The Meaning and Practice of Worship
John 4:19-26
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
March 5, 2023
Rev. Juvenal Cervantes
Amy Carmichael was a missionary to India in the 19th century. She wrote over 35 books about her experiences with God and her ministry.
In her book, “If: What do I know of Calvary’s Love,” she wrote:
I believe that if we are to be and do for others for what God means for us to be and do, we must not let adoration and worship slip into second place. For it is the central service asked by God of human souls. Its neglect is responsible for much spiritual depth and power. Perhaps we may find here the reason why we so often run dry. We do not give time enough to what makes for depth and so we are shallow; a wind, quite a little wind can ruffle our surface, a little sun, and all the moisture in us evaporate. It should not be so.
What is your definition of worship? True worship is encountering God as God has revealed himself to us.
I trust that today the Holy Spirit of God will encourage us to redouble our efforts to encounter the living God as it has been revealed to us. Another good question to consider is “What has been revealed to us about God?”
There’s a story in John chapter four that takes us to the heart of the matter of worship. Three ideas we learn from this story: Worship is encountering God, we must strive for a balance between Spirit and Truth, and Our Worship must be Christ-centered.
It’s a familiar story of Jesus and the woman in Samaria. Jesus and his disciples had been in Jerusalem and were going back to galilee, and John chapter four says, “Jesus had to go through Samaria.” Now that “had to” was not a geographical necessity. Many, many Jews traveling from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north, crossed the Jordan River and went up the other side to avoid Samaria and cross over to Galilee.
But Jesus “had to” was a moral “had to,” it wasn’t a geographical necessity. It was necessary for his mission and ministry, to go through Samaria and to take his disciples and to meet with Samaritans.
And so he comes through Samaria and stops at Sychar at Jacob’s well and sits down, its noon and he sends his disciples off to go find some kind of food. I don’t know where they would find kosher food in Samaria because Jews and Samaritan’s just didn’t get along. But Jesus sat there alone and a woman comes to the well to draw water, specifically, it says, she brought her vessel to come and draw water. When she got there, the Samaritan woman was addressed by Jesus. He says, “Woman, would you give me a drink?” And she can tell that he is Jewish and she says, “Ha, how is it that you being Jewish, ask me a Samaritan woman to give you a drink?” Jesus was violating all kinds of things at that point: A man talking to a woman in public, a Jew talking to a Samaritan asking for a drink from one of the vessels that a Samaritan had drunk out of.
And he said, “If you knew who you were talking to, which you clearly don’t, you would have asked me and I would have given you living water so that you wouldn’t have to come to this well.” And she sorts of mocks that, “You don’t have anything to draw with, the well’s deep, how are you going to get living water? Where is this flowing water going to come from?”
He says, “No, no, I’m talking about the water of life and if you drink it, you never get thirsty again.” And that’s when she sarcastically says, “Why don’t you give me some of that water so that I don’t have to keep coming back here to the well every day.
And Jesus says, “Okay, I will, go call your husband and I’ll give you that water.” She says, “I don’t have a husband.” He says, “You’re being honest with me, you don’t have a husband, you’ve had five husbands and the man you’re with right now if not your husband, is he?”
And that’s when she sort of says, “Let’s get off my personal life and talk about religion.” She says, “I perceive you’re a prophet and I have a religious question to ask you.”
Jesus pointing out her life with these men, he wasn’t condemning her, he was just letting her know that he knew that she was a thirsty person. She had come to the well to get physical water, but there was a thirst deeper in her life that she had not yet quenched. She was trying to quench it with relationships and that wasn’t working.
People try to quench this thirst with so many other things. We can do it with success, we can do it with drugs, many of us were obsessed last week with the trial of Alex Murdaugh, we can do it with alcohol, we can do it with sex, we can do it with popularity and power. We can try to quench that thirst in so many ways, but it is like drinking seawater, just never quenching the thirst. This week we learned of the conviction of 44-year-old Tim Norman, of Oprah’s Sweetie Pie Reality TV who arranged the killing of his nephew to profit from his life insurance. Other news included the suicide of 78-year-old billionaire Thomas Lee who is being mourned by the art and museum.
The Samaritan woman thirsty came to the well and Jesus says to her, “The water I am going to give you is going to quench that thirst that is driving you from one relationship to another over all these years and she says, “Sir, you’re a prophet.”
So the story picks up on verse 19
"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
It wasn’t a bad question she raised, “Where are we supposed to worship?” It’s not irrelevant. If God is the source of living water, that quenches life’s deepest thirst, where do we go to drink? Is it Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim?”
She said, “Our Fathers worshipped on this mountain.” The Samaritans came about as a race of people because nine centuries or so before Christ, the Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom of Israel and they carried many people to other countries to live among them so what ended up happening in the north around Samaria was a very mixed race of people and their religion became very synchronistic as well and so they were looked upon by the Jews who themselves were carried out from exile from Juda and then came right back, they were looked up as half-breeds and heretics because they weren’t a pure race and because their worship was contaminated.
So, they weren’t allowed to worship in Jerusalem. They built a temple on Mount Gerizim. They used the five books of Moses as their authority, but no other books from any of the prophets. So, she’s got a different view of worship than Jesus.
My friends, week after week, we come to worship in this place, people throughout the city and county and throughout the country go to other churches, we bring our own water pots, we’re thirsty. Lots of things indicate our thirst. We’re struggling with family needs, sometimes wrestling with marriages, worrying over debts, despairing about the future, not clear where things are going in our world, scared of dying, and scared of death, frightened by the possibility of economic downturn, job losses, defeated by various addictions, habits that seem to be getting the best of us, ruining life, sometimes lonely ways, sometimes we can’t even express it, aching over grief that others have gotten past, guilty over mistakes and sins over our life, longing for some sense of meaning or purpose in life that we can’t quite put our finger on it, there are lots of ways that thirst shows up and we come to worship with our water pots and we want our thirst quenched. Somehow, we sense that in worship there might be a well from where we can drink. But if we’re going to find a well that is going to slates the thirst of our soul, we have to encounter God. Our worship has to be an authentic encounter with the living God.
I can tell you, nothing superficial will quench those thirst. No music of one sort or another, no musician, no poet, no prayer, no preacher, nothing will do it. We need an encounter with the risen Christ, He is the one who offers living water. So, the question is an important question, where do we worship, in Jerusalem or in Gerizim, is it your place or mine? Is it something that happens to you or something you do? Are you supposed to be loud and active or are you supposed to be contemplative? How do you get it right?
The truth about worship is that we’re dealing with an authentic encounter with God, not a form or a place.
Pastor and author Gordon McDonald says that human being have a leading instinct toward God. You and I don’t speak the same language when it comes to God. He lists six leading instincts.
Aesthetics. Some of us are moved toward God when we encounter the aesthetics, beautiful, beautiful music, beautiful art, beauty is what draws us to an awareness of God’s presence.
Experiential. Others are drawn more to experiential like joy and excitement, shouting and noise and all of that.
Activists. And others are more activists, we like accomplishments, we like serving, doing justice, working in our world, feeding the hungry and in that process, we encounter God.
Contemplative. Or other of us, our leading instinct is contemplative, we like to be quiet and still and listen and not having interrupted by any.
Student. Others are more like students. We like truth, we like Bible study, an in-depth visit into the scripture, we think that heaven will be an eternal Bible study with Jesus as the teacher and the disciples as the discussion group leaders. And that’s the way we encounter God, with the richness of His truth.
Relationalist. And others are more relationalist, we like to be with other people, somehow in the community of faith is where we encounter God. The human tendency is to associate God with some limited view of human experience.
And we think that is the right way, the forms that we most like or the forms that are most familiar to us. Truthfully, that’s a kind of idolatry, it puts a human construction that says, “This is how we encounter God.” We erect a form, when God is spirit.
Jesus said, “Genuine worship is not concerned where it takes place externally but an encounter with God.” He says, “Woman, the hour is coming when neither in Jerusalem or in this mountain will you worship God because God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth, we got to enter into God’s realm and not set up our own and to think that God is going to be contained in that.
It is clear that you can be in a religious place, like a church or a temple, you can be doing religious things like singing hymns or listening to a sermon or offering a sacrifice and not be worshiping God at all. That’s clearly possible.
It is also clearly possible that you can be in a non-religious setting, like being out on the field, tending sheep and have an encounter with the living God as did David, Amos and probably others, the shepherds on the night the angels announce the birth of our Lord.
The initial question of the woman was “Where is the place to worship?” and she was focused on the external, but the external is not the issue when it comes to worship.
It is about an encounter with God. Worship also must include a balance between spirit and truth, our emotion and the knowledge that what we’re doing in worship is representative of what we know about God. Our worship must be centered on Jesus; it is through God’s grace that we are able to approach God and contemplate His greatness, His power and blessing.
We don’t want to be religious junkies or worship junkies, we want to engage the heart and the mind as we come before our creator and Lord.
Did you come to hear some music or a talk or to meet with the living God. If the former, then pick up the water pot and go home, we’re almost done, but you are going to be thirsty again before you know it. But if you came to meet with the living God, the seeker, the father, the holy one, through his son Jesus Christ there is the possibility that you can taste the living water that will make a difference in the days just ahead of you as you walk from this place, days in which your thirst is not so deep, you reflect on him, sing his praise, listen to his word, yield your life freshly to him, you worship in sprit and truth. And if that’s the case you do exactly what the woman did. John says at the end of the story, she left her water pot and went back to the village. It’s that abandoned water pot that is evident she had an encounter with the one who gives her the drink so she does not have to thirst again. If we meet God when we come to church, we can leave our water pot and go into the world, having been quenched by something deeper.