In the previous post, Jesus taught his disciples that they should see themselves as harvesters. He wasn’t referring to harvesting in the farming world, but harvesting for God’s Kingdom. Jesus was saying that just as they were his disciples, their mission was to help more people become his disciples.
Just then, something happened to illustrate what Jesus was talking about. A harvester brought in a harvest. The harvester was the Samaritan woman who had five husbands, and was now living with a man who was not her husband. Not the kind of person you’d think would be an evangelist! She told the people in her town about her conversation with Jesus, and now they wanted to meet Jesus.
What can we learn from this?
Don’t write yourself off. You are loved by God, and he desires a deeper growing relationship with you. Know that God sees you as someone that can serve in his Kingdom. You have gifts and talents that can always serve God’s mission, resulting in bringing you life and life for others in God’s kingdom. You might think you are the last person who could help other people become followers of Jesus. But know this. God is in the business of empowering even the most unlikely people to do great things, big and small.
You can introduce people to Jesus by telling the story of God at work in your life. The woman’s message was simple, “Come out and meet the man who told me everything I ever did.” Is she exaggerating? Yes, of course. But she is also getting at the truth. She met Jesus, and Jesus revealed himself to her. She found truth. And she wanted everyone to know the truth as well.
What will it look like for you and I to embody that same spirit? With that same passion?
First, it means that we meet Jesus. Not to know about him, but to be in a growing relationship with him. Where we are watching him, observing him, learning new things about him, meeting with him, and gradually doing what he did.
Second, it means that we introduce other people to Jesus. Who are the people in your life that you can introduce to Jesus? In what ways can you show others who Jesus is and what you are learning from him?
I live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s farm country. My back yard is adjacent to a corn field, so just a few weeks ago we watched as harvesters brought in the corn at night. Other years we’ve watched the combines mowing down the fields and spraying a golden stream of kernels into trailers. Harvest is a normal part of the rhythm of life here.
Just a few minutes down the road, however, is the City of Lancaster. Lancaster City is a typical Eastern USA city with many narrow streets and row homes. It was not designed for cars, but over the years, the major streets have been turned into one-way thoroughfares and numerous parking garages have been built. Still nearly all streets are lined with cars on both sides. What you wouldn’t expect to see is a harvester or a combine driving down any of Lancaster’s streets.
But as we’ll see in our continuing study of John 4, Jesus has an unlikely harvest in an unlikely place.
This week and last week, we have been following the story of Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well. In the previous post, we learned about the conversation Jesus had with his disciples after the Samaritan woman went back into town. Just then, the Samaritan woman shows up, and now she has a posse of townspeople with her. Are they looking for trouble? Are they thinking they will confront the group of 13 Jews who had ventured into their land? Look at John 4, verses 39-42:
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
What Jesus has just talked about with his disciples now plays out right in front of them. There is a harvest for the Kingdom experience of eternal life now. The people in that Samaritan town believe in the savior of the world. The wild thing is that this occurs in what the disciples would have considered the most unlikely place. In Samaria. Enemies of the Jews now become sons and daughters of the king. Brothers and sisters. This is a story of a breaking down of a wall of cultural, ethnic and gender separation. In the kingdom of God, all are equal. Jesus took the time to be sure his disciples could not only hear about this, but observe it and participate in it first hand.
The result? Many Samaritans believed. Jesus stayed there two days and many more believed. Jesus saw the kingdom moment and invested in it. He was not only harvesting for the Kingdom, he was also teaching his disciples to see the harvest fields that others did not see. Those harvest fields might be in a different location than home, might be in a different culture, a different ethnicity. They might be in the unlikeliest of places.
What will you do to open your heart, mind and eyes to the unlikely places around you?
What gives you life? Being with friends or family? Your job? Perhaps a hobby? Serving as a volunteer? Reading? Exercise? Art? Music? As we continue studying John 4:27-42, we learn what gives Jesus life.
Earlier in the chapter, Jesus had a thought-provoking conversation with a Samaritan woman. They had a chance meeting around a well just outside her town. Jesus’ disciples had left him there and went into town to purchase food for lunch. Just as the disciples return, the woman leaves, heading back into town to tell the people there about her conversation with Jesus. While the woman is in town, we learn that Jesus and his disciples have a fascinating conversation of there own:
Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
Jesus is talking on the symbolic level, but he knows his disciples will interpret him on the figurative level. This is classic Jesus, every moment a teaching moment. This is Jesus the disciple-maker, always ready to invest in his followers’ lives. Asking them questions. Getting them thinking. Speaking with symbolism. Challenging them. Surprising them.
Here he is using an analogy. Food doesn’t mean food. Instead, Jesus likens food to doing the will of God. Certainly there is a comparison between the two. Food energizes us. It’s like phrase, “That gives me life!” Or “I felt so alive doing that.” What we are talking about is an energizing facet of life. When we do something that we like, when we use our gifts and talents, when we create, when we help people, when we solve a problem, find a solution, fix something broken, we say, “I love that. That gives me life.”
The funny thing about life-giving activities is that they often require a lot from us. Physical toil. Mentally-strenuous focus. Lots of time. Investment of money. But when we’re done, feeling exhausted, we call it a “good tired,” a “good soreness”. In fact, we usually want to do it again, because it was life-giving.
Jesus says that is how he feels about doing the will of God. It’s what energizes him. That’s his food. So Jesus says to his disciples, that is “the food I have that you know nothing about.” I don’t get the sense that Jesus is being harsh here. I think he is just bending their minds a bit, getting them thinking.
He also expands of what he means by the will of God. He says in verse 34 that God’s will for Jesus is work that Jesus will finish. He is committed to the mission God has for him, come what may.
Then he reminds them of what was likely a common proverb, “Four more months and then the harvest,” which is basically to say that we plant, and then we have to wait. It is a gardening, farming rhythm that we know well. You do not plant a seed and then harvest the next day. You wait.
Jesus follows that proverb by saying that the four months have passed, “Friends, the fields are ripe to the harvest.” He means that they should see that the time is now. But he is not talking about farming. He is talking about lives. People.
Jesus says the reaper is harvesting to eternal life, meaning that the time is now to help bring in the harvest. Jesus is giving his disciples a vision for the urgency of the mission. What was his food, in other words, they should also see as their food: to help people enter into eternal life, to show people God’s goodness, so they can live like him in the world.
But again, remember that eternal life, for Jesus, is not simply life in heaven after death on earth. We studied this in John chapter 3. Eternal life starts now. Jesus wants to be in relationship with people now. Jesus wants people to experience the life of God’s Kingdom now. People in relationship with God also have the hope of eternal life after death. God desires relationship, restored relationship with those he loves, with us. With all people.
Jesus tells his disciples that they get to participate in this process of reaping what others have sowed, of harvesting what they did not plant. Others did that planting work. Which others? Maybe Jesus is referring to John the Baptist. We don’t know. But the planting is done, and now it is time to harvest. Now it is time to invite people into the Kingdom, to introduce them to the King. To Jesus.
Just then, the Samaritan woman returns and now she has some of her townspeople with her. Remember that Jews and Samaritans are enemies. When 13 Jewish men show up in their town, how will the Samaritans handle it? We’ll find out in the next post.
In John 4:1-42, there are two major themes running side-by-side. The first we talked about last week: Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman about worship. Now this week, we’re looking at Jesus’ interaction with his disciples during this episode.
They travel with Jesus from Judea, heading north to Galilee. When they arrive in the Samaritan town of Sychar at lunchtime, we read in verse 8 that the disciples head into town to get lunch for everyone, while Jesus stays alone at a well on the outskirts of town. It is curious to me that no one stayed with Jesus. Did all twelve men need to go into town to buy lunch? Was it a case of teenage herd mentality?
We attended my daughter’s end-of-season soccer banquet the other night. At one point during the meal, I watched as an entire table of girls got up together to check the dessert table. Not one or two. The entire table, at the same time. They didn’t need to do that. But that’s herd mentality.
Maybe it’s FOMO. Fear of missing out. Maybe it’s also protection. Who wants to be alone? Especially when you are a group of Jews heading to enemy territory, a Samaritan city. Remember the Jews and Samaritans detest each other. So it would be a lot safer for a group of 12 Jews to travel in a pack.
Yet, that means they leave Jesus alone, which strikes me as irresponsible. Then again, Jesus spent time by himself a lot. Maybe he directed his disciples to go and give him some space.
Eventually though, they return, and what they find is shocking. Look at verse 27:
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
The disciples show up, likely with a bit of emotion because their teacher is doing what their culture deems wrong. He is talking with a woman. She’s a Samaritan woman to boot. The disciples would have been surprised, concerned, and confused. Jesus, however, was not the least bit concerned. Repeatedly in the Gospels we see Jesus giving women the equality they deserve as humans made in the image of God. What could have been scandalous in that culture was nothing to Jesus, because in his view, which is the right view, it wasn’t scandalous at all. The cultural view of women was wrong.
But just as the disciples were likely shocked to see Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman, the Samaritan woman might have been surprised by twelve Jewish men showing up. What does she do? Look at verses 28-30:
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
The sudden appearance of twelve Jewish men gives the woman enough reason to leave, not to mention the exceedingly thought-provoking conversation she’s just had, a conversation she cannot keep to herself. We talked about that conversation in-depth in last week’s posts, starting here. It was a conversation with a Jewish man…who knew her life story…who taught with compelling authority…who bested her in a theological duel…who claimed to be the Messiah, and she had to admit it all made sense.
Because of that, she heads back into town and starts telling people about Jesus. Which is what you do when you meet Jesus. You tell people. That’s what we still do, still should do. We have met the Messiah. Just like the Samaritan women, we still tell the story. The people in the Samaritan town of Sychar who hear her are intrigued. Could this be the Christ? They want to see for themselves.
Before we learn what happens when the townspeople arrive at the well, the scene changes. While the woman has been in town, we learn that Jesus and his disciples are having a conversation of their own. We’ll learn about their conversation in the next post.
Last week we concluded with a bit of a cliffhanger. Jesus had been talking with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well in the Samaritan town of Sychar. They’re having a rousing conversation, and just then Jesus’ disciples show up. And that’s where we ended.
Before we pick up the story and find out what happens next, I think we need to back up to the beginning of the chapter. Partly to review, but partly because I skipped something last week. Look at John 4, verses 1-3:
The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
We read that last week. Jesus’ ministry had started, and he was training his disciples to do ministry. They are doing the baptizing. This week, let’s pay close attention to Jesus’ interaction with his disciples. That is what I skipped over last week. So what do we see in these verses about Jesus’ interaction with his disciples?
First of all, what we see in verses 1-3 might seem like a surprising move on Jesus’ part. Just when his new ministry is going great, Jesus shuts it down. He has a thriving ministry in Judea, but when he finds out the Pharisees are taking notice of his success, he shuts down his ministry and heads north to Galilee, away from the Pharisees’ central area.
It got me thinking, was Jesus being cowardly? Is he giving his disciples a lesson in caving in to fear? No! We’ve learned in our study of the Gospel of John that already once he walked right into the temple and created a ruckus that could have gotten him killed. Jesus was not a coward. We also know what will eventually get him killed. He will eventually walk right back into enemy territory and face them down. He is not afraid. So why he is seemingly quitting and fleeing to get away from the Pharisees?
Because Jesus is smart.
As he said to his mother Mary at the wedding in Cana in chapter 2, “My time is not yet come.” Jesus is a master of managing his ministry, of discipling his friends, of waiting until the time is right. Here in chapter 4, the time is not right. But what is it that is not right?
If he stayed in Judea, it is likely that he would face increasing confrontation from the Pharisees, which could lead to his arrest and death too soon. Too soon? Why not just get it over with? It’s why he came, right? Considering how awful his death would be, wouldn’t he just want to be done with it? No. Why not? What’s he waiting for?
Jesus has not yet invested enough into the lives of his disciples to the point where they are ready to take over for him. In other words, Jesus knows an end is coming. Or rather he knows a transition is coming, a transition from his leadership of the ministry, to their leadership of the ministry.
You and I know that transition well. We call it the crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and Pentecost. To us it seems like the most natural thing in the world, the climatic events that led to the beginning of the church. It is an amazing story. But we’ve had all our lives to learn that story, not to mention the 2000 years of history during which the church developed and continues to this day. In other words, we are used to that story, that outcome.
But 2000 years ago there in Judea, Jesus had only barely started a relationship with the 12 disciples. By this time, they might have been together a few months at most. They’re not ready to take over leadership of the ministry. Jesus needs more time to disciple them, to invest in them. So he makes space for that investment of time, for that discipleship to happen. He makes space by packing up his ministry and heading home.
We learn an important principle from Jesus here. People need time to grow. Rarely do we mature deeply and rapidly. Usually, it takes us a long time. When our kids were younger, and parental disciplinary action was a normal part of our lives (thank God we are past that!), we used to dream of what I call The Golden Discipline. The Golden Discipline is the perfect parental response to a child’s bad behavior.
It might be a serious conversation. It might be a grounding. It might be a taking away of something special, like their cell phone. Once we removed the door from our son’s room, a discipline we learned from our friends! Or it might be, when they were younger, some kind of corporal punishment, like “the snap.” Snap their legs, hand or mouth, depending on what they did. In our minds, if we talked long enough, intense enough, took away a privilege, or did just the right snap, it would be the golden punishment and they would get it, be remorseful, never need to be punished again, and the rest of our lives would be awesome.
Except there is no golden punishment. No matter how perfectly conceived and delivered was our punishment, our kids would misbehave again. And again. And again. Just like you and I all did when we were young, usually causing our parents stress and frustration. No, there is no golden punishment. There is only time, lots of frustrating parental time, investing in our kids.
What Michelle and I tried, and rarely succeeded at, was emotionally-stable, consistent enforcement of the rules, in love and grace, fully realizing that our accountability would need to be applied probably hundreds or thousands of times. It was hard. We messed up from time to time and had to apologize to our kids. Sometimes our kids had to figure how to grow up in ways we couldn’t teach them or show them.
Ever so slowly, we watched our kids mature to the amazing place they are at today. Young adults, two of whom are now married, including one who is starting the parenting journey himself! And they continue to grow and change. What we have begun to enjoy is becoming friends with our adult children.
I think something like that is why Jesus packed up his ministry and left. Obviously not because he was punishing his disciples. But because they needed time to grow. He had more to teach them. More to show them. They needed more time to observe him, watch him, and learn from him.
I find that helpful. We, and especially we Americans, want success now, and we define success by “Bigger is better…NOW!” We fire the coach if he doesn’t win the Super Bowl in his first season coaching the team. We pull out our hair if the WiFi is down. We can be so impatient, so discontent. We can struggle with the slow grind that is sometimes necessary to become proficient at a skill, to build a strong foundation for a family, a ministry, a business, an organization. We struggle with patience.
That doesn’t mean that if we master patience and pace ourselves just right, things will turn out splendidly every time. As with parenting, time is no guarantee of perfection or a great outcome. Remember that Jesus, even after he put in lots of time and investment in his disciples, still had one of them betray him and one deny him. Not to mention that at the moment of crisis, when he was arrested, they all ran away scared. They left Jesus alone.
That said, there is a great wisdom in Jesus’ steady, slow patience. One person has called it a “long obedience in the same direction,” in God’s direction. We might not see the fruit of long obedience in the same direction. We might pass away before we reap the fruit of our investment. Sometimes, rarely, we might see fruit fast. But for the most part, the fruit of changed lives requires a long obedience in the same direction. That long obedience grows fruit in ourselves and in others.
I have often believed that I’d rather be a late bloomer than a flash in the pan. I suspect Jesus was like that. Patient, slow, steady, relationship-building, investing. He didn’t start ministry until he was 30! Then right near the beginning, just as his ministry seems to have successfully launched and is gaining ground, he hears that the Pharisees are throwing up warning signs about him. Jesus knows that staying and facing them is a bad move at this early stage. So he wisely packs up his thriving ministry and leaves.
At this point, it is highly possible that Jesus’ decision to head all the way to Galilee was a disastrous ministry decision, at least from the perspective of “Bigger is Better.” He was thriving there in Judea. He was outpacing John the Baptist. To pack it up and head north was to essentially call it quits and start over. Sometimes you need to do that. Jesus did. The time was not yet right.
In the next post, we’ll follow Jesus and his disciples on their journey north, which takes them to a surprising place.
I was today years old when I learned that a screwdriver handle is designed to fit inside a wrench so you can use the wrench to put extra torque on the screwdriver.
I was today years old when I learned that iPhone users can text other iPhone users the words “pew pew” and it will send lasers.
I was today years old when I learned that the famous painting “American Gothic” depicts a farmer and his daughter, not a farmer and his wife.
I was today years old when I learned that the word “footage” refers to the fact that motion picture film is measured in feet.
“I was today years old when…” is an online trend in which people post unique and curious facts they just learned. Maybe you are today years old when you learned about this trend. All of those “today years old” facts I included above are from this article, which has a collected a bunch more.
“I was today years old when…” is a humorous and interesting way to say, “I just learned about something new, and it blew my mind!” Usually these mind-blowing facts are related to common aspects of life and culture that we overlooked or were unaware of. Take the first one up there about screwdrivers. When you use a screwdriver, you don’t think much about the shape of the grip on its handle. You just grip it and tighten or loosen screws. But now that you read that fact, you realize, “Oh yeah…most screwdrivers handles are not circular. They have flat sides. I never thought about that before. Now I see that the flat sides could be used to fit into a wrench if I ever needed that extra bit of torque. How cool is that!”
The “I was today years old when…” trend is a reminder that we don’t always see all that there is to see about a situation. In fact, we can get stuck in a way of seeing things, all the while having very little self-awareness that our viewpoint is limited. Instead, we think we are seeing all there is to see, we think that we are correct, that we have evaluated a situation thoroughly, or sufficiently.
Then something happens, perhaps a tragedy, perhaps a failure on our part, perhaps we read or study or hear a different perspective, and we think, “Wow…I never thought about it like that before.” In our continuing study of the Gospel of John, Jesus tries to help his disciples have a new viewpoint. He wants each of his disciples to say, “I was today years old when…”. But what is the new viewpoint? What is Jesus concerned about? What does he want his disciples to learn? Take a look at John 4:27-42, and see for yourselves ahead of time. Then we’ll talk about it further on the blog next week.
In the previous post, we learned that Jesus taught the Samaritan woman at the well that God is not interested in his people worshiping in a geographical location or building. God is looking for people who worship him in spirit and in truth. So that previous post talked about what it means to worship in spirit. Now we take a look at at what it means to worship in truth.
Jesus will say in John 14:6, that he is the way, the truth and the life. In John 1:14, we read, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Truth is not just some proposition or idea on paper. Truth, whether in the Bible or any human truth, is grounded in Jesus himself, who is the embodiment of truth. Jesus is the truth in and of himself. When we want to know what is true in this world, we must look to Jesus. How did he behave? What was his heart like in various situations? There we will find truth. That is one of the main reasons we are studying the Gospel of John. To know the one who is truth. When we get to know him better, we are getting to know truth better.
When we worship in truth, Jesus is the focus of our worship. That means we need to remove anything we might have added to our worship of Jesus. Our worship should never be a combo of Jesus and something else. That’s called syncretism, which is a fancy word for mixing other ideas or objects into our worship, polluting our worship.
This is similar to when we American Christians also worship America, believing God has a special mission for American or that America is better than all other nations, and we can do this to the detriment of focusing on the Kingdom of God. Or when we American Christians also practice consumerism or materialism, which is an obsession with luxury or comfort. Or when we American Christians focus on individualism, which is when we think our relationship with God is just “personal, and I can worship God in my own way, and don’t really need to be committed to a group of Christians”
When we worship in spirit and truth, we are focused solely, completely and fully on Jesus. He is the truth. I suspect that is what Jesus was getting at when he said to the Samaritan women as they talked by Jacob’s well, that God the father is looking for worshipers in spirit and truth. How will the woman respond to this? Let’s read verse 25.
I don’t know what the woman thought of Jesus’ teaching about worship. Maybe she got it. Maybe not. Remember her theological challenge to Jesus in verse 20? I’m thinking Jesus answered her quite masterfully, and well, full of grace and truth. But it seems the woman doesn’t quite want to say, “Ok, thank you, you have now cleared up all my questions.” Instead she says, “Well, the Messiah is coming, and he’ll sort it out.”
I think she got the message from Jesus that he was disagreeing with her, and pointing her toward something greater. We know he disagreed with her comment about worshiping on Mt. Gerazim, because he said that salvation is from the Jews. Not from the Samaritans. That probably stung her a bit. But he was right, and what’s more, he said, “Actually, your focus on geographical place is misguided. God is looking for worshipers in spirit in truth.” So Jesus has disagreed with her and taught her something important. But she just doesn’t seem ready to concede. Can you blame here? She is in quite a fascinating and perhaps confusing conversation! This stranger has told her about her life story, something he almost certainly could not have known. Then he gives her a unique vision of worship that would have been different from what she was taught. Who is this man? And is telling the truth?
She seems to me that she is a bit flustered. So she deflects by talking about the Messiah, “Well, when the Messiah comes, he’ll sort it out for us.” I think her response is one that you and I default to when we don’t really know what to say, so we say, “Whatever. It’ll get figured out eventually.” But interestingly, this woman mentions the Messiah. The promised deliverer. Even though the Samaritans had their own version of the Bible, a version which differed from the Hebrew Bible, they still believed in the ancient prophecies of the Messiah, a savior who would come.
Jesus looks at her and says, “The Messiah, huh? Ma’am, that’s me.” What must have been going through her mind when he said that! But there’s no time for them to talk about it, because just at that moment they get interrupted. And that is where we stop. To find out what happens, you’ll just have to come back next week. Or just read it for yourselves. For now we conclude the theme of verses 1-26: Jesus is the truth, and we worship him in spirit and truth.
Be intentional in your heart and in your spirit, contemplating Jesus and that he is the truth. Reflect on the words he spoke and the way he lived. He shows us truth. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you. Choose to worship in spirit and truth in community. Encouraging one another to worship in spirit and truth.
Sometimes Christians call church buildings, “God’s house.” I hear adults from time to time say, “Kids, stop running in God’s house.” I cringe when I hear that.
I cringe because it reminds me of something Jesus said when he and the Samaritan woman were having a conversation around the well. You can read about their conversation in the previous post, which we concluded as the woman has just raised a theological argument with Jesus. She said that Samaritans disagree with Jews about the proper location of God’s house.
How will Jesus handle this? Look at John 4, verses 21-24.
Jesus essentially says, “Ma’am, the place of worship is not the real issue. The heart of the worshiper is the issue.” He affirms that salvation is from the Jews, and the time has come to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Those are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
Worship in spirit and truth. What is Jesus talking about? How do we worship in spirit and truth?
First of all, worship in spirit and truth is not connected to a physical geographical location, Jesus says. One of the astounding aspects of a Christian theology of worship is that we do not need a nation, a country, a culture or even any building. Interestingly, in 1 Kings 8:27, when Solomon built and dedicated the temple he said, “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!”
The teaching of the New Testament is that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. You can worship God anywhere you go. In fact, Jesus once taught that “Where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” He isn’t saying if we are worshiping alone, he’s not there. God is omnipresent. Everywhere. And we, our bodies, as his temples are the home of God.
No, Jesus said “Where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them,” to emphasize how important it is to gather with other people, in his name! We Christians have a vital need to gather together consistently in Jesus’ name. Our worship is not intended to be isolated, alone, individual and personal all the time, or even most of the time. There is nothing, however, in Scripture that commands us to worship in any particular space.
So let’s not call church building’s “God’s House.” That said, if you don’t want kids to run in the church, I support you parents, because chances are that they could knock over someone with unstable balance and people could get hurt. There are many places in life where we don’t want kids to run around, like the grocery store or nursing home or poolside. But let’s not give our kids the wrong idea by telling them church buildings are God’s house.
So worship in spirit and in truth does not require a building. But next, it does require worship in spirit and truth. Spirit is the inner part of our lives. You can call it heart, mind, soul, will, passion, and frankly, there is a lot you can call it. It is inward, interior, the depths of our lives. We all have that inner part.
Have you ever had that experience of being at one place in your body, but a totally different place in your mind? I’m not talking about out-of-body experiences. I’m talking about when you’re driving, and you’re thinking or daydreaming. Usually, this happens to me on a route I drive often. I’m driving, thinking, and then it hits me, “Woah…I can’t remember the last few miles.” I was right there driving those miles, but my mind, my thought was elsewhere. It’s a bit freaky. You think, “Holy cow…I do not remember the last few minutes, and I’ve been operating an extremely powerful machine that entire time.”
I wonder if you’ve ever had that experience in a worship service. I think we can go through the motions in a worship service and barely connect to what we’re singing, reading, praying or studying. We can be thinking about everything else in life, but barely thinking about God. For me, this is very easy to do during singing. As pastor, I often battle with my mind while I sing, because my mind wants to wander onto “What’s next in the service?” That’s no different, I suspect, than “What’s for lunch? Are we going out? Which restaurant? When do the Eagles play? Oh yeah, they played on Thursday night. Shoot…I wonder if there are any other good games on today? Or maybe I’ll just get a nap.” Or maybe your mind starts wandering to, “Oh wow, look who’s here to today,” or “I wonder why so-and-so isn’t here today?” Or “I can’t believe what they’re wearing.” And before you know it, you just sang your way through a whole song, but your mind didn’t engage with any of the words. Words came out of your mouth, but you probably couldn’t say what they were.
Worship in spirit is when you engage your whole inner being with God, with who he is, and what the Spirit might be saying to you. That can happen during a worship service, but what about the other 167 hours of the week? Worshiping the Father in spirit is a life posture, a desire to live a certain way that is described by what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
Worshiping in spirit is learning to turn your mind toward God through all the hours and minutes of your days. Watch for God’s heart, listen for his truth. And truth is what we’ll talk about in the next post.
At my house, we have a well, so my family knows about wells running dry. We know about sediment filters getting clogged. We know about low water pressure, or no water at all. But if you are on public water, you can pretty much leave your water on all the time, and it will never stop running. Not us. We have to manage our water use. As we continue studying John 4:1-26, Jesus has a testy conversation about water, a conversation that will open a door to amazing life change.
In the previous post, his disciples left Jesus alone in enemy territory. Samaritan land. He and the disciples have been walking north from Judea to Galilee, straight through Samaria, a route Jews rarely took because of the bad blood between Jews and Samaritans.
But Jesus is different. He heads right into Samaria and stops about noontime for a rest, a drink and lunch. While the disciples head into a nearby town to get food for lunch, Jesus waits at a well. Just then a Samaritan woman shows up. He asks her for a drink, and she responds by bringing up the Jewish versus Samaritan controversy, questioning him, “Wait…you a Jew are asking me a Samaritan for a drink?” How will Jesus answer her? He drives right to the mission. Look at their conversation in John 4, verses 10-15.
Jesus basically says, “If you knew who I am, you’d be asking me to give you a drink, because I have living water.” The woman is confused because clearly Jesus is tired, thirsty and has no container for water. It is to be expected that she is thinking somewhat literally here. Jesus has no way to give her a drink. Jesus, however, has moved to a figurative level. Look at verse 13; he just barely tips her off to the fact that he is not talking about literal water, but about something deeper. Jesus says, “I have the fountain of youth…water that will give you eternal life.”
The woman doesn’t get it. She is intrigued, though. I wonder if she was just playing along with him, because the idea of the fountain of youth, living water, really sounds fake. But maybe even if she doubts Jesus or thinks he is suffering from dehydration, heat exhaustion, and is spouting off nonsense, she indulges him. She says, “Sir, give me that water, then I won’t have to keep walking out here all the time.”
There was no indoor plumbing in that day. Rarely would you have your own personal well, like many of us do. The Samaritan woman, however, has had an existence where she could only dream of such a thing. Instead, she had to walk out to the public well and get water day after day after day. Probably sometimes multiple times a day. Imagine how fussy it could be to fetch water, something many people around the world still do this day have as a regular part of their lives. The idea of a spring of water that is somehow eternal life seems amazing. It doesn’t seem however that she understands or believes what Jesus is getting at. Not yet at least.
What is he getting at? How will he help her understand? Look at verse 16.
Jesus changes the subject! He asks about her husband. I wonder if the woman squinted at him in suspicion. Why is Jesus asking for her husband? Where is he going with this? Was he now bending to cultural conventions of patriarchy, essentially insinuating that he could only speak further with her husband? Had the conversation gotten to a point where it would be culturally inappropriate for a male teacher to talk any further to a female?
The woman’s answer is a surprise. In verse 17a she admits that she does not have a husband. This is curious. Has Jesus made a mistake by asking for her husband? No. I think Jesus has a twinkle in his eye, his mouth in a grin, because he has a surprise for her. He is going to reveal himself to her, which is something he has done only to a select few thus far. But he has a very creative way he is going to do the reveal. In 17b, he says she is right when she says she has no husband, and then he reveals that he knows the truth about her. Look at verse 18.
I wonder if the woman gulped, lowered her head, flushed red in her cheeks. She was had. Five previous husbands? And now she is living with a man who is not her husband? What Jesus points out is that the woman not only told him a half-truth, but she had lived, and was still living, what was likely a very immoral life. This revealing of her truth could have been very embarrassing for her. She has likely faced this situation before, people looking down on her, accusing her, and thus she had to endure the shame and guilt of her behavior. She’s probably had to deal with numerous moments like this one, when people find out her life story, and they turn away from her in disgust that they are talking with one so sinful.
But this Samaritan woman seems to have a bit of fire in her belly. She could respond in a dramatic display of shame or anger or feigned frustration, and turn away in a huff and leave. But not her. In fact, it’s almost as if she is totally unphased by Jesus’ revealing the truth of her sordid life. I suspect she’s had to deal with arrogant men many times before in her life. Putting her down. Marginalizing her. She’s had to develop a thick skin.
“So who is this man?,” she wonders to herself. He doesn’t seem arrogant. He just recited her life story without previously knowing her. Very impressive. Shocking even. Had word gotten out? Is her reputation that bad? Can’t be. This guy is a total stranger, and a Jew. It’s extremely unlikely he had heard her story before. He seems different. So she says, “Ah, I can see that you have skills of a prophet.”
What she says next is really interesting. Instead of being embarrassed or angry, she challenges Jesus to a theological duel! Theology? Is she deflecting? When she says “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claims that the place where we must worship is Jerusalem,” she is essentially saying, “Ok, fine, so you know my sordid life story. Well, what about your bad Jewish theology?”
Remember, the Samaritans believed they were the originals, the true followers of God, and that it was actually the Jews who broke away and started their own false religion. The crux of their debate was the place of worship. Mt. Gerazim in Samaria or Mt. Zion (the temple mount) in Jerusalem?
How will Jesus handle this? In the next post we’ll find out.
Jesus makes what must have seemed to his disciples to be an odd choice. After quitting his fledgling, but successful, baptism ministry in Judea, because he wants to keep out of the watchful eye of the enemy, namely, the Pharisees, he decides to travel right into different enemy territory. Jesus goes to Samaria.
In that era Jews and Samaritans were mortal enemies. But the quickest route from Judea in the south to Jesus’ home in the north, Galilee, was to travel straight through Samaria in between. Some Jews were so prejudiced against the Samaritans, they actually took the long way around, crossing the Jordan River eastward in Judea, heading north up the eastern side of the Jordan, and then crossing back over the Jordan to the west once they had passed by Samaria and were safely in Galilee. It was a much longer trip, but it meant they didn’t have to set foot in Samaria.
Not Jesus. He went right into Samaria, his disciples following him. I wonder what they thought about his decision. I wonder if they argued with him, or at least suggested, “C’mon Jesus, let’s just avoid trouble, let’s take the long route.” It seems Jesus wasn’t concerned about these new enemies. In fact, in this story we see Jesus’ heart for enemies.
But let’s back up a bit. Why was Samaria enemy territory for Jews? Why did these people groups hate each other?
That, historians tell us, is a complicated question affected by geo-political upheaval in that part of the world in the centuries before Jesus was born. It seems the Samaritans had ancient ancestral connection to the ancient Israelites. But the Samaritans claimed that they were true Israel, and that the Jews were a heretical splinter group. How could they say that? In 1 Samuel 1:3, we read about a sanctuary (worship space) that the prophet Eli set up long before the temple in Jerusalem. Eli’s sanctuary was in Samaritan territory, and eventually the Samaritans built their own temple on Mt. Gerizim, also in Samaritan land. So they said, “See the original sanctuary was in our land! We are, therefore, the true people of God, and you Jews are the breakaways.”
Also, just over a hundred years before Jesus was born, the Samaritans developed a Bible of their own, consisting of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. But they made some changes that differ in important ways from the Hebrew Bible. One of those changes was in the Ten Commandments. The Samaritan version of the Ten Commandments states that God is only to be worshiped on Mt. Gerizim, and thus the Samaritans rejected Jerusalem as the center of worship, which is an important piece of info for this passage in John 4, as we will learn in a future post this week.
Jews in that day, likewise, viewed Samaritans as lesser people, as polluted. Not just theologically either. They claimed that that Samaritans were descendants of foreign colonists brought to Israel by Assyria. It is probably not surprising then, that the Samaritans were equally disdainful of the the Jews, as often happens when people look down on you. So these two groups despised each other and treated each other horribly. There was plenty of ethnic and religious strife.
They even committed acts of terrorism against one another. In 6 or 7 BCE, for example, when Jesus was a boy, Samaritans scattered bones in the Jerusalem temple during Passover. Jews were prohibited from touching dead things, as it would make them ritually unclean. What do you do then, when bones are thrown into the temple during one of the most important religious feasts of the year? You get very, very angry at the people who did this.
And you avoid each other at all costs. Jewish people rarely traveled through Samaria. Except Jesus and his disciples do just that, arriving at the Samaritan town of Sychar around noon, by Jacob’s well, which you can read about in Genesis 33 and 48. Both Jews and Samaritans would have looked to Jacob as their common patriarch. So this well, if the Jews and Samaritans were willing to think about it, had a rich symbolism. Interestingly, this story will get to that eventually.
In your Bibles, read verses 7-9.
We learn that the disciples had gone into the town nearby to purchase food, so Jesus is alone. At that very moment, a Samaritan woman walks up to the well to draw water. Already, this story has drama. First, there is the tension of the hatred between Jews and Samaritans. Second, there is the cultural reality that Jewish Rabbis only very rarely talked with women in public. Jesus is crossing ethnic, cultural and gender boundaries in one fell swoop. Readers of this story in the first century would immediately pick up on this and think “Woah…what is Jesus doing???”
Jesus asks the women for a drink. Pretty normal, when you’ve been walking all morning. It shows us Jesus’ humanity. He needed to drink, he was tired. He was human. That doesn’t at all take away from the fact that he was also God. He was 100% human and 100% God at the same time. At this time, his humanity means that he is tired and thirsty, so he asks for a drink. But this is a classic Jesus moment. He is always ready to talk with people about the mission of the Kingdom of God. So he’s got that in the forefront of his mind as he asks the woman for a drink.
The Samaritan woman is sharp. She questions him right back. She, too, knows this is an unusual situation. When she says, “How can you ask me for a drink?” she is saying, as your Bible’s text notes likely indicate, that Jews would not touch dishes that Samaritans have touched. She is touching a water jug, and most Jews would’ve arrogantly said, “She touched it! I’m not getting anywhere near that! She’s a dirty Samaritan! I’ll deal with my thirst another way.” Even if it meant they went without food and water for a long time. But Jesus is different. How will Jesus answer her?
Engaging Scripture 