I Know What You Did

Sermon — March 8, 2026
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”
(John 4:28–29)

“After an accident on a winding road,” the synopsis for a 1997 film begins, “four teens make the fatal mistake of dumping their victim’s body into the sea. But exactly one year later, a mysterious fisherman begins stalking the friends.” This horror film was called I Know What You Did Last Summer, and it was such a success that the studio produced a sequel the next year, entitled (almost inevitably) I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, in which (spoiler alert) “the murderous fisherman with a hook stalks the two surviving teens.” A few years later, in 2006, trying to squeeze the last dollar from the brand, the studio released a third film, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, to critical dismay.

Nearly two decades passed, and then, one day in 2024 or so, somewhere in Los Angeles, a film producer awoke in the middle of the night with an idea. “I know what America needs in 2025,” I imagine him thinking to himself. “So much has changed in our nation and in our world since 1997 or 2006, but the human condition remains the same.” At this tense and divided moment in American life, he knew that the people once more needed to hear that ancient story of sin and redemption, and so he offered the American people one final work of art: the innovatively-titled film I Know What You Did Last Summer. (Yes, just like the first one.)

Now, I’m the kind of guy who has nightmares after the Heffalump song in Winnie the Pooh, so I’ll admit I haven’t seen any of the movies in the series. But the titles alone point to a fundamental truth about the human condition: it’s never good news to hear the words, “I know what you did.”

Imagine that you’re sitting down, minding your own business, and someone walks into the room—your boss, your mother, husband/wife/best friend, an officer of the law or a minister of the Church—and says to you, “I know what you did.” If there is even a trace of guilt on your conscience, your heart begins to pound. What secret of your soul have they uncovered? If your conscience is clean, you might get nervous nevertheless. There must’ve been some kind of misunderstanding. When someone says “I know what you did,” it’s nearly always an accusation, or even a threat: I know you did something wrong, and—while I may not be a murderous horror-film fisherman—there will be consequences.

That’s one of the things that makes this conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well so powerful. There are many interesting layers to the story, of course. Jesus reaches out across differences of gender and ethnicity, as the woman notes when she asks him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (John 4:9) Jesus introduces some powerful symbolism with this image of “living water,” which seems to evoke both the waters of baptism and the ongoing way in which God’s presence in our life can quench our spiritual thirst.

But the Samaritan woman doesn’t go back to the city and say, “Come and see a man who bridges the divide between his people and ours.” She doesn’t tell her neighbors that she’s found a new teacher who will quench their thirst, spiritual or literal—in fact, she leaves her water jar behind. When she returns to the city to tell them that she thinks she’s found the Messiah, what she says is: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” (John 4:29) And her words point us toward what could’ve been an amazing title for the fourth movie in the series: not I Know What You Did Last Summer, or I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, or I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, but the most frightening statement of all: I Know Everything That You Have Ever Done.

Of course, Jesus doesn’t actually tell her everything she’s ever done. All he says is that she was right to say, “‘I have no husband,’ for [she has had] five husbands, and the one [she has] now [is] not her husband” at all! (John 4:17–18) But that’s enough for her to feel like he has told her everything she’s ever done. In the same way that “I know what you did last summer” isn’t talking about all the hot dogs and pool parties and trips to the beach, “He told me everything that I have ever done” doesn’t mean that Jesus recited her biography. It means he identified the one big secret, the source of hidden shame that rules her life.

Now, we don’t know anything about husbands one through five—whether they died of natural causes, or the marriages ended in divorce, or something else. And I don’t mean to make any kind of ethical judgment about her life. We don’t have to believe that she’s doing something wrong to say that in the first century, for a woman to have been married five times and now to be living with a man outside the bonds of marriage entirely would have come with some significant judgment or disdain from the people around her. We can only imagine what her neighbors would have said behind her back, in the small-town life of first-century Samaria.

And that’s the most important point. We can only imagine, because Jesus doesn’t say a word. Jesus knows her truth, but he doesn’t scold her. He listens to her with respect. And then he reveals the truth about himself to her, just as she’s revealed the truth about herself to him. “When Messiah comes,” she says, “he will proclaim all things to us.” And Jesus says to her, “I am he.” (John 4:25-26) Jesus chooses to reveal to her something that very few people in the world know at this point in the Gospel. And in a sense, the story goes even further. In response to her question about which mountain is the proper place on which to worship God, Jesus says, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” And there’s just a hint here of the sense that this woman is worshiping God in spirit and in truth; that by meeting Jesus face to face, and by being honest, by acknowledging the truth about her life, she is worshiping God more fully than anyone else. And this woman, who might have faced scorn or suspicion from the people around her, becomes one of the first apostles: she goes and tells her people that the Messiah has come.

She is seen by Jesus, and she is known by Jesus, and indeed, he knows everything that she has ever done. But she’s not condemned, or judged; she is respected and loved, and chosen to do God’s work. And the people around her seem to be able to feel the power of what has happened in her life, because they flock to Jesus, and, on the strength of her testimony alone, they invite him to come and stay with them.

There’s a distinction people sometimes make, and which I’ve probably talked about before, between “shame” and “guilt.” “Guilt” is what you feel when you feel bad about something you’ve done wrong. “Shame” is what you feel when you feel like you are wrong. “Guilt” is about what you do. “Shame” is about who you are. And while “guilt” can be feel a healthy and helpful emotion, when it leads us out of ourselves to make amends for something we’ve done wrong, “shame” is a much trickier thing. Shame tends to lead us into ourselves. Shame leads us to hide from other people; because the worst thing that can happen when you feel a secret shame is for the secret to be revealed, for someone else to see you and know you as you really are.

The worst thing that can happen when you feel shame is to be seen, but of course, that can also be the best thing, and often the only thing that can help. The true antidote to shame is to be seen—to be found out, to be known—and to find that you are loved, to be accepted and cherished, precisely as you are, precisely as the person you are ashamed to be.

And this is exactly what Jesus does, for the Samaritan woman and for each one of us. He looks at you, and me, and every one of us, as he looked at her; and he sees us even more clearly than we can see ourselves, and he knows everything that we have ever done. And he loves us nevertheless, so much and in such a way that, as Paul wrote, “while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) If we have done something wrong, he forgives it. If we bear the burden of some hidden shame, he wants to lift it. Despite our imperfection, despite our outright wrongdoing, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts,” (Romans 5:8) and we are being sent into the world, just as that Samaritan woman was, to share the good news of the power of that love.