Hello, It's Me

This sermon was preached on June 21, 2009, at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst in Portland, Oregon. There were two texts for the day--Exodus 3: 13-15 and John 4: 19-26.

For those of you who were here last Sunday, our destination this morning in John’s gospel—chapter 4—is familiar territory. We spent some time in last week’s sermon looking at the first part of this chapter, listening in as Jesus, resting beside a well on his way back to Galilee, encounters a Samaritan woman and asks her for a drink of water. When she wonders aloud that he would choose to speak or interact with a Samaritan such as she, Jesus tells her, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

But that isn’t the end of the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman—in fact, Jesus talks at greater length to the woman at the well than he does to anyone else in any of the gospels. Our scripture reading today continues their conversation as they move from the subject of water—and living water—to a discussion of right worship, which we know from Biblical scholarship was a source of conflict and bad feelings between the Samaritans and the Jewish people of that time.

The woman opens the topic, telling Jesus that “Our ancestors”—the Samaritans—“worshipped on this mountain”--a place called Mount Gerishim in Samaria—“but you”—the Jews—“say that the place the people must worship is in Jerusalem.”

It’s a seemingly unresolvable religious conflict between their peoples: but Jesus surprises the Samaritan woman when, as so often seems to happen in John’s gospel, Jesus changes the ground rules and lifts their conversation from concrete physical place to expansive spiritual concept: “God is spirit,” Jesus tells her, “and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Worship in spirit and truth.

So what kind of worship is that? Do Jesus’ words, directed at the Samaritan woman and her faith community so long ago, have anything to do with us? We’re not Samaritans, we’re Christians—and not only Christians, we’re Presbyterians. We’re already believers. We’re already here sitting in church on Sunday morning showing, as my mother in law would say, “whose side we’re on.” We’re reading Scripture, and singing hymns, and hearing a sermon, and talking and thinking about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We know how to do church. We’ve got this spirit and truth thing down!

And of course we do. But.

I know that you as a congregation have been in dialogue recently about your ministry, what the future holds for this church, and how God is leading you to serve him and the community. It’s an opportunity to speak a prophetic word, to explore new things, to take a leap of faith, to use your holy imaginations in co-creation with Christ.

I also know that for all of us times of transition and change—even if that transition and change is barely visible on the horizon—can be deeply unsettling, and even frightening—as we imagine—or fail to imagine—a new reality, and wonder about our place in it.

And this experience isn’t new, or unique to this congregation in this place and this time--Portland, Oregon in 2009. It’s an experience that has faced every Christian community, in every place, in every time that Christians have gathered together. In a very real way we could say that every moment in our congregational life is—and has been—and will be—and perhaps should be—a moment of change, a moment of challenge, a critical moment on which the future of our fellowship turns.

At this particular moment in our community of faith, it seems to me that we, like so many other Christian communities before and after us, can look to Jesus’ words about worshipping “in spirit and in truth” to guide us, to form us, to reassure us, and to challenge us as we ponder and strategize and dream together about ministry, and worship, and being church—now and into the future.

Let me hold up for you this morning a few of the things I see in this passage, and in the concept of worshipping in spirit and in truth—a few of the things that speak to us where we are today and illuminate what is—for us as a congregation and a community—the very thing that makes of us a church—that makes us an authentic community of Christian faith.

Pastor Greg was kind enough to give me a wonderful book on the Gospel of John, called “Written That You May Believe” by new testament scholar Sandra Schneiders. One of the things she says characterizes this gospel is that, in John, there are no “second generation” Christians—people who never meet Jesus for themselves. Time after time in this gospel, the telling of the good news and the hearing of good news is always followed up with an authentic personal encounter with Jesus.

We see this in our gospel passage for today; the Samaritan woman forsakes her water jar, goes into the Samaritan village and tells the Samaritans there about Jesus; but they come to belief only after they come to Jesus and see and hear him for themselves. In verse 42, we read that the Samaritans say to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” As John envisions it, it is the personal encounter between us and Jesus that calls us into relationship and brings us to faith; and it is in the context of that relationship that we find the truest expression of worship in spirit and in truth.

So that’s the first word for us this morning. Worship in spirit and in truth happens in the context of our relationship with Jesus. It is the result of our personal encounter with him—not only that one first, blinding moment of personal salvation but an ongoing, unfolding, living, growing, covenantal revelation that continues to touch us, and move us, and guide us, and companion us, all the days of our individual lives and all the days of our life together as a congregation.

The second element of today’s text that I’d like to lift up for your consideration—and the element I believe is really the heart of what it means to worship in spirit and in truth—is found in verse 26, when Jesus tells the Samaritan woman something amazing. He says, “I am he”—incredibly, entrusting his heretofore hidden identity as the Messiah to this chance-met Samaritan woman, persuading her to abandon her errand and her water jar, and sending her forth to proclaim Christ to her people.

Jesus says, “I am he.” It is the first of what we call the “I am” statements that fill the gospel of John: “I am the gate,” “I am the good shepherd,” “I am the way,” and “I am the vine.” But more than that. Jesus isn’t just saying in some kind of obscure way, “Hi, it’s me, nice to meet you.” In the original Greek text this phrase is “ego eimi”—and we could translate it as simply “I am.”

“I am.” That’s right, it’s strikingly similar to God’s revelation of himself to Moses in our first reading this morning from the book of Exodus: where Moses, astonished by the bush that burns and is not consumed, says to God, “What shall I tell the Israelites is the name of the God of our ancestors?” and God replies “I am who I am. Tell them ‘I am’ sends you.”

When Jesus tells the Samaritan woman “I am,” he is not only claiming to be the promised Messiah. He is claiming to be nothing less than God himself. He is revealing himself as the God of Moses and our ancestors—and he is also revealing himself as the God who calls all people, even the Samaritans—into relationship with him.

Jesus is telling the Samaritan woman that the first, most critical element of worshipping in spirit and in truth is not the “where” of worship—or indeed the when, or even the how-- but “whom.”

True worship is not achieved by doing the right things in the right way, saying the right words, singing the right songs. True worship is not achieved by doing at all. It is achieved by being; it is achieved by drawing near to God, experiencing God face to face and heart to heart, entering into relationship with the One Who Is, in whose presence we can be who we truly are.

One of my hospice chaplain friends tells the story of a man who had everything going for him. Let’s call him Dan. Dan had a prestigious job as a top administrator of a computer company in Silicon Valley, a seven figure income, a beautiful, palatial home. He had a Mercedes, a Porsche, and a Jaguar. Dan’s wife was beautiful and loving, and his kids were high achievers. And on top of all those other things, Dan was a gifted musician. He was a genius with the guitar, played guitar like Eric Clapton.

And then Dan got a very cruel disease, ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. And everything changed.
Dan became progressively paralyzed and weak. He lost the ability to drive the Mercedes, the Porsche, and the Jaguar. As time went on, he couldn’t work. He lost his income and his home. He lost the ability to hug his kids, be intimate with his wife, or even go to the bathroom by himself. And the worst moment of all, the very last straw, came when Dan’s son put his beloved guitar into his arms and Dan couldn’t play it any more—even worse, it slipped out of his hands to the floor.

This man told his hospice chaplain that if he could have taken his own life at that moment, he would have. He had lost everything that had once defined him as a person. He couldn’t “do” anything any more—he couldn’t even move. He could just lie there in the bed. That was his existence, and he was in an existential crisis.

And yet. All that time and space of lying in the bed, unable to move, eventually brought Dan an amazing revelation. He had lost everything that had defined him—and yet—he realized that he was still there. The awful and devastating disease made him understand that he—Dan—the real Dan, the essence of Dan, the authentic Dan, you could even call it the soul of Dan—was more than the sum of his roles, responsibilities, and actions in the world. He was truly and deeply and simply himself. If you will, he had become spirit. He had become “The Dan Who Is.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about yourself that way, thought about who you are—who you really are—I know I don’t think about it very often. It’s a little scary to think about, actually. Who am I, down deep, if I’m not mom, or daughter, or wife, or the one who works, or the one who likes romance novels, or the one who eats pie before dinner, or the one who preaches, or the one who drives kids around town.

Who are you--the Terri who is, the George who is, the Pat who is—once you’ve peeled back all the layers of your roles, and responsibilities, and activities—all the layers of the “You who does.” It’s kind of a mystical notion, kind of hard to get your head around.

But John is a pretty mystical gospel. And I’m pretty convinced that when the “You who is” comes together with the “God who is”—that this coming together in relationship of our authentic selves with God’s authentic self in Christ is worshipping in spirit and in truth as the Gospel of John envisions it.

The coming together of our authentic selves with God’s authentic self is how we can make worshipping in spirit and in truth real in our own lives. And the coming together of our authentic corporate self—“the congregation who is”—with God’s authentic self is how we make worshipping in spirit and in truth real in our congregational life—whatever the words or music we use, whatever the location or circumstance we might find ourselves in, whatever the leadership, whatever the budget, whatever the choices or challenges. When the God who is comes together with the congregation who is—now that’s worship. That’s ministry. That’s the church.

There’s one more aspect of this gospel passage that struck me as I prepared this sermon and that I want to lift up to you today as we consider this notion of worshipping in spirit and truth. And that is, did you notice that the Samaritan woman asks questions? She asks: “How is it that you ask a drink of me?” “Where do you get that living water?” and then, even after meeting Jesus and believing in him, she says to the Samaritans in the form of a question, “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”

And Jesus doesn’t seem at all threatened or irritated by her questions. On the other hand, he seems to welcome them, and to use her questions to draw her closer to himself.

Meeting Jesus and coming to believe in him does not answer all the Samaritan woman’s questions. It doesn’t stop her from thinking, and wondering, exploring and growing.

Perhaps meeting Jesus, believing in him, and coming into relationship with him, has given her the opportunity, and the confidence, and the curiosity, to keep asking questions. Perhaps it is in the questions—and not the answers-- that she continues to grows closer to the God who is, and comes to know her true authentic self, the Samaritan woman who is. Perhaps this questioning, curious seeking is also a hallmark of worshipping in spirit and in truth.

Worship in spirit and in truth happens in the context of our relationship with Jesus. It is the result of our personal encounter with him—an ongoing, unfolding, living, growing, covenantal revelation that continues to touch us, and move us, and guide us, and companion us, all the days of our life and all the days of our life together as a congregation.

Worship in spirit and in truth happens when the "God who is" encounters the "you who is"; and it is the coming together of our authentic corporate self—“the congregation who is”—with God’s authentic self that makes worshipping in spirit and in truth real in our congregational life—whatever the location or circumstance we might find ourselves in.

Worship in spirit and in truth happens when we are not afraid to be questioning, curious, seeking—knowing that God is not threatened by the questions, that God welcomes the questions—and that the questions are evidence not of our doubt, or of our disbelief—but just the opposite—visible and concrete evidence of our deep, ongoing and authentic relationship with God.

On this day--and all of our days--let us worship together in spirit and in truth.

Amen.