Order of Worship
Let us be as open vessels that God’s spirit may enter.
The Community Gathers: Experience God’s presence in the assembly. Please greet one another with joy and welcome new friends into our community of love.
You are welcome here…come and worship!
Welcome: Our worship series for Lent continues as we contemplate the ways we have looked for satisfaction in things that cannot satisfy. The Samaritan woman at the well in our scripture today found out that the water she came for was not really the water she needed so desperately. This woman had looked for love in many places, in many faces. When she was finally offered a soul-quenching love by Jesus, she became a powerful messenger of Good News. Just as the water given by God that flowed in the desert for the Israelites offered new life, the desert of our lives can be refreshed if we look for love regularly at the well of living water and offer life-giving water to others.
Gathering Music: Show Us How to Love
(by Mark A. Miller)
Hearts open, minds awake, change us now for
heaven’s sake. Leave us not alone in hatred’s wake.
Show us how to love. Show us how to love.
Show us how, show us how to love.
Confession and Assurance:
Leader: Let us join together in opening our hearts to the love of God. Before we even utter a word, we can be assured God will offer us grace and a way forward. For this reason, we can be honest with what most pains us most about our own thoughts and actions.
Let us pray: Holy and Merciful One,
in this season of discernment we come bringing our deepest longings, and our failed attempts at satisfying them.
We have often looked for love, for acceptance and security,
in the trappings of notoriety, popularity, and power
that diminish others in order to gain for ourselves.
People: We yearn for lives that matter,
we desire relationships that thrive, we want less regret.
Leader: At times we fail to see that you have already given us what really matters: your love and acceptance. You give us a fresh start each day, inviting us to do better. In this silence, we bring to you our pleas for openness to a different way of living.
Silence
L: My friends, be assured by the Psalmist who reminds us that
our God is the “rock of our salvation” in whose hand is the
“depths of the earth and the heights of the mountains.”
Let us respond together:
All: We open our hearts, our minds, our souls, our vision
to the ways of love created by God, embodied in Jesus, and already moving in us by the Spirit. We are forgiven, loved, and freed. Amen!
Lord’s Prayer
Opening Hymn: Forty Days and Forty Nights #167
Readings: Exodus 17: 1-7, John 4: 5-30 -Caryn Firebaugh
Sermon: “Spirit and Truth: Moving with What Is”
-Rev. Brian Gruhn
Music: Meditative Instrumental ~ Michelle Currie
Musical call to Prayer: (two times) Hush now in quiet peace, be still your mind at ease. The Spirit brings release, so wait upon the Lord.
Prayers of the People
Silent Prayers Pastoral Prayer
Prayers of the People: In this season of Lent, we pray together in song using an ancient form in the church. The Greek words, “Kyrie Eleison” mean “God, have mercy on us.” God’s mercy is a gift of love, given freely to us.
Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison
Offertory: Come to the Water (by John Foley SJ) -Michelle Currie
Doxology: Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise God all creatures here below. Praise God above ye heavenly hosts, Creator, Christ and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Prayer of Dedication:
Closing Hymn: Here I Am, Lord #69
Blessing: Go forth into the world knowing that the
God of love walks with you. Go in Peace…Amen.
Postlude: Go In Peace
Great thanks to our guest presider today, Rev. Brian Gruhn, UCC. Thank you to our Music Director and our Zoom Host.
For Your Reflection….
Blessing of the Well
By Jan Richardson
If you stand
at the edge
of this blessing
and call down into it,
you will hear
your words
return to you.
If you lean in
and listen close,
you will hear this blessing
give the story of your life back to you.
Quiet your voice
quiet your judgment
quiet the way
you always tell
your story
to yourself.
Quiet all these
and you will hear
the whole of it
and the hollows of it:
the spaces
in the telling,
the gaps
where you hesitate
to go.
Sit at the rim
of this blessing.
Press your ear
to its lip, its sides,
its curves that were carved out
long ago
by those whose thirst
drove them deep,
those who dug
into the layers
with only their hands
and hope.
Rest yourself
beside this blessing
and you will
begin to hear
the sound of water
entering the gaps.
Still yourself
and you will feel it
rising up within you,
filling every hollow,
springing forth
anew.
Worship Notes: Worship series design © Worship Design Studio by Marcia McFee. www.worshipdesignstudio.com.