Letter No 326, Monday, 19th May, 2025

My dear Friends,

Christ is Risen!

Here is the cermon on the Gospel portion for the third Sunday after Pascha : John 4:5–42.

There are certain moments in the Gospels that seem to shimmer with layered meaning, as though more than one conversation is taking place at once. The meeting of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well is one such moment: outwardly ordinary, inwardly extraordinary. A Jewish man and a Samaritan woman. A drink of water and a gift of eternal life. A request for hospitality and a revelation of divine intimacy.

It begins so simply. Jesus, tired from the journey, sits at the well. The midday sun is high; it is the hour when no one else would come. And yet she comes—this unnamed woman whose life, like so many, has carried the weight of repeated disappointment. Five husbands, and now another man. Whether we hear that as moral failure or merely social tragedy, we sense that she is weary too.

And then comes the voice:

“Give me a drink.”

It is a striking line. The one who made the waters, who hovered over the face of the deep, who turned water into wine, now thirsts. But he does not seize. He does not perform. He asks. He places himself beneath her generosity.

And in that moment, the whole economy of power begins to tilt.

This is not just a tired man at a well.

And she is not just a woman of poor choices.

Their conversation deepens. What begins as banter about wells and water becomes an exchange about truth and Spirit, about worship not tied to mountains or temples but to hearts that are awake. “The water I give,” he says, “becomes a spring inside, welling up to eternal life.” What is this water that bubbles up from within? What is this eternal life that begins now, not later?

She begins to see. Not everything is understood, but something is recognised. That is how all true spiritual awakenings begin—not with full comprehension, but with an unshakable sense of being known.

“You are right,” he says, when she speaks of having no husband.

And in naming her truth—not to shame, but to see—he sets her free.