God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth

Christ Pantocrator, dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (cropped), mosaic.  Old City of Jerusalem.  Copyright Andrew Shiva (courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

 Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here."  The woman answered and said, "I have no husband."  Jesus said to her, "You have well said, 'I have no husband,' for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly."  The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.  Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship."  Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.  You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.  But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.  God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."  The woman said to Him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ).  "When He comes, He will tell us all things."  Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am He."

- John 4:16-26

Yesterday we read that when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), He left Judea and departed again to Galilee.  But He needed to go through Samaria.  So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.  Now Jacob's well was there.  Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well.  It was about the sixth hour.   A woman of Samaria came to draw water.  Jesus said to her, "Give Me a drink."  For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.  Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?"  For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.  Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water."  The woman said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.  Where then do You get that living water?  Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?"  Jesus answered and said to her, "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.  But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life."  The woman said to Him, "Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw."

 Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here."  The woman answered and said, "I have no husband."  Jesus said to her, "You have well said, 'I have no husband,' for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly."  The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet."  As Jesus knows already that she was living with a man without being married, and also He knew about her string of husbands, this woman perceives that Jesus is a prophet.  My study bible explains that the Samaritans did not accept any prophets after Moses.  The only prophet they expected was the Messiah who was foretold by Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15-18).  Jesus' insight into the hearts of people, which is revealed many times in the Gospels, is an underscoring of His divine nature.

The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.  Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship."  Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.  You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.  But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.  God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."   My study bible explains that if Jesus was the expected Prophet (as foretold by Moses; see above), then He could settle the historical argument between the Samaritans and the Jews regarding where worship was to take place.  Jesus does not answer this very "earthly" question; instead His message is elevated to the manner in which people ought to worship, and toward the new covenant.  Moreover, my study bible says, He turns attention to the One whom we worship:  God.  The Father is worshiped in spirit -- that is, in the Holy Spirit -- and in truth -- which is in Christ Himself (14:6) and according to Christ's revelation.  God is Spirit:  This means, in contrast to the assumption behind the question this woman poses, that God cannot be confined to a particular location.  My study bible says that those who receive the Holy Spirit and believe in Jesus Christ can worship God the Father with purity of heart.  Salvation is of the Jews:   Here Christ affirms that true revelation comes from Judaism.  My study bible quotes St. Athanasius:  "The commonwealth of Israel was the school of the knowledge of God for all the nations."  Moreover, Jesus testifies here that the Messiah, prophesied among the Jews, has risen from among the Jews.  While the gift of salvation in Christ is to all nations, my study bible says, it has come from within Judaism.  The hour (or "time") to which Jesus will repeatedly refer in John's Gospel, is that of the death and Resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, thus inaugurating the worship of the new covenant. 

The woman said to Him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ).  "When He comes, He will tell us all things."  Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am He."  Jesus' statement, translated as "I who speak to you am He," is literally "I AM (ego eimi/εγω ειμι in the Greek), who speak to you."  I AM is the divine Name of God as given to Moses (Exodus 3:14).  My study bible says that the use of the Name indicates a theophany, or revelation of God.  The use of this Name by a mere human being was considered to be blasphemy and therefore punishable by death (see 8:58; Mark 14:62).  But as Jesus is divine, His use of the Name is a revelation of His unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit; in fact, He is God Incarnate.

This Name, I AM, or I AM WHO I AM (see Exodus 3:14) is also the Name from which is derived the word YHWH (also called the Tetragrammaton, from the four Hebrew consonants given in the Scripture) or Yahweh, which was later Latinized to Jehovah.   It was also substituted with "the Lord" in the Old Testament (Septuagint).  However we look at, think about, or pronounce the Name, it is such a sacred name to utter that it is unthinkable that Christ would use it in any way but with the most hallowed reverence possible.   To use it as a mere mortal, as my study bible pointed out, was unthinkable.  And yet, in another astonishing fact of this story, Jesus does use this name for Himself, and He uses it before a Samaritan woman.  That He is even speaking to this woman in the first place is astonishing and remarkable.  He is a Jewish man alone with a woman, and it is already unlikely that He would be speaking to any woman who was not a relative or one He knew well.   For the second remarkable fact here, she is Samaritan, and as the text tells us in yesterday's reading (above), "Jews have no dealings with Samaritans."  And so, putting all of this together, we have the nearly-impossible-to-believe happening at this well:  Christ speaks to a Samaritan woman, and He reveals Himself as God to her.  How is this even possible?  We may well wonder even 2,000 years later.  But all of this juxtaposed together makes for something even more startling in addition.  Jesus begins by admonishing the woman that He knows about her string of husbands.  She can't hide anything from Him.  He knows her whole history.  All of these aspects of this story, taken together, indicate for us something powerful about the words Jesus teaches here:  that there is no place where God "isn't."  In the most intimate depths of this woman's heart and history, God is there and sees and knows all.  In this strange conversation between a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well (the place where Jacob realized, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it" and "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!" - Genesis 28:16-17 ), God is present.  It is a kind of affirmation within the already-affirmative emphasis of Jesus' words, that God is indeed everywhere present (as in the words of a prayer to the Holy Spirit), and that "true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.  God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."    Jesus uses the holy Name, I AM, and indeed the meaning of that name is that God is everywhere present:  within us and without us, everywhere we go, and present within whatever is happening in our lives, and whatever has happened and will happen.  He is there and accessible in spirit and in truth -- through faith.  What we have, then, is a depth of illustration both through the words of Christ and the events of this story, which teaches us that there is no dimension of life in which God is not omnipresent.  In the Orthodox prayer to the Holy Spirit, which begins every worship service, the phrase reads that He is "everywhere present and filling all things."  And so it is.  Christ's I AM tells us so much more than we are capable of imagining.  As John's Gospel repeatedly reiterates, the only thing that cuts us off from God's presence is our refusal of the gift Christ bears into the world through the Incarnation.  In Orthodox icons of Christ, we can see the Greek words Ω ΟΝ in the "halo" or nimbus around His head.  This is taken from the Name, and is frequently translated as "He Who Is" or "the One Who Is."  But it is more literally translated as "The Be."   The icon above is from the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and is an example of Christ Pantocrator, or "Almighty."    The I AM or Ω ΟΝ reminds us that God is not simply "up there" but rather truly everywhere present, the God Who Is, the One always available through our faith and prayer, and for all things, who can reach anyone, anytime, any place.  There are no limits to that presence.  Our God revealed Himself even to this woman at the well on a hot desert day at noon in Samaria, home of the enemies of the Jews.  Let us never forget we are all called by the One who sees in secret and knows us better than we know ourselves.