Thirsty
March 8, 2026 • The Third Sunday in Lent • Year A
Exodus 17:1-7 | Psalm 95 | Romans 5:1-11 | John 4:5-42
“Photini, the Samaritan woman.” These words hovered above the beginning text of Morning Prayer in the app I use. On February 26th, we commemorate the Samaritan woman, yes, the woman at the well. I didn’t know she had a name, and if we follow the text in John, she doesn’t. The Orthodox Christian tradition, however, saw fit to name her, choosing Photini, which means “the enlightened one.” In the Greek Orthodox church, she’s known as “Mother of Evangelists,” “Equal to the Apostles,” and a church at the site of Jacob’s Well was consecrated to her, St. Photini.[1]
As the daughter of a mother whose mothers–both biological and adoptive–were given names not in their native tongue, I bristle at the fact that we do not know this Samaritan woman’s birth name. We have “Samaritan” and “woman” as her descriptors. Except that’s not all. Jesus makes sure she, he, and we know that not only is she undesirable as a Samaritan and unapproachable as a woman, but she is also outcast as a woman with a suspect marital history and is even more untouchable as a woman who is partnered but not married.
That day at noon is already half-spent, temperatures rising with the mounting stress of wearying travels and the weight, the burden of societal pressures. Neither Jesus nor the woman seem to care about norms. She is too tired; he is too present. Let us believe that in Jesus’s presence the reign of God is at hand, where–as Paul might say–there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Samaritan, elite nor outcast. There are only children of God, willing and ready to be known. What is also true in the reality of the moment is that the woman needs water. She is, presumably, thirsty.
Maybe she was past thirsty and was only getting water for her companion or her household, for her chores, neglecting as many caregivers do, their own pressing needs. But she is thirsty: thirsty to be seen, thirsty to be known. Unlike Nicodemus of last week who snuck out to see Jesus at night so as not to be seen, our dear woman can go out in full daylight because the cause for her supposed sins are fully known, and even in the light of day, she is invisible, unnecessary, worthless.
What if we imagine that Jesus asking her for a drink was the perfect question of an untouchable stranger to break the illusion of her invisibility and worthlessness? In seeing her, asking her, knowing her, Jesus reflects her belovedness and opens the floodgates of the living water that no jar or bucket could hold. She didn’t need it anymore. The empty, discarded jar is the shell of the woman she was when she first arrived at the well. It truly is the enlightened one who leaves and rushes like the first evangelist she is to invite others to “come and see!” the man who is–could he be?–the Messiah.
And just like that, the woman’s testimony led many to Jesus, so they could hear for themselves from the Savior of the world. The woman doesn’t ask for acclaim. She doesn’t even ask to be re-named. The Word of God asks us to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest a story of Jesus who reveals to us that the divisions we create between us are arbitrary in the reign of God. This, the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the Bible, opens the way for her to embark on new life, transformed by her encounter with Jesus, fueled by the impact Jesus has not only on herself but on others, too. The Samaritan woman went to the well with intention and left transformed, a thirst revealed in her that had laid dormant was satiated–a thirst, like her name, that was known by God.
What are we thirsty for? Hungry for, even?
It was the disciples who had traveled apart to get something to eat. While we seek to fulfill that which we think we have to do and consume that which we think we need, is that what is really of utmost importance? If the living water of Christ gushed forth and the food of God’s will were provided to us, might we be quenched with a fulfillment like no other? Might then we know enlightenment, too, and run off to share the Good News?
It is hard, this life. Most of us are more like the Israelites in the wilderness, complaining because there is no water, the well’s run dry, there isn’t enough, and we don’t actually want to change anyway. We were fine the way we were before, even if it meant oppression, even if the water we drank poisoned us. Some might call this “internalized oppression.” Others might call it “the devil you know.” Whatever we call it, it’s not the food and drink of fulfillment or Salvation.
Moses turned to the LORD for help, for guidance, and he obeyed as best he could. Our Samaritan woman engaged with Jesus, letting all norms blow away with the wind, relying, rather, on the commonality between them, letting her faith and trust guide her next move. Isn’t that us at our Christian best, too? Striving to live into God’s reality rather than our illusions of division and artificial constructs?
Our country finds itself enmeshed again at war far off while the wars at home of classism, racism, sexism, and many other -isms and phobias rage on. Most of us truly want to be faithful to Jesus, aligned with God, but when it’s someone else asking us for clean water, a job, a meal, a bed, a home, a seat of power, we easily and quickly return to a sense of scarcity. We are in the desert where there may not be enough. We have to be safe, maintain order, and protect the way things are.
There are times when the confines of norms, standards, and presumed security or safety suffocate rather than protect, bind rather than liberate, and deprive rather than nourish.
The Indian boarding schools sought to bring so-called civilization and Christianity to the Indigenous across this land. Well-intentioned and not so well-intentioned individuals collected children of all ages to feed them the Bible and English language, to nourish them with the ways of the white settlers. Rather than come together at living water and seek to see one another as fellow children of the same Creator, physical and political power and resources trumped the natural and relational ways of the First Nations. Children like my grandmothers were stripped of their hair, their clothing, their families, their cultures, and their names. They were left to thirst.
Perhaps this is why I thirst for justice. I don’t speak the language of my grandmothers because they were punished for practicing their ways. I was deprived of a connection to my ancestors because others in my ancestry presumed power and privilege over rather than surrendering to equality and mutual respect, rather than respecting the dignity of every human being.
The next time we find ourselves face to face with another where we are quick to judge, quick to distance ourselves, I pray God gives us the courage and wisdom to dismantle our divisions. Perhaps we could learn from the hospitality of our Hebrew ancestors and offer a cup of water. Or, we could be as daring as Jesus and ask them if they might share with us. In seeing another so openly and vulnerably, maybe they would tell us their name and share their deepest truth. In such a moment, the living water rushes through, quenching all our thirst.
[1] https://prayer.forwardmovement.org/calendar/photini
~The Rev. Sara Milford