(704) 599-9810 | Worship Sundays @ 10:55 a.m.
(704) 599-9810 | Worship Sundays @ 10:55 a.m.
💧 Seeing with God’s Eyes — At the well, Jesus crosses every boundary and meets a weary soul with dignity, compassion, and living water.
Seeing with God’s Eyes – March 8, 2026 | Third Sunday in Lent
Scripture: John 4:1–15 (CEB)
This Sunday at Holy Covenant United Church of Christ, we gathered around one of the most intimate encounters in the Gospel: Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well. On this Third Sunday in Lent, worship invited us to consider what it means to truly see one another—not through the labels and divisions of the world, but through the compassionate eyes of God.
The service began with the reflective beauty of “The Old Rugged Cross” on violin, creating a quiet space for stillness and breath. Pastor Chris’ centering prayer invited us to release the burdens we carried through the doors and remember a deeper truth: we are already and always tethered to the divine presence within us.
Through the Call to the Heart, we named the many ways our world separates people—citizen and stranger, insider and outsider, worthy and unworthy. Yet our shared response declared another vision: to see with different eyes, the eyes of God who beholds the sacred in all. In that moment, worship became an act of re-learning how to look at one another with reverence rather than suspicion.
In our communal prayer of transformation, we confessed how easily we fall back into the categories of race, class, nationality, religion, and identity that determine who deserves compassion. But grace met us there. The assurance reminded us that even when we fail to see clearly, God has never stopped seeing us—as beloved children made in the divine image.
The Modern Lesson from Brazilian theologian Rubem Alves offered a profound reflection: to see another person as God sees them is to look beyond usefulness and notice beauty. Love, he writes, is not blind—it sees more, not less. It notices the fragile places, the unfinished places, the trembling places where human life is most real.
Then we arrived at the well. In John 4:1–15, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman—someone separated from him by culture, religion, and social expectation. Yet Jesus refuses those divisions. Instead, he speaks to her, honors her humanity, and offers something deeper than the water she came to draw: living water that becomes a spring within.
In his sermon, “Seeing with God’s Eyes,” Rev. Christopher Czarnecki reminded us that the miracle of the story is not only the promise of living water—it is the act of seeing itself. Jesus sees the woman not as a category, not as a problem, not as someone to avoid, but as a beloved child of God. And that same vision becomes our calling. To see the immigrant, the refugee, the marginalized, the politically different, the socially unfamiliar—not as strangers, but as neighbors whose sacred worth reflects our own.
The invitation to generosity carried the theme forward. Jesus did not go to the well to take; he went to see, give, and transform. Our gifts—including our support for One Great Hour of Sharing—became acts of shared belonging, reminders that another person’s thirst is also our own.
By the time the congregation sang “Fill My Cup, Lord”, the imagery of the well had deepened into a prayer. We were invited to draw from a source deeper than the divisions of the world—deeper than fear, prejudice, or exhaustion. Christ offers living water that restores the soul and reminds us that we are seen, known, and loved.
As worship concluded with a prayer for peace, we left carrying a simple but powerful invitation: to learn to see as God sees. And in that vision, to recognize that every person we encounter is already standing at the well with us.
“Love is not blind; it sees more, not less.”
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