[Sermon] Washing Away the Labels

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo

March 8, 2026 + Third Sunday in Lent: The Well of Truth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob7AtLoBzN4

Labels shape how we see others—and how we come to see ourselves. Like dust that slowly gathers on a window, these labels accumulate until they obscure our true identity. At the well, Jesus invites a woman burdened by the weight of her story into a moment of radical honesty and healing. Rather than defining her by the fractures of her life, he offers living water that washes away the residue of shame. In this encounter, the outsider becomes the voice of truth, revealing God’s expansive grace. Through Christ, the dust of our past is cleared so that the gold of God’s love can bind us back together.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

Grace to you and peace from God Aba, Father, Mother, Creator, our Parent, and the Lord Jesus Christ, the living water. And we say, amen. Amen.

Well, I brought my bag because I know that there are many young at heart here. But I will talk about something that I have in my bag here.

Labels.

What do you think when you hear “labels”?

Got it stuck on my chair.

What do you think?

You get labeled—are you talking about me now? Good. Right. Right or wrong. Right or wrong. Right. And then we end up, as Michelle says, maybe like me. It was interesting that we are so prompted to have labels for everything that when I was looking for this envelope in the office, it was so hard for me because there were like 25 different types of labels. There were round, square, rectangle, clear, thick, thin. I mean, we have them all.

Every time that we want to label something, we will find a label and a reason to label something—or worse, to label someone. So take a moment, look around, and again look for somebody who you do not know very well, and just spend a few minutes and think of the times when you have been labeled or when you have been pushed to label someone. Let's take just a couple of minutes and reflect on that. If you need labels, I have some for you here.

Pictures. All right.

All right, let's see. And I always feel bad that I give you freedom to talk and then I stop you. It's all my fault. Should I have another label here, John? Yes? Okay.

So, is there any one or two of you who would like to share just maybe an idea—what you started to talk about, or what it means to be labeled or to label someone? Just speak loud so I can hear, and I can repeat for the rest of the congregation.

Sandy? I don't think Dave had a good point—that often there are labels that we don't hear. Somebody has labeled us, but we might not know what that label is. Sometimes we are labeled, but we do not know. We haven't heard that we are labeled by someone.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sometimes people who are physically disabled are considered not bright enough to answer their own questions or discuss issues intelligently. People who are disabled sometimes are not able to answer or to share. Cerebral palsy is a good example.

Say again.

Cerebral palsy is a good example of that.

In the back—yeah.

So something that I felt like, I actually kind of had a feeling of what—so I just assumed that that was the case without giving myself the chance for others to realize that wasn't the case. I put it on myself.

You put it on yourself. You assume things over the perception that others have of you.

Yeah.

I think that we could have a conversation—a full conversation—about the implications. But I think that if you hear these three comments, we can hear that labeling everybody or everything—labeling—has a deep and profound impact in the lives of every person, of all people.

Some of these labels are projections, my own projections onto others. Some of these labelings are imposed on people. And many times, as Steve was saying, sometimes these labels that we have, we internalize them and they become part of us. They get so close to our heart that sometimes we don't see them, but they are inside us.

These are forces that define and shape us as we walk our journey.

Last Sunday we were talking about Nicodemus, and this Sunday we are talking about this woman. We don't have her name. The two conversations that the Lord Jesus has with these people have some similarities, but also some contrast.

The contrast in these two conversations is that for Nicodemus it happened at night, in the darkness, and with the woman it happens during the daytime, probably by noon, when there is plenty of light and openness.

And the similarities are that these two conversations show us the liminal spaces for transformation. Also, one of the similarities is that both characters in the two stories are labeled—one as the Jewish leader, as the one who opposes Jesus; the woman as a woman who perhaps, as many scholars said, maybe went to the well at that time of the day because by that time the rest of the women were back home, and she had to go by herself so that she doesn't have to face and hear and feel the labeling of the people who were talking behind her back, diminishing her and disregarding her.

I believe that we live lives—we experience things like that in our daily lives. These labels accumulate, as you were saying, and we carry them with us without knowing—through the years, through the weeks, through the days, through the hours sometimes—and they become heavy, and they become difficult to bear.

It's like the dust that we do not know is accumulating day by minute after minute, even when we do not notice it.

A couple of weeks ago—I'm going to put our sister Sue on the spot here—but she told me one day, I said, “I hope that one day we can clean all the dust that accumulates on the windows that go from the second floor to the gym, because when you pass you can see that dust growing through the weeks like this.” And it was like this.

So Sue noticed that. And last Sunday one of our adult leaders, Pat Smith, said, “I heard Sue was concerned about that dust,” and he brought a duster—a telescopic duster—and they were able to clean. And now the windows there look very different.

But sometimes our lives are like that. The dust and everything that happens in our lives accumulates layer over layer over layer. We carry this dust of our past labels that are placed upon us by others, and they become part of our identity.

The multiple experiences and hurts in life accumulate like onion layers, covering our true identity—the identity that God has given us.

Jesus, in these two stories—and especially in today's story—is taking the life of the woman and almost like an onion starts peeling layer by layer, to help her to see beyond the labels that she's carrying, the shards and the dust that have accumulated in her life.

Labels diminish, and sometimes they project our own bias. To what degree does society impose them on her, or maybe impose them on us?

Was she defined by the behaviors that people saw, that people perceived?

Jesus says, “Go to your husband.” And she said, “I don't have a husband.” And Jesus said, “You're telling the truth. You have had five husbands, and the man you live with now is not your husband.”

You can imagine what the town—what the labels were in the town for this woman.

I have been telling you that lately I have been reading and listening to Dr. Gabor Maté. Interestingly—and I don't know, this is the Spirit just guiding me to listen to him at this point—but in what I was listening to, he was talking about addictions. He was talking about that we cannot label ourselves and we cannot label others because of our addictions.

When we say, “I am an…” and you blank—you can put whatever addiction that may be—when you say “I am,” he says we need to be careful about that.

Lives certainly are dominated by behaviors—behaviors that we know and behaviors that people see. But is that who we really are? Is really that how we were born? Is that our true nature?

They are behaviors that we have developed, and in many cases—and in most cases—are the result of the social circumstances in which you and I are living.

Sometimes losing purpose in life, losing meaning in our lives, losing the sense of belonging, losing employment, having the breakup of a relationship can be the circumstances that lead us to these behaviors that others see.

No one—no one—can be defined by his or her or their addiction. We are not the addiction.

And to identify people by their addictions is toxic.

He challenges it. Dr. Maté says if people can heal, it means that the addiction is not their identity.

Recovering from an addiction is finding something that gives back meaning to that person—finding oneself.

And I think that that is what is happening at the well.

Jesus reminds the woman. Jesus reminds us that the dust, the sediments that harden our hearts and prevent us from seeing our own true identity.

Jesus helps the woman to see if the fractures were still present in her life. Was she aware? Did others still see those cracks or fractures in her life? Probably they did. Probably she noticed it.

In fact, she confesses, “You are right, Jesus. What you are telling me about my life is true.”

This woman, because she recognizes the fractures in her life, needs water. And as David was reminding us in the young worshippers message, she needs this water and needs to go to the well.

But I wonder—and I invite you to think—was she really looking for the water from the well, or did she go to the well just as a way to keep existing, to keep surviving?

Because the water that she needed was a different kind of water from the H₂O that you and I know. It was the water that will give her the meaning and the understanding of her identity as a person who has value, as a person who has a God-given dignity.

Maybe she wanted the water because she did not want to go to the well and put up with the looks, with the mumbling behind her back, with the faces that people were making in front of her.

Her life was perhaps the result of traumas and fractures in her life.

And like her, you and I yearn for living water—or the bread of life that we read about later in chapter 6 of the Gospel according to John.

Living water, breath of life that heals—heals us and makes us whole.

Healing is the process of letting go—detachment from anything that separates us from one another and from God.

Spiritual dehydration makes us cynical, disregarding, and self-righteous.

And once again Jesus shows us that in his love he takes us as we are, but he also reminds us that he will never leave us in the way and in the place where he finds us.

He always leaves us with a learning experience, with a healing experience, or with a thought in our hearts and in our minds that stays there and helps us to experience the living water that orients us and returns us to our true self.

And to me, my siblings in Christ, this is an act of liberation, an act of freedom—an act that allows this woman to grow and to be who God called her to be.

In this story, my siblings in Christ—my siblings in Christ—once again we see a space, a liminal space, where the outsider is the primary theologian.

Healing requires us to stop drinking from the stagnant pools of our own defenses and instead submit our fractures to the living water—the living water that washes away everything.

The water that Jesus gives revives her. She is reminded of her God-given dignity.

There is no need to hide, to remain buried under the layers of dust, hiding her fractures and pretending that she was okay.

She now proclaims, shares, and lives in the freedom of the golden grace of God.

So how does this call us as community, as congregation?

I believe that through this story the Lord Jesus is inviting us—and reminding us—the call that he has extended to you and to me to strive and to make this space, this place, a sacred space: a well of truth for all people who need to be dusted, peeled, and converted.

By making this space a place where scandalous dialogue can happen—where fractures are recognized but not labeled, where we listen to stories, and the thirst for the living water is recognized.

We are called to be barrier breakers and bridge builders for reconciliation and healing.

A living water that removes our labels and gives us the freedom to be the people who God calls us to be.

And for that we thank God for the good news that once again the Lord brings to us.

Amen.