Fresh Encounters Series

Third Sunday in Lent

March 8, 2026

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church

John 4:5-26

Fresh Encounters

A story is told about a pastor meeting with a contractor about installing air conditioning for the church. The man asked the pastor a number of questions about seating capacity, square footage, ceiling heights, usual attendance, etc., while he took notes. Then he crumpled up the paper and started over.

“What’s wrong?” asked the pastor. “I was figuring to a theater instead of a church,” replied the contractor. The pastor questioned him, “What’s the difference? Wouldn’t they be the same?” “No, not really,” answered the contractor.

“In a theater, with the sound and all that’s on the screen, there are biological changes that take place: heart rate is elevated, blood pressure increases, and body temperatures begin to climb. In other words, there is a greater need for cooling when people get excited. On the other hand, in the church…”

Without even realizing it, this contractor portrayed a common view of worship. It is widely believed that nothing exciting ever happens when people worship. Nothing that would elevate anyone’s heart rate, increase blood pressure or body temperature.

On the whole, we have to admit that most Sundays fit this description. [Illustration from Chris Genders, “Feature Presentation” sermon, SermonCentral.com]

But, what if we came here on a Sunday morning prepared for a fresh encounter with God? We prayed for it. We prepared our hearts and minds for it. We hear the Scriptures read and preached with a mindset that there is something new and life-changing in them for us. We come to church prepared to sing the hymns with our hearts and minds fully engaged, desiring to reach God through the music that we offer to Him.

Is it possible to have the level of engagement in our worship that elevates heart rates, and increases blood pressure and body temperatures? Or is that just for Pentecostals, Charismatics, and some other evangelicals?

What biological changes to you think were occuring inside the Samaritan woman at the well when she met Jesus Christ?

vv. 5-6 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

At the beginning of the chapter, John says that Jesus left Judea to go to Galilee, and “he had to pass through Samaria” (v. 4). Through Samaria was the most direct route, and on that route, Jesus comes to Sychar. Jerome, a priest who died in 420 AD and whose greatest work was his translation of the Bible into Latin, what we know at the Vulgate, identified Sychar as Shechem, as did a Syriac manuscript of the Gospel of John. Shechem in only 250 feet from Jacob’s well.

Jesus is tired from his travel, so He sits by the well. It’s about noon.

vv. 7-9 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

Jews and Samaritans did not mix for a variety of reasons. One reason was that Samaritans had married non-Jews and this was offensive to Jews. Second, Samaritans refused to worship in Jerusalem. Jews and Samaritans were bitter enemies.

In the second century B.C., the Samaritans collaborated with the Syrians against Israel. In 128 B.C., the Jewish high priest had the Samaritan temple of Mount Gerizim burned. Given this background, is it any wonder that the Samaritan woman was surprised that Jesus would speak to her?

v. 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, 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.”

Living water is flowing water from a stream or river, but obvious to us, Jesus meant much more.

vv. 4:11-12 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

While the Samaritan woman isn’t grasping His real meaning, she does think that Jesus is implying that He is greater than the great patriarch Jacob.

vv. 13-14 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”