True Place of Worship
OVERVIEW - To the Samaritan woman, Jesus revealed that the presence of God is no longer limited to specific locations or man-made structures – John 4:20-24.
- (John 4:20-24) – “Our fathers in this mountain worshiped; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where we must worship. Jesus says to her: Believe me, woman! There is coming an hour when neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father. You worship that which you know not. We worship that which we know, because salvation is of the Jews.”
Even
at this early point in his ministry, Jesus experienced opposition from the Temple
authorities, which is, quite possibly, why he left Judea for Galilee where he
did find more receptive crowds. The most direct route there was through Samaritan
territory, a region avoided by many Jews by taking a more circuitous route - (John
4:1-3).
On
the way, he encountered the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and asked her for
water. She was surprised since devout Jews avoided contact with Samaritans.
Furthermore, it was socially awkward for a Jewish male to communicate with an
unrelated female in public.
Jesus
responded - “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is speaking to
you, you would ask, and he would give you living water.” She
assumed he meant water and asked how he could draw any from the well with no
vessel, and then asked him, “Are you greater than Jacob who gave us the well?”
He responded:
- “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. Whosoever drinks of the water I will give will never thirst; in him, it will become a well of water, springing up into everlasting life.”
The
woman then asked him for this “living water.” In turn, Jesus told
her to “summon your husband.” She claimed to have no husband, but he retorted,
“You have had five husbands and he whom you now have is not your husband;
you have spoken truly.”
Moses
directed Israel to worship Yahweh at the place He would designate, but he did
not specify its location. Because the Jews accepted the rest of the Old
Testament, they assumed the correct site was Jerusalem. The Samaritans argued in
favor of Mount Gerizim in Samaria, pointing for scriptural authorization
to the Book of Genesis:
- (Genesis 12:6-7) - “Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem, unto the oak of Moreh... And Yahweh appeared to Abram and said: To your seed will I give this land, and there built he an altar for Yahweh.”
Jesus responded to her
question with a most unexpected declaration:
- (John 4:23-24) - “There is coming an hour when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father… when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for even such as This is the Father seeking as his worshipers. God is spirit; they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
He
did not attempt to resolve the ancient dispute. Instead, he described the new
order of worship being established in him, one where questions
about holy sites and space were pointless. His words indicated the obsolescence
of the old Temple.
What
mattered was not where God’s people worshiped, but how -
(“An hour is coming and now is”). The people of God
must now worship him as Father by means of spirit
and truth. Likewise, the division between Jew and Samaritan had
reached its termination point.
As
elsewhere in John, “hour” referred to the death of Jesus, the “hour”
of his “glorification.” He was ushering in a new reality in which
external rituals would be replaced by spiritual worship:
- (John 7:37-39) – “Now, on the last, the great day of the feast, Jesus was standing, and he cried aloud, saying, If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink: He that believes on me, just as said the Scripture, River from within him shall flow of living water. Now, this spoke he about the Spirit, which they who believed on him were about to receive; for, not yet, was the Spirit, because Jesus not yet was glorified!”
With
his Death and Resurrection, traditional restrictions and regulations based on
holy space and time would become irrelevant. The presence of Yahweh could not
be limited to buildings, geographic locations, or specific “seasons” of the
year. From then on, Jesus was the true “holy place” where God would
be worshiped and His presence found.
The
“Son of Man,” the “word made flesh,” is the true tabernacle where
the glory of God is manifested for all to see, the means of access between
heaven and earth, the true Temple raised up after three days - (John 1:14,
1:47-51, 2:17-22).
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