A Morning Service for the Third Sunday of Lent 2023
HYMN – O for a heart to praise my God NEH 74/AMR325 – Stockton
1 O for a heart to praise my God,
A heart from sin set free;
A heart that always feels thy blood
So freely spilt for me:
2 A heart resigned, submissive, meek,
My dear Redeemer’s throne;
Where only Christ is heard to speak,
Where Jesus reigns alone:
3 A humble, lowly, contrite heart,
Believing, true, and clean,
Which neither life nor death can part
From him that dwells within:
4 A heart in every thought renewed,
And full of love divine;
Perfect and right and pure and good,
A copy, Lord, of thine.
5 My heart, thou know’st, can never rest
Till thou create my peace;
Till of mine Eden repossest,
From self, and sin, I cease.
6 Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart,
Come quickly from above;
Write thy new name upon my heart,
Thy new best name of love.
PRAYER OF PREPARATION
Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open,
all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,
and worthily magnify your holy name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen
PRAYERS OF PENITENCE
God the Father forgives us in Christ and heals us by the Holy Spirit.
Let us therefore put away all anger and bitterness, all slander and malice,
and confess our sins to God our redeemer. cf. Ephesians 4.30,32
Almighty God, our heavenly Father,
we have sinned against you and against our neighbour,
through our own fault, in thought, and word, and deed,
and in what we have left undone.
We are truly sorry and repent of all our sins.
For your Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
forgive us all that is past;
and grant that we may serve you in newness of life
to the glory of your name. Amen.
May the God of love and power
forgive you and free you from your sins,
heal and strengthen you by his Spirit
and raise you to new life in Christ our Lord. Amen
THE COLLECT
Almighty God, whose most dear Son
went not up to joy but first he suffered pain,
and entered not into glory before he was crucified:
mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross,
may find it none other than the way of life and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen
FIRST READING – Exodus 17.1-7
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarrelled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the LORD, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The LORD said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarrelled and tested the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”
SECOND READING – Romans 5.1-11
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
HYMN – Be thou my guardian and my guide NEH 64/AMR300 – Abridge
1 Be thou my guardian and my guide,
And hear me when I call;
Let not my slippery footsteps slide,
And hold me lest I fall.
2 The world, the flesh, and Satan dwell
Around the path I tread;
O, save me from the snares of hell,
Thou quickener of the dead.
3 And if I tempted am to sin,
And outward things are strong,
Do thou, O Lord, keep watch within,
And save my soul from wrong.
4 Still let me ever watch and pray,
And feel that I am frail;
That if the tempter cross my way,
Yet he may not prevail.
GOSPEL – John 4.5-42
So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, 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.”
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.”
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. 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 Saviour of the world.”
SERMON
The gospel reading set for today is a very long and puzzling report of a conversation Jesus had with a Samaritan woman. I think it would be easy to miss its significance if we didn’t remember that it is John who is recalling this incident, and nothing he recalls is without great significance. We might also remember that this scene at the well follows on from Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemas and takes a very similar line. A great deal of symbolism might be read into the scene, and there’s a fair bit going on under the surface.
Jesus comes to the City of Sychar, which might be translated “drunkard”, and is identified as the town of Askar, on the southern base of Mount Ebal, about a mile north of Jacob’s Well. It is said to be the site as the ancient centre of Yahweh worship, known as Shechem, the place of Joseph’s burial. But it’s the well that’s the important thing. John tells us that it’s about noon, a likely time for Jesus to want a drink but an unlikely time for someone to be going there for the daily water collection. Maybe there’s some link here with the hour of Jesus’ crucifixion, when he said “I thirst”.
He asks the Samaritan woman for a drink, we all know that he was neither supposed to talk to women nor have anything to do with Samaritans, but that he is happy to do both doesn’t surprise us. But his replies to the woman are somewhat strange, she is in the context of the ordinary, the concrete – she’s at a well drawing water and her mind is on what she’s doing – but Jesus is somewhere completely different. He begins to talk of “the gift of God”, and “living water”. She tries to bring him back to earth talking of Jacob and his flocks. But Jesus begins to talk of water that will become a spring of water inside people gushing up for ever. Not unreasonably the woman wants some of this to save her having to come back to keep drawing water! Though maybe by this time she thinks this stranger is completely off his trolley and is just humouring him!
And now the conversation takes an even more extraordinary turn. Jesus tells her to call her husband and she answers that she hasn’t got a husband and he says that she’s right and that she’s had five husbands. And then he says something we have as “the one you have now is not your husband.”
Jesus’ knowledge of her clearly impresses the woman as she calls him a prophet, which is a pretty loaded word, especially as there weren’t supposed to be any more in Israel until ‘the prophet that should come’, the Messiah. The woman herself then brought up what underlined the separation between Samaria and Judah. This conversation takes place at the foot of Mount Gerizim (aka Mount Ebal), the Samaritan place of worship; here the patriarchs had sacrificed (Genesis 12:7; 33:20) and here according to the Samaritan version of Deuteronomy 27:4, the Israelites had first set up an altar in Palestine.
Jesus not unexpectedly supports the Jewish position but says that it doesn’t matter anymore as the time is coming – indeed has come – when the only worship that matters is ‘in Spirit and truth’. The only basis for meeting God is not through sacrifice, whether in Jerusalem or Mt Gerizim, not through the physical but through the spiritual – also not in the form, the appearance of worship, but in what is real, what is true. God requires us to come to him and meet him, within – and there we cannot hide, we cannot act dishonestly, for there all things are revealed.
The woman confirms that she believes in a Messianic coming – Jesus doesn’t beat about the bush in St John’s Gospel, he tells her plainly that her waiting is over. At this dramatic moment the disciples return and we a simply told that the woman leaves the water jar – the old physical water – and goes to the town and raises a crowd to come and see what they think of this strange man.
The disciples try to make Jesus eat but they hear the same sort of words that baffled first Nicodemus and then the women. They hear about food that is not food – doing the will of his father – and then about reapers and sowers – perhaps they are to see that the seed Jesus has sown in the heart of this woman is about to be reaped in the many who first show an interest in his message spoken by another and then come themselves to appreciate the gospel at first hand through their own listening to Jesus. Maybe the disciples are to see their own role here – to bring people into contact with Jesus, and he’ll take it from there. Or perhaps that the work of others, the prophets of old, has prepared a people for the kingdom to come – they just need to hear that it has come.
There are a lot of themes in this passage; Jesus being with the outcast, being the living water, spreading the message, and worship that’s of the heart and soul. But it is John’s picture of this woman of Samaria that has the greatest impact – at the bottom of so much social judgement in so many ways, yet regarded by Jesus, and eventually seeing Jesus for who he was and becoming an apostle and evangelist to her people.
AFFIRMATION OF FAITH
Let us declare our faith in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ:
Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures;
he was buried; he was raised to life on the third day
in accordance with the scriptures;
afterwards he appeared to his followers,
and to all the apostles:
this we have received,
and this we believe. Amen. 1 Corinthians 15.3-7
HYMN O for a closer walk with God NEH 414/AMR 326 – Strachathro
1 O for a closer walk with God,
A calm and heavenly frame;
A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb!
2 Return, O holy Dove, return,
Sweet messenger of rest;
I hate the sins that made thee mourn,
And drove thee from my breast.
3 The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from thy throne,
And worship only thee.
4 So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame;
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb.
INTERCESSIONS – Val Etteridge
O God send forth your Holy Spirit into our hearts and minds and teach, guide and direct our thoughts and senses. We pray for the worldwide Christian Church and for our diocese and our benefice. We ask you to bless the family of your Church and pray that it may be open and may overcome all the hostilities and prejudices that might drive it apart. We ask you too, to bless our church here, where we come to worship, help us to be sincere and genuine.
Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.
We pray for King Charles and all in authority and for all human society. We pray for the nations and countries of our world and all who govern or have influence in these places. Especially at this time we pray for all those suffering in Ukraine, Turkey and Syria. We ask that all those who work to bring peace and harmony to our troubled world may be conscientious, diligent and caring, may those leaders who love power learn to turn to the power of love.
Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.
We pray for our local community and for our families here and those who work or visit this area. Father we thank you for this place where we live and we praise you for family love, peace and the many benefits we receive. Send down your peace to all and make us strong, unselfish and ready to protect the blessings you have given us.
Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.
We pray for all those who are sick in body, mind or spirit. We pray for the abandoned and unloved and those going through difficult times, those who need protecting from themselves or others. We pray for those who are sick, gravely ill or near death. In the silence we name the sick we know………..O God we ask you to be present to those we have named and to be present to those who care for the ill and troubled among us.
Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.
We remember those who have departed from this life and give thanks for their lives and all they meant to us. We ask that those recently bereaved may feel your presence. We offer to you all our thoughts and prayers and ask for your grace to serve and do your will im all things.
Merciful Father,
accept these prayers, for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
As our Saviour taught us, so we pray:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen.
BLESSING
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shine upon and be gracious unto you.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
The Lord God almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
the holy and undivided Trinity, guard you, save you,
and bring you to that heavenly city, where he lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen
HYMN – Guide me O thou great redeemer NEH 368 / AMR 296 – Cwm Rhondda
1 Guide me, O thou great Redeemer,
Pilgrim through this barren land;
I am weak, but thou art mighty,
Hold me with thy powerful hand:
Bread of heaven,
Feed me till I want no more.
2 Open now the crystal fountain
Whence the healing stream doth flow;
Let the fire and cloudy pillar
Lead me all my journey through:
Strong Deliverer,
Be thou still my strength and shield.
3 When I tread the verge of Jordan,
Bid my anxious fears subside;
Death of death, and hell’s Destruction
Land me safe on Canaan’s side:
Songs of praises
I will ever give to thee.
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord
In the name of Christ. Amen