Family Communion for the third Sunday of Lent: celebrant the Revd Adetola Badejo.

First reading: Exodus 17: 1-7
Gospel: John 4: 5-42

Water, as a necessity for life and as a symbol, plays a central role in today's readings. In both, there is a physical need for it: the Israelites in Exodus are crossing a waterless desert, and they are not necessarily being unreasonable in telling Moses that their survival is at risk. God's revelation to Moses of a miraculous spring secures their safety and also acts as a metaphor for God's providence; he will meet his people's needs even when their situation appears hopeless.

The Gospel passage is longer and more obviously multilayered. Jesus also needs water and has no means of getting it; his first step is to cross a rigid social boundary and to ask a Samaritan for help. This Samaritan woman, moreover, seems to be distanced from her own community, because she comes to the well alone rather than with the town's other women; her life, it seems, has been marked by scandal. By the end of the passage, many bridges have been built and crossed: the recognition of shared human need implicit in Jesus's request for water leads on to a conversation about salvation. to the woman's recognition of her own worth, and to a confidence that enables her to tell other people that she has met the Messiah.