Being Seen Is Believing
He told me everything I ever did
Sermon delivered March 8, 2026. At Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Charleston, SC. Lent 3. John 4. The Woman at the Well.
I love the Gospel of John. It is both the Word of God and great literature. John often gives us these rich passages. Extended narratives with complex, fully drawn characters and complicated issues and profound theological insights. As a playwright, I am in awe of John’s storytelling. And like Jesus’s parables, John’s narratives work on many levels at the same time. This story of the Woman at the Well is one of his highlights.
In fact the passage is so dense with insights, that you could choose a half a dozen different themes to focus a sermon. I’m going to center our reflection on parts that seem intriguingly odd. That makes me ask, what is really going on here?
One of these is the way John makes us aware of the social and religious context of the story. Oftentimes, preachers have to dig hard, consulting textbooks and commentaries to unearth the background of a text. Here John lays it all out explicitly. It must be important.
First we’re told that we are in Samaria – the territory long-occupied by what might be called schismatic Jews. Or seen from a Samaritan viewpoint, as the true keepers of the faith handed down by Moses, with the Jews being the upstart heretics. Both groups avoided the other, though sometimes contact was unavoidable, like when you needed to travel from Jerusalem to Galilee. Which is what Jesus and the disciples are doing.
The second piece of context is that we find ourselves in a very important place, historically and religiously. We are at Jacob’s well. Dug by the Patriarch and in use for centuries. In fact, it’s still there. It is set beneath a mountain, which will come up later. Jesus stops here, about noon, to rest. And he’s thirsty.
A woman arrives and Jesus asks for a drink of water. Again, the Gospel explains to us how strange this is by having the woman remark, “How is that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” And in case we missed it, the text explains parenthetically, “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.”
It’s as if it were the 1990s and Jesus is an Irish Catholic who walks into Protestant pub in Northern Ireland and orders a pint. Or as if he were an Episcopalian, wearing the logoed pin on his lapel, and walks into an ACNA fellowship hall to ask for a cup of coffee. It’s just not done.
So, we have Jesus in hostile territory, stopping at a well – a very significant well – and requesting a drink of water from someone who would be despised by most Jews of the day and considered impure to boot. And he asks her for water.
We don’t know if Jesus ever gets his drink because he launches immediately into a discourse about living water. Water that when consumed will cause springs of living water to flow forth from within. Water that will never leave you thirsty. Water even better than that of Jacob’s well.
The woman, understandably, is eager to get some of this water. She is tired of schlepping this water jug to the well every day. “Sir!” she says. “Give me this water!”
And Jesus responds with this odd command. “Go, call your husband, and come back.”
“I have no husband,” the woman responds.
And Jesus answers with a remark that utterly unmasks the woman: “You are right when you say, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband.”
This is so very strange. What is going on here?
Is Jesus shaming the woman?
Some preachers see Jesus’s statement about the woman’s marital status as an accusation of immorality. She’s an adulteress. And Jesus nails her. But Jesus doesn’t say anything like that. He simply states the reality of her situation. And the woman recognizes his words as prophetic, as something deeply insightful. “Sir,” she says. “I see you are a prophet.”
These same preachers see the woman’s sudden leap into theology as a smokescreen. To shield herself from shame. But what’s actually happening is that the woman begins to speak to Jesus about the central theological issue that divides Samaritans and Jews: where and how to worship God. Here at the mountain just behind them or in Jerusalem? Jesus responds seriously to her question. “The time now is when we will worship in Spirit and in truth.”
The passage made me wonder. What would it take for a first century Palestinian woman to have had five husbands plus a new partner? Life expectancy was short at that time. How many of her husbands had died? How many times had she buried a spouse? How many times had she lived through that kind of grief?
How many times had the woman been divorced? Divorce was common in the first century – among Samaritans and Jews and throughout the Roman world. But divorce was instigated only by the man. And a wife could be dismissed for the most trivial of reasons. Maybe her husband didn’t like her cooking. Maybe she argued with him. Maybe he just wasn’t attracted to her any more. A man could have a letter of divorce drawn up and the woman would be out on the street. Literally. Because unless you were wealthy, being a woman outside the household of a man meant financial ruin. You were destitute. And this woman is not wealthy. She is lugging her own jar to the well.
How many times had this woman experienced that kind of heartbreak? That kind of cruelty? That kind of desperation? How many times had she been out on the street? No wonder she remarried and remarried and remarried. She had to survive. Did she love these men? Were they kind to her? Were they abusive? We don’t know. But she knew. And Jesus has seen right into the center of her vulnerability and her pain.
This uncovering by Jesus is the fulcrum of the passage. It’s the turning point in the woman’s salvation.
The moment is similar to an earlier conversion in the Gospel of John, just a few chapters back, when Simon Peter brings his brother Nathanael to meet Jesus and Jesus proclaims, “Here is a true son of Israel, in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asks, “How do you know me?” And Jesus replies, “I saw you sitting under the fig tree.” To which Nathanael exclaims, “You are the Son of God! The King of Israel!” Jesus seems to be chuckling when he replies, “Do you believe because I said, ‘I saw you under the fig tree?’ You’ll see far greater things than these!”
Why is this uncovering by Jesus, of both the Samaritan woman and Nathanael, so momentous? How does it have such saving power? How is it that this is the moment that brings them both to experience Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God?
For when the woman runs back into town to tell the community she has found the Christ, her testimony is not about living water. It’s not about worshiping God in Spirit and in truth. Her testimony to her neighbors is, “Come and meet someone who told me everything I ever did! He must be the Messiah!”
Now unless the conversation at the well went far longer than we’re given in this passage, Jesus didn’t tell the woman everything she ever did. He told her the thing that was most important about her life. Her deep pain and constant financial precariousness. And she felt seen. Truly seen. Not judged. But accepted. With her pain. With her gender. She’s a woman (as the disciples will marvel). She’s a despised outsider to the Jews of that day. A heretic. And Jesus sees her. Loves her. Takes her seriously. He reveals himself to her. “I am he,” he tells her. “I am the Messiah you are waiting for.” And the woman races into town, gives her testimony, and brings the community back to the well to meet Jesus for themselves. The woman becomes in this passage, the first apostle in John’s Gospel. The second, by the way, is also a woman, Mary Magdalene.
What is it about being seen, fully seen – and accepted – that is so full of grace?
When my husband Brian and I first moved to the Charleston area, we weren’t sure how we would be accepted by the folks in our neighborhood in downtown Summerville. Some of these families had been there for generations. What were they going to think of this gay, married couple arriving from San Francisco? Would we have to hide? Pretend? “Oh, you’re the Californians!” one neighbor remarked a few days after we moved in. Apparently, the word was already out.
What has been extraordinary for us has been the welcome we received. Especially on the nextdoor porch, where neighbors of all political stripes, different religious backgrounds – Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, None – have become real friends, by looking past our surface differences, and truly seeing each other. It’s been an experience full of grace. Brian, by the way, has written a beautiful piece about this on Substack. Look it up!
When I was beginning my discernment process, I started meeting with a spiritual director – as you’re required to do. Mine is our fellow parishioner John Hodgson. One of the first things John had me do was to complete the Enneagram questionnaire.
Some of you might be familiar with this system for assessing personality types. Will led a workshop on it a couple years ago.
When John asked me to complete the Enneagram I was hoping against hope that it would come up with a different result than when I had taken it a couple years earlier. It did not. Once again, I came up as a Three. The Achiever.
Sounds great, right? You achieve stuff. You get things done. Threes are often leaders. They’re often considered to be charismatic and well-liked. Terrific!
Except Threes are also prone to swapping real achievement for the appearance of achievement. Achievers are also deceivers. To us, actually getting something accomplished is no better than simply looking like you got something done. And we’re willing to cut corners, to fudge the numbers, to inflate our resumes to win that approval, and get the applause.
I felt deeply embarrassed when I confessed to John what the Enneagram had revealed. I felt shame. John quickly pointed out that all nine of the Enneagram types have their up sides and their down sides. It’s part of being human of course. And in that moment, on Zoom, with my spiritual director, I felt seen. And accepted for who am – the good and the bad. I felt loved. Readier to move forward with my discernment. It was a moment full of grace.
Jesus saw the hidden good in Nathanael. He saw the hidden pain in the woman at the well. He loved them both.
In this season of Lent, we are called upon to see ourselves as clearly as God sees us. We can’t hide anything from God, but we do try to hide things from ourselves. Lent calls us to see ourselves for who really are. The overlooked good of Nathanael. The pain and vulnerability of the woman. To see our achievements, and our deceptions. Lent calls us to see ourselves, and to know that we are truly seen, and truly loved, by God. So on Easter, we can exclaim with the woman, “Is this not the Messiah, the Savior of the World!”
Amen.