Over the next few weeks, including this weekend, my calendar is such that, between travel and other commitments, I’m not going to be able to keep my weekly sermon posting schedule.

I’m sorry about that. And extra sorry that this weekend I don’t have a sermon from three years ago to share instead.

But I see that one of my favorite preachers, Andrew Gerns, has already posted his sermon for this weekend.

Here’s a taste:

To this day, Photini the Samaritan woman is honored in many cultures. In southern Mexico, La Samaritana is remembered on the fourth Friday in Lent, when water flavored with local fruit and spice and is given to commemorate her gift of water to Jesus. As I said, the Orthodox know her as St. Photini. In Russian orthodoxy, she is Svetlana, which means “equal to the apostles,” and she is honored as apostle and martyr on the Feast of the Samaritan Woman.

She is remembered because when she recognizes the Christ her identity changes. She leaves her water jar behind and goes and finds her friends and neighbors to tell what she has seen and heard.

Jesus breaks down the barriers of gender and nationality and the woman is bold enough to both remind Jesus of what separates them — he a Jew and she a Samaritan — and of what connects them — their ancestor Jacob. Photini is audacious and spars verbally with Jesus and in the process she experiences him as prophet and, more than that, the Messiah. And she takes that news to her village, her family, her people. Both in the encounter and in the telling, she is changed from the inside out. Two people at the well meet each other’s thirsts.

You can read it here.