March 8, 2026 (Third Sunday of Lent) - Fr. Steve Moore

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The grace and peace of God our Father, the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

My daughter Miriam turns ten this week, and now you have to throw the obligatory children’s birthday party. And it has become the custom to play the game Pass the Parcel.

Now, this was not a game I was aware of as a child, and I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but the cartoon Bluey—which, if you have contact with little children, you know Bluey, because it’s a cartoon from Australia about two dogs. I won’t get into the whole thing—but there is an episode in which Pass the Parcel is a very important part of the story.

It’s a children’s game where you pass a parcel around to music, kind of like musical chairs, and whoever is left with the parcel gets to open it, and it is a gift. And there is some argument in the episode of Bluey about whether there should be little gifts for everybody or just one big gift.

Anyway, Pass the Parcel is now part of our tradition, where the parcel is passed, and you open it and you get a little gift, and then the last one gets a big gift. And it is a whole big thing.

And I was thinking about that because I was thinking about this Sunday and all the Sundays that we’ve been celebrating, and how we often pass the parcel, but we never unwrap it. We often look at these things in our faith, but we often don’t dive deeply in.

And this Sunday especially—and I think this beginning part of Lent invites us to go deeper—because it’s so easy to skim the surface. And often preachers do, because this is a difficult text in a way.

I mean, in some ways it’s wonderful. People love the story of the Samaritan woman. Here’s a woman of Samaria who meets Jesus. And Jesus invites her—early in John’s Gospel. He meets her at midday rather than Nicodemus at night.

But midday is complicated. Because why is she at a well in the middle of the day when women don’t go to the well? And there are all sorts of different details in this story, so intricately woven by John, which invite us into deeper meditation.

It’s impossible for me to go into it all, but I think that this Gospel can be an invitation to us as a congregation to think about where we are on the journey and what we’re invited to.

Now certainly we can look at the details and the differences in this story. We can look at the role of women. We can look at the role of outsiders. And we can think about all those things.

But as some Scripture scholars suggest, this story might not just be about one person. She’s not named—the Samaritan woman. And so it may very well represent many people, the people of Samaria, and the fact that Jesus is inviting people who are necessarily outsiders into relationship, into faith.

Now it’s important to do just a tiny bit of history.

So Samaria is part of what would have been the northern kingdom—part of Israel—that was conquered by the Assyrians and then taken away and then came back. And so these folks are relatives of the Jews, but considered kind of polluted, half-breeds—whatever kind of way you want to think about that.

And so they were especially hated because they were connected but had somehow sinned or turned away.

And so when the woman says, “Well, I’ve had five husbands, and the one now is not my husband,” and Jesus says, “You’re right about that,” it could be that she actually had five husbands. But it could very well be symbolizing that Samaria had turned away from the Lord, because that’s a theme in Scripture.

And so this interplay between the woman of Samaria and Jesus invites us to think deeply not just about a woman of Samaria, but about ourselves in relationship to our God.

Because so often we get close and we shy away. We get close to God, or we get invited into a different way of thinking or a different level of faith, and it can become scary for us.

Now we live in a complex time and a difficult time.

Just recently our country went to war. Although we’re not calling it a war—maybe we are, who knows? Now we’re at war in the Middle East. We’ve got Gaza. We’ve got Ukraine. It’s dizzying to pray the prayers for all the areas of the world that are in turmoil.

We forget that we recently took over the country of Venezuela.

It’s a really complex time on the global stage. And locally, many of us can’t talk to parts of our family because the disagreements and the distrust run so deep.

And we look at our world and our politics and our families and our churches, and we feel more disrupted than ever.

And yet, on this Sunday morning, we are invited to enter into this dialogue that the woman of Samaria has with Jesus.

And Jesus invites her to think and to experience living water.

“If you knew the gift that God was giving you, you would have asked me for living water.” You would not pass the parcel on. You would stay there.

And we should.

We are deceived if we believe that other generations have not been through similar things. Somehow we’ve grown up—or taken on this idea—that the United States, that our context, is different, and that somehow we are right and others are wrong, or what have you.

Whether it came out of World War II or the Cold War, I have no idea.

But the belief that we should live in a culture and in a time and in a place which reflects our values as Christians is simply not our reality.

And so we’ve got to stop deluding ourselves that we live in some sort of Christian country, or at least a country with ethical values that will hold up if we don’t speak up and we don’t live our lives in concert with the Gospel.

We have to let go of those notions that somehow everything will be all right and we don’t need to worry about it.

But the only way in which we can live with that deep conviction is to plug in—to recognize that God is working in us, and that we have the living water.

And that no matter what happens in our world and in our culture and in our country, we will continue.

We have the living water.

We have this faith which sustains us through it all.

And we know this because we are part of the communion of saints.

We know this because we are part of a tradition of a church where we have seen millions of others go before us in different times, in different places, and radiate God’s love in the world and bring about God’s kingdom.

These are difficult passages to enter into, but when we let fear or other factors get in the way of our relationship with God, then we are ultimately not living up to the values of the Gospel.

There’s a reason why it’s a woman of Samaria. A Samaritan. A woman.

“Why are you talking to her?”
“A woman, why are you approaching me?”
“A woman—a person of Samaria—for a bucket?”

Jesus breaks through all those barriers.

And so it is with our lives.

This is not just about our mixed-up world. We recognize that our hearts are also mixed up.

And oftentimes we put barriers to deep relationship with God and others—our own thoughts about ourselves as not being worthy or good enough. Our own anxieties and the ways in which we fall short or fall into thinking errors.

That it has to be this way in order to be perfect. Or I have to become this kind of person in order for God to love me.

And yet this passage—which talks about God breaking through to the most unlikely person—this woman of Samaria, who should not be the one that Jesus chooses and who is the most unlikely to come to faith, is the one who recognizes Jesus for who he is.

And it’s through that simple experience and that honest exchange where she is able to tell the townspeople, “He told me everything I’ve ever done,” and they also came to believe.

My dear friends, it is our task in this time, in this place, as the community of Grace Episcopal Church in Syracuse, New York, to also have this encounter.

To recognize that God’s love breaks through all of our barriers.

And when we trust in that, then we can live into the kingdom of God, which is our birthright.

This Sunday we recognize that in a particular way as we invite our elect, our candidate for baptism, forward, and we pray with and for her that God’s Spirit will continue to invite her more deeply in.

But part of the reason why this is done publicly is not just to hold up Jeanie and her decision. It’s also to remind us that this act of baptism, this mark that we all share, is part of our communal experience.

You and I are chosen daughters and sons of God.

That is a radical, enormous, incomprehensible reality.

And that kind of connection cannot be broken.

And we recognize that all the things that are threats to us, all those ways in which we feel like we have fallen short, all of those realities which seem to crowd in and lead us to despair or discouragement, are simply falsehoods.

Because we have the living water.

And symbolically and sacramentally we will pour the living water at Easter.

But we recognize that that symbol—that sacrament—that breaking open—is for each and every one of us a reminder of who we are and the gift that we have been given.

We only have to remember to open the package.