The Adventurous Lectionary -The Third Sunday in Lent – March 8, 2026
Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11;. John 4:1-42
There is a tradition of banning the word, “Hallelujah,” during Lent. Lent is perceived, should be a time of confession, self-examination, sacrifice, and repentance for our evil ways, materialism, and ego. A time of lamentation in which we need to emphasize the realities of sin and mortality. And, yet we practice Lenten lamentation because of the Easter celebration. Even in the wilderness there is living water and even in sin there is grace. We hold our lamentation and praise in tension, because despite the confessional spirit of Lent, there is the living water of “Hallelujah,” pointing to the goodness, bounty, and joy of life.
NO LENT CANCEL CULTURE. As a cradle Baptist, I have never fully bought into the Lent cancel culture. I do practice a Lenten discipline, and prune away some of the cumber that stifles my experience of God. But, as a farmer once told me, we prune our trees so that the light flows in!
I believe that repentance and confession cannot occur in a bleak world with a bleak and judgmental God. Rather, we confess only if we believe forgiveness and transformation are possible, and that God is loving, bountiful, and forgiving. The point of Lenten simplicity and sacrifice is not ultimately mortification, but authenticity and experiencing God’s abundant life and blessing. So, in that spirit, I say “Hallelujah” or “Alleluia.” Our Alleluias are about God’s grace and bounty and not our ego or acquisitiveness.
Hallelujah is the spirit of Psalm 95, which sets the stage for this week’s readings. Make a joyful noise to the God of our salvation. Praise God for God’s abundant blessing. Recognizing the bleak and wintry spirit of life, the Psalmist delights in the contrast of joy, gratitude, and trust that also characterize the Psalmist’s relationship with God. In addition to lament and confession, singing praise for all that God is and what God has done is at the heart of a holistic faith. Divine providence is at work in the micro and the macro, in the human and non-human worlds. God’s providential love inspires both confession and celebration. In the spirit of Psalm 150, we can affirm that God breathes through all things and that humans and non-humans praise God as they fulfill their appropriate vocations in their own particular context. God’s ubiquitous creativity and wisdom remind us that despite the imperfections of life, we are always Home.
DIVINE DELIVERENCE. In the reading from Exodus, the Israelites temporarily forget God’s miraculous deliverance from Egyptian bondage. They long for security, and doubt God’s providence. Despite their infidelity, God provides. Moses strikes a rock from which the waters of life flow. Regardless of what we do, God is faithful and will provide a way where there is no way. “All they have needed, God has provided,” but they just don’t know it. The water was already there, just waiting for their transformed perception, and trust in their liberator.
This is a message for Christians today as we find ourselves in a wilderness of political conflict, rising racism, and denial of medical and environmental science. We are worried about the future of our congregations, not only numerically but in terms of threats from the current administration. In this challenging time, we need to train our eyes to recognize God’s presence. We need to follow God’s way one moment at a time, trusting that despite the naysayers, God makes a way where we perceive no way. We need to strike the rock of faith and let God’s living waters flow to nourish us, our congregations, the nation, and the planet.
UNIVERSAL GRACE. Romans 5 describes the priority and ubiquity of grace. We can live confidently – even in our suffering – because of God’s prevenient grace. God’s grace overcomes our sin, delivers us from fear, and provides a way forward in an ambiguous world. This grace applies to everyone – friend and foe, Jew and Gentile, Christian and Muslim, American and Iranian. Like the children of Israel, we are encircled by grace. The challenge is our forgetfulness of all that God has done and is doing for us.
The apostle is aware of the reality of sin and alienation. The sin of Adam – the imperfection and waywardness of life – is ubiquitous and shapes everything we do. Without affirming original sin, or abandoning the original goodness of life, the realities of personal and political waywardness shape our personal and political lives.
But, grace is always greater than our sin, and with grace, we can begin again. We can’t escape life’s ambiguities and imperfections, but we don’t need to be dominated by them. God’s power to save is all-encompassing and by comparison, sin’s impact is finite and temporary. Grace abounds. Before we can do anything to earn our salvation, God’s grace saves us. Christ dies for us, redeeming our brokenness and giving us the power and energy to begin again. This is true in a time when we have gone astray and our waywardness threatens the planet, future generations, and the soul and survival of the nation. We are born into loving arms and will be received into loving arms at the moment of our death.
LIVING WATER. The encounter of Jesus with the woman at the well is best suited for a readers’ theatre, liturgical dance, or biblical storytelling. Its length makes it challenging for preacher and congregation alike. Still, the message is powerful. First, Jesus breaks down the barriers that imprison persons and communities – he breaks down the barriers of sex, ethnicity, ethics, marital status, and religion. Grace is positively insidious in its challenge of our prejudice and privilege. Moreover, grace overcomes our ethical and religious distinctions of clean and unclean, pure and impure, and in and out. The woman at the well could just as easily be seen as transgendered, lesbian, an undocumented immigrant, as a person “living in sin.” Someone at the outskirts of their community.
God’s Spirit cannot be localized. The Spirit goes where it will – it can’t be encompassed by religious orthodoxy, ritual, nationality, or ethical qualification. God’s Transforming Spirit heals and cleanses without regard to human convention. We can’t wall the Spirit in or out. It is not our possession or ours to control. God’s living waters are for all. There is no outside to God’s love nor should be an outside to ours.
The woman at the well rightly wants living waters. She wants something that cannot be taken from her. She wants the refreshment that only Divine Providence can give. This is also what we desire. We want the constancy of divine refreshment to quench our own spiritual thirsts and restore us to wholeness. Jesus is here, the waters are here, grace abounds.
Today’s scriptures center on what God has done and still can do for us. God delivers us from bondage, refreshes our spirits, quenches our thirst, forgives our sins, and enables us to face suffering. The theocentric nature of these passages challenges us to inclusive spirituality and ethics. The ubiquity of grace challenges us to be graceful; the priority of grace invites us to be hospitable; the undeserved nature of grace inspires us to forgiveness and boundary breaking for faith.
Let us drink deeply God’s living waters and share our waters with everyone without judgment. Let our congregations become fountains of love and oases of comfort for all who are thirsty – let them come!
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Bruce Epperly is Theologian in Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Bethesda, MD and a professor in theology and spirituality at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC. He is the author of over eighty books, including Jesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet; Creation Sings: Forty Days of Spiritual Wisdom from the Non-Human World; Messy Incarnation: Meditations on Christ in Process; and Homegrown Mystics: Restoring Our Nation with the Healing Wisdom of America’s Visionaries. His latest books are Creation Sings: Forty Days of Spiritual Wisdom from the Non-human World and Three Wise Wisdom: The Twelve Days of Christmas with Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna (volume seven in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” series along with the recently released Lenten devotional, Just a Little Walk with Jesus: A Spiritual Saunter with Mark’s Gospel and Whitehead and Jesus: An Adventure in Spiritual Transformation. He is married to Rev. Kate Epperly, D.Min. and lives in Potomac, Maryland. He can be reached at [email protected].
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