From the Margins to Preachers: The Woman at the Well and LGBTQ+ People

Margie Winters (right) with her partner, Andrea Vettori (left)

Today’s reflection is by guest blogger Margie Winters, retreat facilitator and spiritual director, who had been dismissed from her ministry as Director of Religious Education because of her marriage to another woman. Her story is featured in Cornerstones: Sacred Stories of LGBTQ+ Employees in Catholic Institutions.

Today’s liturgical readings for the Third Sunday of Lent are available here.

I love the character of the Woman at the Well in today’s gospel reading. She is smart, feisty, and unafraid to challenge Jesus. Her line, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep…” always makes me smile. The story unfolds as a gradual revelation: her own truth coming to light, Jesus’ nonjudgmental presence, and a profound theological exchange about the inclusion of the Samaritan community in his ministry—one that unsettles narrow, literal interpretations of the text.

She comes to the well at noon—an unusual hour, the heat of the day. A woman would draw water at that time  only to avoid others, perhaps because she had been shamed or pushed to the margins. Jesus, too, arrives at this unlikely hour, tired and thirsty, asking her for a drink. He engages her–a woman, an outsider–and asks her for sustenance. What can she give him? What can we give him?

This story, set at Jacob’s well, has a hint of wrestling in it. The woman verbally spars with Jesus. She questions his request. She wonders why he would risk becoming unclean through contact with her. Often, those of us on the margins—because we have wrestled with rejection, betrayal, and shame—carry a particular depth of compassion. We know what it is to thirst. LGBTQ+ people  recognize weariness in another’s eyes. We have learned how to survive in dry places.

From that hard-won wisdom, we can offer the water we carry—the truth of our lives, drawn from deep wells. And in giving it, we discover that Jesus has already offered us living water in return.

And what about the woman?  What was the source of her shame?

Many commentaries focus on Jesus’ words: “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.” The assumption is sexual sinfulness. She becomes, in this reading, morally suspect.

“Photini the Samaritan Woman and Christ at the Well” By TedFollow.

Yet  biblical scholar Sandra Schneiders, IHM, offers another interpretation. She situates the entire conversation within the deep theological conflict between Jews and Samaritans. In that context,“five husbands” may symbolize the five foreign gods the Samaritans worshipped during the Assyrian occupation. The exchange becomes less about personal morality and more about communal history and worship.

Schneiders notes how easily women in Scripture are sexualized and marginalized by default interpretations. Across the centuries, that same narrowing lens has been turned on the LGBTQ+ community. Too often, we are reduced to sexual behavior rather than seen as whole persons who are also sexual—complex, faithful, beloved.

Because of that default to sexualization, many in the LGBTQ+ community know the sting of shame—whether about orientation, love, or marriage. We continue to experience rejection from parts of the church hierarchy simply for who we are and whom we love. After I was fired  from a Catholic school, there were times I felt shame and avoided certain spaces or slipped quietly into the back of a church to go unnoticed. Shame isolates. It shrinks the soul.

And yet even if one maintains the traditional interpretation, Jesus does not shame this woman. He names her reality and accepts it. He does not condemn, interrogate, or humiliate her. He simply receives her.

Is this not how Jesus responds to us? With no condemnation? With no shaming? I believe it is. As someone once told me, God speaks only words of love. If what we hear does not console us, it is not God’s voice. Why would Jesus condemn us for who he created us to be? God asks only for our truth—and stands ready to meet it with love, unconditionally.

Another often-overlooked dimension of this story is the woman’s discipleship. After encountering Jesus, she leaves her water jar—her daily necessity—and runs to her village proclaiming, “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Christ?” Schneiders calls this inclusive discipleship: a Samaritan, a woman, becoming a bearer of the Good News. Jesus’ ministry expands beyond what the disciples imagined.

Is this not true for the LGBTQ+ community as well? Like the Samaritan woman, we, too, are called to bear the Good News–and in doing so, to widen the Church’s understanding of discipleship to include our lives and gifts.   We have encountered Christ in ways that compel us to run and tell this Good News. 

The Samaritan woman shows us how this unfolds—through the steady, courageous revelation of our authentic selves. This is where God dwells: in Spirit and in truth.

God sees us—open-hearted, longing to be known—and calls us holy and beloved.