Identified: A Sermon for North End Collective, Peachtree Corners

February 21, 2026 

Every other semester, my theology professor in seminary offered the second of his courses in a different format than a more traditional lecture class. The class would split up into groups, pick a movie, and then prepare a class report detailing the movie’s theological themes. It forever ruined the movie-watching experience for each of us because we could no longer watch a movie without trying to identify the Christ-figure and belief systems in each film.

Similarly, all of us who took preaching courses will forever struggle with sermon points swimming around in our heads until we have the opportunity to organize them on paper into more formal works.

I am grateful that Taylor has given me the opportunity to pull some things out of the chaos of my brain, put them on paper, and present them to you this morning. I am also grateful to Annie who spoke up on my behalf, knowing that it would help the whole family if Mama had a little less clutter in her mind.

Chapter 1:

I grew up in a theologically, politically, and socially moderate household, though many might come to the conclusion that the mix of viewpoints held by my parents automatically put our family in one category or the other. I will explain a little bit more later on, but for now, it’s important for you to hear this: it was fine for women to preach on Sunday from the main pulpit, but I still needed to be home at 11pm on prom night.

My Dad was a college minister at UGA and my Mom was a high school English teacher, and one year, was MY high school English teacher. The point is this: I never got away with anything around town. There were spies all over Athens, just waiting to rat me out.

Lest you begin to believe that my childhood was boring, my life was filled with mission trips and grammar lessons. All kidding aside, my childhood and teenage years had, and still have, a great influence on my life.

Chapter 2:

My senior year of high school, I auditioned for college music schools at Samford, the University of Alabama, UGA, and Belmont. (Did I mention that my afternoons were spent shuffling between piano and violin lessons and Wednesday night youth group and Sunday night youth choir?) Because of the Hope scholarship and the proximity of my Mom’s laundry room to my freshman dorm, I started UGA as a music therapy major. My first course, wildly enough, was Archaeology. I made an A. It quickly went downhill from there.

My chronological list of majors was as follows: Music therapy, psychology, athletic training, business & real estate, there was a brief effort to get into the Special Education teaching school, and finally—English. Thank goodness I had understanding parents who believed strongly in the full experience of a liberal arts education. Thank goodness I could write and thank goodness, perhaps even more so, I had an eager editor at home. Mom has always loved that red pen—

As a child, I loved going to work with my Dad at the Baptist Student Union to hang around the college students, but when I became a college student, I tried to stay a safe distance away from BSU and my Dad, but love and safe space drew me in. My sorority experience was great—I loved meeting women from around the country with vastly different backgrounds who knew nothing of my parents. But I found “my people” at BSU. I went on more mission trips. I’ve said before that I would’ve made better grades if I hadn’t spent so much time there.

Chapter 3:

There was a picture—this picture—hanging in my Dad’s office and Dad and I told many a naïve freshman that this baby was me, but it wasn’t. It was just a beautiful picture of a missionary kid holding a baby. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have minded actually being the girl in the picture. Years later, Dad shared with me that the other baby in the picture died a short time later from an illness. A beautiful picture, indeed.

One of the mission trips in college was to Paris and side note, this is when Jesse and I decided that our relationship was going to be a little more long-term. On one of the many rainy days in Paris, a group of us walked to a museum, and I encountered an elderly woman walking the other way on the sidewalk. Her black and gray hair was matted against her head. I took the scarf from around my neck and wrapped it around her head. She smiled and I smiled and we knew that we didn’t speak each other’s language and we also knew that it didn’t matter. It was nice to find each other in the middle of a crowded street.

Chapter 4:

Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Suchar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”

(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)

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.)

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.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?”

“Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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 said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband,” and come back.

The woman answered him, “I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband;’ for you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”

The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

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.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

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.”

Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

Jesus meets a woman at the well. Jesus, a male Jew, engages in conversation with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. For much of my life, I have heard stories about this unnamed woman--about the reasons why she had so many husbands and was living with a 6^th man. Sin, sin, sin! No doubt, they said, that she was a prostitute! No doubt that she was drawing water from the well at noon because she slept in that morning because of sin, sin, sin! That’s what made this encounter so remarkable for Jesus, you see! This dirty, Samaritan, prostitute, and heathen of a woman was still eligible for the remarkable grace of God.

Yes, I believe that a woman who fit that popular description would have been eligible for God’s grace. But I also believe that this woman, whose assumed identity offers a more salacious story, is just a human, whose nature was just as sinful as our own. And what’s so radical about grace is that she and we and you and me are all offered living water.

Never in this story is it revealed to us why the woman has had so many husbands. We don’t know if Jesus brings up these men because of sin, death, or even the woman’s own vulnerability. Jesus doesn’t call her by her name—“I know you,” Jesus says. “I know what you’ve been through, what you’ve done, what you are doing, and what had been done to you.” And in light of all these things, Jesus tells her, “Come, just as you are. This well is deeper and wider than you know. Come and see, come receive, come and live forever.”

Jesus is neither a fortune teller or palm reader, his “inside information” comes from the One who created us all with purpose and intentionality and with a Divine likeness too. We are all children who are known and we are all children who are all loved, just as we are.

I love stories from the Bible whose ancient lessons are so spot on for us in this modern year of 2026. If only we were to take the time to sit with others without assumption, without a “sizing up period.” If only we could just listen to their stories, and recognize the God-image within their souls.

We too often step in for and maybe even over Jesus as trial lawyers and judges. We unnecessarily stretch the story to make our case, denying the impact of the Witness’s narrative and the Testifier’s sermon. Again, grace is amazing—the gift of everlasting life is amazing—because the Giver gives freely. We could all stand to echo the words of John the Baptist, “We must decrease; Jesus must increase.”  

John’s gospel so beautifully begins with metaphors that signal the beginning of a new creation—God is creating again—and it is love again that is the catalyst of this work.

Who will bear witness to this new creation? God is again, separating light from darkness, but who will see it? God is again, providing water and food, but who will drink and eat? God again, is purposefully giving of Godself to human form, but who will bear witness to the Messiah? Who will understand this new creation, full of rich meaning and language and grace-filled teaching?

This light is not just light that wakes us and this darkness is not just darkness that draws us to sleep. This water is not just water that quenches thirst, but water that satisfies us through eternities bounds. This birth is not from either clay or blood, but a rebirth that is formed from faithfulness. Jesus’ own birth presents new language too for he is Emmanuel, God with us, fully human and fully divine.

Who will bear witness? Who will testify? Who will sit with Jesus at the well?

Chapter 5:

I entered my last senior year at UGA without a plan for life after college. I’d tried out every major I could (or that would have me,) and I wasn’t quite ready to entertain the thought of more school. I was envious of those individuals who had passion enough to carry them straight through college and into a career or graduate school program, each step a box checked on their map from childhood to adulthood.

I struggled with finding my own identity. I wasn’t known as the “violin and piano girl” anymore. I wasn’t an excellent academic. I wasn’t sporty. I listened to songs by Garth Brooks and Billy Joel and Tom Petty thinking that their songs about the “perfect girl” might help provide me a little more definition (and maybe a little more edgy.) They didn’t. The only song that ever worked out for me was Rick Springfield’s “Jesse’s Girl.”

I wandered so much that I felt lost, not curious.

I took the LSAT. I took the GRE. I began working at the local soup kitchen (and tagged a handsome fellow to work with me,) and found more fulfillment and understanding of myself there than I had in many other places.

One day, a friend of my parents and recruiter for Mercer’s seminary, McAfee, School of Theology, shared what he saw in me. He bore witness to my stories from mission trips, my work with BSU, and my love of marginalized people. He saw in me a larger story that I was unable to see myself. He pointed out to me that I liked meeting needs like that of a cold woman on the streets of Paris, France and of those who hungered in Athens, Georgia.

I began seminary and my first class was Ezekiel. I was able to pull my music knowledge and writing skills together to make an A. It didn’t exactly go downhill from there, but seminary was not easy for me. Not only were multiple choice tests still the bane of my existence, my life as a moderate everything meant that I again was trying to figure out who I really was and what I really believed. It wasn’t until my third year when a psychiatrist helped me with both my depression and academic woes. Through therapy for my mental health and learning struggles, things turned around for me. I was supported so well by so many, including my therapist, my parents, my classmates, many professors, and by Jesse.

My capstone paper was about my religious heritage, which turned out to be quite the conglomerate of denominations, including Irish Catholics, Methodists, and Primitive Baptists. Some were loud, some were quiet, some sang along with shape note music, some sang very little. Some were conservative on Sundays only, some throughout the week, and some pushed the boundaries of roles and traditional understanding of “the right way to live.”

Throughout my wandering, I found solace in the prayer of Thomas Merton:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

I found the encouragement to persevere in REM’s “Everybody Hurts Sometimes,” and Third Day’s “When the Rain Comes,” and Jennifer Knapp’s “Faithful to Me.”  

The words from Come, thou Fount of Every Blessing, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love,” brought me relief and reminded me that any faith journey is rarely linear, but full of doubts and questions.

I leaned into praise from my Pastoral Care Professor, Truett Gannon, and my Preaching Professors, John Claypool and Peter Rhea Jones.

I struggled at times too because I felt mis-understood or even wrongly labeled, I felt unworthy, I felt stranded on a bridge between many different groups of people and I really just wanted to belong.

And then I found chaplaincy. Throughout North Georgia and the broader New Orleans limits, I met with patients and families who were often struggling through the worst moments of their lives. I learned to pray the rosary. I heard life story after life story. I listened to the questions of a man who believed that Jesus, at the time, waded in the receding flood waters of hurricane Katrina with him, but as he lay dying of illness caused by the waters, he was no longer so sure. I sat with a Vietnamese family in the back of their grocery store as they prayed together over their dying father.

I’ve worked in churches and helped them with their finances and building management. I’ve played piano and violin in worship. I’ve preached. I’ve wrapped the sprained ankle of a unhoused woman when she came to the church looking for help.

I’ve repaired small electricity and plumbing issues in the houses of people I was visiting.

I’ve prayed with abusers & addicts, devout Christians, Jews, and Muslims. I’ve held hands and wiped noses and caught the bereaved as they fell down in overwhelm in heartbreak.

I’ve rejoiced with families whose children should not have lived. I’ve seen children work hard through rehabilitation. I’ve attended bell-ringings and discharge parties.

I’ve baptized. I’ve stood by as Last Rites have been read. I’ve covered small bodies with fresh linens to respect the Jewish and Islamic mourning rituals.

And I’ve sat in the back of a patient room, holding a dying baby, with the best nurse friend this Chaplain could ask for. As we sat together and waited, we talked about Sunday school, and her life growing up as a Jehovah’s witness, about a quirky neurologist, how we thought our husbands might handle a day like the one we were having, and just how peaceful the moments were in this back hallway of the ICU.

A few days later it hit me and I walked over to this picture in our house. There I was, holding a dying baby and it was a beautiful picture of love and sacred space.

This isn’t a bragging list. It’s reflection, it’s revelation-through-hindsight. It’s being able to see where God’s spirit to teach me, to lead me, and to carry me through. It’s remembering all of the incredible people I’ve gotten to know and it’s the recognition of trauma and grief that I carry with me. It’s my proclamation and witness narrative and testimony: God is faithful. The bridge is no longer lonely; God is there.

Conclusion:

It’s okay if you don’t know who you are yet. It’s okay if you change your direction or change your mind. Our culture desperately wants to tell your story for you, they want you to be predictable in thought, and in one camp or another.

Lean into the places that are filled with hope and joy. Lean into the one who truly does know you and who offers your grace and astounding love at every step in your life’s journey.  

Meet Jesus at the well and be vulnerable. The thought of being fully known is so scary and yet, so unburdening. Come, just as you are, let loose the chains that have wrapped you in fear and bound you to earth’s understanding. May you be seen and heard and may you go bear witness to the abundant waters of everlasting life.

  

We do believe, oh God, that your creative hand is still present today. Oh that we could use it as a magic wand and make the rough places plain, but that is not your way. We have been reminded this week of the dust that formed us and the dust to which we will return. Walk with us during this season of Lent and guide us on towards paths of restoration and reconciliation. Help us find places where we might participate in your good works. Not all of us are preachers, teachers, missionaries, or chaplains; remind us that your story is rarely told in formal settings, but rather on crowded streets, in high trees, over meals, and at wells.

Sung loudly, or whispered between neighbors, we praise you for all you have created and all you will keep refining—may it be on Earth as it is in heaven. Amen.