Lent 3, Year A
Donna Joy

John 4:5-42

Recently, David and I were at an event at which there were many people we were meeting for the first time.We were engaging in that often safe and preliminary conversation that tends to help people get to know one another a little better.Within the context of that conversation someone asked if I am employed somewhere, and if so where.When she heard my response, she did what so many people have done when I have responded to that very same question; she began to explain why she doesn’t go to church.

In the case of this woman her primary reason was because she didn’t really see the point; her experience with church has been primarily meaningless and rather void.Others in the past who have asked me ‘where I work’ and heard my response have responded with such comments as, “I – myself – don’t go to church very often because quite frankly I am one of those people who believe that I can worship God just as well (perhaps even better) on the golf course as I can worship God in church.”Others have said, “Oh, I used to be involved with a church, but then decided that church is full of hypocrites who talk about love and then stab each other in the back; so I withdrew from church all together.”Still others have said, “Both my husband and I work all week, we take the children to swimming lessons and do other errands on Saturday, so we feel we are with God more effectively relaxing at home in our pyjamas on Sunday mornings.”

Believe me; throughout the past 24 years since I was first ordained I’ve heard many reasons as to why people choose not to go to church.And just to be clear, many of these people have since become my good friends; people I love, admire and respect.You don’t have to be someone who goes to church in order to be a good, moral, ethical person.However, at the same time, I would argue that you cannot worship God in ‘Spirit and Truth’ as Jesus points out in our Gospel this morning on the golf course / or at home in your pyjamas on Sunday morning / or by avoiding the hypocrites (a label which probably in some measure, is one that we all may be given).

This act of worshipping in ‘Spirit and Truth’ is exemplified in our Gospel this morning, as we observe Jesus’ encounter with a woman at a well.At midday Jesus begins a conversation with this Samaritan woman while she draws water at the town well.It is a strange conversation at many levels: (1) it would have been unheard of for a man to be alone with a women, much less carrying on a conversation with her; (2) she was a Samaritan – Jews and Samaritans simply did not cohabitate and that schism had existed for centuries; (3) not only was she a woman – and a Samaritan woman at that, but it seems that she is a woman with a bit of a questionable reputation. Indeed, this was a very strange encounter and conversation.

Shortly after Jesus engages the Samaritan woman in conversation, she brings up the dispute that Jews had with Samaritans over where was the best place to worship. The Samaritans believed that the best place to worship was on Mt. Gerizim; the Jewish people, of course, in Jerusalem. Who knows how the woman may be expecting Jesus to respond. Maybe she expects him to tell her that her convictions about this are all wrong. Or, perhaps she thinks that Jesus will give her a good theological reason for worshipping in Jerusalem rather than on Mr. Gerizim (where the temple at that time had already been destroyed for well over a century). But Jesus – it seems – surprises her by responding, “I tell you there will be a day when people will worship in spirit and in truth.”

Sounds like a good thing: worshipping in spirit and in truth as opposed to worshipping with no spirit and in untruth. But – really – what is this supposed to mean? Well, it seems that Jesus, as is usual in the Gospel of John, is doing much more than stating the obvious. He is saying more than we might automatically mean by the words ‘spirit’ and ‘truth.’

So what does Jesus mean in this context when he is referring to Spirit? In the first chapter of Genesis when God began creating the world, we are told that the spirit of God ‘hovered’ over the dark waters and brought forth life. ‘Hover’ brings to mind a helicopter sweeping down and hovering over a location. A better translation of this Hebrew word might be ‘brooded’ over the waters. The Spirit of God is that which brings forth something out of nothing, that which brings life out of death. The Spirit is generative: “Having the power or function of producing, reproducing…”

In the New Testament the word for ‘spirit’ is the Greek word ‘pneuma’, which simply means wind. The wind is air in motion. So this implies the Spirit is God in motion. God is not static but God is movement; constant movement. The Spirit of God brooded over the waters of creation and set the world in motion.

So, while this woman is attempting to establish some clarity over where is the best place to worship, Jesus is making the point that worship is not so much a place or a location, as it is wherever the Spirit of God blows upon us. True worship happens when you have people who are blown together in one place by the Holy Spirit of God. People blown in from a variety of different places.

Worship is also a matter of people in motion. People not only standing up and sitting down, kneeling, processing and recessing (as important as all this is – and, indeed, it is…), but worship is also whenever God moves a people from place to place. When God blows people from one position to another, that’s worship. The woman in this morning story is blown by God from a place of shame and isolation to a place of having experienced God in Jesus, being transformed by that experience and immediately (as the first of a long line of evangelists) sharing the news of that experience with others.

So worship has always got to have some movement in it, a sense of things being dislodged, blown to and fro. Worship is not so much worshipping at Jerusalem or on Mt. Gerizim, or even here at St. Peter’s. Worship is whenever the Holy Spirit of God blows through, blows strange people together, moves you from one place toward another place you wouldn’t be had there not been given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And then there is the truth to which Jesus refers. “I tell you there will be a day when people will worship in spirit and in truth.” John’s Gospel has a very particular view of truth. As we were discussing last week during our Lenten study ‘Making Sense of Scripture’ in our definitions truth tends to be an idea, a proposition; perhaps something that can be proven. But in John’s Gospel, Jesus makes statements like, “I am the truth.” Now the truth about God has become a person, has become personal. God is no longer an abstraction, a vague generality, or simply a good feeling that comes over us on the golf course, or on the beach, or watching a sunset (as God-filled as those moments may be – and I believe they are); but – for Christians – true worship is to see the face of God in the person of Jesus. God has a face and a name – Jesus the Christ.

Later in the conversation, after Jesus has told the woman that there will be a day when true worshipers will worship in spirit and truth – Jesus says to her directly, “I am.” That is, if she really wants to encounter the truth, she has only to open her eyes and see truth in conversations with her. The truth of God is sitting next to her.

Each of our readings this morning speak of God as the good gift who keeps on giving and giving and giving, and this Divine generosity culminates in Jesus. As Jesus encounters this woman, and speaks to her about worshipping in ‘Spirit and in Truth’ he does so while sitting at a well that is producing water that is life giving and refreshing, and she is moved into a new sense of awareness: that Jesus is now the water of life that refreshes and sustains her very soul. With so many frozen pipes throughout Winnipeg this winter, many people have been reminded of how essential water is to everyday life in terms of fulfilling our physical needs. This passage from John’s Gospel is a reminder that Jesus is essential in terms of our spiritual well-being: “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.”

Every time Christians gather for worship, blown in by the wind of God, we believe that we are able to worship in this same “Spirit and Truth.” Here at St. Peter’s we plan worship very carefully, and I am grateful to the team of people who offer counsel, wisdom and support as I serve as your primary liturgical leader appointed by the Bishop to serve in this way. But at the end of the day, as important as all this careful planning is, we don’t create worship. Worship is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Worship occurs in those delicious moments when the spirit of God blows through our dead, dark, infertile world, and brings life. Just like Genesis 1.

It is the hope and deepest desire of our worship planning team that this experience is available to you, week after week, liturgical season after liturgical season. I think most of you already know that worship is not – primarily - when I speak certain words in a sermon (as humbling as that may be for me or any others in our team of preachers here at St. Peter’s). Worship is not – primarily - when a certain anthem or hymn is sung. Worship in Spirit and Truth is not those warm, fuzzy moments that feel good. The heart of worship is in those ecstatic moments when we are transported, lifted out of our current places of shame and darkness, when it is as if a gentle breeze, or sometimes a destructive, powerful hurricane blows through our lives and leads us into renewed places of relationship with God (through Jesus) and each other. Worship, truly Christian worship, is not some vague, ethereal spiritual high in which we have a strange and other-worldly feeling.

Worship is when we are encountered by Jesus – like that woman at the well. In those wonderful moments when we have a sense that Jesus has intruded, arrived, taken a seat beside us, that’s the worship in ‘Spirit and Truth’ to which Jesus refers.

So Christian worship is more than a feeling or a subjective emotional experience. Christian worship is to be encountered by this strange Saviour whose love is not the love we expected, whose way is not the way that we expected to walk. We cannot make worship mean anything we would like it to mean. Worship means what Jesus says it means.

When people are encountered by Jesus and the Gospels they have a variety of emotions. Sometimes we feel a sense of peace, but sometimes we feel a sense of fear. The woman at the well felt both affirmed and engaged by Jesus, and terribly bewildered and confused. The point of worship is not necessarily to come together and have a sense of collected peace. Nor is worship primarily a time to come and feel better about our problems, to receive answers to our questions. Worship ‘in Spirit and in Truth’ is whenever we are encountered by Jesus, and it means whatever gift he has to give.

So, yes, there are ways and many places in which we may experience the presence of God. In our pyjamas on Sunday mornings; on the golf course; watching a beautiful sunset; avoiding a religious community that some may perceive is filled with hypocrites . . . But the challenge Jesus offers us this morning is to discover worship ‘in Spirit and in Truth’ – that is, worship that discovers Jesus taking a seat beside us; worship that surprises us; moves us from those places of darkness and shame into new relationship with God and each other.

In the words of William Willimon:

For 20 years I had the privilege of leading worship in Duke University Chapel. It is a magnificent building. One enters the Chapel through a tower that is well over 200 feet high, that soars in neo-Gothic splendour above the campus. The aisle is 230 feet long. About as long as the tower is high. There are over a million pieces of stained glass, imported from all over the world, in the windows of Duke Chapel. It is quite a building.
 
And yet, every Sunday morning I was reminded that this building, for all of its beauty, could appear as just an elaborate mausoleum. It could appear as just a very beautiful monument like the Taj Mahal in India. But when the body of Christ gathers, when people are blown into the Chapel from the four corners of the earth, when the choir sweeps in glorious procession, when the bread and the wine are gathered and placed upon the altar, when the Holy Spirit, the risen Christ, are undeniably, truly present, then there is worship, then it can be said that there is worship in ‘spirit and truth.’