External Internal

"Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." (John 4:20)

I want to look at the sequence of the focus in this story.

It begins with a simple request for a drink of regular water that is too far out of reach for Jesus to get for Himself.

The Samaritan woman instead wants to know why this Jew is not acting like a normal Jew or like a typical man in the culture of their day.

Jesus immediately moves to talking about God, about a gift and about something mysterious and intriguing that He calls living water which arouses a great deal of interest and curiosity in this woman's mind. This is where Jesus moves very quickly from the external to the internal and even the eternal.

When the woman asks for a drink of His kind of water, which she still implies within her request may have more to do with the external and physical rather than the internal, Jesus then brings up the issue of what is going on inside her heart in relation to the men in her life; again, the internal.

The woman quickly shifts the discussion from that to asking a religious question that may have been haunting her for a long time. The reason she wanted an answer to this question is of interest to me but of course, is not possible to determine with any great degree of certainty. But within her question she again is focusing on the external though she does bring up the issue of worship. But implicit even in her ideas of worship is the importance of the externals surrounding worship instead of anything having to do with the heart. Her question is, where is the right place that people should worship.

This reminds me very much of the other people who sometimes came up to Jesus asking for information about worship or about getting to heaven. Invariably the question always centered around a focus on the externals, on behavior and performance. What must I do to be saved? What must I do to inherit eternal life? What must I do...?

Sometime Jesus answered them by going straight to the internal. What must you do? Believe... But other times He might take them there via a route through their own logic, especially when speaking with someone like a lawyer who was very keen on thinking only along those lines. Jesus would focus on the law and they would then make the claim that they had already measured up to the standard that they could see in their view of the law. Then Jesus would finish the application and take them straight into the issues of relationships and emotions and attitudes towards those they considered below their dignity or of little value. He took them back to the internals and exposed that the real things of importance are always focused on the condition of our hearts.

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 4:21)

I want to take a lot more time to explore Jesus' beliefs about worship that are sharply in contrast with nearly everyone else's. But at this point I want to focus on the fact that all through this story Jesus is leading her, as He did with Nicodemus just before this, to realize that worship and relating to God always and primarily involves getting honest about what is going on in our heart and our emotions. It means ceasing to try to cover up what is deep inside no matter how messed up we may think it is or how painful we may think it is going to be for us. It matters not how embarrassing or humiliating or frightening are the things we are trying to hide inside from anyone else knowing about. God is not the one we need to be afraid of or run away from; He is the one with the gift, the living water of life and the only source in which we can find any hope of healing and restoration and peace.

So what I hear Jesus saying in response to her is, Do you want to know the real place to worship. I will tell you. The right place to worship is in your own heart. That is the only effective place that anyone can truly worship God from if they want worship to be genuine and transformative.

It is the lies we are filled with about how God feels about us that causes us to hide what is really in our hearts. It started immediately when Adam and Eve disconnected from their vital connection of trust in God by believing the lies of the enemy about Him. As soon as the loving, caring, compassionate God came to visit them again as He did every day, they were now filled with terror and ran to hide their shame from Him. We have been doing it ever since because we still are filled with the lies about Him that Adam and Eve introduced into our gene pool.

What was the very first thing that Jesus said in response to the woman's request for an answer about “proper” worship? It was an immediate focus on the internal issue of belief. Woman, believe Me... I find this very significant. Yes, Jesus goes on to share with her some of the most profound truths about real worship that have ever been revealed to humans. But first He pointed her to the very root of the sin problem – a lack of real belief, belief rooted deep in the heart that is learning to experience the goodness of God and is embracing the real truths about God. This is the focus of all the writings of John – trying to get us to realize the enormous importance of real belief and its crucial necessity if we want to experience life in its fullness.

At this point the woman is really being given a choice. Jesus is asking her to believe all the things He is saying to her and to embrace what He is offering her without resistance. Of course she can also choose to hang on to her own ideas, to remain focused on the externals above the internals and to avoid exposure or pain; she can be like many others and be more obsessed with worshiping for appearances or for shallow emotional thrills instead of entering into a vulnerable and intimate relationship with the Savior God who offers to be a better husband than any man could ever dream of being.

Wonderfully, this story has a positive ending where the woman really does take Jesus seriously. And the immediate affects on her life and all her relationships is both startling and immensely encouraging. It is the kind of amazing transformation that I would love to experience in my own life. I am jealous of this woman's freedom to embrace the truth about God so quickly and to be so expressive in her compelling witness in such a very short time.

This happened because, whatever it took or however she did it, she entered into real belief. She did exactly what Jesus asked her to do – she believed Him. And the rest is not only history but became a very important part of His story as well.