A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
1 February 2026
John 4.1–42
If you wanted to design a scene
that disrupted every
expectation of how religious life is supposed to work,
you could do worse than John
chapter 4.
A Jewish man speaks publicly
with a Samaritan woman.
A rabbi asks to receive, not
to give.
A woman with no recognised authority
becomes the first evangelist
to her community.
A conversation begins with water
and ends with transformed
relationships.
And all of this takes place not
in a synagogue, not in Jerusalem,
not on a mountain charged with
holiness, but beside a well.
An ordinary place. A necessary place.
A place people go because they
need to survive.
John’s gospel, more than any
other, invites us to slow down and linger.
This is not a story that can
be rushed.
It unfolds in layers, with misunderstandings, interruptions, silences,
and moments where what matters
most is not what is said,
but who stays present to whom.
At Bloomsbury, we are used to
complexity.
We are used to faith that does
not come neatly packaged,
to lives that do not conform
to religious scripts,
to questions that remain open
longer than some traditions find comfortable.
And this story, I think, speaks precisely into that space.
Because this is not a story
about getting it right.
It is not a story about
repentance before welcome.
It is not a story about moral
reform as the price of encounter.
Rather, it is a story about
what happens
when Jesus meets someone where
they actually are,
and what that encounter sets
in motion.
Crossing the wrong
boundaries
John tells us that Jesus “had
to go through Samaria”.
That line can sound
deceptively neutral,
as though it were simply the
shortest route.
But every first-century
listener would know
that this is not
straightforward geography.
Many Jews avoided Samaria
entirely,
even if it meant a longer and
more difficult journey.
Samaria was a contested place,
marked by ethnic hostility,
theological dispute, and historical trauma.
Jews and Samaritans shared scriptures but not interpretations.
They shared ancestry but not
trust.
They shared land but not table
fellowship.
So when John says that Jesus
“had to go through Samaria”,
we are already being alerted
that necessity here is not about convenience.
It is about vocation.
Jesus stops at Jacob’s well, a
site heavy with ancestral memory.
Wells in scripture are places
where stories turn.
They are sites of betrothal,
revelation, and unexpected meeting.
Think of Rebecca, Rachel, Zipporah.
Wells are places where
survival and relationship meet.
Jesus is tired. John makes a
point of telling us that.
And this isn’t incidental.
The Word made flesh doesn’t float above the body.
He is thirsty. He needs water.
He sits.
And then comes the encounter
that should not happen.
A Samaritan woman comes to draw
water,
and Jesus asks her for a
drink.
The request itself is already
transgressive.
Jewish purity codes, ethnic
hostility, and gender conventions
all say that this interaction
is inappropriate.
But John doesn’t treat this as a dramatic shock moment.
He allows it to unfold with
almost quiet insistence.
Jesus does not open with
theology.
He doesn’t begin with
judgement.
He begins with vulnerability.
“Give me a drink.” He says to her.
The one through whom all things
came into being
asks to receive something from
someone
whose society tells her she
should not even be addressed.
This is where the story begins,
and this is where we need to
linger.
Because Christian faith has
often been framed as something we dispense,
rather than something we
receive.
As certainty we offer,
rather than encounter we risk.
As answers we possess,
rather than thirst we
acknowledge.
But here, Jesus begins not with
authority, but with need.
Misunderstanding as
invitation
The conversation that follows
is full of misunderstanding.
Jesus speaks of living water,
and the woman
hears a promise of running water.
Jesus speaks symbolically,
and she responds
practically.
This pattern recurs throughout
John’s gospel.
Nicodemus misunderstands being
born from above.
The crowds misunderstand the
bread of life.
Martha misunderstands
resurrection.
John is not mocking these misunderstandings.
Rather, he uses them as
doorways.
Misunderstanding is not
failure.
It is often the first step of
engagement.
The Samaritan woman is not slow
or obtuse.
She is sharp, perceptive, and
quick to respond.
She notices the boundary crossing.
“How is it that you, a Jew,
ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?” she says.
She names what is usually left
unspoken.
And Jesus doesn’t correct her.
He doesn’t deny the reality of the boundary.
He simply steps across it.
When Jesus speaks of living
water,
he’s not offering a spiritual
upgrade.
He’s not dismissing her
material need.
Rather, he is speaking of a different kind of life,
a life that doesn’t run dry,
a life that isn’t dependent on
constant return to the same sources
that never quite
satisfy.
In John’s gospel, eternal life
is not a future reward.
It is a present quality of
life rooted in relationship with God.
It is life lived in the light, life that flows,
life that doesn’t need to be
hoarded.
And this is important,
because the woman’s life
has clearly required careful
management of resources.
Water must be drawn daily.
Relationships have been
complex.
Security hasn’t been guaranteed.
One detail in this story that
is easy to pass over too quickly is the time of day.
John tells us that it is about
noon, the hottest part of the day.
Preachers have often used this
to suggest
that the woman comes to the
well at an unusual hour to avoid other people,
implying shame or social
exclusion.
But once again, the text doesn’t
require that conclusion.
What it does insist upon is
the exposure of the moment.
This isn’t a conversation that
takes place under cover of darkness,
like Nicodemus’ visit earlier
in the gospel.
This isn’t a private, protected, night-time exchange
where questions can be asked
without being seen.
This encounter happens in full
light,
when the sun is high and
shadows are short.
Nothing is hidden here.
Nothing is softened by
anonymity.
John is careful with such
details,
and here the contrast matters.
Nicodemus, a respected male
religious leader, came to Jesus by night.
This unnamed Samaritan woman,
without status or protection,
meets Jesus in the full glare
of day.
If John is inviting comparison,
then the implication is unsettling.
Those with social power often
seek the safety of darkness,
while those without it conduct
their lives in full visibility.
And yet, it is in the
brightness of noon
that recognition and
transformation take place.
The living water Jesus offers
is not something dispensed in secret.
It isn’t reserved for those
who can manage their reputation.
Rather, it’s given in the open, where life is actually lived.
For a church like ours, this
matters.
Much harm has been done by
forms of faith that operate in shadows,
that demand secrecy, denial,
or silence in order to belong.
This story insists that
encounter with God doesn’t require concealment.
It happens in the light, with
lives as they really are.
Living water is not about
escape from exposure,
but about sustaining life
within it.
It is the gift of being able to stand in the open,
known and unhidden,
and still discover that God is
present there.
And so we return to the woman,
and we find that Jesus doesn’t
romanticise her situation.
But neither does he reduce her to it.
“Go, call your husband”, he
says
Few lines in scripture have
generated as much damage as this one.
“Go, call your husband, and come back.”
So often this moment has been
treated as a dramatic unmasking,
a revelation of hidden sin,
a turning point where the
woman’s moral failure is exposed.
And as I have preached before,
the text simply does not
support that reading.
There is no accusation.
There is no call to
repentance.
There is no offer of
forgiveness.
What there is, is recognition.
Jesus acknowledges the reality
of her life without commentary.
He names it accurately,
without judgement or rescue.
And the woman doesn’t collapse in shame.
She doesn’t apologise. She
doesn’t defend herself.
She simply recognises that she
has been seen.
“He told me everything I have
ever done.”
Not everything she has ever
done wrong.
But everything she has ever
done.
In a world where women’s lives
were often rendered invisible
unless they transgressed,
to be fully seen was itself transformative.
We don’t know the story behind
her marriages, and we don’t need to.
The gospel isn’t interested in
satisfying our curiosity.
Rather it’s interested in showing us what it looks like
when someone’s whole life is
acknowledged
as the context for encounter
with God.
This isn’t a story about moral
correction.
It’s a story about relational
truth.
And that matters deeply in a
church context,
because too many people have
been taught
that they must explain,
justify, or repair themselves
before they are eligible for
divine encounter.
But this story says otherwise.
Worship beyond the right
place
The conversation shifts, as
conversations often do
when something vulnerable has
been named.
The woman raises a theological
question about worship.
Which mountain is the right
one?
This isn’t deflection. It’s
discernment.
She is testing whether this
encounter can hold the weight of real difference.
Jesus’ response is one of the
most radical statements in the gospel.
Worship is no longer anchored
to geography.
It’s no longer confined to
sacred sites.
Rather, it is re-located in
relationship.
God is not accessed through the
correct location,
but through truth and spirit.
And truth here is not doctrinal
precision.
It is openness. It is
alignment.
It is life lived without
duplicity.
This is not an argument against
tradition or embodied practice.
It is a refusal to allow any
system to monopolise access to God.
And for a congregation like
Bloomsbury,
rooted in a tradition that has
always questioned established power,
this matters.
It reminds us that God is not contained by our structures,
even the ones we cherish.
The Spirit blows where it will.
Grace refuses to stay put.
And encounter happens in places we didn’t plan.
The interruption of
discipleship
And then, just as the
conversation reaches its depth,
the disciples return. And
their reaction is telling.
They are astonished that Jesus
is speaking with a woman.
But they don’t say anything.
John often uses silence as
commentary.
And their silence reveals
discomfort.
They don’t yet have the language for what they are witnessing.
The woman, meanwhile, leaves
her water jar and goes back to the city.
This detail is easy to
overlook, but it’s significant.
She leaves behind the very
thing she came for.
Not because water no longer matters,
but because something else has
claimed her attention.
She becomes a witness, not
because she has everything figured out,
but because she has
encountered something she cannot keep to herself.
“Come and see a man who told me
everything I have ever done.
He cannot be the Messiah, can
he?”
Her testimony is tentative. It
is invitational.
It leaves room for others to
discover for themselves.
This is not evangelism as
persuasion.
It is evangelism as overflow.
The woman’s witness contrasts
with the disciples’ misunderstanding.
While they are concerned with
food and status,
she is attentive to
transformation.
She becomes the bridge through
which her community encounters Jesus.
Abundance redefined
When the Samaritans come to
Jesus,
they ask him to stay. And he
does. For two days.
This is remarkable.
Jesus doesn’t rush on.
He doesn’t treat Samaria as a brief stopover.
Rather he stays in a place
that religious convention told him to avoid.
And many come to believe,
not because of the woman’s
testimony alone,
but because of their own
encounter with Jesus.
This is how faith spreads in
John’s gospel.
Not through coercion, not
through argument,
but through relationship.
The story ends with a
declaration that Jesus is the Saviour of the world.
Not the saviour of the
righteous.
Not the saviour of those who
get it right.
But the saviour of the world.
And that is a profoundly
political claim.
It relativises every boundary,
every hierarchy,
every claim to exclusive
access.
It says that no one’s life is
outside the scope of divine concern.
It says that no one’s story is
too complex for encounter.
It says that abundant life begins not in the future, but here.
Living water today
So what does this story ask of
us?
It asks whether we are willing
to meet people where they actually are,
rather than where we think
they should be.
It asks whether we can allow
misunderstanding to be part of the journey,
rather than a reason to
withdraw.
It asks whether we trust that
God is already at work
beyond our boundaries.
And perhaps most searchingly,
it asks whether we are willing
to recognise our own thirst.
Because this is not just a
story about the Samaritan woman.
It is a story about Jesus,
tired and thirsty, sitting at a well.
It is a story about a God who
does not wait for us to get it right,
but meets us in the heat of
the day,
in the ordinary places of
survival, and offers life that flows.
Life that does not depend on
constant self-justification.
Life that is not exhausted by
complexity.
Life that is sustained by relationship.
And that, surely, is good news
worth sharing.
Not as certainty.
Not as control.
But as an invitation.
As the woman says, “Come and
see.”
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