Transfordinary Moments John 4:1-42 Rev. Dr. Rhonda Abbott Blevins January 25, 2026

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” 2 (although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized), 3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 ”Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” 30 They left the city and were on their way to him.

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36 The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

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Today we continue our series “Forever Beginning: Stories of Fresh Starts.” We’ve been exploring stories from scripture in which people experienced new beginnings, second chances, transformation. We began with those first disciples who left everything to follow Jesus, responding to an invitation that disrupted all their plans. We met Nicodemus, coming to Jesus in the darkness, discovering it’s never too late to begin again. Last week we encountered the prodigal son, coming to his senses and finding a father already running to meet him with grace.

Today we meet a woman at a well. No dramatic calling from boats. No nighttime theological discussions. No journey home from a far country. Just an ordinary woman doing an ordinary task on an ordinary day. And yet this ordinary moment becomes the turning point of her entire life.

I’m calling today’s message “Transfordinary Moments”—a word I’ve made up that combines two words: “transformational” and “ordinary.” Because this woman’s story shows us that God doesn’t wait for our spiritual mountaintop experiences. God meets us at the well, in the middle of our Tuesday afternoon, while we’re doing the most mundane tasks imaginable.

Picture the scene. It’s noon. It’s hot. She’s walking to the well, as she’s done thousands of times before. This isn’t a spiritual practice. This is a chore, a necessity. She’s probably not thinking about God or meaning or purpose. She’s thinking about water. About getting through another day. About the weight of the jar on her shoulder and the heat of the sun on her face.

This is the dailiness of our lives. The commutes we take every morning. The dog we walk twice a day. The laundry we fold every week. The dishes we wash every evening. The groceries we buy. The emails that never seem to end. We can spend our whole lives waiting for the “right moment” to encounter God—waiting for Sunday morning, for a retreat, for a crisis that forces us to our knees, for some dramatic spiritual experience.

But God shows up on Tuesday afternoon. God shows up in the produce aisle and the pharmacy line and at the kitchen sink. God shows up at the well.

There’s a stranger at the well—a Jewish man who shouldn’t be talking to her, a Samaritan woman. He asks for water. She questions why he’s speaking to her at all. Social boundaries, religious boundaries, gender boundaries—all being crossed in this moment.

What starts as an ordinary request—“Give me a drink”—becomes an extraordinary conversation. He knows things about her life, her past, her pain. He sees her. Really sees her. And he offers her something she didn’t even know she was looking for.

Haven’t we all had moments like this? When a casual conversation became profound? When a chance meeting shifted our perspective? I think of an occasion when I struck up a conversation with a stranger on an airplane, and somehow we ended up talking about things that mattered—loss, hope, faith, struggle. What started as small talk about the weather became a sacred exchange. Or a simple comment from a friend this past week that changed how I viewed a difficult situation. Or the “random” encounter that looking back, maybe wasn’t random at all.

God’s interruptions don’t usually come with fanfare. They come disguised as ordinary moments. They look like strangers asking for water.

Jesus offers this woman “living water”—something that will quench a deeper thirst. She’s been coming to this well her whole life, but she’s still thirsty. Not just physically thirsty. She’s thirsty for acceptance, for belonging, for something more than mere survival. The text hints at her story—five husbands, and the man she’s with now isn’t her husband. Whatever the circumstances, this is a woman who has been searching for something, trying to fill a thirst that water from Jacob’s well can’t satisfy.

We all carry these deeper thirsts even as we go through our daily routines. We’re thirsty for connection in a lonely world. We’re thirsty for purpose when life feels meaningless. We’re thirsty for peace in the midst of chaos in our personal lives as well as tremendous chaos in the geopolitical order. We’re thirsty—thirsty for something more than just getting through another day.

And the promise Jesus makes—to this woman and to us—is that God can satisfy these longings right here, right now, in the middle of the ordinary.

Several years ago I had a very simple but profound experience while cleaning my house. My oldest was little, I don’t think my youngest had been born yet. I was in the middle of writing my doctoral thesis about the effects of the practice of gratitude on wellbeing, and I had set an intention earlier in the morning to try to practice gratitude throughout the day. So I was cleaning house, and picking up the toys my young son had left strewn about on the floor. This was a mundane task, which often left me frustrated, thinking, “How many times have I told him to pick up his toys?!?” But because I had set an intention to practice gratitude, I didn’t feel frustrated. And I found myself picking up a tiny green ninja toy—a toy I had picked up countless times before. And as I picked it up, I found myself overcome with a sense of gratitude. Not your average feeling of thankfulness—this was an overwhelming gratefulness for this beautiful, precious child and for the honor of being his mother. Suddenly, I didn’t have to pick up this toy for the umpteenth time, I GOT to pick up this toy yet again.

The toy didn’t change. The task didn’t change. But my perspective shifted, and in that shift, everything transformed. In the most mundane moment imaginable, God broke through. I experienced what the mystics call “the sacrament of the present moment”—the holy hiding in the ordinary.

This is what it means to have eyes to see the sacred in the everyday. Any moment can be a transfordinary moment.

Where might you experience a transfordinary moment?

Maybe it’s during your difficult commute through heavy traffic. Day after day, the same frustrating drive. But one evening, stuck at a red light, you notice the sunset painting the sky in shades of orange and pink and gold. And in that moment, instead of rage at the delay, you feel wonder. The traffic doesn’t disappear, but something shifts. You begin looking for beauty on your commute. The drive becomes a time of noticing rather than enduring.

Or maybe it’s while washing dishes—again—feeling the warm water on your hands, and suddenly feeling connected to generations of people who have done this same task. Mothers and grandmothers, people across centuries and cultures, all of us washing dishes, all of us part of the endless human rhythm of feeding and cleaning and caring. A moment of feeling part of something so much bigger than one kitchen, one sink, one pile of plates.

Perhaps it’s standing in line at the grocery store, really seeing the cashier as a person rather than a function. Making eye contact, asking how their day is going, having a genuine moment of human connection. The groceries still need to be scanned, the transaction still needs to happen, but it becomes more than a transaction. It becomes an encounter.

Or it might be while walking the dog for the thousandth time and noticing the wind in the palm trees, the bougainvillea in bloom, lovebirds in flight, the warmth of the sunlight on your cheeks. Feeling gratitude for the rhythm of life, for the gift of being alive to witness the gift of creation.

These are transfordinary moments. When we’re willing to be present, when we’re willing to notice, the ordinary becomes the doorway to the sacred.

Back at the well, something extraordinary happens. The woman leaves her water jar. Think about that. Like those first disciples leaving behind their boats with the biggest catch of their lives, this water jar is the whole reason she came. It’s what she needs to survive. But she leaves it behind and runs to town.

She leaves it because she’s found something more. She’s found living water. She’s found someone who sees her, who knows her, who offers her a new way of being in the world.

And she can’t keep it to herself. This woman who came to the well at noon—probably to avoid the other women who would come in the cooler morning hours, probably to avoid their judgment and gossip—this woman runs back to town and says, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”

An ordinary errand became the pivot point of her entire life. She went from hiding to proclaiming. She went from shame to testimony. Her willingness to be changed in that moment transformed her entire community. The text tells us that many Samaritans believed because of her testimony.

One transfordinary moment. One willingness to see the ordinary differently. One openness to transformation. And a whole town encounters Jesus.

Here’s what strikes me about this woman: she was willing to engage. She could have shut down the conversation. She could have said, “Just take the water and let me get home.” She could have dismissed this strange man and stuck to her script, her routine, her familiar pattern.

But she stayed. She questioned. She listened. She opened herself to the possibility that this ordinary moment at the well might be something more.

How often do we miss transfordinary moments because we’re too busy, too distracted, too committed to our routines? We’re at the well, but we’re thinking about what’s next. We’re folding laundry, but we’re mentally writing our to-do list. We’re in conversation, but we’re checking our phones. We’re going through the motions, waiting for life to begin, waiting for the “real” moments.

What if we approached our ordinary days with expectancy? With openness to surprise? What if we believed that God might show up while we’re doing laundry, driving to work, making dinner, standing in line, walking the dog?

What if we practiced presence in the present moment?

This is what “forever beginning” looks like in practice. Not waiting for major life events to encounter God. Not postponing our spiritual lives until we have time for a retreat or a mountaintop experience. But looking for God in the interruptions, in the ordinary, in the daily rhythm of our lives.

It’s a spiritual practice, really. The practice of paying attention. The practice of staying open. The practice of expecting that any moment—this moment—might be the moment when everything shifts.

Brother Lawrence, a 17th-century monk, called it “practicing the presence of God.” He found God as fully while washing dishes in the monastery kitchen as he did during formal prayer. The dish water became holy water. The kitchen became a cathedral.

We can do this too. We can bring intention to our ordinary moments. We can set aside our frustration and open ourselves to gratitude. We can look for beauty instead of just enduring. We can really see the people around us instead of treating them as functions. We can notice the small miracles—that we’re alive, that we’re loved, that we get to be here.

We don’t have to go to a well in Samaria to meet Jesus. We don’t have to wait for dramatic circumstances or perfect conditions or ideal timing. God is already present in our ordinary lives, waiting for us to notice.

The question is: Will we be present enough to recognize it? Will we be willing to be changed by it? Will we leave our water jars—our familiar patterns, our comfortable routines—and run to tell others what we’ve discovered?

Your transfordinary moment might be today. It might be while you’re doing something you’ve done a thousand times before. It might be in the roundabout or at the kitchen sink or in the middle of a chore you’ve been avoiding.

Pay attention. Stay open. Be willing.

The woman at the well came for water. She left with living water, a transformed life, and a testimony that changed her entire town. All because she was willing to see an ordinary moment as an opportunity for transformation.

May we have eyes to see the transfordinary moments in our own lives. May we be forever beginning, again and again, in the sacred ordinary of our days. May we discover that the water we’re seeking, the life we’re longing for, the transformation we’re waiting for—it’s already here, in this moment, if we’re willing to see it.

The well is ordinary. The water is ordinary. But the one who offers living water makes everything new. Even now. Even here. If we can but open our eyes.