Recording of Sermon for Sunday, March 8, 2026

Yesterday was a good day at church, which was a relief, because my energy level was lower than usual, what with the time change and all the traveling I have been doing.  I've put a recording of my sermon here on my YouTube channel.  If you'd like to read along, this blog post has the sermon manuscript.

Sermon for Sunday, March 8, 2026

March 8, 2026

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



John 4:5-42


This week, we move from the shadows where we met Nicodemus, into the bright midday light where we meet the Samaritan woman at the well. This conversation with the Samaritan woman is the longest one that Jesus has—with anyone, across all of the Gospels. This encounter comes shortly after the one with Nicodemus, and taken together, they both point towards ways that people will react to Jesus.


Both Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman ask questions, and Jesus answers them, although not with a straight forward answer that they might have been expecting or hoping to hear. In both encounters, Jesus shows that he has an understanding of the questioner that is deeper than surface level. In both encounters, Jesus takes time out of his increasingly busy schedule to listen and to have a conversation—not a conversation where he’s hoping to win converts but a conversation that invites the listener to a deeper relationship.


On another level, these two people, Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, couldn’t be more different. Nicodemus is a man, a Pharisee, which means he has spent more time than the average man reading and studying the Law and the Prophets. Nicodemus has social status—he’s a leader of the Jews. The Samaritan woman comes to Jesus from a very different place.


For one thing, she’s a Samaritan, which means that she is part of a Jewish community that isn’t in conversation with the Jewish community of Nicodemus—in part because of geographical divisions, a split about the proper geographical place to worship God. We may hear the word Samaritan and attach it to the idea of the Good Samaritan, who stops and tends to the wounded traveler. People in the time of Jesus or the slightly later time of John’s Gospel would not have had these associations. Samaritans would have been seen as the outcast tribe of Judea that worshipped wrong and lived wrong because they embraced wrong beliefs.


Some have interpreted the fact that the Samaritan woman has had five husbands to mean that she’s a woman of looser morals than most. But there’s nothing in the text that asserts our modern claim. She would not have been allowed to divorce her husbands; it’s more likely that she has been a widow five times, which might soften our hearts towards her. It’s also possible that she’s been divorced a time or two or five, but again, this would have been done to her, not done by her.


Similarly, some interpreters have seen her appearance at the well at midday to mean that she’s so slutty that the women of the town have shunned her, and she has to come to the well by herself in the heat of the day. Women customarily came to the well at sunrise; they came in groups both for safety and for community. What is this Samaritan woman doing at the well all by herself? We might be tempted to jump to the conclusion that she’s an outcast many times over.


Scholar Laura Holmes cautions us about this traditional reading of the woman at the well, as a woman ostracized by her society. Look at the way the Gospel for today ends. The woman goes back to town and tells everyone what she’s experienced. If she was truly an outcast from her Samaritan society, no one would have given her the time of day. Instead, they listen to her and come out to verify for themselves. We’re told that many believed in him BECAUSE of her testimony. Once again, one of the earliest evangelists was female.


In last week’s Gospel, Nicodemus goes away puzzled. In today’s Gospel, the Samaritan woman also goes away puzzled. But instead of staying in the shadows, the way Nicodemus seems to, the Samaritan woman invites others to help her discern the truth. It’s a very Lutheran approach, isn’t it? In the end, they all have opened eyes and a deeper understanding.


They invite Jesus to stay with them, and he does, for two days. A better translation of the verb would be “abide.” We’ve seen this word before, and it means more than just to stay. It is more akin to making a home in a place—it’s a word that connotes settling in, getting grounded, creating and sharing community.


I assume that something similar happens to Nicodemus along the way, but we don’t see it in the same way that we do here, with a whole community doing the work of discipleship. Some come to believe in Jesus because of the testimony of the woman. Some may decide on the strength of their own encounter with Jesus, but it’s an encounter they wouldn’t have had without the woman at the well.


I assume that there are others in the Samaritan community who will be more like Nicodemus: hearing and questioning and remaining baffled as they go away. Will they come back? Has Jesus planted a seed that will lead to later flowering? We don’t know.


We also see the disciples in action. Here are men who have been with Jesus, and yet they still don’t understand. They have an encounter with Jesus that is similar to the encounters that Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman at the well have. They ask questions about reality as they understand it. Jesus answers questions that they don’t even know they have or can’t articulate yet. Jesus shows the same patience with the disciples that he shows with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. He understands that they are asking a different question, but he wants to show them a different way of perception. God is in their midst, and he wants to guide them to a deeper communion.


We see a similar dynamic today. Some will hear the words of Jesus and go away puzzled. Some will come back. Some will be curious. Some will be cautious. Some will witness to the whole community early on. It may take time for others. Some will live with Jesus for years at a time and still have questions.


The throughline is Jesus, who takes time to move the listener to a deeper understanding—an understanding of who Jesus is, and who the listener is in relationship to Jesus. Jesus offers living water, and like the Samaritan woman, we may be stuck on a literal level, wondering about how to get water with no dipper. It may take us time to realize that Jesus offers something much more profound.


Jesus is there, the drinking gourd, offering water for our parched souls. As he tells the disciples, he is the food that nourishes, the food we yearn for, even if we’re not always aware of our hunger.


When Jesus nourishes us and gives us living water, we can leave refreshed, replenished and renewed. We can go into the larger community, ready for the harvest that someone else began, generations of disciples before us, nourishing the earth, planting the seeds, watering the soil.

In a Week of Unraveling, the Sun Still Rises

It's been a week of hard news, a week of war and death and the world as we knew it unravelling.  I do realize my privilege in saying this.  For many parts of the world, that's just a regular week:  war and death and unravelling.

I've taken solace in the sunrise.  Part of it is the happy confluence of being able to get out for a walk in the last week before Daylight Savings Time starts.  Next week, it's back to walking in the dark if I want to get my walk done before my work day.

So this week, let me record these pictures from the high point of Lutheridge, the chapel and Dedication Altar.  Let me remember that God can transform every manner of gruesome death into new life.

The Seminarian Wins a Senate Primary

I am not the seminarian who won the primary--that would be James Talarico, who came to seminary with a wealth of education and experience: an M.Ed from Harvard, a stint with Teach for America, and time in state level politics.  News reports call him a seminarian, but he's earned the MDiv.  Maybe he's like me, an MDiv but still tasks to do before ordination.

I've done a bit of internet searching, and I can't tell what kind of Presbyterian church he's from, the more conservative branch or the more liberal one.  From his comments, it sounds like the more liberal one, but I did hear one commenter say that it wasn't the PCUSA branch, which I think is the most liberal.

I think of his candidacy committee.  Is the U.S. Senate a mission field?  Can he be ordained to serve the Senate?

If he wins the election, does his desire to be a minister change?  Is this something he'll do later?  The U.S. Senate doesn't seem like a bivocational fit.

Most of all, I am happy that someone with a gentler religious view can be a viable candidate.  We need more people with gentler views, but those of us with gentler views don't have the political scaffolding and resources that we would need.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, March 8, 2026:

First Reading: Exodus 17:1-7

Psalm: Psalm 95

Second Reading: Romans 5:1-11

Gospel: John 4:5-42

If you didn't read much of the Bible, you might assume that Samaritans are good people; after all, wasn't the only person who stopped to help the traveler who was assaulted and left for dead, wasn't that person a Samaritan?

Yes, and that's part of the point of the story that many of us miss. Church officials didn't stop to help. The only person who did stop to help was one of the lowest people in the social stratosphere.

Actually, today's Gospel introduces us to one lower, a Samaritan woman. We know that she has low status because she's a Samaritan and because she's coming to the well later in the day. It would have been the custom to come early in the morning to socialize, and the fact that she doesn't come then speaks volumes; she's an outcast among outcasts. She's a woman in a patriarchal society and part of a group (Samaritans) who have almost no social status. It would only be worse if she was a prostitute or a slave.

Yet, Jesus has a long conversation with her, the longest that he has with anyone recorded in the New Testament. Here, again this week, Jesus is in Mystic mode. She asks questions, and he gives her complex answers.

But unlike Nicodemus, she grasps his meaning immediately. And she believes. She goes back to her city and spreads the good news. And her fellow citizens believe her and follow her back to follow Jesus. Notice how she has gone from isolation to community.

Jesus preaches to them and seems to include them, complete outsiders, in his vision of the Kingdom. Hence the good news: Jesus came for us all.

In this Gospel, we see an essential vision of a messiah who will spend time with people who are completely outcast. We are never too lost for God. We don't have to improve ourselves to win salvation. God doesn't tell us that we'll win love if we just lose ten pounds or pray more often or work one more night in the soup kitchen or give away fifty more dollars a week to worthy charities.

Jesus doesn't send the Samaritan woman back to town until he's made a connection with her. He doesn't say, "Hey, if you're at a well at noon, you must be a real slut, if the women won't even let you come to the well with them in the morning. Mend your slutty ways, and maybe I'll let you be part of my vision for the Kingdom."

No, he spends time with her and that's how he wins her over. He knows that humans can't change themselves in the hopes of some kind of redemption; we can’t even lose 10 pounds in time for our class reunion, much less make the substantial changes that will take us into a healthier older age.

However, Jesus knows the path to true change; he knows that humans are more likely to change if they feel like God loves them and wants to be with them just the way they are. Jesus comes to say, “You’ve lived in the land of self-loathing long enough. Sit with me and talk about what matters.”

That treatment might be enough to motivate us to behave like we are the light of the world.

Recording of Sunday Sermon

Yesterday was a good day at Faith Lutheran:  a good Confirmation class, engaged worship, and a visit to a sick parishioner in the hospital afterward.  If you're not ready to let Sunday go, if you need a sermon that offers some hope of moving out of the shadows of fear and into the light of something new and redemptive, the sermon that I preached on Sunday morning is here on my YouTube channel. If you want to read along, here's the blog post where I put the manuscript.

Sermon for Sunday, March 1, 2026

March 1, 2026

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



John 3: 1-17

When I was much, much younger, there was a bumper sticker that I saw on many a car in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1970’s. It was bright yellow, and black letters simply said, “John 3: 16.” So of course, I looked up the Bible verse: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” As a child, I still didn’t understand why it was worthy of a bumper sticker. And as I’ve gotten older, and seen the verse move from bumper stickers to billboards to spray painted graffiti to tattoos on the bodies of sports professionals and others, I’m still perplexed.



Of all the Bible verses that people are likely to know by heart, this is one of them. Consequently, as with many a thing taken out of context, many people think they understand what the verse is saying, that this is all they need to know to be a Christian. However, when we look at the full text, we begin to see the larger implications, something that will never fit on the bumper of a car. But we need to know so much more than this one verse. Luther was not the first or the last to warn us of the folly of choosing just one verse and thinking that we understand the whole Bible based on our understanding of one small piece.


We get this Bible verse in the middle of a teaching. Nicodemus has come to Jesus. He’s a shadowy figure. We see Nicodemus here at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and we’ll see him at the end, when he buys burial spices for Jesus, many more times than is needed and of a very high quality.


I say that Nicodemus is shadowy in part because there’s a whole middle story of conversion that we don’t get, the middle in between today’s Gospel and Nicodemus at the end of the life of Jesus—what happens in the in between time? What happened to transform him from a man of many doubts and questions into that person who will spend a small fortune on burial spices? And does the act of buying burial spices signify that Nicodemus has come to understand what Jesus tries to teach him in today’s Gospel reading? Perhaps he is like Martha, who Christ tries to teach, who also had an in between time that we don’t witness, but we see a profound change from her first experience with Jesus to her later one, a change from someone who doesn’t understand Jesus to someone who is vital to the ministry. Those of us who work in the field of education in any way probably have this same hope for those lives we encounter, that hope for transformation to the better.


I also use the wordy shadowy because his behavior seems suspicious. Why does he come to Jesus at night? Traditionally, many readers, scholars and non-professionals alike, assume that Nicodemus comes at night because he doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s there. But there’s nothing explicit in the text to support that view. Nicodemus doesn’t explain his late appearance, and Jesus doesn’t ask or even seem surprised. Maybe it’s not the issue for them that we have been taught.


We’re told that Nicodemus is “a leader of the Jews.” Maybe he comes at night because he’s busy during the day, busy with leadership duties and commitments. Maybe it’s the only time the crowds go away, and he has his chance to ask his questions and have Jesus answer them without him having to wait his turn.


He asks his questions, and Jesus doesn’t dismiss him with bumper sticker sized slogans—here we see two men with very different life purposes and understandings of the world, but they take each other seriously, not dismissively or combatively. However in this encounter with Nicodemus, Jesus doesn’t explain what he means in a way that Nicodemus understands. He answers the questions of a mystified Nicodemus with more mysteries. (relatable modern example from teaching)


Those people who put John 3:16 on bumper stickers or other places—could they explain this mystical chunk of text that surrounds the verse? I doubt it. We’ve had thousands of years of scholars trying to puzzle out the mystic threads, and we don’t have agreement on what it means. For example, most people hear the term “eternal life,” and their minds leap to an afterlife of some sort, which would have been a fairly new concept at the time of Jesus, afterlife as a place that is pleasant or a reward. Bible scholars can and do spend many pages parsing out all the different ways we could interpret the phrase “eternal life.”


Maybe Jesus is just as confused with Nicodemus as Nicodemus is with Jesus—how can Nicodemus not understand? Isn’t he a leader of the Jews? It may be precisely because he’s a Pharisee that he doesn’t understand. He’s spent a lot of time with texts trying to parse out the answers to these questions, questions about eternal life, questions about signs that signify the presence of God, deep and meaningful questions about how to live a deep and meaningful life. But what he hears from Jesus is completely foreign and contradictory to his beliefs. Rather than dismiss it, Nicodemus continues to reflect on what he has heard.


I picture Nicodemus, his brain aching, his spirit weary from interacting with his fellow Pharisees, and he says, “Well, what about this new teacher? Let’s go and see what he says. Maybe he can give me the straight forward answer.” Jesus does not give the understandable answers that Nicodemus must have been hoping for. We, too, have an expectation of the type of explanation that will work with our learning style, whether that be emotional appeal, snarkiness, humor, or a clearly articulated and well reasoned argument.


We are probably more like Nicodemus than most of us want to acknowledge. Like Nicodemus, we have spent a goodly portion of our waking hours trying to figure out what the ancient texts tell us about how to live a good life. We have made some assumptions. We have felt the emotional power. We have appreciated wit and insults. We have drawn some conclusions. We might feel confused when we mix the ancient teaching with more current wisdom which often makes no more sense than the ancient wisdom. How we yearn for Jesus to sum it all up for us!


Many see John 3:16 as that summary, a verse containing the whole Gospel in one simple sentence. But the Bible is too complex to be summed up in one sentence. You may remember that I, too, fell into this trap in a recent children’s sermon when quoting from the famous rabbi who summed up the entire Bible standing on one foot, saying “Love God, Love neighbor.” Many people might tell us that all of Jesus’ ministry can be summed up in this one verse or that other verse. Again, that might be so, but it leaves out so much essential information. Like Nicodemus, we want more and hopefully want a fuller, more complex and meaningful understanding of this verse.


We have many centuries, too many centuries, of people offering this verse as a summary of what Christianity means and how we should respond. Want eternal life? Just believe in Jesus. The shadow side of this approach to this text is how it has often been interpreted: that everyone who doesn’t believe is headed to Hell.


In a text that is so difficult to understand with our heads and not our hearts, it’s fascinating to think about how this one verse, plucked out of context, has become the hammer with which we clobber any questions. No room for doubt here: believe or you don’t get eternal life. Note that this is not what is said here. Believe and receive is NOT equivalent to don’t believe and you won’t receive.


What if this verse is not a command, but an invitation?


In this passage, Jesus does not say that everyone who doesn’t believe in him does not get eternal life. But he does say that opening our hearts and minds to the new possibilities offered by Jesus will leave us open and ready for rebirth. It won’t be like a bumper sticker, all tidy and summed up by the fewest words possible. And it’s not all about what happens to us when we die. It’s not about judgment, but about wind blowing in mysterious ways. It’s about being open to a reconsideration of even the fundamentals of our beliefs with a pure and open curiosity.


The winds of the Spirit clearly blew through Nicodemus. We don’t know what happens in Nicodemus’ in between time, exactly, but by the end of the book of John, Nicodemus has left the shadows and lives in a different light. Jesus invites us, too, to move from the shadows of whatever scares or threatens us, whatever keeps our minds, spirits, and hearts closed to understanding others. Jesus invites us to move out of our heads and to act with our hearts.


When we move away from loyalty to a bumper sticker mentality to an open, genuinely curious desire to understand the hearts of others, and the heart of God, we can, like Martha and Nicodemus, be re-born to a new and more meaningful and more faithful understanding. Let us pray that we can more forward to this understanding in our in between times as well—as individuals, a community of faith, and in our world.