John 4:19-24
Worship on God's Terms

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."

New Revised Standard Version

You probably recognize this as part of the story of Jesus talking with a woman by Jacob's Well in Samaria. That story contains many truths about the nature of Jesus and how God relates to sinners like us. You might also recognize where this passage was taken from that story--it comes immediately after Jesus told the woman that she had had five husbands and was living with a man to whom she was not married. We might surmise that this woman was surprised and dismayed that Jesus knew such embarrassing information about her. She might have changed the conversation quickly to what she felt would be a safer topic and one that would distance herself as a Samaritan from this Jewish teacher.

But she was not successful in diverting Jesus' focus, and we have received a profound truth in this section of Jesus' conversation with this woman. She had lived her life on her own terms, and the followers of Yahweh in Samaria had established their own worship customs and rituals around Mount Gerizim. In each sinful thought there is an effort to insert what we want into the standard of what is good, loving, and right, as if we can successfully negotiate righteousness. As to the question of where to worship, the Samaritan option seemed practical and reasonable, given the "political" challenges of visiting Jerusalem.

Jesus' answer immediately dismissed the two options the woman had presented. It isn't the location that matters, whether Jerusalem or Gerizim, Jesus responded, for worship is not about the location, but about the relationship. The same can be said for many other barriers and choices believers through the ages have erected around worship practices. Traditions usually start with our best intentions for enhancing our time with God, but they can take a life of their own and compete with our worship experience. Think of how some have considered preserving the archaic language in the King James Version of the Bible to be worthy of conflict and division--then consider that it took more than one hundred years before King James' officially sanctioned translation of 1611 became as widely accepted as the Geneva Bible published in 1560.

Given that location and tradition are not central requirements of worship, we should pay special attention to what Jesus said is fundamental to worship: "spirit" and "truth". The two words are so easy to say and so impossible to fully comprehend. This passage instructs us that we are to worship in spirit because God is spirit--we are to worship on God's terms, not our own. We construct a church building, and it exists on the earth, not in spirit. We dress in fine clothing and make generous gifts to the church, and our clothing and money are tangible, not spirit. We offer up our abilities and talents, but the quality of those mortal expressions may not have any root in spiritual expression. When we worship in spirit, we must set aside most of the resources and tactics we use to influence other people on earth. If we have focused on our material success, we find ourselves woefully lacking when we approach God in spirit. In the midst of all that we can see and touch around us, we need reminders that we are spiritual beings more than we are physical beings. We need to think and act as creatures made in God's image more than we think and act as land-based mammals on the third planet orbiting the star Sol.

We must exercise and develop the essence of our being and worship God in spirit, but we have all fallen short in our quest to worship in truth. Many over the years have laid false claim to this phrase and argued that only their form of worship was "true." But the expression in this passage is of the ideal of perfect Truth, not a comparative truth between human interpretations. This is the same concept as Righteousness and Holiness, perfectly aligned with God's will and completely devoid of sin.

So, Jesus invited a woman he had just correctly identified as an adulteress to worship God in perfect truth and righteousness. How can this be?

The answer lies in who seeks whom. We think that we are seeking God as we worship, and indeed we should. However, Jesus taught that "the Father seeks such as these to worship Him", and the God who has searched for and found us will also equip us for the holy calling of worship! We are sinful, but God through Jesus has given to us "the free gift of righteousness" that Paul described in Romans 5. God has made us holy so that we can fellowship with God and live as children of God.

This is the hope that Jesus offered the Samaritan woman, the opportunity to be freed from the sins and failures of the past and have a full and complete life in intimate relationship with God. This is the opportunity to which God calls us, to worship God on God's terms instead of our own, to be made holy and righteous by God's grace, and to live a transformed life from these experiences.