Back to Abnormal: Worship in Spirit and Truth
Written by Daniel Bocchetti
God is Spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4.24)
Questions of ‘where’ and ‘how’ to worship have occupied the minds of many during this time of lockdown. John 4.24 may seem too elusive and abstract to be of help in the practical difficulties we face during this season of COVID-19. However, this claim about God and worship is Jesus’ rationale for his ‘strange’ moves in this well-known story.
First, Jesus asks the Samaritan woman for a drink. ‘“What!” said the Samaritan woman. “You a Jew asking for a drink from me, a Samaritan?” (Jews, you see, don’t have any dealings with Samaritans)’ (4.8-9). Ethnicity matters.
Second, the Samaritan woman is surprised at Jesus’ ideas about appropriate places of worship as Jesus says, ‘the time is coming when you won’t worship the father on this mountain or in Jerusalem’ (4.20-21). Can people worship outside of the Jerusalem temple?! Location matters.
Last, when Jesus’ disciples found him talking to the Samaritan ‘they were astonished that he was talking to a woman’ (4.27). Oh dear . . . needless to say: gender matters!
Jesus is not unaware of these strange moves, but his answer is ‘God is Spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth’ (4.24). ‘God is Spirit’ means, for Jesus, that God is not tied up to a particular ethnic group, a specific geographical area or to a gender. Jesus talks about a day when anyone can worship anywhere. This is worship in spirit and truth.
During this time of lockdown some of us have felt as if our worship is being hindered. We are nostalgic of our beautiful place of worship, our engaging worship style and the friends we worship next to. Online church is terrific, but it cannot replicate that.
Hear Jesus’ subversive whisper: ‘the time is coming – indeed, it’s here already! – when true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and in truth’ (4.23).
The earliest church in Jerusalem was a Jewish church. After they came to believe Jesus to be the messiah of Israel, they continued to worship in the Jerusalem temple, the abode of God’s presence, the symbol of God’s covenant and the prescribed place of Jewish worship. The siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in 70 AD caused a major identity crisis among the earliest Jesus worshippers. The question arose whether it was even possible to offer an authorised worship outside Jerusalem without the place that defined their unique (and exclusive) identity. The answer was no: but now they could worship in spirit and truth. The catastrophe of 70 AD made it possible for the early church to realise the far-reaching reality that God is not confined to a city or a national identity. This does not mean that sacred spaces do not matter, but that everyspace is sacred. It does not mean that gender does not matter, but that one gender is not above another. It does not mean that our ethnic identity is dissolved but that every ethnic group is God’s chosen people.
This is not a unique case. There seems to be a pattern in the Bible where adversities spark fresh visions. The first persecution of the church in Acts 8 led to the first international mission. One could think of the exile or the cross.
God is Spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. It is in lockdown that some of us have been able for the first time to appreciate (and some realise) the wonderful diversity of St Nic’s as we worship with people of different nationalities, cultures and languages. Lockdown has forced us to turn our homes in sacred places of worship. Many of us have now experienced the struggles that some of us have been experiencing for longer than we can remember. These characteristics are the essence of the church that has distinguished it from other communities since Pentecost. It seems that the lockdown has not hindered our worship. St Nic’s continues to worship in spirit and truth, now more than ever.
Bible citations are from The Bible for Everyone (N.T. Wright’s translation)