In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Make sure you do not live in the wrong neighborhood….
Do not be caught on the wrong side of the political aisle.
Never be found sitting at the wrong table.
We have all heard comments like this over the years whether we realized it or not. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus addresses one of the deepest lines of division that is called: “them and us.”
One of the defining aspects of living in 2026 is how easily we can live inside a “one-sided” world. The Internet “feeds us” the news that we agree with and connects us to people who share our same opinions on life and rarely challenges us to hear views different from our own. But “one-sided” views didn’t start with technology.
Long before the Internet existed, we were already learning where these “lines of division” were. Many of those divisions were taught to us early in life, sometimes spoken out loud by relatives or friends or sometimes simply implied with phrases like these: The wrong neighborhood, the wrong faith, the wrong side of the political table, the wrong income bracket or sitting with the wrong people. Those things that society says that if you find yourself there, you are on the wrong side. Then we encounter the Jesus Who sat with everybody, who embraced and loved and welcomed everyone no matter what they believed or where they lived.
In today’s reading He sits along side a Samaritan. Well, to speak with a Samaritan woman. So, let us look at this story. To begin with, Jesus met this woman at what is called “Jacob’s Well”. It’s located at a busy crossroad where travelers stopped to water their animals and where people from all over passed through. Women living nearby would come to draw water for their families at that well, but they always came in groups because women never travelled alone.
So, a woman who came by herself was probably a widow, who had no choice. So, this Samaritan woman was someplace she was not supposed to be by yourself. But, Jesus, too, was someplace He was not supposed to be. Jews despised Samaritans and any Jewish person would have taken a different road to avoid setting food on Samaritan soil. In other words, He was sitting alone along side a Samaritan well in the middle of the day in a city He should have avoided, waiting, it seems, for this specific person to show up.
Society says He shouldn’t have been there, but He doesn’t place importance on doing what society says is the right thing to do. He only cares to bring people closer to God. He wants to cross boundaries that should never have been drawn in the first place because He knows that on the other side of those boundaries there is a person in need of God’s Love.
So, the conversation opens with Jesus asking her for a drink of water from the well. Immediately, she realizes that something wrong is happening. His kind does not speak to her kind. The fact that He is doing so has her all confused, but when she meets Jesus at the well, she meets a man who doesn’t see her as someone from “the other side” and unworthy to speak with. He looks at her and sees a “child of God” and touches her life exactly where she carries her greatest burdens and hurts and wounds that have left her beaten down by life with a thirst she has never been able to quench.
He doesn’t turn away from her. He offers her something different. He offers her “Living Water”, the real thing. “Living Water” quenches the soul. “Living Water” is offered to everyone no matter how broken or lost they feel. If this Gospel story has something to teach us, then it teaches jus that everyone is or has been broken or lost in some way at some point by life just like the woman at the well. Christ came to bring us His “Living Water” and the “Living Water” of God makes all the difference. It is the Water of Faith, the Water of Trust and the Water of Belief in the eternal promises of God.
Let us leave here today keeping in mind how this rarely heard story affects our lives. The same Jesus Who crossed social and religious barriers to care for this woman at the well is still crossing barriers to find us. He wants to meet us where we have our deepest thirst and offer us His “Living Water.”
So, let us remember this. The same Jesus, Who crossed social and religious barriers to care for a woman at a well, is still crossing barriers to embrace us where we are most—hurt or wounded. He wants to meet us in our deepest thirst and offer His “Living Water.”
Amen.