Sunday Worship – 8th March 2026 – Lent 3

(All our songs this morning are from Singing the Faith (StF) numbers will be given where available)

Living Water

Call to Worship

Come let us sing of a wonderful love. For this third Sunday in Lent, we will be thinking of the love of God as like living water, flowing freely in and through his followers; and we’ll be looking at how the Holy Spirit allows us to experience that love for ourselves and share it with others. Firstly, let’s come to God in prayer.

Prayers

Let us pray. Lord God, you want a relationship with us that covers the whole of life, not just the sacred hours, and not just in holy places like this your house. You want a relationship with all people, not just those we would consider to be acceptable. Your relationship with us carries us through life, not just in the enjoyable times, but also when we are feeling tired and weary. You share our joys and our sorrows and you bring us through whatever life throws at us, ready to face the next day in the certain knowledge that you will still be with us. Help us to worship you in spirit and in truth today.

Lord God we praise and adore you. We worship you because you have made yourself known to us, through your Son Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Life-giving God, you are the spring of bubbling water, the well of wholeness, the fountain overflowing with goodness. We come to dip our hands into that water of life, to immerse ourselves in your wholeness, to soak ourselves in your goodness. Pour out the living water of your Spirit on us we pray.

And yet Lord, we acknowledge that we have let you down. We have experienced your love for ourselves and are grateful for it, but we have not always passed it on to others in the way that you would have us do. We have seen the needs of others, but have often  done very little to help. We have accepted your blessings in so many ways, for you are a very generous God, but there are times when we have not shared them willingly.

Father, forgive us our sins, and help us to be so grateful for what you have given us, that we develop a generous spirit ourselves and seek out ways in which we can share your love with our friends and families, and also with those people we don’t easily get on with, as our way of serving you. In the name of Jesus we ask it. Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer

If we’re thinking today of Jesus giving us living water, we’re talking about having a relationship with him that is so close and so good that it brings us to life as a Christian.

I’m an exciting man, me. So exciting, that in the week that I was preparing this service, I was also . . . doing my ironing! But while doing that ironing I was given an idea for an illustration for today’s service (I’m so rock n roll!).

It struck me that our clothes are a bit like our lives. Initially when we are born, we are without sin, we have not done anything wrong. We are like a freshly ironed t-shirt, folded neatly and not a crease in sight! [display one].

But soon we do commit sins, we often do what is wrong, or don’t do what we know to be right. And this sin crumples our relationship with Jesus. Initially only just a bit, but as we do more and more wrong things, the effect on our relationship with Jesus gets worse and worse. Until our lives are not like a freshly ironed t-shirt anymore, but more like this bag of rags! [display crumpled t-shirt].

Now on our own, we would find it impossible to get this t-shirt perfect again [try, unsuccessfully, to straighten out the creases]. Just like on our own we cannot repair our relationship with Jesus. To go from this [hold up crumpled shirt] to this [hold up clean shirt] we would need to wash the shirt in water and iron it.

And the living water that Jesus offers us, washes us clean. It can get rid of everything in our lives that is spoiling our relationship with him. If we open our hearts to him, he will help us get rid of the sin in our lives, and that includes anything that is preventing us being closer to him. Whatever we have done, the living water from Jesus can make us clean again and repair our relationship with him.

And then if we can live our lives close to him, we will be able to declare to others that Jesus is Lord, because of what he has done for us, just as we are going to sing in our first hymn.

Song – StF 353 – Jesus is Lord

Readings

Exodus 17:1-7 Water from the Rock

John 4:5-26 Jesus and the Samaritan Woman

Song – StF 248 – I heard the voice of Jesus say

Reading

Romans 5:1-11 Right with God

Sermon

So we’re thinking about the love of God as like living water, flowing in us and through us. Water. A simple word. But water as we know it can have all sorts of different uses and functions. What do we use water for?

Water was used a lot in the past for generating power: huge water wheels driving machinery in factories and mills.

And we can mean a lot of different things when we use the noun water: tap water, rivers, seas. A question that arises from our Bible readings today is, what did Jesus mean when he spoke about “life-giving water” to the Samaritan woman at the well? To understand this properly, we need to view our Gospel reading in the context of our other two readings this morning.

Paul wrote to the Romans that “trouble produces endurance, endurance brings God’s approval, and his approval creates hope.” Which is the opposite attitude to that displayed by the Jews as they wandered the desert after escaping from Egypt. It would seem from our Old Testament reading that at the first sign of difficulty they started complaining and even hankering after their old life of slavery.

Maybe it’s a little harsh though to think that the Israelites had an inexhaustible capacity to grumble and complain. For in this instance, I’m sure we can have sympathy for them. It’s understandable that having journeyed through desert land they were incredibly thirsty. Such thirst was not quite like we, with ever-present running water, might imagine. This was a lack of water that inflicted a community that was on the move, with no hope of knowing which would come first: water to drink, or dying of thirst.

Though the people grumbled against Moses, he directed their attention towards God, saying that surely God would not have gone to such lengths to free them from slavery in Egypt only to let them die of thirst in the desert. God heard their grumbling and satisfied their thirst with a miracle of water from a rock of all places!

[Have a large rock at the front of church] Can we get water from this? Just like trying to get the crumpled shirt neat again, on our own we cannot do it. On our own we can’t get water out of this rock. But God can – for nothing is impossible for him!

In providing water for the people from a rock, God proved to be faithful and caring, in response to the people’s complaint “Is the Lord with us or not?” This was not just an idle question, but one of life and death. Hence we can see that in this context, the water that God provided brought life itself.

So God brought the blessing of life-giving water, out of a rock – the most unexpected of places, to satisfy the needs of his people. If we are open to the influence of the Holy Spirit, we too can receive what we need from God, even in ways we might not expect.

One of the reasons we choose to worship God on a Sunday is to praise and thank him for giving us what we need, but I wonder if you’ve ever shared with your friends who don’t go to church just how amazing it is to be a Christian and to be able to receive God’s blessing, guidance and strength at any place and at any time. For as Paul said in his letter to the Romans, “God has poured out his love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God’s gift to us”.

There may be times when we have to face some difficult situation and we know that if we seek God he will be present with us, guiding us to the right course of action.

Remember that ironing I was doing in the week I was preparing this service? Well, before I started, I checked our TV planner to see if we’d recorded anything that I could watch while doing so. And I realised that a lot of the programmes on the planner were of a certain type: a Jimmy Anderson bowling masterclass; a Joe Root batting masterclass; matches from the men’s T20 cricket World Cup, the final of which is on the afternoon I will be preaching this service! I’m hoping England will be playing that match!

Now remember, I am a very exciting man and so it’s not all just about cricket for me. So exciting that one of my favourite TV programmes is . . . Songs of Praise! Hey, we all like a good sing, and in the days of my youth, I was on Songs of Praise, not once but twice! On one occasion, one of the TV cameras was just behind my right ear, when I was in one of the boxes in the Royal Albert Hall . . . aged about 21, with a long mullet hair style! I once was so rock n roll!

Anyhow, I remember one episode of Songs of Praise which was much more exciting than the back of my head, as it was all about Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s life, work and witness in South Africa. In an interview he spoke about feeling the presence of God when he faced an angry mob and stepped in to calm the violence and prevent what would have been a murder from taking place.

He recalled saying, “God, I’m doing your work here, you’re going to have to protect me” – and then he gave the presenter of the programme that lovely, infectious laugh of his, as though the thought of him bargaining with Almighty God had really tickled him.

And in amongst all that violence, God did give him his strength and protection, right when he needed it most. Now there was a man who led an interesting life, because he always put his trust in God.

And God offers exactly the same to us, the life-giving water of his Holy Spirit as our guide and our protector, if we too put our trust in him as thoroughly as Desmond Tutu did.

Now, I know when a preacher asks the congregation to do something, some people can get a bit nervous. So all I’m going to ask you to do in a moment is, if you can, and you are comfortable doing so, stand up and then sit back down again. That’s it. So, would those of you who can, stand up for me? Now sit back down again. Well, would you look at that?! Without even thinking about it, you trusted that your chair would support you. It was so natural to you, you did it instinctively – you knew that your chair would not let you down, and so you sat on it without even a thought!

From our reading from Romans, it is clear that the early Christians didn’t instinctively put their trust in God and that – just as we heard of the Israelites in Old Testament times – grumbling and discontent easily infected the people of God in New Testament times too. Too easily they forgot that the path of the Messiah is the path of suffering. Yet Paul does not deny this, but uses it as a means of glorifying Jesus. He reminds us that Jesus, who had more reason than all for grumbling when he died for the ungodly, did not grumble – because he was acting out of love, for a people who did not deserve to receive such love.

And that is worth us remembering too. That we are unworthy recipients of a totally undeserved love, poured out through the life and death of Jesus Christ.

Indeed we are. If we have been brought back to God through the death of Jesus, how much more should we who now know his love, be saved by his life and spread the news of his love to others, just as life-giving water flows from God to all who will receive it? But do our friends at work or where we socialise, know that we are Christians and that we love and worship God? Or is this something that we keep to ourselves? God doesn’t keep his love to himself, he shares it most generously with us, and wants us to share it with those around us, as we strengthen our relationship with God by being like Desmond Tutu and trusting God to keep us safe as we choose to do his will.

So this is the context that we should see our Gospel reading in: that the people of Israel had known God’s provision of life-giving water in the past (remember the rock in the Old Testament?), but had not allowed it to bring them into a close and permanent relationship with God, for they soon rejected the life that he offered them and went their own ways.

And having set the context, what can we learn from the detail of our Gospel reading?  Emphasising Jesus’ human nature, we see him developing a thirst on his long journey from Judea, through Samaria and back to Galilee. It’s easy to imagine his hot, dusty midday encounter with the woman at the well. When Jesus spoke to the woman, he did not just offer her life-giving water, in the form of the everlasting life that comes through belief in him as the Messiah. Even the act of speaking to her had a huge effect. For she was a foreigner, a woman and, in view of her domestic situation, an outcast in her society.

This shows that Jesus is the one who breaks down barriers between people. Here we have the Son of God, tired, weary and thirsty. Here was the holiest of men, listening with caring to a sorry story, from a woman, and worst of all in the eyes of the Jews, from a Samaritan woman of ill repute. Here was Jesus breaking through the barriers of nationality and orthodox Jewish custom to show that the love of God, which he called life-giving water, is for everyone, of whatever nationality and whatever background.

And there is the challenge for us – to share the love of Jesus with all sorts of people. A big challenge. A huge challenge. But one that Jesus himself will help us to fulfil.

How much water do you think we should drink each day to stay healthy? [Show 200ml bottle – is this enough? [Drink it all in one go] Show 330ml bottle – is this enough? [Drink it all in one go] Show 2 litre bottle – or do we need as much as this?]. And there’s no way I’m drinking all of this! We are told we need to drink two litres of water every day to help us stay physically healthy.

How much of the Holy Spirit do we need to take on board each day to remain spiritually healthy? We can’t measure the Holy Spirit in litres or bottles, but we can ask God to give us his Spirit, to fill us each day with the power of the Holy Spirit so we can be a good and effective witness to his love, spreading that love like life-giving water to those we meet.

Let’s think of our own lives and consider for us, who is the Samaritan woman? Think of the people in your life, at home or at work or in your social groups outside of these places. Who do we know that is on the edge of society, or maybe just on the edge of our group of friends – the one who never really feels part of the group? What can we do to bring them in? If the love of Jesus is to flow through us like life-giving water, then it should be flowing to people like this, for that is what Jesus did and that is what he wants us to do for him.

So in conclusion, we see from our reading today Jesus, the Son of God, as a caring, understanding person, breaking down barriers as he offers to people life-giving water – the love of God in the form of the Holy Spirit. Shouldn’t we, as his followers also be doing the same? Amen.

Song – StF 566 – Take my life and let it be

Prayers of Intercession

Let us pray. The woman at the well was faced with the real meaning of her life. Her failure was accepted and Jesus worked with her to bring her into a new understanding of his love for her.

Lord, when we are faced with our own lives as they really are, may we not be crushed or lose hope, but rather realise our need of you and celebrate the gift of forgiveness and new life that you offer us. Lord Jesus, we thank you for your life-giving water, alive in us in the form of your Holy Spirit.

Lord, help us to never tire of the daily journey to the well, of dealing with the daily realities and needs of life, of living and working each day with the same people. Rather than look for the big things, or wait for others to change, may we start to look at the world with fresh eyes and begin to open our own hearts to new beginnings – new beginnings in our worship of you Lord, and fresh starts in our relationships with others. Lord Jesus, we thank you for your life-giving water, alive in us in the form of your Holy Spirit.

God of life, where we have failed to appreciate all the life that is ours; where we like Israel have shown a lack of trust in you; when we have grumbled and complained and focused on what we lack rather than thanking you for our many blessings – please forgive us.  

Where we have devoted our time and energy to personal concerns only; where we have not noticed the outcast in our midst; when we have not encouraged new life in our church or community – please forgive us. As we acknowledge our failings, we trust in your promise of forgiveness. Fill us anew with your Spirit of trust and compassion.

Jesus, provider of living water, you knew what it was to be tired. When we are tired of the seemingly endless problems in our world and of struggling to do our bit to help, send us your Spirit of refreshment and renewal.  

You knew what it was to be out in the heat of the day. When we feel the heat of persecution or controversy, send us your Spirit of courage, wisdom and grace.

You knew what it was to be thirsty. When we thirst for truth and insight, send us your Spirit of knowledge, so that we may indeed share your love, your life-giving water, with all those who are in need within our groups of friends, our church, our community and our wider world, for whom we ask your blessing now …

We bring all our prayers to you Lord, in thy name. Amen.

As was the first line of my call to worship this morning, so is the first line of our closing hymn today

Song – StF 443 – Come let us sing of a wonderful love

Blessing: Love only waits to forgive and forget. As we conclude our worship of God, may we take with us his Spirit of forgiveness, so we can forgive others and show them the life-giving water of his love. And as we go, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit go with us. Amen.