Sunday 08 March 2026
3rd Sunday of Lent
Welcome!
Welcome to excerpts from the worship held within the newly formed Westhills Church of Scotland Congregation. We know that not all members of the congregation are able to be in church on Sunday morning; offering these excerpts from the Sunday morning service might help you feel included. Where we can, we offer parts of the service in text and audio, whichever works best for you.
If this post helps you explore what happens within an act of worship then please read on…
Your Weekly Church Notices
Scripture
Romans 5: 1 – 11
John 4: 5 – 15
Praise – Worship the Lord
Prayers
Seeking; only because of the promise of finding.
Calling out; only because of the promise of being heard;
Lord God, we seek You only because you came to seek us.
We love you only because you first loved us.
Everlasting, ever-gracious, ever-seeking and ever-loving God,
Yours is the offer of life because the gift of life itself is Yours.
You chose, in Jesus to be born as one of us, living among us, showing Your grace speaking words of love, only to be excluded, shunned and hated, dying among us, yet still showing grace and declaring love. God of endless goodness, we praise You. When we consider who you are Lord, we recognise that we fall far short of all that you are.
Invited to come to You, we ignore Your presence.
Encouraged to praise You, we find other things to do.
When facing the deceitfulness and hatred of this world, rather than trust in Your help, we give up in despair.
Rather than prepare in faith for the uncertainty of the future, we immerse ourselves in the past. Our spirits thirst and faint.
So here we offer ourselves afresh, knowing that we are imperfect, knowing that we fail, knowing that you pour out your grace upon us, love us for who we are and lovingly accept the fragile gifts we bring. Our resources, our hopes, our fears, our talents, our strength, our weakness, our today and our tomorrow we now lay before you.
Hear us as we join in the words of the Lord’s Prayer saying…
Our Father who art in Heaven Hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory forever. Amen.
Address
It’s a long story. Literally, it’s a long story; the one of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. I just didn’t have the heart to ask Sandra to read the whole story which runs through to verse 42 of chapter 4. That said, it might have been better if I had asked Sandra to read a different section of the story.
Maybe, like me, you will have spotted some similarities to the story of Jesus and Nicodemus, which we dipped into last Sunday. And yes, I know that Nicodemus, a teacher of the Law from the Upper Classes of Society, and a Samaritan woman are at opposite ends of the social spectrum. There was no way that you would have found Nicodemus in the company of a Samaritan woman, but Jesus doesn’t seem to feel bound by social norms or expectations, he crosses boundaries and happily communicates with everyone. Jesus, tired from the journey in the heat of the days waits at the well and talks with someone very different to Nicodemus and yet there are so many similarities.
The Samaritan woman, and Nicodemus, both fail to understand what Jesus is talking about. It’s another case of, “I did not understand a single word that came out of your mouth.” Jesus is trying to encourage an engagement with the spiritual, to make the leap from the physical to the spiritual using water as the means of conveying his message; the water that quenches the thirst of the body and the water that quenches the thirst of the soul. It may seem obvious to us but it was not obvious to her. The way John tells this story leaves us with the impression that the Samaritan woman had a rather passive role in this dialogue. Maybe that was the expectation on all women at that time, that they would be, should be passive. But actually, this woman always had an answer for Jesus; she always had another question to ask. Would it be fair to say that she had some personality, character, a wee touch of feistiness about her? She had five husbands. Why? Had she been widowed five times? Or was she so feisty as to be impossible to live with? Or just unwilling to be passive in a male dominated society? Maybe her personality matters in this story. Just who was she?
We know that Jews and Samaritans shared a common heritage but the events of history had taken them different directions and it developed into a sectarian divide. And maybe we see a little of that attitude in Jesus words when he says, “You Samaritans do not really know whom you worship but we Jews know whom we worship, because it is from the Jews that salvation comes.” And we have to wonder if as Jesus reveals himself as the Messiah if he is attempting to convert this Samaritan woman to Judaism, or if he is simply seeking to heal divisions. We will never really find a conclusive answer to that but it’s worth pondering.
And just then, just as the conversation is starting to get a little edgy, the disciples return. And they are taken aback, disgusted even, by what they witness; Jesus talking to a woman!!! Embarrassed and awkward the woman makes a hasty retreat, leaving her water jar behind. Does this suggest just how awkward the moment has become?
As she heads for home in the town of Sychar, she carries a message with her. It’s not a message about life giving water. It’s not a message about meeting the Messiah. It’s not a message about life, death or resurrection. It’s not a message that we could identify in any way as being the Gospel. In fact, it comes across as more like a bit of gossip, ‘ You have to come and meet this man. He’s amazing! He’s told me everything I’ve ever done!’ Her excitement, her enthusiasm is infectious. Maybe Jesus had found just the right person to stir curiosity. Maybe, that life-giving water was already within her. The people of Sychar want to meet Jesus, not because they had heard about salvation but simply because they were curious if Jesus might be able to tell them about everything they had ever done.
So, this Samaritan woman does not understand Jesus words. She does not carry a meaningful message of hope, light, faith, resurrection; and yet she is able to draw people toward the Christ just because she is filled with excitement about him; she is not passive. For all the question marks about her background and successive husbands, people listen to her and that makes me think she was always an outspoken person and that more often than not she was right, she spoke the truth and damn the consequences.
And maybe she tells us this; It is OK not to understand everything that Jesus taught. It is OK not have the “right” words for conveying the gospel. All we need is a natural and infectious enthusiasm and excitement for our faith and the boldness of character to speak out.
Praise – When I survey
Prayers for Others
The Middle East
Complex would hardly begin to scratch the surface. An ill-thought out action that has brought anxiety across the middle east, loss of life, otherwise peaceful nations brought into a time of conflict and every potential for conflict to escalate. We watch in disbelief. Regime change from the skies and then what? Will the Shah of Iran come home from exile?
Of course, Lord, we pray for those visited by suffering. We pray for those who have known suffering at the hands of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s government, was more suffering the way to resolve this?
Honestly, Lord; we just don’t know anymore. We weep for a world increasingly fractured, a world that has lost sense and direction and even sense of right and wrong. Father God, hear the prayers we offer even the prayers that have no words…
Drinking from the well
Lord Jesus, in the confusion of our world, in the anxiety that surrounds us, we come to the well to drink, to be refreshed. Renew our hope in tomorrow, restore the light of truth that shines upon us, give to us that which is lasting, life-giving, joy-giving. Help us to live as people of faith. Hear our prayers as we seek to offer this world a faith to live by, a hope to cling to and a light to guide it…
Praise – You are called to tell the story
The Grace
And now… May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you and all whom you love, now and for evermore. AMEN.