John 4: 19-24 - Sermon - True Worship:
In Spirit and Truth
This pericope is a conversation between
Jesus and the Samaritan woman. To understand the reason for the genesis of a
discussion on worship, we should first understand who Samaritans were and the situation
they were in, at that period of time. Samaritans were the people in Samaria who
dwelt in the region of Manasseh and Ephraim. It is a form of Israelite religion
that developed and centred around mount Gerizim. They were the descendants of
the tribes of northern Israel but the Jews believe that they were the
descendants of the colonists brought into the region of Samaria by the
Assyrians. They looked at them as idolaters, pagan worshippers who considered
Yahweh as one of the gods they worshiped. The Samaritans were generally a
subaltern community oppressed by the colonizers and the Jews.
In this pericope, we notice the Samaritan
woman guiding the encounter towards the issue of worship. To be precise she
questions Jesus, assuming that he is a prophet, about the place of worship
which was an issue of debate between the Jews and the Samaritans. In the
history of Israel, selecting the place of worship was very important. There
were many places like Shiloh, Nob, Bethel, Dan, etc. But why did mount Gerizim
become important to the Samaritans? The answer is simple: they’re just
following their scriptures. Deuteronomy 11:29 and 27:12 clearly portrays mount
Gerizim as a blessing and Mount Ebal as a curse. Also, the geography of this
place helped them to worship here since it is around this mountain that the
Samaritans inhabited. Interestingly, there was also a regular and reliable
water supply near this mount. And so all these factors made this Mount an
important place of worship. Even from the Jewish perspective this Mount should
have been an important one as Abraham, Jacob and Joshua visited this place and
held great religious ceremonies there. So, it is evident that the Samaritans
were following the scriptures known to them and they believed that they were
doing the right thing. Coming back to the aspect of worship, the Jews regarded
the Samaritans as heathens and impure, thus making their worship of God
inappropriate and illegitimate. But for the Samaritans, just like any religious
group, worship was significant. So knowing the right way of worship becomes a
liberative aspect to the Samaritans especially in a context where they were
oppressed by the dominant theology of the Jews. It is in this situation that
Jesus going through Samaria and has an encounter with the Samaritan woman. This
encounter raises certain questions like: what is worship? Is the place where we
worship important? What is worshipping in spirit and truth mean? Let us try to
reflect upon these questions.
Professor Edward Aune writing about early
Christian worship says that Christian worship primarily had a verbal character
and though Christians used to gather, eat together, baptize new members, read
scriptures, and so on, they and their worship were not tied to particular places
but could be practiced virtually everywhere. This brings us to my first point:
1. Worship: Rupturing Boundaries
The conversation between Jesus and Samaritan women raises an
important issue. Where should God be worshipped? The woman recognizes Jesus as
a prophet, the Taheb or the “Coming One” who will restore true worship
by purifying mount Gerizim. Jesus’ response to her initial statement turns her
attention from the place of worship to the object and manner of worship.
Recently, the issue of women not being
allowed in worship places raised few protests in Mumbai, Pune etc. There are
churches that are formed on the basis of caste encouraging only those people
who belong to it to participate. The recent issue of the burial of Mary John,
grandmother of Priyanka Chopra is a very good example to this. She was denied
space to be buried because she became ‘impure’ by marrying a Hindu. When we
look at the conversation of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman, we see that she was
considered impure not only because she was a Samaritan but also because she was
a woman. The well, where the conversation happens, is a metaphorical
representation of a place of worship, where Jesus a Jew is talking to a
Samaritan woman who is considered “impure.” The disciples who saw this
conversation were not very comfortable because for them this was pollution. The
concept of purity and pollution undermines women and such a concept only
pollutes them further. Such a concept denies women, Dalits and the LGBT
communities, the right to worship. The way I see it, the recent events were not
just about allowing women into places of worship but in a way denying their
right to worship. The religious elites of today who invariably happen to be
men, just like the Jewish religious men, not only control women’s bodies but
control their spirituality. And so not allowing women into places of worship is
to make worship a male-oriented affair. But as we read in the text, Jesus
breaks this understanding of worship.
David Joy writing about a new concept of
worship says that the way in which
Johannine communities overcame ecclesiastical structures of worship limited by place
and liturgy is through the understanding of this episode of Jesus and the
Samaritan woman. He says, “When the church became more ritualistic, the
community of John challenged the world by highlighting the word of Jesus.” He further
says that, “Giving importance to certain place or a person in worship life is
not desirable.” Through this passage, Jesus clears the ambiguity with respect
to this issue and points out that the place of worship is insignificant.
2. Worship: Disintegrating
Intellectual Arrogance
In Verse 22 Jesus goes
on to state a very provocative statement pointing out the ignorance of the Samaritans.
He says that the Samaritans worship what they do not know while the Jews know
of it. He further adds that salvation is from the Jews. Recent scholarship
considers this verse as a later insertion. While that could be possible, the
aim behind such reasoning is to defend Jesus from having stated anything
provocative, controversial and condescending. However, it is clear from the
conversation that Jesus asserts and affirms his Jewishness. If that is so, what
could verse 22 mean?
The possible
interpretation to this verse is that Jesus’ humanness comes out in this verse.
He belongs to the Jewish community and his immediate reaction was the way in
which any Jewish religious elite would react. It is a fact that salvation is
from the Jews, since the Messiah will come from the Jews. But the point here is
not that it belongs to the Jews but it is transferred from the Jews to the
non-Jews and eventually to the rest of the world. Jesus here is wrestling with
the human Jewishness and divine purpose. Though he was capable of doing
everything by himself, he still chose to be subordinate to God, allowing God to
change his idea of worship. The initial reaction of Jesus was similar to that
of a religious Jewish elite, who believe that they have the knowledge. This I
call “Intellectual arrogance.”
In our context, when
we observe our churches and our worship carefully, it is not the lack of
understanding that makes us do what we do but rather the opposite. We the
priests in general, and at times the congregation, are so obsessed with our intellect
with regard to the aspects of religion and worship, that we become blind to the
realities around us. We create ourselves into human gods assuming we know all
and deciding who is pure or polluted, who shall enter and who shall not, who
shall worship and who shall not.
Jesus here wrestled
with this “intellectual arrogance” and counters this submitting himself to the
authority of God and thereby fulfilled his purpose in saying that it does not
matter who we are or where we come from, we are equals when it comes to
worshiping God. This verse teaches us to wrestle with our “intellectual
arrogance” and humble ourselves so that we make God the sole object of Worship.
3. Worship: Disarming Hegemonic
Identities
There are many interpretations to
worshiping in spirit and truth. Fr. Jose Maniparampil looks at it from the
viewpoint of Trinity and calls it a Trinitarian worship where Father is the
Godhead, Spirit is the Holy Spirit and the Truth is God the Son. Or as some others
opine “worship in spirit” could mean worship going beyond one’s
thoughts, words, and emotions to the innermost self, the spirit. And “worship
in truth” implying worship not defiled by hypocrisy and deception.
According to
John’s gospel, truth is the ultimate reality which is the understanding of God.
This understanding of God is eternal life which is manifested in Christ and
through him revealed to all humanity. Verse 23 in by itself is not sufficient
to understand worshiping in spirit and truth. Jesus explicates this in Verse
24 by saying “God is Spirit.” God is Spirit does not emphasize the
inaccessibility of God by earthly creatures but is a description of God as the
foundation and giver of true life.
While one cannot deny the meaning of these
interpretations, what could the words “spirit and truth” mean to the Samaritan
woman? The Jews and the Samaritans gave prominence to the time, place and the
person involved in the act of worship. Jesus debunks that idea and asserts that
none of the external environments matter. As we saw in the second point, the
knowledge of the Jews is contrasted against the ignorance of the Samaritans.
The Jews considered them to be pure and the others as impure. Thus, we see the
Jews took pride in them as being Jews, the so called ‘chosen-race’. But Jesus
realizing that his identity as a Jew was a stumbling block to the Samaritans, chose
to disarm himself from that identity. Today, we cling to our identities defined
by education, caste, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. Jesus urges us to
disarm ourselves from those identities that are life-negating and acts as a
stumbling block to others. Jesus recognizes the woman as a human person who has
the desire and the right to worship God and so acknowledges her person-hood
without labeling her identity as a Samaritan. And so Jesus tells her to
worship God in spirit and truth, as spirit is not defined by any social
constructions and truth rests deep in one’s spirit.
Worshipping in spirit and truth makes worshiping
in every other way insignificant. We are bound to the norms of place, time,
liturgy and even manner of worship. Have we not noticed that many people
especially the youngsters no longer connect with the church and are moving
away? The reason is that we’ve made an institution of the Church. We’re not
ready to let go of the monotony hovering around our worship. A faintest
deviation from our set pattern of worship makes us feel uncomfortable and
irritable. We are not ready to let our spirits free and accept different forms
of worship which is still governed by the principle of “spirit and truth”. We
are all equal before God, and Jesus portrayed this through his conversation
with the Samaritan woman where he went beyond his Jewishness to assure the
Samaritan woman that there is no distinction between him and her when it comes
to worshiping God.
In conclusion I would like to state that
True worship, the way God wants us to worship, is to worship without any ties
with the place, time and our life-negating identities; know the object of
worship which is God and understand the manner of worship which is in spirit
and truth. Everything else becomes insignificant. God is spirit and his
worshipers must worship him in spirit and truth.
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