(704) 599-9810 | Worship Sundays @ 10:55 a.m.
(704) 599-9810 | Worship Sundays @ 10:55 a.m.
đ§ Seeing with Godâs Eyes â At the well, Jesus crosses every boundary and meets a weary soul with dignity, compassion, and living water.
Worship Service â March 8, 2026 | Third Sunday in Lent
Scripture: John 4:1â15 (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 anotherânot through the labels and divisions of the world, but through the compassionate eyes of God.
The service began with the reflective beauty of âThe Old Rugged Crossâ on violin, creating a quiet space for stillness and breath. Pastor Chrisâ 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 peopleâcitizen 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 usâas 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 blindâit 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 4:1â15, Jesus meets a Samaritan womanâsomeone 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, âSeeing with Godâs Eyes,â Rev. Christopher Czarnecki reminded us that the miracle of the story is not only the promise of living waterâit 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 unfamiliarânot 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 giftsâincluding our support for One Great Hour of Sharingâbecame acts of shared belonging, reminders that another personâs thirst is also our own.
By the time the congregation sang âFill My Cup, Lordâ, the imagery of the well had deepened into a prayer. We were invited to draw from a source deeper than the divisions of the worldâdeeper 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.
âLove is not blind; it sees more, not less.â
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