Sermon - 3-8-26

Year A – Third Sunday in Lent– March 8, 2026 Pastor Megan Floyd Exodus 17:1-7 John 4:1-42 Grace and peace to you from God and the Holy Spirit, and from Jesus Christ, who is truly the Savior of the world. Amen. *** Many… many years ago, Bill and I had the privilege of attending my friend's wedding… she and her partner got married in the Valley of Fire in the Grand Canyon… at sunset. It was… spectacular!   Our little party was delivered to this magical location on helicopters, which flew us through the Canyon, across the incredible landscape that just… stretched on for as far as I could see.   As we flew, the walls of the Canyon were on either side of us, and yet, my brain couldn't make sense of the scale. Then the pilot pointed out a little dark spec that was way under us… he said, "That's the other helicopter."   Those four words… radically changed my perspective. I mean… sure, I could see that the place was well worth the title of 'Grand,' …but suddenly, 'Grand' couldn't even contain the full scope of where we were.   Nothing could… I don't think there is any word in our language that can truly encapsulate the landscape… the magnitude… of what we call… The Grand Canyon.   And the same is true… about God's love.   God's love is so grand… so deep and wide and never ending… that we bump up against the same inability to fully wrap our minds around the full scope… the full scale of what it really means… that God so loved the world.   On that helicopter… I didn't even begin to understand how big that landscape was until the pilot showed me what it meant… until he gave me a new perspective and showed me how Grand it really was.   And that's what's happening in our text today… Jesus is showing the disciples what it means… that God so loved the world.   Telling them isn't going to be enough… he must show them… which is why it was necessary for them to go through Samaria. Verse 4.   Our translation reads, "But he had to go through Samaria." …the Greek word is stronger than that, though… It was 'necessary' …it was imperative that he go through Samaria.   Why? …they were traveling north from Judea to Galilee… and Samaria is between those two places. But, as the text points out… something that everyone at the time would have understood… very clearly… the Jews and the Samaritans do not associate with each other.   It was an ancient family feud… they have the same ancestors… but different theology around the critical question of… where is God found?   For the Jewish people, God was found in the Temple in Jerusalem… in the Holy of Holies. That's where they went to worship.   For the Samaritans, God was found high on the top of Mount Gerizim. That's where they went to worship.   They had other differences as well, but this was the most pressing theological question of their time... the question that went back to the time of Moses, in the wilderness of Sin, when they were dying of thirst… Where is God? Is the Lord among us or not?   These are heavy questions… and modern denominations have split apart for less.   So, to avoid the tension and the feud, Jewish people traveling from Judea to Galilee would have taken the road that ran along the Jordan River Valley. They would not have climbed through the mountains of Samaria.   So why… why was it necessary for them to go through Samaria?   It was necessary… because Jesus needed to show his disciples the full scale and scope of his ministry… he needed to give them a new perspective.   Jesus needed to challenge their assumptions about who is in and who is out… he needed to widen their understanding of what sort of people Jesus was seeking… about whom he loved.   So he took them to the very place they would have assumed was excluded. Samaria.   Jesus needs to go there to find his first witness… he needs to find her… the unnamed, unmarried, powerless, Samaritan woman… discarded or widowed five times over… now living with the brother of her late husband in a Levirate marriage.   She is a nobody… an outsider among religious outsiders… visiting the well when no one else would have been there… at the hottest… and brightest time of the day.   Remember what I said about day and night in the Gospel of John?   She's there when the sun is at its brightest… and with this woman… Jesus proceeds to have the longest recorded conversation that he has with anybody… in any of the four gospels.   It was necessary for him to go through Samaria… to find… her.   Now, like anyone who talks to Jesus, she doesn't fully understand him at first, but she sticks with it… and she trusts him with her truth.   So, in response to her faith and her growing understanding around the coming Messiah… he shares his truth… He is… the I AM… the Great I AM… the same I AM from the burning bush and Moses…   I know our translation says that Jesus replies, "I am he" …but that's just added grammar for verbal flow. Jesus' response to her is only… I AM. …and his statement holds the power and weight of all the other I AM statements.   He reveals his true identity to her… before any of the disciples figured it out. And in her joy, she left her water jar at the well to run to share the good news with her neighbors…   She told them of her experience… of her encounter with this man… she shared her wondering… "He cannot be the Messiah, can he?"   And she invited them to come and see… come and meet him… come, and hear from him yourself. She shared her witness… her testimony… and then invited them to come and experience him for themselves.   And because of her witness, her town became followers of Jesus… and were the first to recognize that he was truly… the Savior of the world.   This… out-of-the-way place… in Samaria.   Its… incredible. And this is only chapter four! Jesus hasn't hardly done anything yet!   He was identified by John the Baptist as the Lamb of God, come to take away the sin of the world. …then he called his first disciples…   …and they enjoyed a party at the Wedding at Cana, where, thanks to some strong encouragement from his mother, Mary, Jesus ensured there would be plenty of the very best wine for the happy couple and their guests.   After that, Jesus went to the Temple, where he… caused a scene. The other gospels have this Temple scene happening at the end of his ministry.   John, however, has it at the beginning… it gives Jesus quite the reputation.   And then Nicodemus came to visit him… at night. That's really all that has happened until this point, when he started heading back to Galilee and said it was necessary for them to go through Samaria.   Jesus was still seeking someone he could entrust his identity to… so he went to find this woman.   She taught the disciples… as she teaches us… how to be a witness… how to share our stories of encounter with God… with our Savior, Jesus Christ.   We don't need to fully understand every moment of meaning… only that meeting Jesus is to encounter God… the Holy Spirit… the Divine among us… and to be in relationship with him brings salvation.   We don't have to convince others… Jesus can do that… we just need to invite people to come and see… come and encounter a love so pure and inclusive, that it's hard to wrap our minds around.   Jesus was also seeking to demonstrate to his disciples… to give them a new perspective of just how grand God's love really was.   He needed to push all the boundaries and prejudices they held… and choose the most unlikely person to be the first one with whom he shared his truth.   She was his first witness… the first evangelist… starting the first church… first worshipping community… who understood that the answer to the most pressing theological question of their time… Where is God?   …that the answer was, God is with us, wherever we are.   Jesus needed to give them all some perspective… and we still need that today.   We like to draw boundaries… we like to know who's in and who's out… We like to think that this is all something we can fully wrap our minds around and have some certainty about it. …especially when it comes to God's approval… and God's love.   But it's hard to hold that kind of scope and scale in our minds… so we need this constant reminder… this continual renewal of our perspective… this pointing out of those people that we might be tempted to exclude…   God's love includes them, too.   For God so loved the world… will always be so much bigger than we can imagine, which is good news… because it means that no matter what, everyone is in.   Amen.