Third Sunday in Lent | March 8th, 2026 | The Rev. Irene Tanabe
Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.
In 1913, my step-grandfather Katsujiro Tanabe was eighteen years old, the number one son of a farmer in Tottori-ken on the Japan Sea. He left to find more exciting work in the fish canneries of Alaska. He eventually made his way to Seattle where he worked at Pike Place Fish market, but finally found his passion working as a cook. He left Seattle briefly when he had an opportunity to open a diner of his own in the railroad town of Cut Bank, Montana. In late November of 1941, the diner was burned to the ground, a victim of the anti-Japanese sentiment at that time. He returned to Seattle on December 2, 1941.
It wasn’t easy being a Japanese immigrant then, and things got even worse following the attack on Pearl Harbor a few days later. Fears in response to the “Yellow Peril” prompted Chinese children to go to school wearing “I am Chinese” buttons. On February 19, 1942, by Executive Order, my grandfather, and all persons of Japanese ancestry were removed from west coast communities and incarcerated at hastily built camps in the desolate west.
Sadly, the current focus of the “anti-other” is on our most recent immigrant communities. A UCLA study found that 70% of principals have students missing school due to immigration-related rhetoric, and children are being dropped off at school wondering if it will be the last time they see their parents. What is happening today, and what happened to the Japanese Americans eighty years ago, is the experience of the woman at the well.
For you see, when Katsujiro returned to Seattle, he was stepping into a world that had already decided who he was before he could speak a word. To the neighbors, he wasn't a skilled cook; he was a "threat." This is the same shadow that fell over the woman at Jacob’s well. For centuries, we’ve labeled her an "immoral woman" because she was at the well at noon. But what if she wasn't hiding from God? What if she was just tired of being seen through the lens of other people’s labels?
Many read into this text that she was a prostitute, but nowhere does Jesus judge her. Instead, we see the possibility of “levirate marriage” from Deuteronomy—where women whose husbands died were passed between brothers to ensure survival. Five husbands would have been heartbreaking. Jesus saw her circumstances; it was one of dependence, not immorality. He spoke to her as someone with worth. He didn't look at her; He looked into her.
I’ll be honest: when I see people being oppressed, my first response is anger. I suspect the woman at the well carried that same hot, noon-day anger. But notice what happens when she encounters the "Living Water." She doesn't use her anger to secrete the water for her own consumption. She leaves the jar—symbolizing her burden and her past—and runs to tell others.
She found a truth that was louder than the labels forced upon her. It is the same kind of freedom found by the Japanese American soldiers of the 442nd Regiment during WWII. Even though they and their families were rounded up and imprisoned, the Nisei men volunteered to serve for love of country, becoming the most decorated unit in U.S. history. Rather than harbor resentment, they pursued something greater than their individual needs. After 9/11, when some called for similar treatment of Muslim-Americans, the Japanese American community vowed: Nidoto nai yo ni—“So that it never happens again.”
We might be saying to ourselves, “Well, the Japanese Americans were different; they had a mission.” But haven't we all been enslaved by needing to look good, by materialism, or by anger? Jesus has freed us—not to an indulgent freedom, but a transformative one that comes from the recognition that God sees us. Through Christ, we are freed from that which enslaves.
As we bear witness to the inclusive, loving God who has set us free, we repeat the vow of our brothers and sisters: Nidoto nai yo ni. Let it never happen again.
Never again means we will we not be silent when the "other" is marginalized.
Never again means we will not look away from the thirst of our neighbors.
Never again means we will not be enslaved by the anger or fear that keeps us from God’s grace.
Jesus, the sower, reminds us that the fields are ripe for a harvest of justice. Trust that God knows your challenges. Like the Samaritan woman, leave your struggles, leave your water jar, and go tell others what God has done.
We have seen the Messiah and we are free.