God Wants Worshippers in Certain Locations and with Specific Beliefs

Imagine if THAT is what Jesus taught about worship? Thankfully he said the opposite.

Jesus’ Thoughts on Worship

Imagine if our worship was less focused on theological accuracy and more grounded in personal honesty?

What if the aim of worship had less to do with the rightness of our religion, and more about the openness of our hearts?

That’s the vibe I get as a follower of Jesus.

In John chapter 4 we read about a conversation between Jesus and a woman from Samaria. They met at a well, she with her a water pot intending to get water, and Jesus with… well, who knows what he was up to. But he’s there, he’s thirsty, and he struck up a conversation with the Samaritan woman.

When their back and forth turned toward the topic of religion, the woman, perceiving Jesus to have insight on the matter, asked about who was worshipping properly: the Samaritans with their mountain, or the Jews with theirs.

In other words: Who is most right?

No wonder. This is the same question people in the church have been asking for 2,000 years.

• Whose worship is the most correct?

• Who has the right theology?

• Who knows what the proper rituals and sacraments are?

• Etc etc etc

Rather than answer her question, Jesus replied by saying God wants people to worship “in spirit and truth.”

Setting aside for a moment what “worship” means (that’s a whole topic unto itself), I’m intrigued by how worshipping-in-spirit and worshipping-in-truth can be an antidote to our human instinct to constantly seek the right, correct, and proper mechanism for worship.

When we ask, “Who has it right,” my sense is that Jesus disagrees with the question altogether. His reframing of the issue matters, and I’ve got some thoughts on that.

But first, since it’s the backdrop of the interaction in this story, I want to say a quick word about religion.

Jesus and Religion

Humanity has a long history of trying to make sense of this strange reality we find ourself in. One of the primary ways we’ve done that is through religion — a tool nearly every civilization has developed to help answer questions of meaning and purpose. Like any tools, we can use them for goodness or for wickedness.

At its best, the tool of religion gets used for healing and flourishing.
Of course we’ve also seen how religion can be used for harm and destruction.

Maybe you have too, but I’ve heard many times over the years that Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion. And usually when people say that it’s because they begin with the belief that religion is inherently bad or broken. Therefore, since religion is bad, then Jesus obviously wasn’t trying to start a new one.

“It’s about a relationship, not a religion,” so says many Christians (and most all evangelicals).

I get why people say this, but I’m not sure I totally agree. I don’t think it was religion Jesus was opposed to, as much as it was the ways that religion can go sour.

As far as I can tell, Jesus’ ultimate goal was to reform the parts of his religion that had lost the plot. Through his teachings and his miracles he tried to reveal an alternative (and I’d add, elevated) way to think about God and what it means to be human.

Saying that Jesus is anti-religion makes as much sense to me as saying Gordon Ramsey is anti-restaurant. The goal is reform and improvement of the best parts, not elimination for elimination’s sake.

When I think about religion as a benign tool of human ingenuity developed to find and make meaning and purpose, and when I think about the ways historically religion has soured and become a tool for destruction, three things come to mind.

1. People have used religion to create divisions, and then become gatekeepers of such divisions.
   
   There are those who use religion to divide by creating arbitrary categories of things like clean/unclean; in/out; pure/impure. Then the religion’s gatekeepers patrol the perimeter and force people to believe certain things or perform specific rituals in order for them to be in the aforementioned groups of “clean, pure, and one-of-us.”
   

2. People have used religion to feed itself at the expense of the people.
   
   We’ve all either been ourselves or known someone who has been on the receiving end of a Religion more invested in self-preservation than in care for human souls. Churches have used shame and fear to keep people in line. A ton of money has been raised, and many buildings have been built, using shame and fear to feed the institutional machine instead of tending to wounded sheep.
   

3. People have resorted to violence in the face of conflict over religious ideas.
   
   The list is embarrassingly long when we start to consider the wars fought between competing religions—or even just the in-fighting within one religion (such as ours, Christianity). How many people throughout the last 2000 years have been on the receiving end of violent efforts for theological purity? How many lives have been ruined and lost over mere differences in ideas?

These are just some of the ways religion can go sour and become a tool for harm instead of healing. And when the Samaritan woman at the well tried to play the religion game, Jesus wasn’t having it.

So now let’s turn to what he said. What might we take from his words that God is seeking those who worship in Spirit and in Truth?

Worship in Spirit

Recall, the Samaritan woman tried to engage Jesus on which mountain was the right mountain for worship. Who drew the lines properly? Who has it right? Where should God be properly worshipped?

Jesus’ response: Worship in Spirit.

How was that a response to her question?

Well, because Spirit cannot be contained. Asking for which location is the correct location to worship God is to live in a world where God is and can be bounded. But Spirit transcends boundaries. Spirit refuses to be owned, protected, sold, or bought.

I’m reminded of when Jesus told his friends “Wherever two or more are gathered, there I am.” Temples are great, synagogues are wonderful, churches are fine… let’s just not confuse the means for the end.

The point is not the mountain—let alone the “right” one. Nor is the point the right beliefs or the correct rituals. These are all external metrics. They’re not bad, per se, but they are most certainly not the point.

When we use religion to create dividers and boundaries, and when we gate-keep who’s in and who’s out, this leaves us endlessly thirsty and unsatisfied.

To worship “in spirit” is to properly align with the location of where worship resides. Meaning, the point is in here (*points to heart).

Trying to arrange all the external bits — theology, sacraments, churches, etc — is like drinking from a well. It’s fine, but it won’t ultimately satisfy. We’ll keep being thirsty. Which is what we’ve done as we’ve endlessly divided over which religion, which denomination, which sect has it right.

Instead, Jesus spoke of Living Water. That stuff comes from within. It’s a source that leads to the life of the ages, to wholeness, to flourishing.

It can satisfy because it’s internal, infinite, and unbound.

It is Spirit.

To which the woman said, “Woah, I want that kind of water. The kind that truly satisfies.”

“Cool,” Jesus replied, “but first, go get your husband.”

“Er… um… I don’t have a husband.”

“You have spoken the truth,” said Jesus. “In fact you’ve had five husbands. And the one you’re with right now isn’t even your husband.”

This now brings us to what it might look like to worship in Truth.

Worship in Truth

I think Christians err when we worship Truth, rather than worship in Truth.

Which is to say, we tend to emphasize theological accuracy while neglecting personal honesty.

I believe that to worship in truth means being honest with ourselves.

If we aren’t honest with ourselves about ourselves then we create a false reality from which we live. This self-deception—which can begin ever so subtly as we ignore even the smallest truths about our motivations, our desires, and our choices—it grows and grows until eventually we become alienated from who we truly are. And when that happens, we’ve now created a hole where our Self should be.

This hole is insufferable and requires filling. Since we’ve created a reality built on lies (about ourselves), we must then turn to external sources, namely other people and God.

We try to fill our lack-of-Self by extracting from others: love me, like me, see me, admire me, respect me. Make me feel good about myself because I’ve cut myself off from myself.

And/or we look to God. Not in the way that 17th century philosopher, Blaise Pascal, meant when he wrote about the infinite abyss in the heart of man that can only be filled by an infinite God—because I think there’s some real truth in that. No I mean we use God, we use religion to mask the ways we lie to ourselves and others.

How many religious leaders have to fail and fall in disastrous manners before we see just how easy it can be to deceive ourselves and others by using the covering of religion, church, God-language, and so on? It’s no wonder Jesus called Pharisees white-washed tombs. They used religion to keep an outer pretense of holiness while inside their hearts were corrupt.

Put plainly, we can’t worship in truth if we are not honest with ourselves. When we are not honest with ourselves then our worship becomes at best pretend and at worst an illusion we project in order to keep the lies covered.

Worshipping in truth, then, means aligning ourselves with what is Real, with what is True.

We get honest about who we are.

We tell the truth.

And that’s what the Samaritan woman did. “I don’t have a husband.”

When Jesus said what he did (you’re right, you’ve had five, and the one you’re with now isn’t a legitimate relationship), it’s like he said the things out loud that, probably for this woman, were the source of her greatest shame. Those were the things she tried to keep hidden from everyone, including even to her own Self. But by admitting she didn’t currently have a husband she took a small (yet massive!) step to shatter the illusion she had created, an illusion that no doubt kept her disconnected from what is Real and True.

In that moment of confession, of honesty, she was in Truth. And it was liberating.

In fact, when she went to her village to tell people about Jesus she said, “Come see this man who’s told me everything I’ve ever done.”

In other words, I met someone who confronted me with absolute Truth and I lived to tell the tale!

What We Find When We Worship in Spirit and Truth

I was a Worship Pastor for ten years. Every day, each week, I had worship on the brain. It’s a layered, complex, nuanced, endlessly fascinating subject, of which I feel like I understand less now than when it was my full-time job.

And yet, for all my study, all my engaging with, all my leading of worship, I think I fundamentally misunderstood these two aspects of what Jesus said matters to God when it comes to our worship.

To worship in Spirit is to stop playing the games of external boundary making and trying to divide up humanity into in/out groups, right/wrong, us/them. Instead we trust in the Transcendent nature of God’s Spirit. We accept that Spirit is free and available to all, and that it flows from within infinitely and without restrictions.

To worship in Truth is be honest. To tell the truth about ourselves, to stand in a place of integrity and openness. It is to stop trying to cover our shame, hide our doubts, or mask our fears with the trappings of religion.

And when we do this, when we show up with an intent for worship that comes from within (the heart), and is as open and honest as we know how to be, we will discover the same thing the Samaritan woman encountered: a life changing, non-judgmental, compassionate, and loving presence.

We discover God.