Third Sunday in Lent, Year A, March 8, 2026
What is your deepest, darkest secret?
What is that thing
that you hope no one ever finds out?
What is it you hope
to take with you to the grave?
Most of us carry something,
maybe a few somethings,
that we don’t even dare
to write in our diaries,
a secret shame we are reluctant to share
even with our best, most trusted friends
pastors, or therapists.
While our lives often reveal
more about who we are
than we may even realize,
like most people,
we are really good at the PR campaign,
doing our best to control what’s said,
how it’s said,
and to whom it is said.
And this control
is not only about our
deepest, darkest secrets,
not about inflating the ego
and fostering a sense of pride.
It’s about protecting
the wounded places in us—
places in our lives
where others’ perception holds power,
where trauma still guards the door,
where sin—
our sin and the sin done to us—
gives us a sense of vertigo
before the gap between our true self
and what we think is loveable.
These are places
where we try to convince
ourselves and everyone else
that these wounds don’t exist
deep within us
or that somehow
we’re capable of healing them
on our own.
I wonder if this is why,
in our Gospel from John this week,
we find this woman at the well
at an odd time of the day
and when no one else is around?
It’s noon, in the heat of the day,
when this woman finds Jesus
at the well.
Most other women come
in the cool of the morning
to collect their water,
but not her.
Now it’s important to note
what we do know about this woman
and what we don’t know.
We know she’s had 5 husbands
and at this time
she’s living with a man
who is not her husband.
Historically and culturally,
in all likelihood,
she is not promiscuous
or some kind of man-eater,
but most likely she is a victim:
a teen-bride,
passed down from man to man,
brother to brother, like a commodity,
and discarded
perhaps due to infertility.
She is more a victim
of something akin to human trafficking
than she is a keeper of loose morals
and a short attention span.
Bear in mind that,
as theologian Francis Taylor Gench points out,
“divorce was exclusively
a male privilege at this time.”
Yet throughout history,
she has also been the victim of many
writers and preachers,
usually male,
As Fred Craddock observes:
“Many have assumed
that the brighter her nails,
the darker her mascara,
and the shorter her skirt,
the greater the testimony
to the power of the converting word.”
That is,
the greater the sinner,
the greater the savior.
Yet this says much more about
the assessor than the assessed.
The truth is,
we don’t know why
she’s been married so often,
but from her interaction with Jesus on this day,
it is clear that she has a deep, deep wound
that separates her from herself and from others.
But that wound
does not keep Jesus from her.
Jesus waits for her at the well
and has the longest recorded conversation
in the New Testament.
Jesus talks with this Samaritan woman
more than he talks to
his disciples, his accusers, or his family.
I imagine this Samaritan woman
is at the well as a matter of course
a part of the daily routine,
hot and tired,
lost in her own thoughts,
when she realizes there is someone waiting
where she went to be alone.
Having been so often wounded
by the men in her life,
I cannot imagine
she was happy
to find herself alone
and vulnerable,
surprised by the company of a foreign man.
She silently begins the work she came to do
when Jesus speaking to her.
This, in and of itself,
is must have been startling to this woman.
Afterall, a Jewish man
speaking with a woman who is not his wife
is a big no-no.
A Jewish man
speaking with a Samaritan woman,
an ethnic outsider,
is an even bigger no-no.
A Jewish man
speaking with a Samaritan woman,
who’s had 5 husbands
there are not enough no-nos for that.
But the greater risk
is borne by the Samaritan woman
speaking to a Jewish man
all by herself
with no witnesses.
It is hard to say what might have happened to her
if the two had been discovered
by a group of Samaritans
and not the returning disciples.
But Jesus is undeterred.
What struck me this week
is that when he offers her living water
she responds
“Give me this water
so that I may not thirst.”
And Jesus goes straight for her wound
by asking about her husband.
Rather than avoiding her wound,
allowing her to continue to conceal it,
Jesus brings healing to that wound
We cannot heal
what we cannot acknowledge.
Perhaps you’ve heard the saying,
“water finds the lowest point?”
Well, beloved,
so does living water.
The living water Jesus offers
finds our lowest points,
our wounds,
the things we spend so much time
trying to conceal,
to hide, to control,
to numb,
to medicate in insufficient ways,
and it flushes them out,
anoints them with healing oil,
and binds them up.
Nothing draws more attention to a wound
than a bandage.
But we cannot heal
what we cannot acknowledge.
Theologian James Allison
describes faith,
not as some intellectual exercise,
but as a place where we can fully relax
into God’s love for us.
Faith
is fully relaxing
into God’s love for us.
Did you notice what happens
when the woman receives
this good news from Jesus?
Once the living water
found her greatest need,
trickled down to her deepest wound,
she runs off and leaves her water jar
at the well.
She becomes the vessel of living water.
This often-discarded woman,
passed from man to man,
family to family,
leaves her thirst,
her emptiness,
her discardedness behind.
She is now the vessel of living water
carrying the good news of God’s love
to the very people who had created her wound.
Her healing, her wholeness,
becomes their hope for the same.
Beloved, the very good news for us this day
is that this Jesus waits for you too.
Jesus is waiting for you
in the very places you go
to avoid him,
to avoid facing the reality of your woundedness
to nurse a thirst that will never end
until it finds what it is really looking for.
This living water will find your lowest points,
your deepest wounds,
your darkest shame,
your vilest sins.
The living water
of Christ’s compassion will find us,
bringing us healing, wholeness, and salvation.
In the waters of our baptism,
we are saved by God’s grace
and set free
to acknowledge our woundedness
and experience this healing,
to know Christ’s salvation.
And, just like this Samaritan woman,
we can become living vessels,
carrying the good news
of living water to everyone we meet!
So,
what is your deepest, darkest secret?
What is that thing
that you hope no one ever finds out?
What is it you hope
to take with you to the grave?
Jesus is waiting for you
in the very places you go to hide.
Come and find the One who knows all your secrets
and waits to love and heal you anyway.
Amen.
