February 1, 2026

    Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus

    “Living Water for a Divided World”

       by Rev. Trip Porch

February 1, 2026                                                                                                                      Based on  John 4:1-30; 39-42 MSG

Last week we listened in on a conversation between people who stood in opposing camps. People who shared a faith, shared a tradition, and yet saw the world in fundamentally different ways. This week, the divide is even greater. This is not just disagreement. This is enmity.

Jews and Samaritans did not simply disagree. They hated each other. They avoided each other at all costs. They told stories about each other that justified fear, contempt, and exclusion. They reduced one another to caricatures. They otherized. They dehumanized.

And John is very clear about this. “Jews in those days wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Samaritans.”

Generations of resentment, violence, religious superiority, and political grievance lived between them. They told stories about one another that justified cruelty. They passed down fear like an inheritance. 

So the first thing Jesus does in this story is actually pretty radical. It was common for Jews to travel to    Galilee, but they would take the long route around Samaria. Jesus tells the disciples… today we’re going back to Galilee.. but we’re taking the Samaritan route. We’re doing what others will not. We’re going right in the heart of enemy territory

Jesus puts his most challenging teaching into practice… love your enemy.

If loving your enemy is going to be anything more than a slogan, it has to involve proximity and nearness. 

As Brene Brown tells us “People are hard to hate close up. Move in.
You cannot love people you refuse to encounter. You cannot understand people you only hear rumors about. You cannot dismantle dehumanization from a distance. You cannot learn another story if you only try to tell your own. Jesus does not wait for the Samaritan woman to cross a border into his world. He crosses into hers. Jesus meets people where they are, even when that place is charged with fear and         hatred and history. 

And when he arrives, he is tired. He sits down. At noon. At a well. This isn’t a posture of conquest. This isn’t what someone does when they are seeking to control or dominate This is what vulnerability looks like.

And when a Samaritan woman approaches, Jesus does something that violates every social instinct his disciples have been trained into. He asks her for help.

“Would you give me a drink of water?”

A Jewish man asking for help from a Samaritan woman?
A rabbi asking assistance?

It’s outrageous, but its classic Jesus. Someone with power choosing dependence. This is not incidental. This is the gospel in miniature.

Jesus does not begin by fixing her. He does not begin by correcting her. He does not begin by explaining why she is wrong. He begins by needing her.

How do we begin to dismantle divisions? How do we love our enemy?

By meeting them where they are, getting near to them to be able to see them close up, and then by

 recognizing how much we need each other, how much we rely on each other.

If our faith never puts us in a position of needing people we’ve been taught to fear, we are not following Jesus. 

The woman knows how dangerous this moment is. “How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”

In other words: Do you understand what you are risking?
Do you know what happens when lines are crossed? Do you know how people get hurt?

Jesus isn’t ignorant of the divisions. Later, he names them plainly. You Samaritans worship here.

We Jews worship there. Jesus isn’t pretending this act will fix every separation But he refuses to let those divisions be prescriptive.

“The time is coming— in fact, it has already come—when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.”

Hear how radical that is. Jesus saying the identities you’ve been using as weapons will not matter

anymore. The borders you’ve been keeping to separate people, will not be borders God enforces.

The time is already here where the things that used to separate us can no longer be used to justify our

exclusion, violence, or fear.

“What counts,” he says, “is who you are and the way you live before God.”

This is a vision of the kingdom of heaven that terrifies systems built on fear. A kingdom where access to God is not guarded by ethnicity, nationality, accent, paperwork, or purity codes. A kingdom where worship is not about proving you belong, but about showing up honestly as yourself.

And notice who receives this vision first. Not the disciples. Not the religious insiders. Not the ones who think they already on the right side of history… An outsider Samaritan woman.

When the disciples return, they are shocked. They don’t say anything, but their faces do. They are

uncomfortable. They are confused. They are resistant. Even those closest to Jesus struggle when his

kingdom of love asks them to push beyond their instincts to fear, otherize and hate.. And Jesus keeps pushing. The woman leaves her water jar behind and becomes a witness. She goes to tell others about this kingdom of inclusion and love where dividing walls fall down and living water flows.  

She tells her community, “He knows me inside and out. 

And the people come. Their enemy comes. These foreigners come. The ones they were warned about come. And by the end of the story, they say something that should still undo us:

“He’s the Savior of the world.” Not the savior of one faith. Not the savior of one nation. Not the savior of one culture, or one side. But the Savior of the world. 

This story is not asking us to ignore danger. It is asking us to refuse dehumanization. It is asking us to

believe that fear does not get the final word. It is asking us to follow Jesus into places we have been taught to avoid, to practice a faith that chooses relationship over suspicion, vulnerability over dominance, love over the baser instincts that tell us safety only comes from separation.

There are moments in the life of a country when our fear of the stranger, our hate of the foreigner becomes policy. When our suspicions harden into law. When accents, skin color, clothing, or where someone is from become reasons to stop, question, detain, arrest. When people are reduced from neighbors into threats.

We are living in one of those moments.

In times like this, Scripture either becomes a comfort blanket that helps us avoid reality, or it becomes a mirror that shows us who we are and who we are becoming.

What is clear to me in this scripture… is that Jesus is still pushing us. Still pushing us to love the stranger. Still pushing us to love our enemies. To move in closer, to see our interdependence and need of one

another. Jesus is still pushing us to resist systems that turn neighbors into threats. Still pushing us toward a diverse, expansive vision of the kingdom of heaven. A Kingdom built on his love.

And the question this story leaves us with is not whether that vision is beautiful. The question is whether we are willing to follow him there. 

That is a question that we get to answer today with our lives… Who are the neighbors that our country has declared enemy? Where are they? And how do we move in closer?

Friends, may we follow Jesus.. across borders both real and human made. So that we can put the hardest love that is asked of us, into practice.  Amen.

WE GATHER IN AWE AND PRAISE

PRELUDE                                                                      “Sweet, Sweet Spirit”                                           arr. Doris Akers

INTROIT                          “The Night Has Passed”                                    Emma Lou Diemer

WELCOME                                                                    Rev. Trip Porch

One: This is the day that the Lord has made

All: Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

*CALL TO WORSHIP

One: Come, all who are weary and thirsty.

Many: We come seeking living water.

One: Come, all who have been divided by fear, history, or harm.

Many: We come longing for healing and truth.

One: Let us worship God in spirit and in truth.

*HYMN 324                                “For All the Faithful Women”                                     NYLAND

*PRAYER OF CONFESSION                                                                                        MacKenzie Murray

God of living water, we confess that we have drawn lines where you have built bridges. We have feared the stranger, distrusted those who seem different, and allowed labels, borders, and assumptions to shape our hearts. We have benefited from systems that harm others and have remained silent when love required courage. Meet us at the well of your mercy. Tell us the truth about ourselves without turning us away. Wash us clean, soften our hearts, and teach us again how to love as you love. Amen.

*ASSURANCE OF PARDON

*RESPONSE OF PRAISE 583         “Gloria, Gloria”   (sung twice)                                     GLORIA (TAIZE)

*PASSING OF THE PEACE                                       

     One:   The peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all,

     All:      And also with you.

WE LISTEN FOR GOD’S WORD 

ANTHEM                 “Seed That in Earth Is Dying”                       Harald Herresthal

                                                                                                                                                                    arr. Bradley Ellingboe

CHILDREN’S MESSAGE                                                                  Dorothy Kyle

PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

SCRIPTURE   John 4:1-30; 39-42 MSG

Jesus left the Judean countryside and went back to Galilee. To get there, he had to pass through Samaria. He came into Sychar, a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon.

A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, “Would you give me a drink of water?” (His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.)

The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, “How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (Jews in those days wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Samaritans.)

Jesus answered, “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.”

The woman said, “Sir, you don’t even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this ‘living water’? Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?”

Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.”

The woman said, “Sir, give me this water so I won’t ever get thirsty, won’t ever have to come back to this well again!”

He said, “Go call your husband and then come back.”

“I have no husband,” she said.

“That’s nicely put: ‘I have no husband.’ You’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now isn’t even your husband. You spoke the truth there, sure enough.”

“Oh, so you’re a prophet! Well, tell me this: Our ancestors worshiped God at this mountain, but you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place for worship, right?”

“Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship the Father neither here at this mountain nor there in Jerusalem. You worship guessing in the dark; we Jews worship in the clear light of day. God’s way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.

“It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”

The woman said, “I don’t know about that. I do know that the Messiah is coming. When he arrives, we’ll get the whole story.”

 “I am he,” said Jesus. “You don’t have to wait any longer or look any further.”

Just then his disciples came back. They were shocked. They couldn’t believe he was talking with that kind of a woman. No one said what they were all thinking, but their faces showed it.

 The woman took the hint and left. In her confusion she left her water pot. Back in the village she told the people, “Come see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out. Do you think this could be the Messiah?” And they went out to see for themselves

Many of the Samaritans from that village committed themselves to him because of the woman’s witness: “He knew all about the things I did. He knows me inside and out!” They asked him to stay on, so Jesus stayed two days. A lot more people entrusted their lives to him when they heard what he had to say. They said to the woman, “We’re no longer taking this on your say-so. We’ve heard it for ourselves and know it for sure. He’s the Savior of the world!”

 Holy Wisdom, Holy Word  

Thanks be to God 

SERMON                                                                                                 Rev. Trip Porch

WE RESPOND TO GOD’S WORD 

*HYMN 161                             “Woman in the Night”                            NEW DISCIPLES (FEDAK)

TIME OF OFFERING   online giving is available at  www. indianolapres.org/give

OFFERTORY                       “Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts”                                arr. Gene Roberson

COMMUNION

INVITATION TO THE TABLE

GREAT PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING

SHARING OF BREAD AND CUP      479            “Ho, All Who Thirst”                                                      JACOB’S WELL

      PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION

God of living water, we thank you for meeting us at this table. You have fed us with grace and truth and renewed us by your Spirit. Send us out to love boldly, to welcome the stranger, and to live as witnesses of your reconciling mercy. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

*HYMN 494                                                                “Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts”                                                  QUEBEC

TIME OF COMMUNITY SHARING 

CHARGE & BENEDICTION

POSTLUDE                             “Postlude on NYLAND”                               arr. John A. Behnke

Acknowledgments: Unless otherwise indicated, all texts and music are printed and broadcast under OneLicense.net license #A-702452