3rd Sunday in Lent – 8 March 2026

I shall always remember my visit, many years ago, to a young woman of twenty-one who was dying of AIDS. Jeanine’s life had been fractured — childhood abuse, addiction, exploitation, loss. By most standards, people might have said her life had been wasted. And yet, sitting close to death, she spoke with extraordinary vitality. She dreamed of helping others who were sick. She wanted to write poetry. She treated each day as a precious gift. She spoke tenderly of her nieces and hoped for their happiness. She hoped people would not be crushed by her death but would trust she was going home to God. For someone who was dying, she was astonishingly alive.

I think of Jeanine in these days. Because we are living in a time when death feels loud. War in the Middle East continues to scar entire populations. Civilians suffer. Families are displaced. Fear travels across borders. Other conflicts simmer around the world. Political rhetoric hardens. Old grievances deepen. The images reach us daily.

And it is not distant from us. Some in our own parish have family in the region. Some carry anxiety for loved ones overseas. Our own bishop, Bishop Anthony witnessed firsthand the missile attacks in Dubai where he was trapped for almost a week before being able to get a flight out to London last Thursday and then on to Rome. Many of us feel the low hum of uncertainty — about global stability, about our children’s future, about the kind of world they are inheriting.

War may be geographically far, but fear is not. In such a time it is easy to believe that destruction is stronger than goodness. That violence speaks louder than hope. And yet Jeanine taught me something unforgettable: never underestimate the well of life that can exist in a human heart — even in broken circumstances.

Today’s Gospel takes us into a desert. Jesus meets a woman at a well — a woman whose own life story is complicated and marked by failure. She carries shame. She comes at noon to avoid the eyes of others. She lives, in her own way, in a kind of war zone — not of bombs, but of social judgement and inner disappointment. And Jesus meets her there. Not with condemnation. Not with ideological debate. But with vulnerability. “Give me a drink.”

In revealing His thirst, He honours hers. In trusting her, He awakens her desire for something more. “Give me that water,” she says. Perhaps that is the prayer rising from our world right now: Give us water. Give us something that is not revenge. Give us something that will not run dry. Because what we see globally is not only geopolitical conflict. It is thirst — thirst for security, for dignity, for recognition, for belonging. But when thirst is met only with fear, it turns violent.Jesus does something different. He leads the woman to discover that the well she seeks is already within her — a spring of living water. That is the Christian conviction, even in a world at war: that beneath layers of history, grievance, trauma and anger, there remains in the human heart a well that violence cannot completely seal — the presence of the Spirit, the capacity to desire life.

But to find that well, we must enter the desert. And the desert for us is not only Beirut, or Tehran, or Jerusalem or distant battlefields. It is also: The anxiety we feel watching the news. The anger that rises in us. The temptation to reduce complex suffering to simple sides. The fear for our children. The quiet sense that the world feels fragile. That is our desert. And it is there that Christ waits.

Jeanine found a well in a hospital room. The Samaritan woman found one at noon in her shame. We are invited to find one in our fears.

The first step is to become conscious of our deepest desire. What do I truly desire? If we listen beneath the noise, perhaps we hear something very simple: I desire peace. I desire safety for children — everywhere. I desire dignity for every person, whatever their history. I desire a future not governed by vengeance. That desire is not naïve. It is holy. It is a sign that the Spirit is alive in us. If we lose that desire, we grow cynical. But if we hold onto it — and bring it to prayer — then something in us remains unconquered.

In a few weeks we will celebrate Easter. We will proclaim that life is stronger than death. That from what seemed sealed and lifeless, light burst forth. In a world overshadowed by war, that proclamation is not sentimental. It is defiant hope.

Our world at the moment feels like a vast desert — dry with suspicion, heated by anger, scarred by violence. And yet, hidden beneath the sand, there runs an underground river — the deep human desire for life, for peace, for communion. Christ stands at the well of that river and says to humanity, “Give me a drink.” And in asking, He draws the water up. If we dare to lower our bucket — in prayer, in compassion, in refusal of hatred — we will discover that the river has not dried up. And from that hidden water, even now, God can begin to green the desert.