then you see him, a man sitting on the edge
of a well. And that's wrong. Everything about
it is wrong. The hour is wrong. The posture is
wrong. The person is wrong. He's Jewish. You
can tell before he ever even opens his mouth
the way his garment falls, the dust on his sandals
that says he has come from Judea. It'd take the
long way around Samaria like so many did, like
it was a disease they might catch. He's alone,
Dusty. Clearly tired from travel, not standing
like someone guarding territory or staking a
claim. He's just sitting. Like someone who's
used up all of his strength and made the quiet
decision not to pretend anymore. Something almost
reckless about the way he rests there. Like a
man who isn't afraid of what the next moment
holds because he already knows what it does.
And you slow down without meaning to. Your sandals
scrape the dry ground. You feel the shift in
your chest, that old alarm system, honed by years
of being the wrong person in the wrong place
at the wrong time. This is not how this place
works. And before you can decide whether to turn
back or press forward, he looks up and speaks,
John 4 and 7, give me a drink. No greeting, no
apology, no explanation for why a Jewish rabbi
is sitting on a Samaritan well at the hottest,
emptiest part of the day, asking a woman he's
never met for something he has no cultural right
to respect or to expect. He just has a need.
Spoken plainly, like a man setting a stone on
the ground between two strangers and saying,
here, let's start with what's real. That sentence
is small, but it carries history like a fault
line, carries his tectonic weight. It's quiet,
maybe unnoticeable on the surface, ancient and
violent underneath. Jewish people do not go to
Samaritans for water. The boundary was stacked
in stones generations before either of you were
born. Men do not initiate conversation with women
like this. Not here, not now, not without a chaperone
or a transaction or a reason. Other men might
just accept over dinner. Rabbis? Do not speak
casually across lines it took centuries to harden.
Lines drawn in blood and exile and the slow grinding
erosion of people deciding who counts and who
doesn't. And what we see isn't a social misstep.
This is a collapse of categories. And it happens
so simply. almost miss the earthquake underneath
it. He's asking for something he has no right
to expect. He's placing himself also below you
in the transaction. A thirsty man needs a woman
with a rope and a jar. He's making himself dependent
on your mercy. And mercy is a currency you didn't
even know you still carried around. So you answer
the way someone answers who survived knowing
the rules better than the people who wrote them.
You name the boundary, the line. John 4, verse
9. How is it that you, she says, being a Jew,
ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? And instead
of retreating or correcting himself, instead
of pretending that this is normal, hoping she'd
play along. He says something that doesn't belong
in either of their scripts. John chapter 4 and
10. If you knew the gift of God and who it is
who says this to you, give me a drink, you would
have asked him and he would have given you living
water. Living water. Not still water drawn up
from a deep hole, carried home in a jar, leaks
a little bit when you're not careful. Running
water. Fresh water. Water that doesn't stagnate
in the dark. That doesn't settle at the bottom
as ancient and old as a well. You glance at that
well. Deep. Old as the patriarch who dug it.
Reliable. The way things are reliable. When they've
been doing the same job for a thousand years
without one complaint. But then you glance back
at his hands. Empty. No rope, no bucket, no jar,
just open palms and a claim that doesn't add
up. And you ground the conversation where you've
learned to keep your footing in the practical,
in the measurable, the verifiable. Sir, you have
nothing to draw with and the well is deep. It's
not sarcasm, it's realism. You lived long enough
to know the difference between poetry and provision.
Between a beautiful idea and a full jar. Between
a man who talks about water and a woman who has
to carry it home. Friends, tonight our scripture
comes to us from the gospel account according
to the Apostle John chapter 4 beginning verse
13. Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst
again. Whoever drinks of the water that I will
give him will never thirst again. Sir. Give me
this water so that I won't go thirsty. Neither
come all the way here to draw. Go. Call your
husband and come here. I have no husband. You
said, well, I have no husband, for you've had
five husbands. And he whom you have now, he is
not your husband. The hour comes, and now is.
when the true worshipers will worship the Father
in spirit and in truth. I am he, the one who
speaks to you. Thus ends the reading of the word
tonight. And in the story, this is where the
air begins to change. You can feel it. The way
we can feel the storm coming in, not in the sky
yet, but in the stillness beforehand. Up until
this point, the conversation had been intriguing,
even hopeful. He's talking about water that lasts,
about thirst that doesn't come back, about a
gift that doesn't need to be earned or bartered
for or purchased with respectability that you
ran out of long ago. And then he says it. Go
call your husband. And this... This is where
most of us would have preferred Jesus to keep
it metaphorical. Because he was being kind. He
was being interesting. He was being safe. Or
at least he was being the version of safe that
tells you to stay in the conversation without
having to open the closet door. And now, standing
in front of that door with his hand on the knob.
And when you answer him, Chose precision over
performance. I have no husband. Four words. You
don't explain. You don't embellish. You don't
offer the back story or the justifications or
the defenses you've rehearsed. You have rehearsed
in your head the hundreds of times you have walked
to this well. You hand him the shortest, truest
sentence you've got. and you wait to see what
he does with it. And he doesn't contradict you.
He completes the sentence you were never going
to finish out loud. Five husbands. A current
arrangement that doesn't carry a name anyone
wants to say in public. A history that, in that
culture, pause, could mean widowhood, abandonment,
economic desperation, or all three. Because the
truth is here, my dear friends, we don't know
how much of her story was sin and how much of
it was just the brutal math of survival. We do
know she's been surviving more than thriving.
And we know this, in her world, Women didn't
end marriages. Men did. Which means five husbands
may tell us a lot less about her character than
her endurance. We know the arithmetic of a woman
in the ancient world whose options were never
really her own. And notice what he doesn't do.
He doesn't call her immoral. He doesn't launch
into a moral lecture. He doesn't start with repent.
He starts with relationship and revelation. He
doesn't threaten her with consequences or wave
the law at her like a weapon. He doesn't turn
this into a sermon about purity or lecture her
about her life choices. He tells the truth. accurately,
completely, without flinching. And then he stays
seated. Grace doesn't blur our reality. Grace
meets it face to face and decides not to look
away. And then the strangest thing happens. She
stays. She doesn't run. She doesn't shut down.
She doesn't lash out or deflect or grab her jar
and disappear into the heat the way she's done
a hundred times before. She shifts the conversation
upward. Verse 19. Sir, I perceive that you are
a prophet. And this isn't deflection, it's instinct.
Kind of instinct belongs to people who survived
hard conversations by somehow finding a higher
ground. Like, if we talk theology, maybe we can
breathe again. If we stay focused on worship,
maybe we can stay in the room without bleeding
out. So she raises the oldest argument in the
book. the one between the Jewish people and the
Samaritan people and who really are God's people.
Another Bible study for another night. But it
is a conversation, one where her people and his
people have been having since the kingdom split.
Where does worship really happen? On this mountain
or in Jerusalem at the temple? With us or with
them? Where does a person have to stand before
God will listen? And instead of choosing sides,
instead of planting his flag on one hill or the
other the way every other rabbi and priest have
done before him, Jesus does something instead
that loosens the ground between the two mountains.
The hour comes and now is. Not someday. Not after
the temple is rebuilt. Not after you've sorted
out your theology or your living situation or
your reputation. Now, Jesus is saying, the hour
is now. Worship is not about your geography.
It's about presence and honesty. Spirit and truth.
Not spirit to escape truth. Not some ecstatic
flight that lets you leave your body and your
history somehow behind. And not truth without
spirit to hold it. Not cold clinical accuracy
that tells you exactly what's wrong with you
and then walks away. Both spirit and truth together
like breath and lungs. And then quietly. Without
ceremony, without witnesses, without the kind
of audience a revelation like that is supposed
to require, he says this, I am he. This is the
first recorded self -revelation of Jesus as the
Messiah in the gospel account according to John.
And he gives it to her. Not to the disciples,
not to the Pharisees, not to the powerful, the
connected, or the credentialed. To a Samaritan
woman with five ex -husbands and no name the
gospel even bothers to record. At noon, at a
well, in a place where people avoid. This is
also. the longest recorded conversation Jesus
has with any single person in the four gospel
accounts. And he has it with someone the world
had already decided wasn't worth the time of
day. Not literally, right? We've all been there.
We've all had our noon moments. We have them
in church. Not literally, like I said, but...
Sometimes we'll slip into the back queue late
enough it might as well have been. We've figured
out when it's safest to show up. We've learned
which versions of ourselves were acceptable in
the building and which ones had to wait out in
the car. We've kept jars that make us functional
but never full. Just enough religion to keep
people from asking questions. Just enough performance.
Pass inspection. Where did you learn to hide
in plain sight? Sit with that for a second. Don't
rush past it. The answer might be older than
you think. And what would it take to believe
that the person sitting at the well already knows
your story and stayed anyway? Because there is
a counterfeit gospel that is circulating in churches
that says grace means God won't ask hard questions,
that love means never being confronted with the
truth about yourself, that acceptance and honesty
are somehow enemies. Jesus refuses that gospel
at this well. He doesn't bypass her story. He
doesn't pretend her history doesn't exist. But
he enters into it without weaponizing it. He
names it without using it against her. He holds
truth and tenderness together in the same hand.
And he doesn't drop either one. And if you've
ever tried to do that in a marriage, in a friendship,
in a pew, in a pulpit, you know it is the most
demanding kind of love there is. Because it would
be easier to choose one or the other. Truth alone
is simpler. Tenderness alone is safer. Jesus
refuses the simplicity and the safety of both.
What truth are you carrying to assume would end
the conversation if Jesus named it back out loud
to you? And what if that naming is exactly the
way the living water gets in? The story doesn't
become holy because she cleans up. It becomes
holy because she's seen and held by God. It's
the miracle at this well. Not that she changes,
but that she's known and not abandoned. The transformation
comes later. Staying comes first. And Grace is
not allergic to complexity. Grace specializes
in complexity. Grace built its house on the corner
of messy and unlikely streets and hung out a
sign that said, come as you are, we'll sort this
out together. When she leaves, the text tells
us something quiet but seismic. John 4, verse
28. The woman left her water jar. She came to
the well for water. She leaves with witness.
And she doesn't walk. She runs back to the same
village she's been avoiding. Back to the same
people whose eyes she's learned to dodge. And
the first thing she says isn't a creed or a confession
or a carefully constructed testimony. She says,
verse 29, come see a man who told me everything
I did. That's not shame talking. That's freedom.
Some jars are necessary for survival. Some jars
are habits we've mistaken for life. Some jars
are the containers we keep carrying to wells
we've outgrown because we forgot we were allowed
to set those jars down anyway. What jar are you
still carrying that you no longer need? Church,
Jesus is still sitting at wells, still showing
up in the wrong hour, wrong place, wrong people.
Still asking for drinks he doesn't need from
people who don't think they have anything worth
to offer him. Still telling the truth gently
enough to be survived. And still offering the
living water to people who didn't think they
were allowed to want it on purpose. If you came
here today at noon, if you timed your arrival
to avoid the crowd, if you carried your jar to
the edges where nobody watches too closely, you
didn't miss him. He's been waiting for you since
you left the house. Amen. Amen. Thanks, guys.
Somewhere under that noonday sun, a woman walked
back into town lighter than she came. The jar
still at the well. The heat still pressing down.
That well still deep. She was no longer carrying
what she thought she had to carry. She had been
seen, fully, truthfully, and not dismissed. And
that's the part that comforts and convicts us
at the same time. Because if Jesus could name
the truth without shaming the soul, then maybe
the thing you've kept folded tightly doesn't
disqualify you either. Maybe it's the doorway.
Maybe the living water starts right there. The
place you were most certain God wouldn't sit
down. Now, listen, friend. If something landed
tonight, if you heard a phrase a little differently,
if a piece of your story felt less alone than
it did 30 minutes ago, throw that old like in
the offering plate. That just lets us know you
were here, that it mattered. And if you'd like
to keep walking with us into the new year, go
ahead and tithe that subscribe. That way you'll
know when we're meeting for church again. And
until then, friend, be blessed.