Isaiah 55.1-13
John 4.13-14
Good morning. On this Third
Sunday of Advent
we gather in a city facing
tension, division, and fear.
Saturday’s march in London made
claims to the Christian story
in ways that sought to speak
for British identity and national heritage,
and to create a certain
version of “our country”.
But for countless people: our neighbours,
our friends,
asylum‑seekers, migrants,
Jewish people, Muslims, people
of colour, and many more,
the echoes of fear still linger this morning.
I recognise that some who get
swept up in this rhetoric
are anxious about economic
insecurity, social fragmentation, and rapid change.
But the kind of rhetoric that marched in our streets yesterday
leaves others of us with a
range of emotions from despair to grief.
And so today our Advent waiting
does not feel distant or abstract.
It feels urgent.
The invitation of the prophet
remains as pressing and as beautiful now as then.
Isaiah says: “Come, all you
who are thirsty, come to the waters.”
And in John’s Gospel, Jesus
echoes that promise:
“If anyone drinks of
the water that I will give, they will never be thirsty.”
These words of universal
invitation come to us today not as escapist spirituality,
but as living hope, as
challenge,
as a call to courage,
compassion, justice and welcome.
This sermon is offered because
I believe our faith summons us
to a hope bigger than fear,
a hope rooted in God’s abundance, God’s word made flesh,
and God’s transforming
presence in the world.
The church should not take its
cues from extremist movements,
our starting point is always
the revelation of God in Jesus Christ,
made known to us through the
scriptures by the Spirit.
Our response should always be rooted in God’s vision of shalom.
And so I want to begin by returning
to the message of the prophet,
“Come, all you who are
thirsty, come to the waters.”
This invitation is radically
inclusive.
There is no small print. No
qualifications. No membership card.
The only admission requirement
to God’s kingdom is thirst.
When Isaiah spoke those words,
his hearers were people shaped
by exile, loss,
economic hardship, and displacement.
Scarcity was the condition of
their lives.
Houses destroyed. Dreams
shattered.
The world rearranged around
them.
Perhaps you know something of
that pain today.
Perhaps you feel it in your
own bones, or you see it in the lives of others;
friends living precariously, people longing for welcome,
those for whom “belonging”
feels like a distant promise.
The dominant voices around us,
in politics, on social media,
through banners or slogans,
often demand that we protect,
exclude, and guard what is “ours”.
That logic says: we have
limited resources.
We must decide who belongs and
who does not.
We must guard identity, defend
heritage, seal borders.
That logic does not seek to
heal. It seeks to preserve.
But the word of Isaiah says
something entirely different.
It declares abundance.
Water for the thirsty. Bread for the hungry.
Welcome for those who have no
money, no status, no place at the table.
This is not sentimentality.
This is counter-imperial
theology.
It is a subversive logic that
refuses scarcity as the final word.
And then Isaiah adds another
weighty claim.
God’s word, he says, like rain
and snow, does not return empty.
It accomplishes the purpose for which it was sent.
When God speaks, something
happens.
Life blossoms. Deserts bloom.
Drought ends.
That is a powerful claim in
ordinary times.
But it becomes urgent when our
world is torn
by narratives of fear,
hostility, and exclusion.
When hateful slogans are
chanted in the streets
and religious symbols are
misused to justify prejudice,
we must resist the temptation
to stay silent.
Because God’s word is not quiet
by default,
it moves. It challenges. It
renews.
In the Gospel of John we encounter
Jesus standing at a well.
An ordinary place. Not a
temple courtyard. Not a hall of power.
Just a dusty well where people
come for water.
And Jesus speaks to a foreign
woman there, and offers her living water.
Water that does not run dry.
Water that satisfies her
deepest thirst.
This living water that Jesus
speaks of is not reserved for insiders,
for those with certificates of
belonging.
It flows for everyone. For
those seen and unseen.
For those welcome, and those
pushed to the margins.
For those acclaimed by society,
and those disregarded.
This week we have seen
Christian identity
claimed by those who marched
under banners of exclusion.
Some worshipping twisted
slogans, and appeals to nationalism.
But the Gospel reminds us that the
water Jesus offers flows to all humanity,
regardless of passport, skin
colour, language, religion, or status.
If we follow Christ, we cannot
remain silent.
If we follow the One who
offers living water, we must speak truth.
We must act. We must welcome.
Isaiah’s invitation is not only
to drink and be satisfied;
it is a summons to discern how
we live in the world.
The prophet speaks to people
who have experienced exile, oppression,
and the arbitrary power of
rulers.
This is precisely the world
that can look familiar to us
in the wake of marches,
slogans, and fear-driven politics.
The thirst Isaiah calls us to
acknowledge
is not only our personal
longing for God’s comfort;
it is the thirst
of the city itself,
the thirst for justice, for
honesty, for dignity, and for mercy.
In a society where fear is
leveraged to divide communities,
where identity is weaponised
against neighbours,
and where power seeks to
intimidate the vulnerable,
God’s living water calls us to resist all forms of spiritual and social
dehydration.
Jesus offered this living water
at the well of Samaria,
as he reached across
boundaries of gender, ethnicity, and status.
He spoke to a woman whom society had marginalised
and whose community would have
preferred she remain invisible.
He did not ask her to qualify
for grace, to prove her worthiness,
or to demonstrate allegiance
to the powerful.
He simply invited her to drink,
to engage,
to experience the
transformation of God’s presence in her life.
In the same way, the church is
called to practice inclusion that is active, not passive.
To see, hear, and welcome
those whom others seek to
silence, exclude, or demean.
This active welcome is not
sentimental.
It is inherently political
because it challenges the logic of exclusion and scarcity.
In a world where fear drives
narratives
about “our city,”
“our people,” and “our country,”
the Christian response is to
insist that living water is for all.
That God’s provision does not
run out.
That grace, hospitality, and
solidarity are abundant,
not limited to the privileged
or the powerful.
When we make space for those
whom society would push to the margins,
we enact the kingdom’s logic
in tangible ways.
We resist the co-option of
religion for fear,
and we witness that love and
justice
are stronger than slogans or
intimidation.
We are called to drink deeply
ourselves, yes,
but also to become conduits of
that water for others.
To stand with those who feel
threatened, marginalised, or afraid.
To speak truth when the
powerful misrepresent faith to justify exclusion.
To intervene in subtle and
overt ways when injustice manifests,
whether through casual
prejudice, hostile policies,
or public demonstrations that
sow fear.
The living water Jesus offers
transforms us
so that we become bearers of
hope, dignity, and welcome.
It allows us to see beyond fear
and scarcity,
to recognise the God-given
worth of every person,
and to act courageously in
ways that promote peace and justice.
In this season of Advent, when
we await the Christ-child,
the challenge is clear: to
align our thirst with God’s purpose.
To let our longing for justice,
for healing, and for reconciliation
shape how we move through the
city,
how we engage with our
neighbours,
and how we make room at the
table for the stranger,
the outsider, and
the oppressed.
God’s invitation is radical,
countercultural, and transformative.
It demands that we confront
fear, reject the idolatry of exclusion,
and participate actively in
God’s mission of abundant life for all.
And so we come to the
simplicity, and the challenge, of the Nativity.
We sometimes sanitise this
story.
We place it in a cosy manger,
with warm lamps, sweet music, and
sentimental angels.
But that sanitised version is
not the Bible’s version.
The real story is raw.
The real story involves
displacement.
A pregnant mother and a fiancé
forced to travel
because the empire demanded a
census and control.
It’s
a story of hospitality and solidarity within the community,
not rejection by it.
A
story of vulnerability, of human fragility.
and ordinary people giving
care to those who are vulnerable
in the face of powerful forces
set to do them harm.
And in that story the powerful find
no place.
The empire claims control.
The census demands numbers.
The rulers tax and count.
But the Word becomes flesh not
in a palace,
not in a hall of power,
but in a borrowed room in a little town,
among people whose names never
make the headlines.
Oppression comes from empire,
with its census, displacement,
fear, militarised power, and Herod’s
violence.
But solidarity comes from
ordinary people making space in cramped conditions,
offering us a powerful counter-image
to the hostile rhetoric in public life today.
The
little child of God belongs to the poor,
to the refugees, the
outsiders, the marginalised.
The
Christ child belongs to every womb that trembles with uncertainty,
to every heart that wonders if
they belong,
to every human being whose
dignity has been questioned.
So
when we hear the Christmas story this year,
in the days after a march
claiming to recover “our heritage” and “our identity”,
let us remember who that baby
was, and who that baby still is.
Not
the symbol of empire.
Not the flag of a nation.
Not the banner of exclusion.
But
the sign of God’s belonging and God’s welcome.
The sign that God chooses the
vulnerable, the displaced,
the stranger, and the
outsider.
The sign that no human border, no human slogan,
no human barricade can contain
the love God pours out.
This is the theology of the
manger.
This is Advent hope.
And if this is true, then our
call is to live it.
Not only on Sundays.
Not only in sermons or hymns.
But in everyday life. In our streets. In our workplaces.
In our neighbourhoods. In our
city.
We are called to radical
hospitality.
To offer water and welcome to
those who thirst.
To offer dignity to those who have been denied it.
To stand with those who feel
threatened, marginalised, and afraid.
To make our church a sanctuary not just in name, but in practice.
This Advent, as every Advent,
Christ’s call to abundant
welcome becomes a political act.
Christ comes to our world as we open our doors, our hearts, and our resources.
As we challenge prejudice.
As we stand beside those the
world would rather ignore.
As we speak truth in public
spaces.
When we offer living water,
we are claiming that God’s
resources are not limited.
That love, justice, dignity,
belonging
are not scarcity goods to be
rationed.
They are abundant gifts. Gifts
poured out for all.
We might be a small
congregation.
We might have limited
resources.
But we are part of the church universal, the household of God,
where the feast is open, where
the table is large,
and where there is a place for
everyone.
We do not need to hoard. We do
not need to fence.
We do not need to fear the
outsider.
We only need to remember that the Word became flesh among the vulnerable.
That God’s welcome is wider
than any ethnic identity,
any nationality, any passport.
So this Advent, I invite you to
imagine differently.
To imagine a London
transformed,
not a closed city, not a city
of fear, suspicion and division.
But a city of living abundant water,
a city of welcome, a city of
belonging.
A city where the table is open,
where strangers become
neighbours,
where fear is met with courage,
where justice meets mercy,
and where love becomes action.
Imagine a city shaped not by
slogans of identity
but by hospitality,
solidarity, compassion,
justice, and dignity for every
person.
This Sunday, as we gather for
worship, liturgy, song, and prayer,
and as we celebrate the coming
of Jesus,
we affirm that God’s invitation still stands:
“Come, all you who are
thirsty.”
We do not wait passively.
We come. We listen.
We drink. We act. We welcome.
Because the living water Christ
offers is not for some.
It is for all.
Because God’s word will not
return empty.
Because the manger was never
meant for empires.
It was meant for the world.
May we, this congregation, this
city, this people, live into that promise.
Amen.
