In Spirit & In Truth
Love Never Dies, prt. 5
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
April 25, 2010
Well, this past week has been like almost every other week in prepping the sermon – leaving me wishing that instead of one sermon per chapter, I could do three/four sermons per chapter and really get you into detail on the whole book of John. But I’m just not prepared right now to commit to a series of 60 weeks or more and that’s what it would take.
So John 4 contains the famous story of Jesus talking to the woman at the well. This is probably one of the most frequently referenced and frequently preached-on passages in the New Testament. This account is just incredibly rich with all kinds of important messages, and so the challenge for me this week was to choose from among the dozens of message available in the text – to narrow it down and decide which one of these dozens of messages am I going to bring to you? Seeing that we started out looking at Jesus as the eternal Word, the Logos, the Creator and sustainer of all things, I figured I’d pick a section of chapter 4 that would kind of stick with the same idea and help us expand on it and see it maybe a bit more clearly, or maybe in a little bit different light. So I hope to do that for you today.
First let’s look at this portion of text from John 4. Jesus had been in Judea, which was where he was in our passage last week when he spoke to Nicodemus. Now he decides to travel back where he was from, in Galilee, but to get there he has to go through Samaria. Many of you perhaps know that the Samaritans were despised by the Jews. They were considered half-breeds – not fully Jews. They were the ones not good enough, who God could not possibly love and accept the way he did the Jews. They were not the keepers of the law. They were not the ones to whom Moses had come down from the mountain with the 10 Commandments. They were spiritual inferiors. It is precisely the fact that they were considered spiritual inferiors, by the way, that caused Jesus to tell a certain parable about a man who stops to help a Jew who has been beaten and robbed. That’s the parable of what? The Good Samaritan. The way Samaritans are portrayed in Christ’s parables and in his personal dealings with them is critical to our being able to understand what our attitude should be toward people who we do not think are our spiritual equals – people of different denominations, of different religions, or no religion at all. Anyway, Jesus is heading back to Galilee, by way of Samaria, he gets tired, and asks a Samaritan woman at a well to get him some water. This incredible conversation ensures, which we’re going to pick up about halfway through, just as this woman is starting to piece together who Jesus is:
John 4:19-26 (MSG)
19 "Oh, so you're a prophet!
20 Well, tell me this: Our ancestors worshiped God at this mountain, but you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place for worship, right?"
21 "Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship the Father neither here at this mountain nor there in Jerusalem.
22 You worship guessing in the dark; we Jews worship in the clear light of day. God's way of salvation is made available through the Jews.
23 But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. "It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship.
24 God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."
25 The woman said, "I don't know about that. I do know that the Messiah is coming. When he arrives, we'll get the whole story."
26 "I am he," said Jesus. "You don't have to wait any longer or look any further."
Do you get what I’m driving at? Let’s pray and we’ll be dismissed.
Seriously, this passage is so clear – but seemingly it’s a secret hidden in plain sight. It’s funny how we who grow up in a certain tradition just get to where we view everything through the lens of that tradition, whether or not the tradition is actually present in what we are viewing. Now let’s parse this out and get serious about it. I’m going to say some stuff I’ve been getting at for weeks now, but because Jesus here is so much clearer about this, I will be a bit clearer about it too.
In verse 21, Jesus talks about the way the Samaritans worship vs. the way the Jews worship. Two different ways, two different locations. But of course the Jews believed that true worship could only happen in their temple and in their prescribed way. The first thing I think is interesting here is that Jesus describes what the Samaritans are doing as worship. He says they worship “guessing in the dark,” but he still calls it worship. He doesn’t dispute that worship is what is happening. That’s huge, because that’s exactly what Jewish culture was doing. The Jews, as I said, believed the Samaritans were spiritual inferiors – not as “in” with God as they were. But Jesus makes clear here that although they did not understand everything clearly, even though perhaps they had some things wrong, they were – in fact – worshipping God.
Are we prepared to say that? Are we prepared to grant that those who worship in ways we are unfamiliar with might actually be worshipping God? Are we ready to say that those who call God by a different name might be worshipping him? Are we prepared to acknowledge that the One who is the object of worship is the one who gets to decide whether worship is appropriate, acceptable, and whether it is even worship at all? Are we okay allowing God to sort this out, and are we able to have a faith in Christ that has nothing to do with making decisions about who gets in and who is out? Jesus says, “You worship guessing in the dark.” I wonder how many people all over this planet are doing that at this very moment. However many the number, we can only conclude that God is the “decider” – God is the one who determines which hearts are in the right place – which acts of worship are acceptable. For some reason, Christianity has had at its very foundation for almost our entire history this notion that we can know beyond question that only those who worship in our prescribed places and ways are worshipping at all.
John 4:23a (MSG)
23 But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. "It's who you are and the way you live that count before God.
Is it possible to overstate the impact this would have on Christianity if we just took it at face value? Is it possible to overstate how much some people feel they would have to lose by doing this? Here’s a snippet I found from a commentary on this passage:
4:23. With the advent of the Messiah the time came for a new order of worship. True worshipers are those who realize that Jesus is the Truth of God and the one and only Way to the Father. To worship in truth is to worship God through Jesus. To worship in Spirit is to worship in the new realm which God has revealed to people. The Father is seeking true worshipers because He wants people to live in reality, not in falsehood. Everybody is a worshiper (Rom. 1:25) but because of sin many are blind and constantly put their trust in worthless objects.
The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures by Dallas Seminary Faculty.
Interesting, isn’t it? Here’s Jesus saying, “A time is coming when what you’re called WILL NOT MATTER and where you go to worship WILL NOT MATTER because it is who you are the way you live that count before God. And so our scholars look at this passage and conclude exactly what I facetiously said above. That this whole thing is really somehow about being a “proper Christian” (which didn’t even exist at the time of Jesus).
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that being a proper Christian is any more flawed than any other religious approach. But being a proper Christian is just a religious approach, a religious perspective. Behind the religion of Christianity, which sprang up almost entirely after Jesus had gone back to the Father, is Jesus himself. And here is Jesus telling us clearly that because of his arrival on the scene, the time had come when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. And why is that? Because Jesus has changed the game. It’s now about what’s happening in the heart of the worshipper.
Now let’s get something straight. We Christians are scandalized by the idea that someone might think something wrong about God. After all, we were handed a tradition of creeds, which were poured over and studied and carefully crafted so that every word conveyed EXACTLY the right IDEA and CONCEPT. I believe in what? God the Father, almighty maker of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ his only begotten Son, our Lord, etc., etc. We spent hundreds of years trying to get the IDEAS right – to capture the CONCEPTS. Do you know why people went to the stake? Because they didn’t quite get the ideas right. We burned alive human beings created in love by the eternal God because they dared to wonder who Jesus was and maybe write down some questions. Or maybe they questioned the doctrine of the Trinity. Or maybe the doctrine of the virgin birth. Now I can say I believe all these things and I think there are good reasons for believing them. But what I cannot say is that a person who wonders about them, questions them, or even rejects them for a time according to his/her own conscience, should be burned alive, or even that there’s any serious reason we should question their standing with God. Because there many of them were, worshiping as they guessed in the dark. Our tradition says the worst sin you can commit is not the sin of rejecting God entirely, but asking the wrong questions. In fact our tradition says that simply asking a question the church believes is the wrong question indicates that God has already abandoned you on some fundamental level. But I firmly reject this idea. I reject it because it makes God as fickle as we are. I reject it because that is not the attitude of a loving Father towards his child; it’s the attitude of someone seeking to control. God, as embodied in Jesus Christ, simply cannot be that way. I mean, of course each of you will have to make up your own mind – but if God is who God claims to be in Christ – then we can rest assured that our attempts to worship in the dark are known and seen by God, and that it “counts.”
But let’s take this one step further, because Jesus says “It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God.” Let’s dig into this a little bit. Imagine yourself standing around a stake a few hundred years ago, and attached to that stake is a person who is about to be burned for having the wrong ideas about God. There are hundreds of people there to watch this execution. You strain through the crowd to see what is happening and just for a moment, between the shoulders of two people bigger than you, you see the executioner – who in that moment drops a burning piece of wood onto the oil-doused logs at the feet of the condemned man. The flames shoot up ten feet high and this execution is now fully on. Let me ask you something. Let’s say the one burning to death before your eyes is there because he believed some wrong ideas about God, but lived more or less peacefully. The executioner, on the other hand, believes all the right ideas but is now responsible for the fact that this man is dying horribly. When both of these men one day stand before God, what do you think that conversation will be like? Will God simply condemn to hell the man who had burned at the stake and open wide the gates to heaven for his executioner? Will the ideas and concepts about God be the important thing on that day? Will God say to the burned man, “You had it coming – and now you have it coming again. After all, you were wrong – and wrong gets you burned in more ways than one.”
Or will it be the other way around? Will God welcome the condemned man and condemn the executioner? Will he say, “Condemned man, you were condemned before men, but you will not be condemned before God. My Son was condemned in your place. There is a place for you over here.” And will he say to the executioner, “Depart from me. You fanned the flames in my name, and many died at your hands, but I never knew you.”
Or will God stand there in love before two men who both worshipped in the dark, who both were imperfect in various ways, and accept both of them? That would be pretty radical grace, wouldn’t it? It sure would dispense with the simplistic way we understand things, wouldn’t it? It sure would affirm that what happens in our worship, though it may happen in the dark, really happens – and that God accepts it for what it is. And indeed, this is what Jesus seems to say here. And I’m not trying to say that I know beyond question what would happen to these men – all I’m saying is that the first scenario seems highly unlikely – that whoever the church burned as a heretic will actually be condemned by God. And if I’m right about that, then many people died horrible deaths simply because they thought things that others believed were wrong. Now today we do not burn people at the stake, but the church continues its tradition of rejecting people who ask questions that are uncomfortable, of doing all it can to make outcasts and heretics of them, of propagating the idea that the worst sin a person can commit is the sin of being “wrong” – of not thinking like everyone else.
One thing we can say of those burned as heretics – they believed what they believed sincerely, and were willing to die for it. Oh for the courage of those men and women. But isn’t it amazing when you think about it? The church has actually murdered people for what? Simply for being wrong. And wrong, of course, in the opinion of the church. And many Christians today take it as a key element of their faith that people who are “wrong” about God (people who picked the “wrong” religion) are going to be eternally separated from him, not on the basis of who they are and the way they live, but simply on the basis of being wrong. But Jesus says, “It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God.” But it’s not the rightness and wrongness of your ideas that count before God. I’m sorry, but that’s not what Jesus is saying here. This thing isn’t going to be as simplistic as saying, “Your religion had the right name on it – so you’re good to go. Your religion had the wrong name on it, so you’re hosed.” “You were right, so welcome in.” “You were wrong, so goodbye to you.” How human could we get? How simple for us as human beings to calculate is that? And how lacking in grace is it? No, this simply cannot be the way it works, and Jesus makes clear here that this is NOT the way it works. So you can relax. None of us get this completely yet, but like Nicodemus, most of us have approached God and said, “God, I believe you are who you say you are,” and God says the same thing to us he did to Nicodemus, “Anyone who sees this has been born from above.”
Jesus goes on to explain more about real worship:
John 4:23b-26 (MSG)
Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship.
24 God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."
25 The woman said, "I don't know about that. I do know that the Messiah is coming. When he arrives, we'll get the whole story."
26 "I am he," said Jesus. "You don't have to wait any longer or look any further."
Who is God looking for? People who are simply and honestly themselves. Doubts and all. Fears and all. Wounds and all. Rightness and all. Wrongness and all. The whole deal.
Verse 24 makes clear that God is sheer BEING and that to engage with God we must do it not from templates and frameworks and systems and paradigms and models, but from our own beings, our own spirits, our true selves in adoration of Him. That’s worship. It happens from our heart to the heart of God. Now if that heart is there, then some of the frameworks and models can help us to engage more. Relationships must have a form. I can sit and say I love Christy, but love actually looks like something. So we don’t throw out the forms entirely, but you might have realized over the last few weeks I’m trying to get that relationship into proper perspective and make it clear that all this church stuff is just an external form which we settle on to help us to center our lives around God. To the extent that the form helps us to live in the relationship, the form is good. To the extent that we allow the form to start dictating what the relationship is and all that it can be, the form is getting in the way. No one saw this more clearly than Jesus, who said to the religious leaders:
Mark 7:9 (NIV)
9 …You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!
How easily we adopt a form to help us worship God, and then find ourselves at some point worshipping the form instead of God. My friends, I believe the majority of Christians in America today worship God, but their worship of God is secondary to their worship of the religion of Christianity. This is idolatry. This is worshipping the created thing instead of the Creator!
And I love the way this passage ends. Here Jesus has just handed down some absolutely brilliant teaching to this woman – some of the most profound spiritual teaching of his “career,” and what does she say? “I don’t know about that.”
To which Jesus replies, “You must know. Admit it. Say you know it and confess to it, or I’ll have you burned at the stake!” Of course not. She expresses her uncertainty and says, “Maybe the Messiah will clear everything up” and Jesus just says, “That’s me.” That’s it. No judgment. He doesn’t even comment at all on her uncertainty.
This is one of the ways we know Jesus came from God. Because he did not force himself on people. Not ever. His disciples did. The church that formed in his name did, and does. But he doesn’t. The only one who absolutely has, and knows, and is, all of the truth, has simply never tried to force it on anyone. And the rest of us, seeing darkly through our dark glasses, get all certain and want to make this whole God thing about the proper confessions and proper pronouncements and proper beliefs and proper ideas and proper statements and proper doctrines, and we want to hear people talking about it in the proper words, avoiding improper words, and just generally comforting us with orthodoxy.
There are many things we can say about Jesus, and most things we say about Jesus come from our own unique perspectives, but nearly everyone agrees that if any one thing is true about Jesus, it is that he challenged and defied orthodoxy – what was expected and appropriate – in his time. And if Jesus is God, I expect that he’s still doing that today. And as uncomfortable as this might make us in some ways, it’s actually very good news for us because it’s the unorthodox streak in Jesus that allows him to love wounded and needy people who aren’t always in a position to love him in return –pssst, that’s us.
Jesus, thank you that you love us in Spirit and in Truth, and that you just want us to love you back in the same way. We know your spirit is in us, and your truth will continue springing to life in us as we allow your spirit to move and to work. We are excited about all you are doing and will continue to do. Forgive us for thinking we get all of this, for trying to squeeze people into our own boxes – teach us to love others with the same abandon with which you love us. Amen.
