This is one of the truths the gospel keeps revealing. The places we think of as wilderness—the places of isolation, uncertainty, or shame—are often the very places where God meets us most honestly.
March 8, 2026 (Lent 3A; John 4:7-29, Kildonan Community Church)
There are seasons in life when we find ourselves somewhere in between. Times of expectation for a new job, a new child or a new address. They can also be something heavier like waiting for the results of a medical test or yearning for a change in your life circumstances. Not quite where we were. Not yet where we thought we would be or where we hope to one day be. We call these seasons “liminal.” Liminal seasons can feel like standing at a threshold—between old identities and new ones, between certainty and questions, between exhaustion and hope. As I read scripture, I have begun to understand these liminal seasons more and more as a kind of wilderness.
The wilderness is a common image in scripture mostly because of the geography of the area in which the stories emerge. But the wilderness can take many forms. It can look like loneliness. It can feel like shame or uncertainty. It can be the quiet realization that the life you imagined has not unfolded the way you expected.
If the pandemic taught us anything, it was that liminal seasons are not particularly comfortable.
Even now, as we look at the political realities of the world around us and we yearn for a day when the headlines are not so full of disruption and chaos, we can recognize that it still feels like we are living in a kind of in-between time.
Most of us, when we find ourselves in those places, want to move through them quickly. We want answers. We want resolution. We want the wilderness to end and things to go back the way they were.
But during Lent, we have an opportunity to slow down and notice something different. This year as I’ve been reflecting on the gospel stories, I’ve been particularly struck by how often it is precisely in these in-between spaces—the places that feel uncertain or uncomfortable—that God shows up. A few weeks ago we read about Jesus in the wilderness, where the Word of God gave him the confidence to deflect the temptations of the devil. Last week we heard about Nicodemus visiting Jesus in the wilderness of his questions and uncertainties, and Jesus reminding him about the abundant love of God that is for the whole world.
Today we hear about the encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at a well.
The story begins in the middle of an ordinary day. A woman walks to the well to draw water. In that culture, drawing water was often a communal activity. Women typically went together in the cool of the morning or the evening. The well was a place of conversation, connection, shared life.
But this woman comes alone.
Whether by choice or by circumstance, we can assume that she is living on the edges of her community. She is in the space between belonging and isolation, perhaps between the life she once imagined, and the reality of how things have unfolded. And it is there, in that tension, that Jesus engages her in conversation.
Jesus is traveling through Samaria, a region that most Jews of his time would have avoided entirely. There was a long history of tension and distrust between Jews and Samaritans. Yet Jesus stops there. He sits down by the well, tired from the journey. When the woman arrives, he asks her for a drink. At first glance, that may not sound extraordinary. But in the context of the story, it breaks several social expectations all at once.
A Jewish man speaking to a Samaritan woman. A rabbi engaging someone from outside his religious community. A stranger initiating conversation across cultural and gender boundaries.
The woman immediately notices the tension. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” It’s a question that acknowledges the invisible lines people had drawn between them.
But Jesus doesn’t retreat from the awkwardness or the complexity of the moment. Instead, he opens the door to something deeper. “If you knew the gift of God,” he says, “and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
At first the woman takes his words literally. “Where do you get that living water?” she asks. But slowly the conversation begins to shift. Jesus speaks of a kind of water that satisfies a deeper thirst.
“Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman hears something in those words that resonates with her own life. “Sir,” she says, “give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
And that’s when things get interesting. Jesus asks her to go call her husband. The woman replies simply, “I have no husband.” And Jesus responds with words that reveal he sees her story clearly. “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.”
It would be easy to hear Jesus’ statement as exposure or judgment. But for some reason the woman does not run away. She does not shut down the conversation. Instead, she stays.
Because I wonder if what she experiences in that moment is not condemnation. It is recognition. She realizes she is speaking with someone who sees her fully—her past, her present, the complexity of her life—and does not turn away. For many of us, trusting someone with our complicated story is scary and vulnerable. It seems funny to say, but it can be uncomfortable to be fully known. But in this encounter, being known becomes the doorway to something new.
As the conversation continues, the woman begins to ask deeper questions. They talk about worship, about history, about the hope of the Messiah. And then Jesus says something extraordinary. “I am he.”
It is one of the clearest moments of self-revelation in the gospel, connecting this story to the other “I am” statements in John. The woman who came to the well alone—perhaps expecting nothing more than another quiet trip for water—finds herself in the presence of the one she has been waiting for without even realizing it. And something shifts inside her. She leaves her water jar behind. She returns to the town she had likely been avoiding. And she begins telling people what has happened.
“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”
The woman who arrived at the well carrying the weight of her story leaves as a witness. Not because her circumstances have changed. But because her identity has.
She has encountered a love that sees her fully and still invites her into the story of God’s work.
This is one of the truths the gospel keeps revealing. The places we think of as wilderness—the places of isolation, uncertainty, or shame—are often the very places where God meets us most honestly.
The woman’s life had not been easy. Her story carried layers of complexity we can only begin to imagine. And yet it is precisely there, in the middle of that story, that Jesus meets her.
Not after she fixes her life. Not once everything is sorted out. But in the middle of it. Her in-between space becomes a place of encounter. Her wilderness becomes a place of transformation.
In the coming weeks of Lent, the gospel will continue to tell stories like this.
We hear about the man who has been blind since birth and the story of Lazarus. And then we go to the cross, where Jesus himself wonders if he will have to navigate his wilderness experience alone.
Each of these stories describes a different kind of liminal experience. But in each one, God meets people exactly where they are in a way that changes how they understand themselves, their lives, and the love that God has for the world.
So the invitation for us this Lent is to pause for a while at the well. To notice the places in our own lives that feel like wilderness. But also to notice those who are seeking the nourishment of living water from a place of isolation and discouragement. To listen to tlhose who are in their own liminal season and are thirsting for something deeper. Perhaps this story can remind us to create safe spaces to put words to those places where we feel uncertain, unseen, or still waiting for something to change. Perhaps we are being invited to wonder what might happen if those places are not signs that God is absent. What if they are the very places where Christ is already sitting, waiting to begin a conversation? What if we, as the physical presence of Christ in the world, are being invited into those wilderness spaces with a message of hope and restoration for others?
Because the story of the woman at the well reminds us of something that is easy to forget. Jesus meets us in our wilderness spaces. He knows our stories of disappointment and despair. And there, in the middle of the in-between, He reminds us that He is the living water that will never run dry.
Benediction:
As you go from this place,
remember that the wilderness is not empty ground.
It is the place where Christ meets us,
where our stories are known,
and where living water begins to flow.
So go into the world with courage.
Go trusting that the God who meets us at the well
will also meet us on the road,
in our questions,
and even at the edge of the tomb.
And may the grace of Christ,
the love of God,
and the life-giving presence of the Spirit
go with you now and always.
Amen.