Sunday Worship 15 September 2024
Today’s service is led by the Revd Sarah Moore
Introduction
Hello. My name is Sarah Moore, and I currently serve as Transition Minister in the National Synod of Scotland. At present I am working closely with Aberdeen United Reformed Church and with Morningside United Church, a local ecumenical partnership of the United Reformed Church and the Church of Scotland. I also serve as Clerk of the General Assembly of the United Reformed Church. You are welcome to this time of worship where we gather to worship the Lord of living water and remember the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well told in John chapter 4.
Hymn Let Us Build a House Where Love Can Dwell
Marty Haugen © 1994, GIA Publications, Inc. Sung by Frodsham Methodist Church Cloud Choir accompanied by Andrew Ellams. Produced by Rev’d Andrew Emison OneLicence # A-734713
Let us build a house where love can dwell and all can safely live,
a place where saints & children tell how hearts learn to forgive.
Built of hopes & dreams & visions, rock of faith & vault of grace;
here the love of Christ shall end divisions:
all are welcome, all are welcome,
all are welcome in this place.
Let us build a house where prophets speak, & words are strong & true,
where all God’s children dare to seek to dream God’s reign anew.
Here the Cross shall stand as witness and as symbol of God’s grace;
here as one we claim the faith of Jesus:
all are welcome, all are welcome,
all are welcome in this place.
Let us build a house where love is found in water, wine, & wheat:
a banquet hall on holy ground where peace & justice meet.
Here the love of God, through Jesus, is revealed in time & space;
as we share in Christ the feast that frees us:
all are welcome, all are welcome,
all are welcome in this place.
Let us build a house where hands will reach beyond the wood & stone
to heal & strengthen, serve & teach, & live the Word they’ve known.
Here the outcast & the stranger bear the image of God’s face;
let us bring an end to fear & danger:
all are welcome, all are welcome,
all are welcome in this place.
Let us build a house where all are named, their songs & visions heard
& loved & treasured, taught & claimed as words within the Word.
Built of tears & cries & laughter, prayers of faith & songs of grace,
let this house proclaim from floor to rafter:
all are welcome, all are welcome,
all are welcome in this place.
Prayers
Lord of living water we gather today in your name. In this time of worship we praise you and above all other things recollect that you are God and not us. Lord of living water we remember how you created all that there is, seen and unseen, out of chaos. Lord of living water we remember how your son Jesus was born into creation as one of us, here to nourish us for our life’s work and to show us your ways. Lord of living water we remember how your Holy Spirit is within and without us now active and moving in creation giving life to everything that lives. We join together in the prayer that Jesus taught his friends and teaches us to pray:
Our Father…
Reading John 4.1-15, 28-30, 39-42
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. 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.’ 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. 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 for 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.’
Hymn There’s a Wideness In God’s Mercy
Fr Frederick William Faber (1862) Public Domain BBC Songs of Praise
There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice, which is more than liberty.
There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in Heaven;
there is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly judgment given.
For the love of God is broader than the measures of the mind,
and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.
But we make His love too narrow by false limits of our own,
and we magnify its strictness with a zeal He will not own.
There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed;
there is joy for all the members in the sorrows of the Head.
There is grace enough for thousands of new worlds as great as this,
there is room for fresh creations in that upper home of bliss.
If our love were but more simple, we should take Him at His word;
and our lives would be illumined In the joy of Christ our Lord.
Prayer
Lord of living water, pour out your refreshing and life-giving water upon us as we reflect again and anew on your Word. May we listen with open ears, open minds, open hearts and open lives as we reflect again and anew on this story and its call on us and on our churches and communities. Amen.
Sermon
I’ve long had a bit of a soft spot for the Samaritan woman at the well. I like hearing the stories of gobby women, wherever I encounter them. Women who don’t take any nonsense but who are open at the same time to learning and to taking on a new challenge.
The thing is though with this story is that like with many stories of gobby women everywhere, Bible included, is that the Church and others have chosen to misread this story to satisfy its own purposes. This woman, who tradition if not the text has named Photina, has been criticised because of the bit in the story about having had five husbands and for at the time of the encounter with Jesus having an irregular relationship with a man who was not her husband. Preachers have for at least the whole time that I have been paying attention to preachers suggested that the reason that this woman was at the well in the middle of the day was because either she wished to avoid the rest of her community or because the community had made plain to Photina that she was not welcome at the well at the same time as them. Such an interpretation doesn’t really stack up when we get to the end of the story and read about the interest that the Samaritans of Sychar had in Jesus when this woman told them about her experience.
Such a reading doesn’t really work either if we consider how the Church tends to read the Gospel of John. While all four Gospels are concerned with the question of who Jesus is, the fourth Gospel approaches this question with extra bells and whistles attached. We tend to read John with the question of what theological point is John trying to teach us about Jesus … until we come to this story. Then the misogynist nonsense comes out to play and we miss countless sermons’ worth of deepening our learning about Jesus and who he is. John tells us who Jesus is in chapter one of his Gospel; the Word who was with God from the beginning; the Word through whom all things came into being, in him was life and that life is the light of all people; the Word who became flesh and lived among us. There is an argument that whenever we read any passage from the Gospel of John that we might do well to keep his prologue beside us as we read as everything in John can be related back to and read through those guiding verses. Another verse from John that we may keep in our minds as we read this story is one that was a part of the Gospel reading from last Sunday, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’.
As we think a little more about this story and how we might read it today and perhaps into tomorrow, I invite you to hold John’s opening words in your mind about how the Word that was with God from the beginning became flesh and lived among us, and his teaching about how much God loved the world that he gave his only Son.
How might this story help the congregations and communities of which we are each a part now and in the immediate future? We might reflect on how we are being called to support those who our society is inclined to push to one side. A question to come to any part of the Bible at any time is to ask how is this passage or this story good news for us now. So what threads of good news might we carefully look at from this story today?
I think that there are three pieces of this story we might carefully have a look at today. Firstly there is the location of this story, at a well. Secondly we might examine the woman’s question about where is God to be located. Lastly we can consider John’s choice of including a Samaritan evangelist in his Gospel.
What do we know about wells? Wells are places to get water and water is the stuff that is essential to life. Nothing can survive without water. They are everyday ordinary places that perhaps are not given a great deal of attention for this reason. In the verses that set the scene for this story we learn that this isn’t just any well but is Jacob’s well. Jacob had courted his beloved Rachel at a well, and it was at a well that Moses first encountered his wife Miriam. A well can be a place of intimacy, a place where couples meet and start on the journey of being deeply known. Intimacy of course usually goes hand in hand with vulnerability. Jesus and the woman were vulnerable with each other. Vulnerability goes hand in hand with bravery. One has to be brave to be vulnerable.
I wonder how we, and the congregations and communities of which we are a part, are being called to be brave as we discern our place in our locality and ponder with who are we being called to work?
Before I moved to work in Scotland I was involved in the leadership of an ecumenical covenant and mission strategy in Cumbria. Substantial grant funding was secured to develop the work which was used to employ specialists in particular areas of mission, one post of which was a specialist in pioneer ministry and fresh expressions. At interview one of the candidates at the stage that the candidate was invited to raise any questions that they had asked the bishop chairing the panel if they considered themselves to be a brave bishop. The point being made was that moving forward in our current age requires bravery. Being brave to try new ideas. Being brave to take risks. Being brave enough that when something edgy is being consider to then ask the question if actually we need to be even braver still. Being vulnerable as Church is difficult. My experience is that its hard for the United Reformed Church. I imagine that its even harder for the Churches of England and Scotland, and for other national and international churches, who are used to being in a position of power, who are used to being among the ones who call the shots in society, to be able to say that we need help.
How is the Church, and how are Christian people in our communities being called to ask the places in which we find ourselves what it needs to be helped. Jesus was vulnerable with the woman when he asked her for a glass of water. He needed her help and she needed his. Many of us get nervous when we talk about mission and even more worried if we talk about evangelism because we imagine that it has to be about knocking on doors, telling unsuspecting people about Jesus and inviting them to church. It can be that but really its more than that. When we see growing churches, often those more conservative theologically than many of us hold, we think that such is what they have done. Usually it isn’t. Growing churches often have found out what the genuine need is in their community and they have responded to that. When they have been asked for a glass of water that is what they have given; they haven’t been asked for a glass of water and given what they think the person asking should have. What are the people asking for from asking for from the churches? Are the churches brave enough to listen?
The big theological question that divided Jews and Samaritans in Jesus’ lifetime was where should God be worshipped. On the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for the Jews and on Mount Gerizim for the Samaritans. This comes down to an even deeper question. Where is God located? Where can God be found?
According to John the answer is right in front of our very eyes for Jesus is the Word made flesh who came to live among us. The Gospel of John was written down after the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70. Many people within the community behind the Gospel of John were Jewish people who had been expelled from the synagogues because of their Christian faith. The question ‘where is God’ was an important one for them. John was teaching them that the time for Temples was past. The Word had been made flesh, and the Word made flesh was for the whole of en-fleshed creation. The woman was asking ‘where is God’ and Jesus was telling her that God was right in front of her. Some commentators say that the reason that this story happens in the hottest and brightest part of the day denotes that this woman was meeting the Light of the World. Nothing to do with the woman’s shame or the bullying of her community.
And now to the last point. Jesus’ use of a Samaritan evangelist. Samaritans were on the outside of Jewish society. They were a despised people. This story demonstrates Jesus’ teaching to Nicodemus, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’. God loved the world so much that his love included a despised people like the Samaritans. This story shows too that Jesus was prepared to trust a woman from a despised people to share the good news about it. Another vulnerable act of bravery. And according to John the Samaritans listened.
It feels in our world at present that we are beset by intractable problems. As our nation learns to live with a new government, we might ponder how the next few years will unfold for us personally, for our nation, and for the world overall. As other nations prepare for their elections some are wondering if the world is on the brink of a change in order as leaders who would never have received the time of day in the past are in the ascendancy and we are confronted by the challenges of climate change and the rise of artificial intelligence.
We can hold onto our lessons from Jesus and Photina, the Samaritan woman, as we approach the time before us. Vulnerable bravery, remembering how God enfleshed is before us, and how Christ uses the most surprising people for his purposes can stand us in good stead.
We are called above all to be faithful people; to keep the faith. To live out and speak the good news that ways of living grounded in life and love are possible. Where the vulnerable are respected and everyone’s voice is valuable. We keep the faith by coming together here and being a Christian community. We keep the faith through our Monday to Saturday lives too. By developing and holding a deep care for our neighbours. By saying yes and no at the right times and in the right places. By keeping the faith.
Hymn I Heard The Voice of Jesus Say
Horatius Bonar (1846) Public Domain sung by Chris Brunelle and used with his kind permission.
I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Come unto Me and rest;
lay down, thou weary one, lay down thy head upon My breast.”
I came to Jesus as I was,so weary, worn, and sad;
I found in Him a resting place, and He has made me glad.
I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Behold, I freely give
the living water, thirsty one; stoop down, and drink, and live.”
I came to Jesus, and I drank of that life-giving stream;
my thirst was quenched, my soul revived, and now I live in Him.
I heard the voice of Jesus say, “I am this dark world’s Light;
look unto Me, thy morn shall rise, and all thy day be bright.”
I looked to Jesus, and I found in Him my Star, my Sun;
and in that Light of life I’ll walk, till trav’ling days are done.
Prayers for the World
Lord of living water, we pray for your world, those places where the water flows and rains abundantly and those places that are dry and drought-ridden. We know that abundance and scarcity can be both literal fact and how anyone might perceive their life or circumstance at a given time.
Lord of living water, we pray for those places, times and situations that are marked with abundance, places where the water flows. We give thanks for those times when we have enough, when our communities have enough, when our churches have enough.
Lord of living water, we pray for those places, times and situations living with scarcity. Scarcity that might be caused by drought or famine, flood or earthquake, epidemic or war, greed or because of any of so many reasons. Pour your living water into those lives and places, heal those who need healing so that they may live fully once again.
Lord of living water, we pray for those people, places and situations that sit heavy on our hearts and minds. We pray for those known to us who have asked us to pray for them or who we feel called to bring to mind. Bless and nourish those people and places.
Lord of living water, we pray for ourselves, for the gifts and graces we need for the tasks that lie before us. In Jesus’ name, strengthened by the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Offering
Lord of living water, we make our offerings of our creativity, energy, gifts, graces, and resources to you now. Many all that we have be used to live and share your love, in our own communities and beyond. Amen.
Hymn We Sing a Love That Sets All People Free
June Tillman © 1993 Stainer & Bell Ltd. Admin. Hope Publishing Co. OneLicence # A-734713
Sung by the congregation of Dalgety Church and used with their kind permission.
We sing a love that sets all people free,
that blows like wind, that burns like scorching flame,
enfolds the earth, springs up like water clear:
come, living love, live in our hearts today.
We sing a love that seeks another’s good,
that longs to serve and not to count the cost,
a love that, yielding, finds itself made new:
come, caring love, live in our hearts today.
We sing a love, unflinching, unafraid
to be itself, despite another’s wrath,
a love that stands alone and undismayed:
come, strengthening love, live in our hearts today.
We sing a love that, wandering, will not rest
until it finds its way, its home, its source,
through joy and sadness pressing on refreshed:
come, pilgrim love, live in our hearts today.
We sing the Holy Spirit, full of love,
who seeks out scars of ancient bitterness,
brings to our wounds the healing grace of Christ:
come, radiant love, live in our hearts today.
Closing Words and Blessing
Return to your life and work nourished by the Lord of living water,
strengthened to live into that story, with enough to live on and enough to share some.
Many the blessing of God, Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit
be with you, those you love, and those you are called to love,
today and all days. Amen.