402 How to Tell If It's A Scam

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “How to Tell If It’s A Scam”, originally shared on March 4, 2026. It was the 402^nd  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   There are lots of ways that you can get scammed these days. How can you tell when an offer is real and when it is a scam? Today, we’re going to find out.

   People say that you can’t cheat a cheater. They already know all the tricks.

   People also say that you can only cheat a cheater. Because scammers are blinded by arrogance, while honest people know that they can’t get something for nothing.

   People say that they have learned from experience. “Once bitten twice shy.” Or, “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”

   People say lots of things.

   H. L. Menken once said, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

   People get scammed for lots of reasons, simple and complex. They are desperate. They think that they are smarter than everyone else. The possibility of good fortune blinds them to everything else.

   Or, maybe they were raised to believe that everyone is out to cheat them, so they can’t tell a grifter from a go-getter. Maybe they have had bad experiences in life that lead them to think that everyone is out to take advantage of them, so they cheat themselves out of good experiences.

   It’s not easy for anyone to tell if they are being scammed.

   So, a reasonable person couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the woman in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, John 4:5-42, would have thought that she was being scammed. By Jesus.

   What if someone offered to give you a kind of water that would make it so that you would never be thirsty again? Would you accept it? Would you think it was a scam? It sounds like the guy offering magic beans to Jack for the family cow, doesn’t it? How would you respond to the offer of that “living water”?

   We’ve had two significant rainstorms this season. Both brought floods to the burn areas and snow to the mountains. The melting snow brought more floods, following the pull of gravity and flowing down in streams. It cascaded into culverts, control channels, and fields and catch-basins, percolating into aquifers. And some flowed into the ocean.

   That’s what people in Bible times called “living water”.

   “Living water” means water that is moving, like rapids, like fast-moving rivers. “Living water” is found in both the Old and New testaments of the Bible as a metaphor for the Holy Spirit in places like the Bible’s book of Jeremiah, where God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah to the southern kingdom of Judah, just before it falls to the Babylonians, in Jeremiah 2:12-13,

¹² Be appalled, O heavens, at this,
    be shocked, be utterly desolate,
says the Lord,
¹³ for my people have committed two evils:
    they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water,
    and dug out cisterns for themselves,
cracked cisterns
    that can hold no water.

   Jesus speaks to the people gathered in Jerusalem for a religious festival at the Temple and we see, in John 7:37-39, Jesus’ use of “living water” as a metaphor,

³⁷ On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, ³⁸ and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” ³⁹ Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

   We can still see a little snow in the foothills, waiting to melt and become living water. “Living water” is untamed, not bound by our expectations, like the winter wind, like the melting snow.

   It’s like the third person of the Trinity, the personal presence of the one God transforming, challenging, calling, equipping, and sending us through turbulent times on the course that leads to receiving eternal life.

   When the pandemic got to the point where we were pretty much confined to our homes in 2020, Sally and I decided to produce videos of encouragement that would provide a means to reflect on what it meant to be a Christian in the LA area and beyond. We called them “Streams of Living Water”, because we were never alone in the Holy Spirit and, well, the videos were being streamed, get it? 😊 Those developed into a blog, “Words of Living Water”, and a podcast, “Living Water Radio.” Do we see the common theme there? We are doing our 402^nd episode of each this week.

   In today’s main Gospel reading, John 4:5-42, Jesus speaks to a Samaritan woman, a follower of the Samaritan religion, at a water well, about the nature of the Christian faith, and specifically about living water.                          

   Samaria was a foreign nation in the middle of Israel. It had been formed, mostly, by the Assyrian Empire when the Assyrians conquered the northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C.

   The war that is going on in the middle east right now has been going on in one form or another for several thousand years. Our war with Iran has been going on, in one form or another, for 47 years.

   Conquest and colonization have been going on for a long time everywhere, sometimes self-destructively, as with Assyria’s conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel more than 700 years before Christ.

   Assyria had mixed the populations from throughout its conquered territories to prevent unity and rebellion, but many were no longer Assyrian. The result in Israel was “Samaria”.

   The Samaritans had retained enough of their Judaism to look a little bit familiar to the Jews, but they were not Jews. They were Samaritans. They were a hodgepodge of religions. They were a temptation to the Jews to be something else.

   Observant Jews were not supposed to even set foot in Samaritan territory. Jews traveling from Galilee, where Jesus was based, to Jerusalem, where the Temple was, were expected to walk to the other side of the Jordan River and then walk around, the long way.

   Observant male Jews were also not supposed to speak with a woman in public, not even with their wives.

   So, what is Jesus doing in Samaria, talking to a woman who we find out later has a questionable reputation, in a public place, with no one else around?

   Let’s take a look at the beginning of the passage, in John 4:5-8,

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.)

   We know that our current rainy season, such as it is, will be followed by a dry season, and that all these green hills will soon be brown. Oops, sorry, I meant “golden”. That’s what we say in California, right? 😊

   Israel has a climate much like that of Southern California, though it didn’t have irrigation back then. People had to draw water from cisterns in which they had stored water under their homes during the rainy season and from wells during the really dry season.

   Women usually went out to the local well to draw and carry water to their homes early in the morning, while it was still cool. This was a time when they could be with other adult women and exchange information and the news of the village.

   We find later in this reading that the Samaritan woman who Jesus has been speaking with at the well has been married five times, and that the man she was with is not her husband. Now, we don’t know the circumstances behind these marriages. She may have been divorced by each of her 5 husbands or widowed 5 times. But, given that she’s out at the well by herself in the middle of the day, there may be something to say for her not being very popular among the other women in the city.

   So, this particular Samaritan woman came to the well and unexpectedly found Jesus there alone as his disciples had gone into the city to buy food. He was tired, and Jesus spoke to her and asked her for a drink of water. What was he thinking?!

   The drama continues with John 4:9-14,

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.”

   The woman wanted that water. I’m guessing that she did not like going to the well at noon by herself, and that she was starting to realize that Jesus was offering more to her than avoiding shame and inconvenience. Much more.

   That well, Jacob’s well, is still producing water. I drank from that well when I studied in Israel. Back then there was just a bucket and a ladle that everyone who wanted could drink from. I’m sure it’s different now, but it does give us a strong image for what’s happening with Jesus’ revelation to the Samaritan woman.

   Jesus is in Samaria to show that God’s living water, the Holy Spirit, is for everyone. Everyone. Not just the Jewish people, but for gentiles, even for Samaritans and people like us.

   In the course of their conversation, Jesus asks the woman to go and get her husband, and when the woman says that she has no husband, Jesus tells her that he already knows about her marital history.

   Was that awkward for her? Yes.

   Have you ever lived in a place where you were a religious minority. Well, I suppose that we all have if we are living today, as Christians, in an increasingly non-Christian, even hostile, world. To cope, we often seek to be blindly inclusive and accepting, even to the point of being reluctant to share the good news of the living water that gushes up to eternal life for fear of appearing “unwelcoming”. We go along to get along.

   That’s why I think that this exchange between the Samaritan woman and Jesus is so shocking to our 21^st century ears as well as to the Samaritan woman. The woman deflects attention from herself and changes the subject. She calls Jesus a prophet. She points to their religious differences  and Jesus does nothing to accommodate them.

   Jesus replies, in John 4:21-26,

   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.”

   We sometimes hear from people with a vague sense that they need to be more than they are, but don’t want to change, that they are “spiritual but not religious”.

   Jesus doesn’t give us that option. In fact, Jesus doesn’t give us either option.  Christian faith is not about us.

   Gas is selling at around $5.00 a gallon here. At the same time, you can buy a gallon of diet coke for between $4.00 and $7.00. Of course, you can’t run your car on diet coke, but I’ve known people with serious diet coke needs, even addictions. 😊

   What we are willing to pay for something depends upon our needs, and on what’s going on around us. Some people think that they are poor if they don’t own what were considered luxuries a generation or two ago. Many people’s expectations for a minimally acceptable material life has grown to owning things like a cell phone, a home computer, and a big screen TV with lots of streaming services, things that people didn’t know that they needed for thousands of years.

   Others are just hustling for a dollar. They know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. They seek more things for no other purpose than to fill the emptiness within them that they cannot name. But that we can. And that Jesus paid to fill when he paid for our sins on the cross.

   The Samaritan woman had been defined by her failed relationships. Some of us are ruled by our failures. We have not been the people we want to be, both in what we have done and in what we have left undone.

   And when we have messed up the devil says, “You failed! What a hypocrite! You aren’t a Christian. Why pretend? Give up!”

   But that’s not the Word of God, that’s the word of the devil. That’s the word of the forces that defy God.

   God’s answer to us and to the Samaritan woman is that we have been given a Savior, the Messiah, Christ the Lord.

   The Good News, the Gospel, the Word of God says, “Jesus died for you. Jesus overcame temptation, sin, death, and the power of the devil, for you.”

   Some others are ruled by their fears

   Why don’t they turn to God’s perfect love that casts out fear, to the living, eternal relationship with the one true living God for which they were created? I think that the reason is “sin”, what Martin Luther called being “curved in upon ourselves.”

   Most people in this world are focused on themselves, on their pleasures, on their material security. They are worried about the economy, that our country seems to be coming apart at the seams, that we are devolving into conflicting tribes, that we can’t talk with each other anymore, that A. I. will take away their jobs and their dignity as human beings, that their health or their health insurance coverage will fail, that the zombie apocalypse is inching closer and that they are powerless against what they fear is coming. And now we are facing the possibility of another world war!

   They might remember the bumper sticker that said, “Even paranoids have real enemies.”  And they look at the world and they realize, “Yes. We have real enemies.”

   Like the Samaritan woman, we are now at a crossroads. We are in the season of Lent. Lent is a time to reconsider the necessity of the things we can’t buy.

   Instead, some of us are being ruled by false beliefs about God, like the Samaritan woman. Jesus doesn’t talk to her about inclusion here. Jesus offers her an alternative in the truth. Jesus himself. Jesus is the truth.

   Our salvation has been paid in full at the cross! There is nothing more valuable than that, and it’s free. It casts out our failures, our fears, and our false beliefs forever and puts Jesus Christ in their place. It is revealed by the Holy Spirit, the living water at work within us!

   How do we convey that message to people who walk in the darkness of false belief every day and don’t know it? Jesus is pretty direct with the Samaritan women, even offensive to our ears. Why?

   We say that Christianity is not a religion, it’s a transformational relationship. It is personal and it is particular.

   It doesn’t come to people and nations from the West, or from the East, or from the North or from the South. Christianity comes to all people from above.

   Jesus does not mince words about what truth is. It isn’t a proposition; it is a person.

   But suddenly the disciples return from their shopping trip, and their first reaction is that they are astonished that Jesus was speaking with a woman.

   The woman, an outcast among outcasts, living a separate existence within Israel, and a seemingly separate existence within Samaria, pays no attention to them and returns to her village and fearlessly shares what she has encountered in Jesus, and that he might be the Messiah.

   Jesus’ disciples seem to be concerned only with Jesus’ immediate physical needs.

   Jesus refocuses their attention toward Jesus’ mission, and that of his disciples (and ours), and what was happening right in front of them.

   The Samaritan woman is telling her community about Jesus! She is evangelizing!

   Our Gospel reading concludes in John 4:39-42,

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.”

   I saw on the news once that 6” of moving water can knock a person over, and that 12” of moving water can sweep away a motor vehicle.

   Living water is powerful, and the streams of living water within us, that is the Holy Spirit, is powerful. It transforms lives. It endures forever.

   It’s how we know when the devil, the world, and our sinful selves are scamming us. When they tell us that we are not enough, that we need more stuff, that we should fear what, in fact, has no ultimate control over us. None.

   God has always known everything we have ever done, and yet he has died on the cross for us. The Holy Spirit opens the hearts of all who will receive the living presence of God, the living water, and makes us a new creation by the water of baptism and the Word of God.

   This Lent, seek this water, this living water, gushing up to eternal life, the power of the Holy Spirit within you that opens your heart to receive the gifts of faith and the water of baptism and tell people you know, people who trust you, about what Jesus has done for you. He is truly the Savior of the world.