4 Real Worship John 4.1–42
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 6 March 2022
We come today to the well-known account of Jesus and the woman at the well. John shares it with us for a number of reasons. It is a fascinating glimpse of Jesus relating to a woman—a foreign woman at that. We are also introduced to the subject of eternal life. But the main subject is worship: should we go to a Catholic church, or to the Anglicans, or the Baptists, or the Pentecostals? Jesus says something quite startling about that.
I wish we knew her name. She lived in a village close to Samaria, which is near modern Nablus. She is a Samaritan, and that makes this story special. The gospels are mostly about Jews.
I guess she was beautiful. She was also complicated. Five husbands is not a bad score. And now she is living with a guy who is not her husband. She attracted them like bees to a honey pot, but once they had their fill—she was difficult to live with. Or maybe it was the other way round. She loved men, but couldn’t stand having them round for long.
The shortest road from Jerusalem to Galilee went through the district of Samaria; Jesus is returning to Galilee where he is about to go public announcing the arrival of the kingdom of God. It is early evening; they have been walking all day. The disciples have gone to the nearby village to get food. Jesus is sitting by the well when the woman comes to draw water. He asks her for a drink. She is always interested in a new man, but not a Jew. She teases him. “You’re a Jew! You shouldn’t ask me for water. You guys are too pure to drink from anything we Samaritans use.”
Jesus plays along: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” He’s talking about the Holy Spirit and eternal life, but that’s a subject for another day.
His answer threw her for a moment. “Huh? Who does this guy think he is? What gift of God is he talking about? What is living water?” See how Jesus arouses her curiosity! But she’s used to playing with guys, so she returns his serve.
“Sir, you ain’t got no bucket and this well is deep. How do you suppose you are going to get this living water?” Then she adds as an afterthought. “Our father, Jacob, gave us this well …” That was a dig. Jacob is Israel, the father of the Jews, but the Samaritans claimed him too, and here is his well in their territory to back their claim. “Are you greater than Jacob? Is your water better than his?” Jacob’s Well is still there. You need a backet and a long rope if you want a drink. The water is cold and clear.
Jesus returns her shot: “Everyone who drinks this water will soon get thirsty again, but the water I am talking about—drink that and you will never be thirsty again; it will become a spring in you— welling up to eternal life.”
She is becoming uncertain. “Either this guy is playing me, or he is mad, or …” She is not sure. The only thing is to call his bluff: “Alright, give me this water and I won’t have to come here every day.”
What is Jesus going to do now? He is going to do exactly what she asks, but first he must get the man. When you are counselling someone, you can go so far, but sooner or later it’s wise to involve the partner.
“Go fetch your husband!”
“I don’t have one.”
“This is true. You have had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband.”
Up until now she has been sparring him like she is used to doing with guys. Now he has landed a punch and she is seeing stars. John is fascinated by this. “Jesus knew all men.” Remember Nicodemus. Remember Nathaniel. This was Holy Spirit knowledge. Her whole attitude changes at this point. Her mind is whirling. “OK, he’s is not mad; he must be a prophet. What do I do now?”
Have you ever thought what you would ask if you found yourself with someone with a hotline to God? One question, and you’ll get God’s answer. What would it be?
She asks a question about worship—not what we would ask, but it was a hot topic with Jews and Samaritans. Where should we worship, at our temple here, or in Jerusalem?
I want us to pause here and say something about worship. The huge number of people who never darken the door of a church would seem to indicate that worship is not something most people think important.
I was discussing Christianity with a group of people, and there was a university professor there—a professor of music—and he said, “He must be a terrible god, if he wants people to bow down, and grovel, and worship him! I could not respect a god like that.” He thinks worship is a bad thing. But God commands us to worship. Is God that insecure, narcissistic, that he needs us to tell him, over and over, how great he is?
The truth is, God doesn’t need our worship at all. He has everything he wants and is totally fulfilled in his own Father-Son-Holy Spirit person. In Psalm 50 God says, “If I were hungry, I wouldn’t tell you. For the world is mine and everything in it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls and drink the blood of goats?” (In those days they worshipped God by sacrificing animals.) Every animal in the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.”
It doesn’t hurt God, if we dont worship him; it hurts us. The music professor doesn’t teach music appreciation because the composers and song-writers need it. He does it because it builds up the souls of his students. When you learn to appreciate music you become more than you were before, just like if you follow cricket. People praise what they think is good: music and musicians, football and football heroes, art and artists, literature and novelists, beautiful women, hunky men, computers and the people who invent them. The world is full of worship: people talking to people about how good someone or something is. Everyone worships something. There was a tourist guide in Greece, who was blind. The tourists would all get out of the bus to photograph the Parthenon. We would ask them what was so good about it. They described it, and found that they enjoyed telling him what they could see much more than clicking their cameras. The more you worship, the more fulfilled and joyful you will be. The smaller your appreciation of things, the smaller is your humanity. It would be a poor sort of human being who couldn’t look at the ocean on a beautiful morning, and say, “That is great.” And never to let your heart go out to the one who thought it all up is to be less than human. We need God; he doesn’t need us. To be human means to praise the very best.
But how do you worship God? How do you worship him in a way he is happy with? You need to connect somehow, and humans have always felt that to do that you need to be in the right place: a temple, a shrine, a sanctuary, a church, a cathedral.
And that’s the question this Samaritan woman puts to Jesus. From where they sat you could see Mt Gerizim. On its top was a temple— or the ruins of one. A hundred years earlier a Jewish king destroyed the Samaritan’s temple. But they still worshiped there—still do today, but you can understand why they hated the Jews like they did.
You are a prophet; tell me, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
According to the law of Moses, when the Israelites came into the promised land they were to worship God in one place. It was called “the law of the central sanctuary.” The many shrines that were found throughout Canaan were to be destroyed. Jews and Samaritans both followed the law of the central sanctuary. But Moses didn’t lay down where that sanctuary would be. So the Samaritans had their temple on Mt Gerizim; the Jews in Jerusalem.
Jesus stops to deal with her question. John tells us his answer, so it must be important. It is the most important statement about worship in the whole Bible. And it is still the big question that divides the world. In Jerusalem or on Mt Gerizim or in Mecca? The way the Sunni’s do it, or the Shias? Or should you go to India or Tibet and find a guru? The Roman or the Eastern way, or like the Anglicans or the Pentecostals? I could go on. What do you have to do, which church should you go to, if you want to truly connect with God? Because that is what worship is all about, and there is no point worshipping him in a way that offends him.
Jesus’ answer is surprising. He starts by saying that the Jews are right. Their temple, all those sacrifices: that’s the way God has taught them. But …
Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 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 is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
The Jews are right, but everything is about to change. When Jesus says, “The hour is coming and now is …” he means that the promised kingdom is breaking in and it is going to bring about a revolution in the way we worship.
Worship before Christ was largely symbolic. Everyone sacrificed.
That was a form of worship that reminded people that they were sinners deserving banishment and death. But God is about to make a way for sins to be forgiven and wiped away. With the coming of his kingdom God was going to deal with sin in a way that it will never be necessary to sacrifice an animal ever again. And once that happens there will be no more need for a special place of sacrifice – not the temple in Jerusalem, nor the shrine at Mt Gerizim, nor Mecca or anywhere. Those who worship the Father will worship him in spirit and in truth. That means that their worship will no longer be in symbols and shadows, but the real thing. It means that our worship will be the sincere outpouring of our heart and mind to a God who is present wherever we are. Another way the New Testament speaks of this is to say they we are now given access to God’s presence in heaven. You don’t have to come to this cathedral to meet with God, you … well what do you have to do; where do you have to go?
When Jesus spoke these words it was not clear to the woman or anyone else how this revolution would come about. We know it happened at the cross when Jesus offered to God the one and only sacrifice he would ever ask for. The great temple in Jerusalem was replaced by a person, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. When we want to approach God we must come to him, and his atoning death. There is no other way that God accepts. It would not be truthful worship, if we did not recognize that God has come to us and made himself known in the person of Jesus. It would not be true worship if we did not realize that we are reconciled to God and are able to approach him only because of Jesus’ sin-bearing death. And it would not be true worship if we did not know the Holy Spirit now living within us as the way God connects with us. Authentic worship is trinitarian: we come to the father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit living in us.
AD worship is fundamentally different to BC worship – because of Jesus. It is not different because Jesus invented a new kind of worship, but because he fulfilled the shadows and symbols of the old covenant. Worship now is your total positive response to the totality of God. You can respond negatively to God; you can hate him. That is not worship; it needs to be a positive response. You are responding to more than just something you like about him. You are responding to everything he is. And it is the response of your whole person. If you decided you would worship God on Sundays, but not in the rest of the week, that would not be worship. God would not accept it. If you only worshipped God when you came into a church, it would mean your worship was not real, even when you did, because it is not the outpouring of your whole person.
So think of what Psalm 95 asks us to do. We are to sing and make a joyful noise. That is because we are responding to the fact that God has saved us. We are to come into his presence with songs of praise. That is because he made the world and everything in it – the oceans, the land, the mountains – from the furthest part of the universe to the very bottom of bottom. We are to worship and bow before him. Because we are his people, his sheep. And we are to listen to his word and not harden our hearts. Because his word is true and the way to life. To harden your heart in disobedience leads most surely to destruction, as it did for the Israelites in the wilderness. All this is worship. It is our total response to the totality of God.
When Jesus answers her question about worship the Samaritan woman mentions the Messiah, whom Jews and Samaritans believed would come one day and reveal everything. Jesus says to her, “I who am speaking to you am he.” Jesus reveals to the woman that he is the promised king, and she runs off to tell the people in the village: “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could he be the Messiah?”
By now the disciples had returned. They were surprised to find him talking to a woman. That was another thing that was changing. She shared her story with the whole village and led them out to meet Jesus. They invited him back to stay with them. By the time he left they were convinced. They said to the woman:
“We no longer believe because of what you said. We have heard for ourselves and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.”
She believed. She was born again. God gave her his Holy Spirit. She became a spiritual worshiper. She drank of that living water and it became a spring in her rising up to eternal life. She also became the first missionary to the Samaritan people. You will meet her one day. You can ask her name, and enquire about all those husbands.