John 4:1-26
You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know… (v. 22a) It sounds strange even as I am typing this comment, but Jesus is dealing with denominational issues here. There were Judean Jews and Samaritan Jews. Both groups followed the Law (at various levels!), but the Samaritans did not buy into the Prophets. So Samaritans were expecting a Messiah more like Moses whereas the Judean Jews were expecting a political Messiah, more like King David. (Jesus didn’t meet anyone’s expectations!) So the two groups had fundamental differences. I was thinking about our own denominational differences today. We at St. Andrew’s would like to think that …we worship what we know…, and that our historic, traditional understanding of Scripture is a better interpretation than the thinking of our more liberal friends. And I will continue to hold to that feeling – the people with whom I worship at St. Andrew’s seem (to me) to be seeking Jesus at a higher, stronger level than people I have known in other denominations. I’m thinking of the people that I know best – our Men’s Group, the Vestry, Freedom Road, etc. Our parishioners, I believe, are following Jesus’ next sentence: But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. (v. 23) I do believe that we are honoring the Son and seeking the Holy Spirit in our worship of the Triune God. We need to be humble about the God we know, the God we seek, but we also need to remain confident that we at St. Andrew’s are on a path where God is truly leading us.
See also: February 1 / John 4:1-14 , February 2 / John 4:15-26
One thing I would add is that worshiping God focuses on truth and spirit, not location, either Jerusalem or the Samaritan alternative. An important reminder for us is that the church building is not the point, however beautiful.
Interesting in John 4:1 that Jesus left Jerusalem when he heard people were comparing Him and John the Baptist. (Did He want to avoid drawing people from John until after the end of John’s ministry?) Was His growing popularity perhaps leading too early to a confrontation with Jewish leaders? His Jerusalem ministry was not yet time. God has exquisite timing!
In John 4:14, my translation is that Jesus’s water is “a spring gushing up to eternal life”. Right now! It is the source that enables us to live our eternal life now.
Just a thought on worshipping in spirit and truth. As I understand it, there are truths of reason and truths of faith. Truths of reason can be determined through examination of known facts to come to some true understanding of them. Truths of faith are revelations from God that we can know only because God has revealed them to us. The Bible is full of both kinds of truths. Jesus says that the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers of the Father will worship in spirit and truth.
I think truth here means the revealed truths in the Old Testament as well as the teachings of Jesus. Truth is often symbolized by light, and Jesus is identified as the light of the world. Jesus reveals the truth about our redemption and salvation and our relationship with the Father.
I think spirit refers to a personal worship of the Father where God abides in each of us as we abide in Him. My understanding is that before the death and resurrection of Christ, the Holy Spirit was probably not available to people in general. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit seems to operate as a special emissary from God to prophets in order to speak God’s truth to his people. But because the people had not yet been redeemed through Jesus’ sacrifice, they could not live in the spirit (which was only made possible by our redemption). The Jews identified certain places (like the temple in Jerusalem or the Samaritan mountain) where God resided. And here Jesus also says that the hour is coming when you will no longer worship God in Jerusalem or on the Samaritan mountain. I think He means that after we are redeemed, we can worship God in the spirit in our own hearts. We abide in Him as He abides in us.
While everyone else has provided some really good theological food for thought, I’m going to quibble over a minor point of terminology that probably has little theological relevance at all — at least for the moment. That is the notion of a “Samaritan Jew” (sorry, Fred!), a phrase that might make sense to us today but that I am pretty certain would have sounded like an oxymoron to both Samaritans and Jews of Jesus’ day.
The term “Jew” is derived from “Judah,” one of the twelve tribes of Israel and the primary tribe of the Southern Kingdom. The tribe of Benjamin was the much-more-junior partner in that kingdom, which was otherwise known as the “Kingdom of Judah.” The other ten tribes of Israel split off from Judah and Benjamin after the reign of Solomon to form the Northern Kingdom, aka the “Kingdom of Israel” (sometimes also called “Ephraim” because the tribe of Ephraim was the primary “mover and shaker” among those ten tribes). The origin of the split is described in 1 Kings 12. The Northern Kingdom had its capital at Samaria, hence the term “Samaritan.” The Northern Kingdom was apostate, choosing to worship golden calves (that they still called “the LORD”) in two places that were not Jerusalem and various other idols on “the high places” — hence the woman’s notion of worshiping “on this mountain” (John 4:20). God’s judgement ultimately fell on the Northern Kingdom, and He sent them into exile at the hands of the Assyrians, at which point the Northern Kingdom ceased to exist and has never been heard from since. Any remaining Israelites in the region of Samaria intermarried with surrounding nations (or those imported by Assyria) and lost their identity, hence the ten “lost tribes” of Israel. The Southern Kingdom (the tribes of Judah and Benjamin) was eventually also judged and went into exile to Babylon. But these people — the “Jews” — did not lose their identity and subsequently returned to the land. To help ensure that they would not again face such judgment and exile, the Jews pursued a course of strict separation from non-Jews, including (or perhaps particularly) the Samaritans. You can see the beginnings of that separation in the latter chapters of Nehemiah, particularly Neh 13.
So, even though we might think of them all as Israelites and therefore kindred, neither the Jews nor the Samaritans would have recognized the notion of “Samaritan Jews.” The split between Jews and Samaritans was quite severe, which makes the entire chapter of John 4 (along with the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37) truly extraordinary.
John, that was really helpful understanding. And yes, it makes all of Jesus’s ministry re Samaria even more powerful as the light of the whole world.
I agree with John’s comment. I was trying to say that there was a biological connection between Samaritans and “Jews” that had broken down as a spiritual connection. I couldn’t think of any other way to properly emphasize that except to call them “Samaritan Jews”. BTW, there were also “Galilean Jews” in addition to “Judean Jews”, two groups that held to the same faith, but differed geographically and, very likely, in their knowledge of and adherence to Torah rules and regulations.
Quite right, Fred, with regard to “Galilean” vs. “Judean” Jews and potential differences between them. In fact, those differences may explain some apparent “discrepancies” between John’s Gospel and the Synoptics on the timing of the Passover and the Crucifixion. But I’ll leave that until we get to that part of the story…