“Christ and the Woman of Samaria” (1681) by Pierre Mignard. Public domain.

Opening response

Lord, open our lips.
Our mouth will declare your praise.

Hear our voice according to your loving kindness.
Revive us, LORD, according to your ordinances.

Prayer of thanksgiving

Blessed are you, God of compassion and mercy,
to you be praise and glory forever.
In the darkness of our sin,
your light breaks forth like the dawn
and your healing springs up for deliverance.
As we rejoice in the gift of your saving help,
sustain us with your bountiful Spirit
and open our lips to sing your praise.
Blessed be God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Blessed be God forever.

The night has passed, and the day lies open before us;
let us pray with one heart and mind.

Silence is kept.

As we rejoice in the gift of this new day,
so may the light of your presence, O God,
set our hearts on fire with love for you;
now and forever.
Amen.

Hymn

Depth of Mercy! Can there Be

Charles Wesley

Depth of mercy! Can there be
Mercy still reserved for me?
Can my God his wrath forbear,
Me, the chief of sinners, spare?

I have long withstood his grace,
Long provoked him to his face,
Would not hearken to his calls,
Grieved him by a thousand falls.

Kindled his relentings are:
Me he now delights to spare;
Cries, "How shall I give thee up?"
Lets the lifted thunder drop.

There for me the Savior stands,
Shows his wounds and spreads his hands.
God is Love; I know, I feel;
Jesus weeps, and loves me still.

Confession of sin

O King enthroned on high,
filling the earth with your glory:
holy is your name,
Lord God almighty.

A time of silence and self-examination may be kept.

In our sinfulness we cry to you
to take our guilt away,
and to cleanse our lips to speak your word,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

May the God of all healing and forgiveness
draw us to himself,
and cleanse us from all our sins
that we may behold the glory of his Son,
the Word made flesh,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Psalm 77

Refrain:
In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord.

My cry goes to God!
Indeed, I cry to God for help,
and for him to listen to me.
In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord.
My hand was stretched out in the night, and didn’t get tired.
My soul refused to be comforted.
I remember God, and I groan.
I complain, and my spirit is overwhelmed. Selah.

You hold my eyelids open.
I am so troubled that I can’t speak.
I have considered the days of old,
the years of ancient times.
I remember my song in the night.
I consider in my own heart;
my spirit diligently enquires:

“Will the Lord reject us forever?
Will he be favourable no more?
Has his loving kindness vanished forever?
Does his promise fail for generations?
Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has he, in anger, withheld his compassion?” Selah.

Then I thought, “I will appeal to this:
the years of the right hand of the Most High.”
I will remember the LORD’s deeds;
for I will remember your wonders of old.
I will also meditate on all your work,
and consider your doings.
Your way, God, is in the sanctuary.
What god is great like God?
You are the God who does wonders.
You have made your strength known amongst the peoples.
You have redeemed your people with your arm,
the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah.

The waters saw you, God.
The waters saw you, and they writhed.
The depths also convulsed.
The clouds poured out water.
The skies resounded with thunder.
Your arrows also flashed around.
The voice of your thunder was in the whirlwind.
The lightnings lit up the world.
The earth trembled and shook.
Your way was through the sea,
your paths through the great waters.
Your footsteps were not known.
You led your people like a flock,
by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and will be forever. Amen.

Refrain:
In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord.

Psalm prayer

God our shepherd,
you led us and saved us in times of old;
do not forget your people in their troubles,
but raise up your power
to sustain the poor and helpless;
for the honor of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Old Testament reading

Jeremiah 2:14-32

Is Israel a slave?
Is he born into slavery?
Why has he become a captive?
The young lions have roared at him and raised their voices.
They have made his land waste.
His cities are burnt up, without inhabitant.
The children also of Memphis and Tahpanhes have broken the crown of your head.
“Haven’t you brought this on yourself,
in that you have forsaken the LORD your God, when he led you by the way?
Now what do you gain by going to Egypt, to drink the waters of the Shihor?
Or why do you to go on the way to Assyria, to drink the waters of the River?
“Your own wickedness will correct you,
and your backsliding will rebuke you.
Know therefore and see that it is an evil and bitter thing,
that you have forsaken the LORD your God,
and that my fear is not in you,” says the Lord, the LORD of Armies.

“For long ago I broke off your yoke,
and burst your bonds.
You said, ‘I will not serve;’
for on every high hill and under every green tree you bowed yourself,
playing the prostitute.
Yet I had planted you a noble vine,
a pure and faithful seed.
How then have you turned into the degenerate branches of a foreign vine to me?
For though you wash yourself with lye,
and use much soap,
yet your iniquity is marked before me,” says the Lord GOD.

“How can you say, ‘I am not defiled.
I have not gone after the Baals’?
See your way in the valley.
Know what you have done.
You are a swift dromedary traversing her ways, a wild donkey used to the wilderness, that sniffs the wind in her craving.
When she is in heat, who can turn her away?
All those who seek her will not weary themselves. In her month, they will find her.
“Keep your feet from being bare,
and your throat from thirst.
But you said, ‘It is in vain.
No, for I have loved strangers,
and I will go after them.’

As the thief is ashamed when he is found,
so the house of Israel is ashamed—
they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets,
who tell wood, ‘You are my father,’
and a stone, ‘You have given birth to me,’
for they have turned their back to me,
and not their face,
but in the time of their trouble they will say, ‘Arise, and save us!’
“But where are your gods that you have made for yourselves?
Let them arise, if they can save you in the time of your trouble,
for you have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah.

“Why will you contend with me?
You all have transgressed against me,” says the LORD.

“I have struck your children in vain.
They received no correction.
Your own sword has devoured your prophets,
like a destroying lion.
Generation, consider the LORD’s word.
Have I been a wilderness to Israel?
Or a land of thick darkness?
Why do my people say, ‘We have broken loose.
We will come to you no more’?
“Can a virgin forget her ornaments,
or a bride her attire?
Yet my people have forgotten me for days without number.

Silence may be kept.

New Testament reading

John 4:1-26

Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptising more disciples than John (although Jesus himself didn’t baptise, but his disciples), he left Judea and departed into Galilee. He needed to pass through Samaria. So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

The Samaritan woman therefore said to him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. So where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his children and his livestock?”

Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.”

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

The woman answered, “I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her, “You said well, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshippers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ. When he has come, he will declare to us all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who speaks to you.”

Silence may be kept.

The Benedictus (The Song of Zechariah)

Luke 1:68-79

Refrain:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be filled.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people;
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David
(as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets who have been from of old),
salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us;
to show mercy toward our fathers,
to remember his holy covenant,
the oath which he swore to Abraham our father,
to grant to us that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies,
should serve him without fear,
in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life.
And you, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the remission of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the dawn from on high will visit us,
to shine on those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death;
to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and will be forever. Amen.

Refrain:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be filled.

Brief silence.

The Apostle’s Creed

Let us unite in this historic confession of the Christian faith:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

Intercession and thanksgiving

Prayers may be offered for:

the day and its tasks
the world and its needs
the church and her life

Prayers may include the following concerns:

Those preparing for baptism and confirmation
Those serving through leadership
Those looking for forgiveness
Those misled by the false gods of this present age
All who are hungry

Other intercessions and supplications may be offered as the Holy Spirit leads.

Response

Father, by your Spirit
Bring in your kingdom.

Silence may be kept.

Collect of the day

Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.
Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer

Trusting in the compassion of God, as our Savior taught us, so we pray

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and forever.
Amen.

Conclusion

May God our Redeemer show us compassion and love.
Amen.