The Third Sunday in Lent, Year A—March 8, 2026
I hate Lent.
…Stick with me, though.
At least in the Episcopal Church, we do so much chest-beating—perhaps not literally, but if you pay attention to the words we’re praying, saying, and singing, you should see it. The season doubles down on what I’m coming to see more and more as one of the effects of Christianity’s enmeshment with Empire for so many centuries. I think focusing people inward, occupying them with their own sins, projecting a God who needs to be appeased, re-casting that God as an Emperor-King, and encouraging Christians to see their sins as the cause of Jesus’ execution by Rome is an effective way to make good subjects of Empire. We see that most clearly in the Crusades, where ordinary Christians were baited into fighting wars in a far-distant land with the promise of immediate entry into heaven should they die in the fight. All their sins will be forgiven.
But wait—God puts conditions on forgiveness? The God of Jesus Christ finds warfare so appealing that engaging in it clears sins God would otherwise hold against repentant people until they had paid for them in the afterlife?
Don’t get me wrong—plenty of people will have gone on the Crusades to play out fantasies of violence against and murder of Jews, Muslims, and Eastern Christians. But even if we imagine none of the Crusaders really believed in what the Church was offering, the fact that the offer could be made, again and again over several centuries, upheld by popes and preached by priests, theologians, and religious—that’s the work of Empire. Through Christian history, the Church and State fought over which of them should have authority over the other; but in either case, that lust for power itself is the spirit of Empire and has nothing to do with Jesus.
So what if we read our Lenten lectionary texts without those particular glasses on—those glasses that focus our attention on the logic of sacrifice? What if we entertain the idea that God can, and always has been able to, simply forgive? What if we even go so far as to consider the possibility that our sinfulness isn’t really a preoccupation of God’s?
This Sunday’s readings center on themes of water—at times, through its lack. In the Exodus pericope, we find the story of ancient Israelites wandering in the wilderness and finding themselves in desperate need of water. They went to their leader, Moses, and pressured him for a solution. Yet the text interprets this fairly reasonable move as a sinful lack of trust in God—an affront Moses calls “trying God.” Yet it’s not clear to me that God is all that offended. God instructs Moses to strike a rock, causing water to flow from it. This would be a miracle, but a rather simple one for Moses to pull off. Thus God provides the water God knows people will die without.
The Psalmist, however, agrees with Moses. Placing words in God’s mouth, the Psalmist attributes the Israelites’ years of wandering in the desert to this particular incident (probably as emblematic of a general lack of faith seen in a number of episodes). The Psalm presents a challenge to Christians who use the Psalms in worship. We need to recite this Psalm as prayer without internalizing antisemitic tropes in a verse like
This people are wayward in their hearts;
they do not know my ways.
Often, we do this by reading ourselves into the passage. Taking a serious assessment of how we might behave in a situation portrayed in Scripture can be a fruitful practice. Using Scripture to stereotype or blame others or ourselves never is.
The Exodus passage and the Psalm together give us a glimpse of ancient Israelites’ rich tradition of meditation on and engagement with their religious texts. In fact, some of the writers of the Christian Scriptures continue those practices.
Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans is an example of that. As we see in texts like 2 and 4 Maccabees, a martyrology had been developing that built on parts of the tradition such as Deutero-Isaiah’s Fourth Servant Song (“the Suffering Servant”). In this martyrology, observant Jews who suffered for their faith to the point of death were not cut off from the promises of God, but would be vindicated in the resurrection. Further, their suffering could be a kind of sacrifice on behalf of others, as this reading of the Suffering Servant Song can be read as suggesting. While Paul uses a variety of images to explain Jesus’ death and the salvation found through Christ, in this case, he is clearly describing Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, orchestrated by God, so that human sins can be forgiven.
None of which shows up in the Gospel reading. Returning to the theme of water, we encounter, with Jesus, a Samaritan woman who is making her daily trip to draw water needed in her home. Much has (repeatedly) been made of the fact that she’s a Samaritan, a woman, and an apparent pariah within her community (since she is alone at the well), so I won’t go into that. What I’m interested in here is Jesus’ engagement with her. Despite what preachers have imagined through the years, Jesus never condemned her having had five husbands nor called her to repent over her current situation living with a man who is not her husband. He didn’t even tell her she needed to break off that relationship. Jesus presumably knew the precarity that would place her in. Besides, in the text, the woman herself interprets Jesus’ comment on her relationship status as a sign that he knows things he has no way of knowing—”He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”
Rather, he holds a conversation, and welcomes her initiative in starting a theological conversation. Bloch’s painting of the scene (above) portrays Jesus and the woman in rapt mutual exchange. He powerfully shows two people so caught up in their shared moment that the rest of the world fades off in the background.
This is a mission of inclusion. It also reveals something about God: However unworthy we may think we are, or others may tell us we are, God wants nothing more than to befriend us and slake our deep thirst for this kind of radical acceptance. And, at least in this instance, we see God requiring no sacrifice, no bewailing of sins, no repentance.
Why? Because, I think, repentance (and the attendant liturgies, prayers, spritual disciplines, or penance) is really about turning to God. If you do that—if you really turn to God and allow God to accept you—you will follow Christ instead of focusing on yourself and your sins. They become irrelevant, unless you need to make things right with others.1 Follow Jesus, and they will fall away.
Obviously, as creatures who develop habits, we may need to reorient our habits, and that is what penance really is about. Confession and absolution are about healing: they’re for the penitent person; God doesn’t need it.
In the words of the New Zealand Prayerbook,
God forgives you.
Forgive others.
Forgive yourself.
In the end, whatever practices you take up, whatever liturgies you value and participate in—remember the point is to heal you and help you follow Jesus better, help you be a better Christian.
But I guarantee you: God doesn’t look at you and see a wretched sinner. God looks at you and sees a beloved person God desperately wants to be in relationship with. But we have a hard time accepting that kind of fierce love. Rather, we tend to accept Empire’s assessment of us as people who are unworthy, people who should be ashamed before God and others. And if God can be portrayed as willing to let humans perish forever in hell or needing a gory sacrifice of a tortured man in order to let us avoid that fate, then surely whatever lies the powers today tell us might stick. Lies like:
- Some people don’t deserve human rights
- People who are poor are poor by their own fault (and the rich deserve their riches)
- To “get ahead,” to enter Empire’s rest, you need to sacrifice: sacrifice your health, your time—maybe even your family or home
- Asking for what you need will rightly incur wrath
Like the woman at the well, we may not even have imagined what it is God has to offer us to meet a deep need we may not have even known we had. Jesus tells her about the living water he offers; she immediately asks for it. Can we find a quiet place free of all the noise and guilt-mongering of Empire, so that we can hear Jesus offer us living water?
- Cf. Zacchaeus, who promises to pay back all he took from people dishonestly, and to make reparations, at which point Jesus says, “Salvation has come to this house.” Elsewhere, Jesus says to do what you can to restore relationships before you go to offer sacrifices in the Temple. He seems interested in justice, understood as making a community and its individuals whole. ↩︎
The Sound 
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