Rude Bluntness or Authentic Conviction

You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. (John 4:22)

I have been pondering and praying over this verse for several days. This is Jesus' response to this woman's inquiry about the right place to worship highlighting the differences between her “denomination” and His. The abruptness of this answer has caught my attention and I have been searching for the real reason He said these words to her in this context for some time now.

As I came back again today and thought about it some more, it suddenly dawned on me what one of the biggest reasons likely was for His making this statement to her. It seems rather rude to just bluntly tell someone that they are wrong and I am right because they belong to a different church than I do. And it certainly does not ring consistent with the spirit that I have seen in the way Jesus related to people most of the time, which is why I have been disturbed for so long about why these words are spoken here.

But I remembered the beginning of this story and it all is coming together much more clearly now. First of all, I have sensed early on that this woman already may well have been harboring doubts about the validity of her own people's religion. But because there was no way she could ever change the fact of her being a Samaritan woman, she may have felt permanently stuck, forced to accept the religion that identified her people and isolated them from the Jewish system of beliefs. She seemed to be branded with the form of religion that had been passed down to her through her hereditary based on the choices of people who had lived many generations before her.

But that still did not prevent her from feeling uncomfortable with the truthfulness of what she had been taught all of her life. Somehow I believe that she had entertained increasing misgivings about her religion but had not been able to freely discuss any of these without stirring up intense animosity and hostility from people in her own culture. Any thought of questioning her religious heritage was considered openly unpatriotic and would bring her scorn and shame. So she had been forced to hide these questions deep inside her as she wondered how these deep tensions could ever be resolved. She had decided long ago that the only hope there was for bringing about real change in her world was for the true Messiah to finally show up and show them the truth.

Of course, the whole idea of a Messiah originated largely in the Jewish religion. But that was not totally the case, for indicators and messages of a coming Messiah pre-dated the existence of Jews themselves. The first promise of a Messiah to come, a deliverer to save lost sinners, was given just after Adam and Eve sinned and the first lamb was killed as a sin offering. God told Eve that in her seed would be born a child that would finally bring about the demise of the serpent who had entrapped them into the slavery of sin. And repeatedly throughout history the promises had been accumulating of a coming Deliverer who was to come and save His people from the stranglehold of sin.

Evidently the Samaritans also clung to a belief in a coming Messiah that would bring about deliverance. I find this fascinating given the strident views of the work and nature of the Messiah as taught by the Jews of that day. The Jews had come to believe that when the Messiah came He would come as a conquerer to make the Jews the strongest nation on earth so they could dominate and control with violent force every other people, especially the ones they hated the most. And Samaritans were certainly very near the top of the list of people the Jews hoped the Messiah was going to prosecute when He came to honor and elevate the Jews to their “rightful” place in the world.

Yet I see this woman, a Samaritan no less, looking forward to the Messiah as her hope for clearing up the confusion in her heart about the real truth about religious issues that troubled her. From this perspective it seems to me that she had a much clearer concept of the true nature of the coming Messiah than most of the Jews believed. This woman somehow had come to realize that the Messiah would be much more oriented to clarifying issues regarding God and religion than He would be in elevating the Jews politically.

Yet there must have been conflicts in her mind about what this coming Messiah was going to look like. She was familiar with the commonly held opinions of the Jews about a Messiah that would feel the same scorn for Samaritans as they cherished. Obviously she did not believe all those lies, which actually made her more mature spiritually than most other people. She also cherished doubts about the accuracy of her own people's religion which is one of the main reasons why I believe Jesus had rendezvoused with her in the first place. Jesus had been alerted to the condition of her heart by the Holy Spirit that always lead Him in every event throughout His life and He knew that this woman was the most open and receptive person in this whole region. God had set up this encounter for just this outcome because in the life of a true believer there is no such thing as a coincidence.

But why did Jesus speak such blunt words highlighting the difference between the religion of the Jews and that of the Samaritans if he always related to people with the utmost kindness and tact? This certainly doesn't seem at first to be a very tactful way to approach this subject.

But as I look more closely I realize that God knew her heart and that these words were not going to be overly offensive to her. She had already been feeling the conviction of God in her heart for some time that her religion was not as valid as that of the Jews, no matter how badly Jewish leaders had distorted and abused the truth they had received from their ancestors. Just because the Jews of her day were so extremely prejudiced did not detract in the slightest from the fact that God had still ordained the Jewish people to be the channel through which the Messiah was to come to save people from the darkness of ignorance and sin.

Jesus, I believe, was very possibly reinforcing some of her convictions about religion that she had already pondered for some time as well as her convictions about the true nature of the coming Messiah. She was actually advanced ahead of what most Jews and Samaritans believed, both in her ideas about religion and in her openness to accept and embrace the true Messiah. Because of the spiritual orientation of her heart, in spite of the obvious immortality of her life and present circumstances, she was actually much more ready to receive and appreciate the true Messiah than nearly anyone else in the whole surrounding country, both Jewish and Samaritan.

So it was necessary for Jesus to affirm to her that her secret belief that the Messiah just might have to come through the Jews was indeed correct. She had already identified Him as a Jew at the very beginning of their conversation together. Jesus was now building on this fact and reaffirming it so that she would move more easily into a state of full belief in Him when He revealed Himself to be the very Messiah she wanted to encounter. These longings for a coming Messiah had been placed in her heart by God Himself and now were being drawn out to experience for herself what the true Messiah had come to do – to preach the gospel to the poor, to release the captives, to open the eyes of the blind (both physically and internally), to heal the brokenhearted and best of all to reveal the favor of God in the world. This was the very kind of news that she longed to know the most and was the very nature of the Messiah that God was sending to people just like her.

So to validate the authenticity of His identity as the true Messiah, it was necessary to correct and affirm in her mind any questions causing confusion about where the Messiah would come from as far as race and ethnicity. He confirmed the fact that the Jewish religion in fact was still the religion that had the most truth left on the earth. This was despite the fact that the Jews themselves had so badly distorted God's reputation, His character and personality to the point where He could hardly be seen at all in the way they treated people or even in their popular teachings. Jesus also pointed out that her religion was in fact lacking in sufficient truth to be reliable to lead her to real salvation. Jesus simply affirmed what I believe she was already suspecting – that the Jews had the best religious information around and that the Samaritan religion really was a counterfeit of that true religion.

It was important to get this better settled in her mind before He revealed Himself as the Messiah. This was because He wanted to eliminate every doubt ahead of time that might prevent her from fully embracing Him as her own Savior when she realized who He really was. He was effectively dealing with her ethnic prejudice against Him as a Jew so that she could embrace her own convictions of truth that had been stirring inside her for some time and now act on them. She was ripe to embrace the fact that her own religion really was inferior to the core Jewish religion. It was largely the prejudices of the Jews against her that made it difficult to justify that conviction in the face of fierce opposition by her own cultural heritage.

And from this perspective it is now also easier to see that she could accept His statement that her religion could not give her all the answers that she was looking for to satisfy the deepest longings of her heart. God had provided through the Jews the channel through which the Messiah was going to come to bless the whole world without any more prejudices of religion, ethnicity, gender or any other kind. The Messiah was in fact going to be far better than even she had ever been able to imagine. And she was about to find that out for herself.

Worship 101

"Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father." (John 4:20-21)

I notice something interesting in the emphasis in these two statements. The woman's statement about worship focuses on the proper place to worship. This is so reflective of almost all religions, a focus on the externals or on formulas or ceremonies etc. Religion for all too many people is not much more than a prescription to follow or a list of rules or even something along the line of incantations to invoke some sort of supernatural benefits. Pagans explored these kinds of things at great length and Christianity brought much of that kind of reasoning and thinking into the culture of the church not too many years after Jesus lived on earth.

But Jesus here puts the focus back on the only real issue in true worship. And if we learn what true worship actually is then we will begin to experience the effects of real worship far more effectively in our lives. For true worship cannot be separated from an encounter with the living, loving God of the universe. Anything short of this is a counterfeit of worship which abounds everywhere, even in the name of the worship of God.

I attended an all-day seminar a number of years ago on the topic of worship. I was offered the chance to attend only the night before and felt an overwhelming desire to go, for my heart was just beginning to learn the real truth about worship and I longed to know much more. The details for me to be able to go were so dramatically and miraculously worked out almost immediately that I sensed that this was very much a God thing for my life. I arrived early in the morning at the seminar filled with anticipation of what God was going to reveal to me that day about worship that I had never seen before.

And did it ever happen! That day marked one of the most dramatic enlightenment points of my whole life. The things I heard that whole day were thrilling, enticing and deeply informative but at the same time saddening, for I realized how far most of us have strayed from experiencing true worship of God. The seminar presenters were not focusing on denominational ideas or even worship styles which I greatly appreciated. In fact, the attendees came from many different denominational backgrounds but all of them seemed to deeply appreciate the narrow focus of the presenters on what it really means to worship God even in very different styles or contexts.

I just now went back to glance at my notes from that seminar and felt my heart warming immediately once again. The main definition of worship that they shared with us and that I realized was so true was that authentic worship is simply the response of a heart when it encounters the true presence of the God of heaven. The closer we come into His presence the more our heart is going to worship spontaneously if we allow it to.

I, like most people, have grown up in a culture where the word worship was simply the term used to describe what happened at church each week, particularly during the “divine worship hour”. I have found it so true for many religious words that our assumed definitions of them come more from the meanings we have assigned to them by default rather than from careful searching in the Bible to see what God intended for them to mean. As a result we have cultivated religions of various colors and flavors all based on our own private dictionaries so to speak of what the religious terms mean for us and our particular group. They may all be the same words and verses quoted from the same Bible but they mean something different depending on which denomination or subculture you belong to.

But there really is a master document that can be used to reliably discover the true meanings of the religious terms we use so loosely. But only those who are willing to first doubt their own assumptions and take the time to open their minds to seek deeper truth will be able to discern the far more incredible realm of true spirituality and experience the amazing encounters with our Creator that true religion must involve. And real worship lies at the very heart of all of this activity. If we do not pay attention to learning how to truly worship God in the way He has revealed in His Word, then we will be content to remain in self-deception insisting that our form of worship is what God intended for us.

I am interested in tracing again the progression in this story that led to the most profound revelations about real worship that Jesus shared with this woman. My mind is always seeking to understand where I came from and how I got here partly in order to be able to ingrain that sequence of logic into my own psyche to help correct my own faulty assumptions assimilated elsewhere.

Jesus initiated a relationship with this woman by asking her for a kindness in spite of the fact that all social norms pressured both of them to remain distant and disconnected from each other. When responding to her amazement at His lack of prejudice, He moves the conversation quickly into the much deeper waters of her relationship to God and His attitude of kindness towards her. Jesus offers to share with her a wonderful gift called living water if she is willing to ask for it.

She then brings up the issue of identity and value for both of them. Jesus completely skirts the issues that divide them or that would produce emotions of prejudice and instead expands on His offer to her by describing this new kind of water more enticingly. She accepts the bait and asks for it but with still a focus on the externals.

Jesus' first response to her brought up the subject of God and the gift He wanted to give her. The woman's response to that was to point to their common ancestor that had been part of the lineage chosen by God to represent His character to the world. So the issue of worship was already starting to emerge, especially since unbeknown to her she was already talking to God directly face to face herself. Jesus was actually drawing her into worship as they spoke together without her even knowing what was going on.

Since worship is a response of the heart to an encounter with the real truth about God in His presence, then this woman was a prime candidate for experiencing authentic worship right then and there. She was observing how God treated the marginalized without any prejudice but with deep compassion and care for their heart. As she continued to experience and respond to this encounter with the One who was the only true representation of the Father, her own heart was quickly waking up and coming to life and stirring with emotion to connect more deeply with this most unusual love. Her heart was already entering into true worship even before she consciously realized what was happening.

When Jesus asked her to go get her husband and come back to receive His living water, I don't believe He was only saying that to set her up in a sting operation to expose her. And while He did use that to bring to her attention the most painful and vulnerable parts of her life, He was not doing it to shame or hurt her deeper but was doing it to help her and all of us realize that worship will always involve opening up areas of the heart that we are trying to hide from others. Genuine worship will always involve facing the inner pain, the shame, the fears and all the other things deep inside that skew our picture of God and hide His face from us. When we encounter the true God that has been largely obscured by religion and our own fears of Him for most of our life, we will come to realize that He is eager to bring healing and wholeness to the most painful, messed up areas deep within us and fill us with overwhelming love, hope and joy.

Instead of responding immediately to Jesus' offer to talk about her painful past, she instead moved over to talking about worship not realizing that the issue of her painful relationships with men was actually her opportunity to interact with God in the healing experience of worship. Like so many of us today, she believed that worship was just something you did when you went to a religiously designated place and performed certain routines that others have defined as being religiously required. But worship goes far deeper and is far broader than simply performing religious incantations or singing some songs, praying and listening to a sermon.

All of these things can be performed endlessly and yet true worship of the Father may never actually take place. What I have observed over the years is that very often we indeed do worship in church but far too much of the time we are actually worshiping our own routines and traditions, or even our emotions, our music and our sermons but without ever actually experiencing true worship of the Father. This trap is so subtle that it is very difficult to unmask in religion, but it is very pervasive and is something that all of us must face if we really desire to encounter the transforming kind of worship that this woman experienced.

She was used to thinking of worship as a place just like we do most of the time. Jesus viewed worship in a radically different way, for in His life worship was all about a loving heavenly Father that Jesus spent much time communicating with on a daily basis. In fact, the secret of Jesus' perfect life on earth did not come from the fact that He was inherently divine, giving Him an advantage over all the rest of us. He had completely laid that aside and steadfastly resisted ever using His own power for Himself while living here as a human. He came to demonstrate that any human being could live in such close connection with God experiencing authentic, life-giving worship that they could come to perfectly reflect the character of God in the life just as Jesus did simply by focusing on the heart of the Father. That is the essence of real worship.

The Issue of Arguing

"Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews." (John 4:20-22)

Again, I am seeing the unusual way that Jesus treats someone who is used to relating to religion primarily with arguments. Religion is full of people that believe that truth must be advanced through the use of arguing and even force when necessary. But man's ways are not God's ways and Jesus demonstrated here the best way.

One thing that is becoming clear to me in this story is Jesus' consistent way of seeking common connections before dealing with differences. He is not ducking the tough issues, but because His primary strategy is to form heart bonds before addressing external or doctrinal differences, He uses affirmations and highlights the positive things before moving on to explain the more delicate misunderstandings. When the woman reacts emotionally after the subject of her marriage status is brought up and denies that she is married at all, instead of laying a guilt trip on her Jesus twice affirms her honesty in the way she chose to answer. That is shocking to many of us.

Now she brings up yet another point of deep division between her people the Samaritans and His people the Jews. She refers to the core issues that have caused deep hostilities between the two groups for centuries with deep curiosity as to how He is going to respond to this most provocative subject. Instead of continuing a discussion about her private life that has caused her the most emotional pain, she wants to see how He is going to handle the most intransigent deadlock in religion that has stymied resolution for the greatest theologians of the time. In her mind, if this man is really as connected with God as she is beginning to think He might be, then maybe, just maybe, He will be able to provide insights and answers that seem beyond the ability of all the religious leaders to discover.

But the way that she broaches this subject is through the typical way that most people would approach it – through the angle of argument. If this question were to be posed to anyone else from either side of the deep divide that it had created, she already knew what their reaction would be. They would immediately launch into the stock answers and intense defense of their position based on which side they happened to be born on. It seemed that this prejudice was unsolvable and the differences impossible to heal. But this man seemed different and she was keen to find out if just maybe He might unveil the most elusive answers that had never been found by anyone else.

Her hunch was actually very accurate. This man was indeed very close to God – and much closer than she had ever imagined up to this point in their encounter. He was not only very close to God but was in reality God in human form. She was experiencing the privilege of not only being able to talk with someone who might be able to hear insights from God to pass them on to others but was given the privilege of talking directly to God herself without even realizing it yet. In effect, she was being given the opportunity of becoming a prophet herself without even realizing it.

One of the evidences that this was God and not just a human religious man well-versed in Scripture was the way in which He handled such questions. Instead of reacting defensively to a confrontation inviting an argument, He instead keeps moving inexorably closer to capturing her affections, her devotion, her appreciation of His kindness and love for her. In every detail of His demeanor and every word of His interactions with her He was expressing the passionate love that God had for her that she had craved for all of her life. She was already tasting the living water and it was already having its effect inside of her even before she realized what was going on. Because she was willing to receive that water of life and was yielding to its influence in her spirit she was already beginning to tingle with the excitement and joy and this water always produces in any heart that is willing to drink of it.

In Jesus' response to her query about the deep religious tensions between His race and her people, He once again avoided talking first about the tensions that divided them. Instead He went straight to the resolution of this very problem that He Himself had come to this world to provide; He had come to bring the two groups along with all humanity into full unity in Himself, both Jews and Gentiles of every stripe. The Jews had made the reputation of God stink in the world with their exclusivity, their arrogance and pride and their perversions of the true meaning of the Word of God. They had become so self-centered and exclusive in their opinions about religion that they had almost totally obscured the light of truth about how God feels towards sinners. But Jesus came to explode all those myths and to reveal to the world the real truth about God's desires and plans to save everyone who would believe.

But the fact still remained that God had indeed originally chosen the Jews as His special people to reveal His character to the rest of the world. It was true that they had largely failed in this assignment and were soon to finalize their divorce from Him as a nation by killing His Son and then rejecting and killing His messengers that would come after Him. But it was still a valid truth that the Jews were indeed the repositories of the facts of truth; they were the race from which most of the prophets of God came from and they were the ones entrusted with the written messages of God down through the ages. They had been given the most accurate truth even though they had failed repeatedly to live their lives in harmony with it but had allowed their spirit to take on the opposite characteristics from that which inspired these sacred writings in the first place.

On the other hand, the Samaritans were in fact counterfeits of the religion of the Jews. Their motive for building a temple elsewhere from the one in Jerusalem was because they had been so offended by the harsh way in which they were treated by the pure-blooded Jews in Ezra's day. This offense had hardened into a parallel religion invented by the Samaritans as an alternative to that of the Jews partly because the Jews refused to accept them in the way God had intended and partly because the Samaritans themselves had hardened their hearts in defensiveness to justify their own religious preferences. There was certainly plenty of blame to around, but as Jesus pointed out to this woman, the real truth of God really was entrusted to the Jews no matter how badly they had mangled it.

But before making that point, Jesus wanted to let this woman know that all of that was about to become irrelevant as far as God was concerned. Jesus had come to dissolve all the walls of artificial separation that religions had constructed over the centuries and was here on earth to offer a completely new way of connecting with God. He had come to bring to light the very salvation that all of those symbols and shadows built into the Old Testament religious services pointed forward to. When the reality was fully exposed the symbols would become totally obsolete and everyone would then come to God directly without any reference to race, gender or any other discriminations. This was the exciting announement that Jesus gave to this woman before He said anything about who was technically right and wrong in the long-standing feud between the Jews and the Samaritans.

I am still open to hearing what God has to share with me about what Jesus meant in His words about worshiping what we know or don't know. I want to get beyond the stock answers for this and really hear from the Spirit the deeper significance of these words and how they surely affect all of us today.