What Are You Drinking?

Rev. Erik Swanson
March 8, 2026

You can watch the sermon video here.

In the year before I interviewed for the position at Westhope, I spent time in Minnesota helping another Presbyterian pastor found a spiritual formation and health center. It was meaningful work, but it didn’t cover my living expenses, so I took a second job on a farm. I became something of a handyman and helped with the harvest. I drove massive combines, worked with sugar beets, sunflowers, and soybeans, and did repairs while driving equipment like a Bobcat. While we worked, the radio was almost always on, and it constantly played commentary from Rush Limbaugh.

Water: A Metaphor For What We Take Into Ourselves

The family I worked for was incredibly kind and treated me well, yet I noticed how the steady stream of political commentary seemed to shape the atmosphere around us. Day after day, the same messages were repeated—ideas about American greatness, suspicion of immigrants, and a worldview that framed certain people as threats. It struck me that this constant exposure was like slowly drinking something that gradually becomes part of you. That memory came back to me this week as I reflected on the biblical story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.

One reason this story is so powerful is that it uses something universal: water. As infants, our bodies are roughly 78% water, and even as adults we remain about 50–60% water. Water is essential to life and to civilization itself. Jesus often used everyday realities like this to teach deeper truths. In this story, the conversation about water becomes a metaphor for what we take into ourselves—not just physically, but spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally.

What Are We Drinking? Where Are We Drawing From?

This raises an important question for all of us: what are we drinking? What are we allowing to become part of who we are? Every day we consume information through news, social media, conversations, and sermons like this one. All of it shapes us. Every source carries a perspective, even those that claim neutrality. Understanding who funds or leads a particular outlet can help us discern the viewpoint it carries.

In the story itself, there is a subtle but important detail in the original Greek. The woman refers to the well using a word that suggests stagnant water—water that simply sits in a cistern. Jesus, however, uses a word that refers to a spring: living, bubbling, moving water. The contrast invites us to ask ourselves where we are drawing from. Are we filling ourselves with something stagnant and stale, or something fresh and life-giving?

Drink From Living Water

Spiritually, I believe the Spirit invites us to drink from this “living water.” Practices like prayer, meditation, spiritual reflection, and openness to God’s presence nourish us in ways that transform how we see the world. They strengthen and sustain us. But in a world dominated by algorithms and media echo chambers, we often keep drinking from the same limited sources.

Caring For Others

Another powerful dimension of this story is the relationship between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. In that time, Jews and Samaritans avoided one another. Yet Jesus crosses that boundary. He does not insult her, ignore her, or treat her as inferior. Instead, he engages her and offers her living water. In doing so, he challenges the idea of treating anyone as “the other.”

This message echoes throughout the teachings of Jesus: we are called to love our neighbors and care for the vulnerable, the stranger, and the outsider. Love has no boundary lines around race, nationality, or identity. The way of Christ consistently points toward compassion, justice, and concern for the marginalized.

The Importance Of Self Reflection

Finally, the passage invites deeper self-reflection. What within us responds to the messages we hear in the world? What emotions are being nurtured by the voices we listen to? Sometimes the living water of Christ challenges the values around us, and that can make life more difficult rather than easier. Yet it also reveals a deeper source of truth and strength.

Drinking Deeply From The Living Water

So the central question remains: what are we drinking, and from what well? The Spirit continually invites us to drink deeply from the living water Christ offers. The challenge is whether we will recognize it, receive it, and allow it to shape who we are throughout every wilderness season and every step of our journey. Amen.