Surprised by Jesus

Hearing what Jesus has to say to us

This morning, I had the privilege of preaching at St Ninian’s Church, Glenurquhart. The Gospel reading is one of the longest Gospel readings in the lectionary. The temptation to preach a sermon of a length to match it was strong, but it being Lent, I resisted!

This is the written version of it.

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The Third Sunday of Lent 2026

• Exodus 17:1-7

• Romans 5:1-11

• John 4:5-42

I have the privilege of being a member of the faculty of a theological college in Hong Kong, where I used to live before moving to the Highlands of Scotland. One of the courses I have taught in the past has been on St John’s Gospel.

Around the time of Covid, I thought I would also set myself the goal of preaching on every chapter of the Gospel and collecting the sermons into one document. At the moment, the document runs to over 400 pages. For one of the things you quickly discover teaching and preaching on St John’s Gospel is that you never exhaust what it has to say. St John writes at many different levels, and each level has something important to say to us.

St John’s Gospel will speak to you on a single reading and still speak to you after years of study. This is true of the Bible as a whole, of course, but it is especially true of St John’s Gospel. And our reading from St John’s Gospel this morning is especially true of the Gospel itself. There is so much that could be said about it. I will, then, begin by apologizing to you for all the things there isn’t time to say this morning and hope you will understand why I am going to limit myself to just three.

First of all, however, the story so far!

The Story So Far

After his encounter with Nicodemus, a Pharisee and one of the leading religious figures in Jerusalem, Jesus had gone into the Judean countryside, where he conducted a ministry in parallel with John the Baptist, with Jesus’ disciples baptizing people on Jesus’ behalf. St John tells us that John the Baptist had not yet been thrown into prison (John 3:24). St John is indicating that all this took place before what we read of Jesus’ ministry in the first three Gospels.

John the Baptist, for his part, knew that his ministry was coming to an end and that Jesus was taking over. The Pharisees, in the meantime, had heard how popular Jesus was becoming. They, in all likelihood, saw Jesus as a threat to political stability in a way that John the Baptist had not been. After all, Jesus had shown that he was not averse to using violence in furtherance of his aims (John 2:13-22). When, however, Jesus learned that the Pharisees were taking note of his success in attracting people to his movement, he decided to return to Galilee, probably seeing it as safer for him there.

This brings us to the time of this morning’s Gospel reading.

The route Jesus has chosen for his journey back to Galilee has taken him through Samaria. On the way, he and his disciples have come to a place with religious and historical significance called Sychar. This, St John tells us, was near a field that Jacob had given his son Joseph, and Jacob’s well was there. Leaving Jesus by the well to rest, the disciples have gone into Sychar to buy food.

St John writes that it is the sixth hour, that is, about midday. While Jesus is resting, unusually, a woman comes to draw water from the well. It is unusual because women normally came early in the morning to avoid the midday heat. It suggests that the Samaritan woman wants to avoid the other women. Jesus talks to her and engages her in the conversation that forms the basis for our Gospel reading.

What, then, are my three points?

1. Surprised by Jesus

Firstly, surprised by Jesus.

The woman is surprised that Jesus, a Jew, is talking to her, a Samaritan. As St John explains, Jews and Samaritans didn’t do that sort of thing. Jesus’ disciples, when they return from their shopping, are surprised to find him talking to a woman. Rabbis didn’t do that sort of thing, and they particularly didn’t do that sort of thing with that type of woman.

So, my first question this morning is, ‘Who would you be surprised to find Jesus talking to?’ In the past in the Church, we tended only to talk to people of a certain kind and class. To its credit, in recent years, the Church has made a determined attempt to be more inclusive in whom it talks to. It has sought to reach out to those on the margins of society who have previously been excluded and to become more welcoming, diverse, and inclusive.

At the risk of being excluded myself, I would say that, ironically, this has resulted in recent years in us only talking to people who share our own newly acquired inclusive outlook, that is, those whom we see as tolerant, liberal, and progressive. I suggest that we would be surprised today, for example, to see Jesus talking to people we considered intolerant, bigoted, and prejudiced.

We have again fallen into the trap of thinking that ‘talking to’ equals ‘approving of’. Jesus, however, was authentically inclusive. His approach was to talk to anyone.

This meant him talking to Nicodemus, who came to him at night, at a time probably so no one would see him, or to the woman at midday, at a time probably so no one would see her. He talked with the scribes and the Pharisees and with the tax collectors and prostitutes. Jesus still surprises us today by whom he is willing to talk to, and whom, therefore, he wants us to talk to and to share the Good News about him with.

We may not like, approve, or agree with those Jesus wants us to talk to, but whoever they are, Christ died for them. And that is as good a reason as any for why we should talk to them.

But here’s the thing: the most surprising person Jesus wants to talk to this morning is you. For it is all too easy for us to think that Jesus is interested in everyone else and not us. So, we can see him talking to certain people, perhaps to the clergy and those who are that way inclined, but not to us.

I’m here to tell you this morning that Jesus wants to talk to you, not in general terms, not in churchy language, but directly and personally to you.

So, what does he want to say?

2. Self-aware

Secondly, self-aware.

Whatever Jesus says will be personal to you. Don’t, however, expect it to be comfortable. He is not, for example, going to tell you that you’re wonderful, that you must love yourself, or that you can do anything, achieve anything, be anyone if you just believe in yourself.

If you want someone to say this sort of thing to you, there are plenty of people around who will oblige. No, Jesus is going to make you face up to the truth about yourself. ‘Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?’ he said to Nicodemus. ‘You have had five husbands and the man you are now living with is not your husband’, he said to the woman of Samaria.

After Jesus had spoken with her, the woman told people in her village, ‘Come and see a man who has told me everything about myself.’

Let me tell you about a hero of mine, St Catherine of Siena.

Catherine of Siena was born in Italy on March 25, 1347. She died of a stroke on April 29, 1380 at the age of just 33. Catherine was declared a saint in 1461 and a doctor of the Church in 1970, only the second woman out of a total of four to be given that honour. Those who know of her today tend to focus on her service with the poor, and it was certainly an important part of her life and work. However, everything St Catherine did and achieved - and she achieved much in her all too short life - came out of her relationship with God.

The key to St Catherine’s thought and teaching is something that God said directly to her. God said to her, ‘I am he who is; you are she who is not.’ In saying that she was ‘she who is not’, God didn’t mean that St Catherine was worthless to him, anything but. Rather God wanted St Catherine to appreciate that she could only know life and find fulfilment in him. Without God, not only could she do nothing, she literally was nothing.

We today don’t like the thought that we are not independent creatures but are instead utterly dependent on someone far greater than ourselves. As St Catherine realized, however, knowing she was ‘she who is not’ did not diminish her, but instead gave her the foundation for coming to a proper understanding of herself.

St Catherine urged people to dwell in the ‘cell of self-knowledge’. She is using the idea of a monk or nun withdrawing to a physical cell. She is urging us to withdraw inwardly and see ourselves as God sees us. There are, she says, two sides to this.

First, we are to see our weakness, failure, and inadequacy, but secondly, also to see that although we are nothing in and of ourselves, we are loved by God.

St Catherine teaches that we must keep both together. Only seeing ourselves as nothing can lead to despair, but only seeing ourselves as loved by God can give us a false sense of our own importance. We need to see ourselves as no-one in ourselves, but as someone who is loved by God.

3. Spirit-filled

Surprised by Jesus. Self-aware. Thirdly, Spirit-filled.

Seeing ourselves in this way opens us up to what God wants to do with us and in us. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that he is the One who gives ‘living water’. What did Jesus mean by ‘living water’? Clearly, it is an appropriate metaphor given that they are by the well and the woman is drawing still water. Jesus is someone who provides ‘running water’. But what is the meaning of the metaphor?

That Jesus satisfies? That Jesus gives the water of eternal life? Both are true, of course, but St John, I think, has something more specific in mind. He will tell us later what that is. In chapter seven, St John writes:

‘On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me, and let him who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”’ Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.’ (John 7:37-39, ESV)

The ‘living water’ is the gift of the Spirit. Jesus not only wants to give us the Holy Spirit, he wants to fill us with the Spirit. But to be filled, we must first be emptied, and that can be a painful experience.

We cannot be filled with the Spirit while we are full of ourselves.

John the Baptist said Jesus would be the One to baptize with the Holy Spirit (John 1:33). The first thing that Jesus does after the resurrection is to breathe on the disciples and tell them to receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). During his ministry, Jesus has been preparing them for this. Nicodemus has been told he must be born of water and the Spirit (John 3:5). The teaching that Jesus gave in the Upper Room during the Last Supper was all about this gift of the Spirit. Jesus told the disciples that the Holy Spirit was with them but would be in them (John 14:17). Jesus even said to them that it was good he was leaving them, for then he would send the Holy Spirit to be with them forever (John 16:7; 14:16).

St Paul writes, in our second reading this morning, that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us (Romans 5:5). It is the Holy Spirit that makes it possible for us to have a relationship with God, through Christ, and it is the Holy Spirit that makes it possible for us to serve him in the world.

Jesus said to the Samaritan woman that if she knew the gift of God and who it was who was talking to her, she would have asked him, and he would have given her the ‘living water’. This morning, Jesus wants to give us the gift of the Spirit.

All we have to do is ask.

Amen.