In Spirit and truth
’Tis the loving Father calls the wanderer home,
Whosoever will may come. Philip Bliss
Read John 4:20—26
‘You worship what you do not know.’ A telling sentence. I can picture people worshipping what they do not know. I can picture passionate worship misdirected, worship that enslaves the worshipper. I can picture world religions with their scriptures, their colourful and detailed rituals and their spiritual teachers. I can picture animist customs with control over people’s lives but little stated theology. I can picture the adoration of things that are not God and do not seem even to be gods. This usually doesn’t pass for religion, yet it functions so similarly. It diminishes humanity. I can find some of this in myself. So it is a liberating thing that tonight I have the privilege of sitting with this much-failed woman of Samaria being tutored into true worship and marvellous freedom as she is taken with utter seriousness by the Messiah of Israel. When he talks of true worship Jesus does not think along any other line than what will bring honour to God. But it will equally bring honour to her.
Father, I thank you that Jesus sat by this woman at a well in Samaria on what I assume was a hot day, and had this conversation. I thank you that he took her seriously. I thank you that she heard his word as the word of truth that would set her free; that she knew then the glorious liberty of forgiveness; that she was invited to the place of praise, not in Jerusalem, nor on Mt Gerizim, but in the Spirit and in the truth. I thank you that this woman could not contain her new knowledge, but told others of the one who knew her through and through, blessed and loved her, and renewed her. I pray this night that her story will be repeated in someone’s life. And repeated again and again throughout the world.