2/1/26 - Sermon written and preached by Leigh Rachal at FPC Abbeville, LA

When my kids were little, I learned a very specific lesson about timing.

You do not take small children to the grocery store after church.

I tried.
More than once.
Because I am apparently a slow learner.

We would leave worship and head straight to the store, and everything would seem fine right up until the cereal aisle.

It was always the cereal aisle….

They would spot the sugar-coated sugar capsules of fun, you know – the cereals that are basically dessert in a box,

and suddenly I had lost all authority as a parent.

And the meltdowns were impressive.

Now, my kids were generally pretty well behaved, even in the grocery store. But not after church.

At first, I told myself all the usual things.

They were being dramatic.

They were testing boundaries.

They were pushing buttons.

But eventually it dawned on me.

It wasn’t that church turned them into little demons…

It’s just that they were tired.

They had sat still.
They had listened.
They had tried to be good.

And by the time we hit the cereal aisle, their reserves were gone.

Parents know – after a few of these hands on learning experiences – that when a child is cranky, it is usually because they are tired.
They need a nap.

When adults are cranky and acting poorly, we usually tell ourselves a different story.
We blame stress.
Or other people.
Or the state of the world.

But I heard someone offer a suggestion one time that said “when you are cranky, try drinking a big glass of water…”

We have forgotten how to feel thirst – much like a kid doesn’t really feel tired. And so it shows up as cranky, irritable, or maybe we even feel tired….

I know when I ask folks how they are, I often hear some version of “tired” – not like they need a nap tired. Though maybe that would help!

But what they mean is they are tired of all the overwhelm. Tired of the relentlessness of life. Tired of never feeling like they can catch a breath and get ahead….

But perhaps, what we really mean when we say we are tired. Is that we are thirsty….

Sometimes for actual water.
But often for something deeper.

The psalmist knows this thirst well.
“As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.”

Thirst is not a polite longing.

It is a biological demand. If we go without water for any period of time, our bodies will quickly start demanding that we find some…

We will be desperate and driven to meet this need. Before it is too late…

But we don’t only thirst for actual water. Humans also thirst for God.

John tells us that Jesus meets a woman who is experiencing this deeper thirst.

She comes to Jacob’s well in the middle of the day, in full light.

John wants us to notice that.

Just one chapter earlier, Nicodemus, a religious leader and teacher, comes to Jesus by night.

Here, it is a Samaritan woman who meets Jesus openly, in the brightest part of the day.

John has already told us that light has come into the world. But that some people continue to chose the darkness.

This woman is closer to that light than she knows.

For the moment, she is just doing what needs to be done.

Drawing water.

Managing her life.

Getting through the day.

But then Jesus is there.

He begins not with instruction, but with relationship.

“Give me a drink.”

And then John does something subtle and rich.

The conversation carries more than one layer of meaning.

This is talk about water.
And it is also the language of longing.
Of intimacy.
Of promise.

In Scripture, wells are places where people meet their spouses.

Rebecca is found at a well.

Jacob meets Rachel at a well.

Moses encounters Zipporah at a well.

Wells are places where futures are shaped and covenant begins.

And if we look back through what we have read of John so far,

we see that John the Baptist has already called Jesus the Bridegroom.

And Jesus’ first sign was at a wedding.

So when Jesus sits down at a well, the story is already charged with expectation.

The woman notices the obvious.
“You have no bucket. And the well is deep.”

She is right. She has the tools. She understands the limits.

And yet Jesus speaks of water that does not need to be hauled up or rationed. Water that moves. Water that springs up from within.

Living water….

There is even a bit of playful, double-meaning language here.

A kind of verbal sparring that John’s original hearers would have recognized.

Desire and meaning overlap. Jesus is not embarrassed by human longing. He engages it, and then redirects it toward something truer.

When the disciples return, they are urging Jesus to eat.

In their world, sharing food could signal that a marriage arrangement had been sealed.

But Jesus makes clear that he is not here to take a bride in the usual way. He is here to give himself for the life of the world.

He is not one more relationship that will leave her empty.
He is living water.

We all know something about buckets.

We all have ways of filling the empty places in our lives.

Work. Achievement. Busyness.

Approval. Control.

Comfort. Distraction.

These things sustain us for a time.

And then we return to the well again.

Jesus names this: Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.

There is no judgment in that. Only honesty.

And then Jesus offers more than she expected. More than we dare to expect.

The water he gives becomes a spring within us, flowing toward life.

When Jesus speaks truth into this woman’s life, it is not to shame her.

Truth here is a gift. It frees her from pretending.

And she immediately shifts the conversation to worship.

Jesus responds by widening the horizon.

Worship is no longer bound to place.

It takes shape wherever lives are opened to Spirit and truth.

Which means worship happens at wells.
And tables.
And kitchens.
And grocery store aisles.
And hospital rooms.

At the end of the story, the woman leaves her bucket behind.

Not because actual water no longer matters, but because something inside her has shifted.

She goes back to her community carrying a story instead of a bucket.

“Come and see.” She tells her community.

Those words echo from earlier in John’s Gospel.

When Jesus first calls his disciples, he invites them with those same words: “Come and see.”

Now this Samaritan woman speaks them.

This woman. This Samaritan woman becomes the first evangelist in John’s Gospel, using Jesus’ own invitation to draw others toward living water.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells a story about a Samaritan who stops for a wounded stranger.

In that story, he reminds his listeners that the one doing God’s works is the one who pours himself out for the other, without measuring the cost.

An enemy who becomes neighbor.

This is a different Gospel, but a similar story of boundary crossing.

But John takes it one step further.

This time the Samaritan is also a woman.

And she becomes a disciple, and the first evangelist.

In both stories, the Samaritan, the enemy, becomes the one through whom Abundant life is revealed.

Jesus crosses boundaries others treat as non-starters.

Ethnic boundaries. Religious boundaries. Social boundaries.

And he does so freely, without calculating what it will cost him.

That way of self-giving love is the living water he offers.

And that is the love we meet at this table.

At this table, the covenant is sealed.
We are claimed as Christ’s own.
We are the bride, gathered and beloved.

We come not just to hear about living water, but to receive it.

We come to a meal.
Bread broken.
Cup shared.

Like the woman at the well, we bring our thirst.
Like the disciples, we often misunderstand what kind of nourishment Jesus offers.
And still, Christ meets us.

At this table, we are given more than we expected.

Not just symbols. Not just reminders.

We are given Christ’s own life,

poured out without measuring the cost,

even for the one once called enemy.

We come tired.
We come thirsty.
And we are fed….

And from this table, we are then sent,

carrying living water into a dry and aching world,

with the message for everyone to “Come and See” what Jesus has done in our lives and what he can do in theirs.

May we have the faith and courage to drink deeply from the Cup of Salvation and then to proclaim the Way to others. Amen.