John 4:5-42
March 22, 2026
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, Oakland, CA.
On the average, the human body is composed of approximately 60% of water. When we were infants, I know none of us remember that time now, but our infant body was 78% of water. Now, many of us here, including myself, who are over 50, the water percentage in our bodies is 56%. Whether it’s Pampers or Depends, that water has to go someplace!
In the season of Lent, we go through 40 days with some of us abstaining from eating chocolates, some abstaining from alcohol, so that we can focus on prayer, devotions, and creating a thirst for God. When we are thirsty, we seek to quench that thirst.
When the Israelites were in the wilderness of Sin, the people quarreled with Moses and said to him, “Give us water to drink?” (Exodus 17:1-7) They told Moses, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst? So, Moses cried out to the Lord because the people were so thirsty that they were about to stone him. The Lord told Moses to take some of the elders and with his staff in hand, strike on the rock of Horeb. And when he did, water came out for the people to drink. Moses chided the people for testing God because the Lord has always been among them.
Thirsty to be Recognized
Our Scripture today tells us that Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar and he was tired out by the journey at noontime. Walking through Samaria is long and tiring under the hot sun. While the disciples went into town to buy food in the village, this is when he and the woman meet.
It ought to be easy for a thirsty man to get a drink for himself at the well. But Jesus cannot do this by himself. He asks the woman to give him a drink, giving her the chance to recognize the face of Christ in a stranger.
Unlike the chapter in John right before this one, when Nicodemus meets Jesus at night, this woman is a Samaritan, a religious, social, and political outsider. She is a woman, she has no name, but she meets Jesus at noon, in full daylight.
In this man’s world, this woman is ostracized by them, stigmatized for her status and behavior. In the eyes of the Gospel writer John, this woman is a nobody. She does not even merit a name, and her gender, religious orientation, social standing, and personal habits distance her from Jesus and her community. We expect that people will try to avoid this woman and ignore her whenever possible.
This is the reason why in the heat of the noonday sun, no one is at the well; so, she comes to fetch water because she was thirsty.
I saw a short film when I first started out in full-time ministry. Our friend, Dayle Scott was the Minister of Christian Education for the American Baptist churches in northern California. Dayle gathered all of us who had Christian education responsibilities regularly and one time he showed us this short film, Cipher in the Snow, that I have never forgotten. I have told others about this film and it has appeared in many of my sermons ever since.
Cipher in the Snow is about this little boy who didn’t get the attention from anyone. His parents scolded him and told him he was good for nothing. His teachers yelled at him when they graded his work with a zero. And his friends bullied him and never counted him into their inner circle. One day on a snowy day, this boy got off the school bus and died in the snow. He was a cipher—a zero.
When we tell people that they are nobodies, we remove their life spirit from them. After viewing this film, some 50 years ago, it still affects me ever since. I told myself that I would never in my ministry and in my being to never withhold attention to someone.
The woman in our lesson is good news for anyone who has ever felt the humiliation and stigmatization or the pain of being a nobody, because Jesus does not turn away from this woman. On the contrary, he engages her in conversation, takes her seriously, and spends several days in her village. This woman, her village, and their welfare matter to Jesus, whether nobodies or not.
Who are the nobodies in Oakland? They are the people we ignore. Maybe they are the neighbors who walk in front of our church while we are inside worshipping and having coffee hour? Maybe they are the houseless people who are in tents underneath 580 as we drive toward church? Maybe they are the parents and children playing on the climbing apparatus across the street from the church. Maybe they are the parents and children who are at the Children’s Center.
As we are composed of 56% water, all of these people are also made up of 56% of water. They are thirsty too. This text reminds us that sometimes the boundaries that we draw of the faith community are too narrow.
We often like to leave out the nobodies. But Jesus drew his boundary beyond what his disciples were comfortable with, it went beyond what the Jewish authorities were legalistically okay with, it went beyond what the social norms expected to be. Jesus included the woman, welcomed the outsiders, as well as the insiders, into discipleship.
Water Bottles
When I was growing up, we never had our own water bottles! While we started out in life drinking out of baby bottles with formula in them, we put away those baby bottles when we learned how to drink from a water fountain or what we called, bubblers, in New England.
But today we have our own personal hydration systems! Now there’s a craze of owning what’s popular when we carry our own water bottle. There were Hydro Flasks where you personalize them with interesting stickers. There were Stanleys, large capacity made really for camping but popularized because of their durability. Now, I heard it’s the Owala with colorful caps. By the way, I don’t have one of those yet!
For me, I still have a Nalgene, once popular in the 1970s, primarily used in laboratories that I hydrate with when I play tennis. One time, one of our grandkids remarked that my Nalgene was “old-school!” But when I am thirsty, old school or not, my Nalgene works as good as any of the new water bottles!
When Jesus asked the woman for a drink, she said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get this living water?” Jesus then said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water, plain regular water, will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Not only do we need regular plain H2O to quench our thirst because we are made out of 56% water, we also need the living water in Christ. This woman received living water by meeting Jesus at the well. The living water led her to leave her water jar and went back to the city, inviting the people to hear what has happened to her. She said, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” She was still thirsting for belief and faith.
We know that by the end of this story that many Samaritans from that city believed in Jesus because of this woman’s testimony. These Samaritans were also thirsty for the truth that they testified themselves to this woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
We are the Buckets
While our own Hydro Flask or Stanley water bottles are convenient as they are, are we the buckets to provide living water to all those who are thirsty? As believers as we said that we are, are we willing to share the peace of God and the saving grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit to give living water to those who thirst for love, truth, and salvation?
Can a little thing like a cup of cool water, offered in love, be the beginning of a salvation journey? We know that this to be true—and we will never know until we meet a stranger, and take care of his/her thirst first.
Notice how Jesus took baby steps with this woman in our passage for today. Jesus is patient with her, his willingness to explain his metaphors and stay with the conversation. He doesn’t make fun of her and does not chastise her for her left-brain response to his right-brain language. Instead, he nurtures her, nudges her along, like a parent teaching and feeding a young child with a milk bottle.
Jesus’ tenderness encourages her to grow in faith. When we are new in faith, we too take baby steps. Jesus supports us as we move toward him and grow in understanding. He wants us to deepen and extend our faith beyond our comfortable boundaries, to recognize and acknowledge him for who he is.
There are thirsty people out in this world, in Oakland, and around our church. Are we willing to be buckets, filled with good news to share? What if our next Coffee Hour is outside our front doors and when people walk by, we welcome them with a cup of coffee or a glass of lemonade?
Loved Us Anyway
When I shared that the film, Cipher in the Snow, affected me when I watched it for the first time and that it still affects me today, is because it reminds me that I continue to fall short of my commitment. There are still times in my life, perhaps every day, that I fall short of what I should do. I am distracted or too busy or thought that I had more important things to do in that momentwhen I know that everyone is a somebody.
I can identify with this woman when she said, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” Like this woman, I have done things that I shouldn’t have and have not done the things that I should have.
But like this woman, there’s an unfinished thought to this sentence. “Come see a man who told me everything that I ever did…and loved me anyway!”
We all have a long list of things that we did that we shouldn’t have done. But we believe that Jesus knows all about that already. Jesus can tell us everything that we ever did…and loved us anyway!
This is what saved this woman’s life. In that moment, she sees God. She receives Christ—and leaps up with joy to tell her community. Her thirst was satisfied. The woman at the well was not a cipher in the snow, Jesus saw her and turn her from a nobody to a somebody. Jesus loved her anyway.
When we are thirsty, when we feel that we are nobodies, our thirst for life and salvation to be somebody is quenched and satisfied because Jesus “loves us anyway.”
Let us pray.
O Lord, not only are we hungry for food for survival, we are thirsty to quench our desire to have living water to be saved. Help us to recognize our mistakes, our shortcomings, our sins because you, Lord, already know them. And when we come to realize who we are and to whom we belong like this woman at the well, we become renew again and share in your will on earth. Thank you, Lord for this Good News that you always love us anyway. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.