Fourth Presbyterian Church: A Light in the City

Bulletins are posted on the day prior.

Sunday, March 8st
9:30 a.m. Worship Service

PRELUDE

Choral Dorien
Jehan Alain

O God, Thou Faithful God
Johannes Brahms

INTROIT
(9:30) Clap Your Hands
Sally K. Albrecht

(11:00) Pie Jesu
Mary Lynn Lightfoot

DOXOLOGY
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; praise God, all creatures here below; praise God above, ye heavenly host; Creator, Christ, and Holy Ghost.† Amen.

CALL TO WORSHIP (responsively)

One: Holy God, you are a spring of living water in the wilderness.

All: Come and revive our souls.

One: You lead us in cloud and fire.

All: Let us follow in your paths.

One: We gather together for rest and nourishment along the way.

All: Our hearts open to receive your love.

*Hymn 81

“Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken”

1. Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God. God, whose word cannot be broken, formed thee for a blest abode. On the rock of ages founded, what can shake thy sure repose? With salvation’s walls surrounded, thou may’st smile at all thy foes.

2. Round each habitation hovering, see the cloud and fire appear for a glory and a covering, showing that the Lord is near. Thus deriving from their banner light by night and shade by day, safe they feed upon the manna which God gives them when they pray.

3 . See, the streams of living waters, springing from eternal love, well supply thy sons and daughters and all fear of want remove. Who can faint while such a river ever flows, their thirst to assuage? Grace, so like the Lord the giver, never fails from age to age.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION

God of the lost and afflicted, you call us into lives of wholeness. So often we wander from your ways and need to return to you. Forgive us when we fail to follow you faithfully. Remind us of your grace and give us the courage to begin again. We pray all these things in Jesus’ name, and for his sake. Amen.

Extinguishing the First Lenten Candle

Kyrie, Hymn 551

Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy upon us. Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy upon us.

DECLARATION OF PARDON

One: Friends, believe the good news.

All: In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.

SHARING THE PEACE OF CHRIST
One: The peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

All: And also with you.

We invite you to greet those around you, wishing them ‘peace’ or ‘the peace of Christ.’ We also encourage those worshiping online to text or email someone to let them know you are thinking of them.

(9:30) Children age three through grade five are invited to come forward during the passing of the peace.

TIME WITH CHILDREN

(9:30)

WELCOME AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

(9:30) Children depart for Sunday School with their teachers.

We have launched Check-Ins through Church Center, a new way to engage and connect with our faith community and a simple way to let us know you were in worship. To check in, download the Church Center app from the Apple or Android app store.

If you’re a first-time visitor, we’d love to get to know you—scan the QR code on page 7 to complete the visitor form or add your name to a pew pad.

For those worshiping online, you can sign in using the link or QR code on your screen.

Sacrament of Baptism (9:30 a.m.)

Anthem

“Sing, My Soul, His Wondrous Love”

Ned Rorem

Listening for the Word

Prayer for Illumination

First Scripture Reading
John 4:1–15

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” — although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized — he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying 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 no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

One: The Word of the Lord.

All: Thanks be to God.

*Gloria Patri

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost:† as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Amen.

Second Scripture Reading
John 4:16–30, 39

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 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” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.”

Sermon
Unlikely Friends: Known and Accepted

Nanette Sawyer

Responding to the Word

*Hymn 440, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul”

1. Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly, while the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high. Hide me, O my Savior, hide, till the storm of life is past. Safe into the haven guide. O receive my soul at last!

2. Other refuge have I none; hangs my helpless soul on thee. Leave, ah! leave me not alone; still support and comfort me. All my trust on thee is stayed; all my help from thee I bring. Cover my defenseless head with the shadow of thy wing.

3. Thou, O Christ, art all I want; more than all in thee I find. Raise the fallen, cheer the faint, heal the sick, and lead the blind. Just and holy is thy name; I am all unrighteousness. False and full of sin I am; thou art full of truth and grace.

4. Plenteous grace with thee is found, grace to cover all my sin. Let the healing streams abound; make and keep me pure within. Thou of life the fountain art; freely let me take of thee. Spring thou up within my heart. Rise to all eternity.

*Affirmation of Faith (unison)

We are all held in the hollow of God’s hand, loved children of the universe, born from the life which flows from God, freed to the fullness of God’s creation with all its beauty and variety. We are all worth dying for in Christ Jesus, all called to risen life in Christ’s rising. The way of Jesus gives us footprints for our following and all our trials and longings are known in the frailty of Christ’s birth among us and the courage of Christ’s walking with us. We are all called to new things in the Spirit, in the hope that stirs in unlikely moments, the home we find in the wastelands of our wanderings, the warmth that we touch in the coldness of our need and the opening of our hearts to adventures in belonging or the gathering in of those without a home.

Prayers of the People

The Lord’s Prayer (unison)

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 and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Call to Offering
Offertory Anthem

“I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes”

Jake Runestad

OFFERTORY RESPONSE, Hymn 652, v. 1

A grateful heart is what I bring, a song of praise, my offering. Among the saints I lift my voice: in you, O God, I will rejoice.

*Prayer of Dedication (unison), from The Worship Sourcebook

God of all peoples and God of all places, we present these offerings, that they may be used to extend your liberating reign. With them we offer our varied ministries, that each of us may be a part of your answer to the cries of the world. Amen.

Bearing the Word into the World

HYMN, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”

1. Come, thou Fount of every blessing; tune my heart to sing thy grace; streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above; praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it, mount of God’s unchanging love!

2. Here I raise my Ebenezer; hither by thy help I’m come; and I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God; he, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood.

3. O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be! Let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; here’s my heart; O take and seal it; seal it for thy courts above.

*Charge and Benediction

Choral Benediction

The Lord Bless You

Craig Phillips

Postlude

Prelude in E-Flat Major

Camille Saint-Saens

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