So worship wars are not new. The woman at Sychar told Jesus, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship” (Jn 4:20). Ever since that day people have been using the words ought and worship in some kind of contentious debate and most of it has little or nothing to do with real worship. Jesus ended the debate for anyone who might actually have been listening when he retorted, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (v. 24).
OK, I’ll concede that his response does not answer every legitimate question people have about worship, but it certainly does create categories. On one hand there are the issues related to location, time, order, ritual, liturgy, music, offerings, and such. On the other hand there are the much weightier matters of spirit and truth. If the average evangelical church would focus on spirit and truth the worship wars might morph into amicable bantering about preference and the emerging crowd might loose their cause for anti-fundamentalist rage.
It needs to concern us that God is seeking such worshipers as if they are a commodity with heavenly value. Both the Father and the Son are soul-seekers and worship-seekers, which actually means they are both glory-seekers. Being the center of the universe, the source, support, and end of all things and the personification of love, for them to be consumed with glory-seeking is both terribly appropriate and wonderfully loving.
Just what did Jesus mean by this a moral imperative of truth-anchored and spirit-localized worship? The typical response to John 4:24 is to pull it out of its context and use it as a plank in some systematic theology related to worship and then fiddle with it and paste it onto several others texts to arrive at a meaning that might be an awkward fit it the words ever found their way back to John 4. Actually the context answers the question for us.
Jesus was doing evangelism but he was also forming a worshiper–which is precisely what evangelism does! In the process he spoke truth into several sin-darkened sectors of her unregenerate mind–truth about the gospel, the nature of Christ, her sin, and acceptable worship. Interestingly, while she was digesting these bits of truth, her view of Jesus evolved from “a Jew” to “Sir (kurios) to “prophet”, to “Christ”. By the end of the day, she was light-years ahead of the average Jerusalem priest or Galilean Pharisee when it came to worship credentials!
Jesus addressed the spirit component when he turned her attention from the worship war/turf war issues of location and form to internal issues. If spirit is held against physical locations then spirit has to do with the invisible, internal, essential issues of the heart, mind, affections, and will. Are these crucial issues the very ones we neglect to our hurt and the devastation of the body of Christ while while we heroically fight to keep guitars and drums out of our worship centers and give our blood planting the fundamentalist flag on the hills of secondary and tertiary separation?
Is it possible that for all our Fundamentalist sophistication and pride, we have not yet mastered Samaritan Worship 101? If Jesus said worship matters, and he did! If Jesus said worship must be rooted in revelation, and he did! If Jesus said the essential heart of worship is delight in God, and he did! Then let’s get on with it soli Deo gloria!
Amen! Thanks for taking the time to blog. I really appreciate the focus on worship.
Thank you for the great reminder to come to church to worship!
Amen! Is this a subtle announcement of soon to be coming additional instruments? Don’t forget cymbals and trumpets too!
Great post. I was tempted that the internal priority of worship makes things simpler, and perhaps it does. But simple does not mean easy. This is a great reminder to focus on what matters to God.