Pastoral Priest: Rev’d Canon Denise Hyde – 01285 713285
To hear Denise’s sermon click on the arrow below
From Rev’d Caroline – 01285 712467 – carolinesymcox@googlemail.com
Readings for Sunday: Exodus 17.1-7; Romans 5.1-11; John 4.5-42
The following is taken from the Parish Newsletter for Sunday 8th March 2026.
Over the last few weeks, water has been very much on our minds. It’s honestly felt as if the rain was never going to stop! The fields grew more and more sodden, roads were flooded over, and I know I can’t be the only one who was nervously watching the height of the River Coln rise day by day. Yet it was so short a time ago that we were in a season of drought, with hose pipe bans and warnings to save water as much as possible. In fact, was that hose pipe ban ever lifted?
Our relationship with water is complex. The ups and downs we’ve experienced over the last few years (floods vs shortages) is just one symptom of how complicated it is to manage access to water in this country. Easy answers are certainly not forthcoming.
Yet we cannot avoid dealing with it! Because water is life. Water, like breathable air, is one of those things we just can’t do without. Without access to water, all living things would die, in some cases startlingly quickly. Even outside the boundaries of Earth, we look at signs of water as the key indicator that life would be possible on other planets. Across the universe, water is fundamental.
Which of course, is the meaning behind our readings from Scripture this Sunday. Moses and his fellow Hebrews, newly escaped from Egypt, and just entering the wilderness know how desperately they need water. Moses trusts that God will have an answer, but the people he’s led away from the only lives they had ever known are a little more cynical. “Why did you bring us out of Egypt?” they cry, “To kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” Where is there water in a desert? They are given their answer immediately as God responds to Moses’ plea. Where is there water? There is water where God creates it, and when Moses struck the rock at Horeb it flowed just as God willed. God provides.
Jesus too knows the importance and power of water, but in his conversation with the Samaritan woman, he encourages her to think more deeply than just about physical needs. Jesus tells her that deepest of truths, that he gives living water to those who come to him. Living water, that nourishes the spirit and the wholeness of life. “The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The body needs H2O, but the whole self needs that and more – a spiritual refreshment and energy that comes as a gift from God himself, and made available to us through Jesus.
The especially good news about this is that unlike our relationship with physical water, our relationship with Jesus does not need to be complicated. It doesn’t need to be managed. There is no danger of there being too much or too little of the water of life when we come to Jesus! We just have to come, to listen, to know ourselves known as we have never been known before, and to follow.
This week in Lent, let’s consciously take ourselves to the well-side. Let’s be ready to be filled, and more than filled, made into springs ourselves to nourish and enliven others. Let’s ask to drink deep of the living water that Jesus himself offers.
Rev’d Caroline
Updated 20th March 2026