A Message from Pastor Kaji

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Dear Church:

This Sunday we gather around a story at a well. Jesus meets a Samaritan woman in the heat of the day and asks her for a drink. That simple request opens a conversation that will change everything. I want us to think together about power. Who has it. Who does not. And how God uses it in ways we do not expect.

Study Guide

The Samaritans were descendants of the Northern Israelites who worshiped the same God but on Mount Gerizim instead of in Jerusalem. Centuries of conflict left deep wounds between Samaritans and Jews. To meet at a well was to come face to face with generations of mistrust.

Questions for reflection:

1. Where do you see invisible lines in your daily life, the kind that separate you from others without a word being spoken?

2.How does Jesus’ request for water invite us to think about vulnerability and dignity in new ways?

3. What do you notice about your own relationship to power when you imagine this encounter?

I cannot wait to see you at church on Sunday.

Pax Christi,
Pastor Kaji

SCRIPTURE
John 4:7-26 (Year C, p. 308)

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 Now his disciples had gone to the city to buy food. 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How are you, a Judean, asking a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Judeans do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is the one telling to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. From where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, the one who gave us the well, and with his daughters and sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. 14 But the one who drinks of the water that I will give will never thirst. The water that I will give will become in them a fount of water springing up into eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may never thirst or keep coming here to draw water.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come [back] to this place.” 17 The woman answered and said to him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You said rightly, ‘I have no husband.’ 18 For five husbands have you had, and now the one you have is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our mothers and fathers worshiped on this mountain, yet you say in Jerusalem is the place where people must worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Sovereign God. 22 You all worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Judeans. 23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Sovereign God in spirit and truth, for these are the worshippers the Sovereign God seeks. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to Jesus, “I know that the Messiah is coming” (the one who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am, the one who is speaking to you.”