19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (RSV)
This article dwells on a frequently visited passage. It narrates the infrequent encounter between Jesus with the Samaritan lady seeking to get water from the well. Their private conversation becomes an unorthodox event, especially in the startling absence of an attentive public audience. The purpose of this article is not to do an exposition on the full biblical passage but only focus on the latter part of the story where the Samaritan woman is asking Jesus for information about the place of worship.
Why is the question asked?
Establishing the context of the story is necessary to understand the intentions between the two individuals. It is towards the end of their conversation where the Samaritan ‘woman’ is asking Jesus to declare the more privileged place of worship. The desire for making this question follows a prior encounter when she realizes that this individual is the anticipated Messiah. Knowing the significant opportunity, to be still at hand, the woman takes the courage to question Jesus about a significant concern. The question concerns the location of worship, but it hides a lot more in what is implied about inheritance, identity, sovereignty, and legitimacy.
οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν
The systematic development of infrequent religious practices into a formalised and systemic pattern is largely a succession between different generations. In a society where stories are verbally passed from one generation and onto the next, people are entrusted with written and verbal accounts of specific incidents.
A formal narration qualifies the development of specific events as ‘history’ whose significance is ameliorated for its details as past events undergo new cycles of corrections. The passing of a ‘torch’ between generations cannot be made manifested as if it is were a physical act similar to those experienced in athletes. Stories become codified within formal accounts whose style of narration and systematic contextualisation on what happened, who are involved, and the wider contributions of their interactions, has materialized into tangible historical accounts.
In this biblical account the event raises interest because it begins with an inquiry for what is a legitimate form of worship. What makes it acceptable before God? Such question takes place towards the end of the conversation once the lady identifies with the distinctive identity of the individual whose enigmatic manner of revealing his identity sparked controversy. There should be a lot more extravagant events that introduced society for what was coming. The seemingly sudden appearance of an individual who claims to the Christ is disturbing. There is a lack of pre-text that could introduce the audiences to its significant coming.
Even though little is known about the woman’s identity and other personal traits the way her question is posed captures a mainstream sentiment that could be reverberated within that society.
The question begins with what is already established and hereby treated as ‘common knowledge’. In introducing ‘the fathers’ as a community of individuals that immersed themselves with legitimate forms of worship, the woman identifies strong grounds for her claim as well as defence. The integrity of her proposition is not based on random hearsay. Rather, there is a succession of generations whose meticulous study of the scripture reveals that ‘this’ place of worship is the legitimate one. However, the problem arises in the presence of an equivalent community that makes a similar claim that also carries significant weight (i.e. Jerusalem).
The church fathers are a topic mentioned in the study of biblical scriptures. For example, in the Eastern Orthodox Church the church fathers have a special place. What sets such individuals apart is their dedication which allowed them to identify with God in some personal and uncommon way. The development of a unique relationship with God becomes a cornerstone for such the fathers’ subsequent accounts. There is little doubt that the personal dedication and frivolous commitment which adds significance to what individuals believed and said about God.
In this passage, the woman’s reference to the ‘fathers’ includes the successive generation. In using historical origins to substantiate current beliefs remains a widespread practice across all societies. Especially, when there is contestation about the truth of the topic considered between such communities.
ἐν τῷ ὄρει τούτῳ προσεκύνησαν
Naming the locality of religious places of worship establishes the physical geography for getting access to it. Moreover, it suggests that the choice of such a location is not random. Rather, it is championed by the powers of the divine realm. In referring to this ‘mountain range’ as the designated place of worship, the Samaritan lady recognizes the wider geography rather than some precise location.
Mount Gerizim is located about 60 km north of Jerusalem and about 70 km south of Capernaum. As stated in the following excerpt, it continues to be treated as protected site by UNESCO:
“Mount Gerizim, or Jebel et-Tor, is the sacred mountain of the Samaritans and has been so for thousands of years. It consists of three peaks, the main summit, the wide flat western hill and Tell er-Ras to the north. It has been traditionally identified with the sacred mountain upon which the Blessing was delivered by Divine decree, a claim which, in Samaritan belief, overrides that of the rival Temple of Jerusalem. On the summit is a rock which the Samaritans believe was the place where Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac.” (www.unesco.org)
An interest in the physical location remains of significance because it provides the context of a community’s relationship to the divine realm. The place is not set-out because of its own speciality but designation. It is the community of people whose presence and actions enable such a place to acquire unique identity in comparison to ‘other’ locations. The word τούτω’ (this) emphasises the territory as designated for a particular mission. Such statement affirms the peoples’ awareness of being part of a history where God’s involvement remains active. Why is this Samaritan interested in the sacredness of a place in terms of its geography? What special privileges can such a level of inquiry generate for her own interests?
This woman is part of the Samaritans as a mixed race. Their association with the mainstream nation, namely the ‘Jews’, acquires its ethnic distinctiveness because of its lack of traceability. Samaritans’ ethnic development lost touch with the religious traditions. Their ancestor took a different turn under the occupation of foreign powers. With significant meticulous planning Assyrians and Babylonians established that the more important longitudinal impact for a people is producing conditions where a people can lose its national identity. Samaritans started to be qualified as an inferior nation to the Jews because of the way extra-marital relationships contributed to a loss of collective memory but also manifestations of commitment to anticipated religious practices.
A contestation of who is the legitimate community whose worship remains accessible by God, stimulates significant considerations about the peoples’ identity and perceived legitimate status.
This ‘Samaritan’ woman remains aware of the historical landscape that contributed to her views of ethnic inheritance. Such association becomes also geared for supporting a position of access that cannot be questioned in its entirety.
Even though the Samaritans acquired a different identity from the Jews, their overarching status was not completely diminished. In generating a question of identity, the woman utilises the opportunity to acquire information from a ‘special source’ that will enable her to address a long-standing question.
καὶ ὑμεῖς λέγετε ὅτι ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις ἐστὶν ὁ τόπος ὅπου προσκυνεῖν δεῖ.
The woman recognizes how Jesus is not part of the Samaritans. How does she know that she is not part of her people? The biblical passage gives us no information about how she reached such conclusion. However, commentators agree that the characteristics of his appearance as well as accent could give away how this person was not of her own kind.
Such difference raises several questions about God’s way of dealing with those communities that people designate a special identity by labelling them as their own. There are hardly any Christian communities without some formal beliefs whose purpose is to designate boundaries. Such boundaries provide a seemingly safe space of interaction where individuals identify with common religious practices as a prominent instrument for sustaining their relationship with the divine.
In referring to the ‘other’ communities the woman identifies that Jesus does not belong ‘here’ but belongs with the Jews! Such anticipation for his identity could become an additional reason for establishing the legitimacy of the Jews.
It is logical that such a person will favourite Jerusalem as the designated place of worship. Such reaction is considered with hesitancy as the woman takes the liberty to community what such people believe that is of difference to the Samaritans.
In his work The Sacred and the Profane (1968) Mircea Eliades establishes the relevance of a sacred religious places within the religious experiences.
Eliades (1968) writes how a designation of a special physical location is identified with noble attributes because of the divine presence. Something becomes ‘sacred’ because of the power of divine manifestations whose very presence set it apart.
“The world (that is, our world) is a universe within which the sacred has already manifested itself, in which, consequently, the break-through from plane to plane has become possible and repeatable. It is not difficult to see why the religious moment implies the cosmogonic moment. The sacred reveals absolute reality and at the same time makes orientation possible; hence it founds the world in the sense that it fixes the limits and establishes the order of the world” (p.30)
This line of reasoning remains pivotal for understanding what elements of divine interaction, when they are manifested through the physical reality, come to acquire and sustain their identity as sacred well after a particular incident. Moreover, whether the sacredness of a place is directed by the people who participate in it.
λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· πίστευέ μοι, γύναι
The gospel writer is aware of the profundity of this encounter. Therefore, ensures that statements are correctly ascribed to those making them. In describing a much-desired response, Jesus responds to her. The Greek words ‘Λέγει αυτή’ (tells her) establishes assertiveness with making an introductory remark to himself as the source of proclaiming this information. There are several instances where the encouragement ‘believe in me’ is repeated in many parts of this gospel. Such incident remains of no exception. The encouragement to believe is contrasted before the other suggestions similarly aired to Jesus for what the ‘truth’ might be.
Information coming from various sources can be scrutinized for its credibility and trustworthiness. Assertions vary in their significance depending on the nature of what previous claims had been made. Such assertations might challenge other ideas as competing to other ones that claim to possess the ‘truth’. The subtle yet firm encouragement of directing this woman’s faith to the upcoming information is compared with what is already known but also remains unknown. In this sense, Jesus is gently probing the woman to take into consideration his own take on her question as being the final truth.
ὅτι ἔρχεται ὥρα ὅτε οὔτε ἐν τῷ ὄρει τούτῳ οὔτε ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις προσκυνήσετε τῷ πατρί.
In stating that ‘the time is coming’ Jesus establishes the physical success of upcoming events. These events will signal a transition that is going to be of worldwide significance to those who want to be considered followers. It would be legitimate to ask what has happened prior to such future and upcoming events?
The passage makes clear that Jesus is not willing to dismiss what people have done, in terms of fulfilling their religious obligations. Hence, the time is coming where prior approximations to a physical location will no longer be viewed as significant because of their exact geographical locality. The physical space has been of significance and contributed to the religious rites that allowed people to treat Jerusalem with special consideration. However, in suggesting that the fulfilment of a time is approaching where such location is no longer going to be significant, Jesus establishes a new remit. It significance cannot pass unnoticed. A change of locality is also associated with the quality of the human intentions of those who participate.
The sentence ‘αληθινοί προκυνηταί’ (authentic worshipers) identifies a position of authenticity in the make up of the religious experience not as descending from a formal ritual but rather from what the individuals identify with internally. Such statement remains significant for establishing that authentic worship cannot be confined to a location but rather it can only become possible through a serious undertaking where the divine becomes integrated into the human experience.
προσκυνήσουσιν τῷ πατρὶ ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ
There is good ambiguity in the literal interpretation of the word ‘προσκυνήσουσιν’ that integrates a physical act. It establishes participation in a religious ritual as well as participating in the invisible dimension of the divine that reciprocates such act.
In using the word of the ‘father’ as ‘τω πατρί’ Jesus’s words provide us with more information the much-debated topic of the ‘trinity’. In interpreting that worship is directed towards the ‘father’, it is reasonable to ask, where does this leave the ‘son’ in its equation? Is the act of worship directed towards the father but not the son? What part of the worship can be accurately attributed to the father but not to the son?
An explanation of this part of the passage shows that forms of biblical interpretation matter for how religious contents harbour topics of debate between communities. It is possible to misunderstand the context of what is communicated by assuming how Jesus names the recipient worshipers as the main subject of self-directing the worship. Yet, in doing so, it is possible we ignore the medium through which such act of worship becomes carried out as an actual human act. Jesus identifies with the Father when God does not have a gender in the way we think of genders in a human context. Such statement affirms that Jesus is referring to God as an entity that is beyond and outside gender-designations. Spirit and Truth become the intermediate conditions that enable an act of worship to become ‘acceptable’. Why is this so? If worship was confined within the actual profundity of an act or ritual, then the human intentions would matter to a much lesser extent apart from performing the act. However, this is not the case. Personal intentions matter for how God is considered and how worship becomes a point of connection with such entity.
Εν πνεύματι και αλήθεια
The bulk of one’s religious experience can be identified because of what the person is doing (as previously mentioned). Such act can be an act of one’s physical access to a religious ritual. Enacting them allows the person to achieve access of a divine realm. In proposing one’s authenticity of worship is dependent on its spiritual dimension (i.e. spirit) as well as truth Jesus identifies in a nutshell the gist of a person’s understanding for what constitutes a genuine Christian experience.
Both the spirit and ‘truth’ remain beyond the scope of a physical reality. The physical senses remain limited in attesting the colour, odour, or shape of an object when such shape can take different forms simultaneously. In this sense, ‘truth’ becomes an escaping reality whose significance is only acquired through the life of the person. Hence, truth is not simply what the person might be able to communicate with words at a particular point in time. Rather, it is a state of being that defines the individual’s inner qualities.
In contrast to the need for finding access to a sacred location, as it would have been the custom for the people of that society, Jesus identifies that meeting the divine can only be done in spirit because such entity can only be understood in spiritual terms. In the exposition of Jesus’s encounter with Nicodemus it is firmly established that God is spirit. However, the person is also comprised of spirit as much his/her thinking faculties are concerned.
In thinking of worship in terms of approaching God in the ‘spirit’, it follows, that what Jesus describes, is the development of the person’s inner/psychic properties that can only be manifested through the power of reflexivity, emotion and reason. Such wide range elements of the human personality address the ‘spiritual’ side but not as information and rational knowledge only. These are properties of the human self that come in touch with religious practices when religion is subjected to a set of doctrines. However, here, the experience of the divine is constituted through the person’s own awareness of his/her self. It is the personalization of such a spiritual condition in the perspon that transcends the material dimension of human existence as we know it.
Such statement proposes that one’s relationship with God cannot be coded or reduced to a mere of physical events. Performing an event might seem adequate to produce some relationality with the divine. In trying to make contact with an entity that exists as a ‘spirit’, the person is encouraged to place in motion faculties that reside in the dimension that cannot be made explicit. The side that can be of communication with the divine remains the side of the person’s existence where elements of one’s faith become the primary faculties that eventually undertake the bulk work of translating God’s existence/identity.
καὶ γὰρ ὁ πατὴρ τοιούτους ζητεῖ τοὺς προσκυνοῦντας αὐτόν.
This sentence becomes the epitome of Jesus’s firm attestation to the Samaritan woman’s inquiry about authentic forms of worship. Such statement clears the skey about the meaning of one’s religious dedication. In stating ‘ὁ πατὴρ τοιούτους ζητεῖ’ Jesus clearly ascribes that these are the type of people the Father wants or seeks. Why is this so?
Jesus makes a statement that is beyond comprehension to an ill-qualified individual. This person lack formal training. Why is it made? Clearly, itt carries depth and shutters the boundaries of organized religion and subsequent forms of its institutionalization.
A desire of the divine realm is directed in communities whose solemn desire is not manifested through the physical performing of religious rituals. Such practices reveal much but can mean very little when they are not attuned with the sentiments that give rise to their significance.
Communities that seek to establish formal boundaries for what can be considered as a legitimate place of worship need to consider the ambiguity in Jesus’s statements. Establishing the human conditions for seeking a connection with the divine is not limited to what the divine can do, but rather, what people can bring during their searching for it.
Spirit and Truth encapsulate two significant elements. They can produce change in the human experiencewhen coming to terms with the sacred and the profane, not as abstracted ideas, but rather as pivotal elements that tackle the big questions about human existence.