— Midweek Meditations:
thoughts, inspiration and encouragement
from ACF community members —
“God is spirit, and those that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24)
Many years ago, I heard this verse chanted in a recording of an Ash Wednesday Evensong. Twelve years later, in 2006, I almost died in a taxi accident in Harare, Zimbabwe, and as I lay in hospital with 16 fractures, this verse repeated and repeated in my consciousness, to the same chant as at that Evensong.
What do you think it means to worship God in spirit, and in truth?
I have an intuitive understanding of what it means to worship God in spirit. In my thinking, this is tied to the Great Commandment: “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” – ie. not so much to do with unthinking participation in rituals – and to the idea that worship is not confined to a particular place. I struggle more to understand what it means to worship God in truth. I have read, and this makes sense to me, that we must worship according to the truth of Jesus’ person and work. For Jesus Himself declares that He is the truth (John 14:6).
One of the things that strikes me when reading the Gospels, is how tough Jesus is on those who are arrogant, self-righteous and those who try to be “clever” rather than sincere in their interaction with Him, and how gentle he is on those who interact with Him in sincerity, acknowledge their imperfections and inadequacies, those who do not try to cover up their sins (even while Jesus often points these people in a better direction). To my way of thinking, this is part of the “truth” of Jesus. May we emulate Him!
It was to a Samarian woman (Jesus was Jewish, and customarily would not have had interaction with Samarians let alone a Samarian woman), one who had had five husbands and now was living with another man – but who had answered him truthfully – that Jesus declares that true worshipers will no longer worship God in Jerusalem (for Jews) or on the mountains (for Samarians), but in spirit and truth. And it is to this woman, a woman rather than a man, a Samarian rather than a Jew, and to a person deeply compromised by “religious” standards, that Jesus first explicitly assents that He is the “Messiah (who is called Christ)” in the Gospel according to John.
Being mindful and prayerfully trying to emulate Jesus’ life and moral example, and trying to uphold his moral teachings, might not be sufficient for our salvation but, in my view, are fundamental to worshiping God “in truth”.
What does this have to do with these deeply contentious times?
As already mentioned, Jesus was Jewish. As I have sought to understand the societal morality God demands of Jewish people and Jewish society, and now of us Christians, as I try to understand what worship in truth might entail, I think I gained some insight from the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the (orthodox) United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. He writes in his preface to Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Contentious Times (2020), that Judaism “has had an almost unbroken conversation on the nature of a good society since the days when Abraham was charged to teach his children “the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just” (Gen. 18:19)… Love your neighbor. Love the stranger. Hear the cry of the otherwise unheard. Liberate the poor from their poverty. Care for the dignity of all. Let those who have more than they need share their blessings with those who have less. Feed the hungry, house the homeless, and heal the sick in body and mind. Fight injustice, whoever it is done by and whoever it is done against. And do these things because, being human, we are bound by a covenant of human solidarity, whatever our color or culture, class or creed. These are moral principles, not economic or political ones. They have to do with conscience, not wealth or power. But without them, freedom will not survive.”
I cannot think of any way in which Jesus through his life and teaching contradicted these moral principles, principles recorded in the Old Testament and embedded in Judaism, principles summarized by Jesus in “love your neighbor as yourself”. In my view they remain our true, God-given guides not only to building good, free society but, through the exercise of our Jesus-inspired consciences, what it means to worship God “in truth”.
The ACF Midweek Meditations
are written by a diverse group of our church members with the intention to seek God’s fingerprints in our lives. They range from somber to humorous and are inspired by all facets of live and faith. Written by ordinary people from all walks of life, they reflect a wide range of Christian backgrounds and spiritualities.
Each week’s text portrays the individual viewpoint of its author. They might not always resonate with everyone, and are not meant to be understood as representing the Anglican Church Freiburg as a whole. Yet, as a church that is aiming to ‘Build a Community of Grace’ we seek to practice learning from and listening to one another.
We pray that these humble ponderings add a small spark of blessing to your week.
Freiburg Anglican Church 