March 8, 2026

Why Worship?

This lectionary reading from the gospel of John you heard this morning left me scratching my head.  What struck me about the story was the question this woman at the well posed to Jesus.  Put it this way: If Jesus suddenly appeared one day and gave you the opportunity to ask anything you wanted, what would it be?  Now, there’s a thought to set your mind going.  You can ask anything at all, but you have only one question.  How do you spend it?  Do you ask about the meaning of life?  Do you inquire into the reason for suffering?  Do you want to know if he really is who people say that he is, or what he can tell you about the afterlife?  Well, this Samaritan woman at the well had exactly that opportunity.  When Jesus, the stranger, clearly knew every detail about her life and marital history, it was obvious to her that this man was a great prophet who could see into the heart of reality and know the truth.  So what did she ask?  “Sir,” she said, “I see that you are a prophet.  Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Come again?  This is your one big chance to ask a question of the greatest prophet of all time, and you want to know whether you should worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem?  I want to say, “Lady, wake up and smell the coffee!  What are you thinking?”  Well, it was, I suppose, a different time – people had different concerns and issues.  Still, what’s the big deal about where’s the right place to worship?

To tell you the truth, I’m not so sure her question is altogether different from what you and I might ask.  It may seem so on the surface, but let’s give it a deeper look.  Here’s one I think I might be inclined to put at the top of my list: “Tell me, Jesus, what’s this ‘living’ business all about?  Why am I here?  And is there any point in trying to make a difference in world that seems full of people intent on tearing everything apart?”  That’s one any of us might like to put to him, right?

I think the Samaritan woman was asking something surprisingly similar.  Her question was raised in the midst of a legalistic environment that had a clear hierarchy of races and classes, and a well-known set of religious practices that distinguished the good from the evil.  She was a woman of Samaria – two strikes against her.  Women were second class citizens, and Samaritans were considered by the Jews to be an “unclean” race.  Religion in her time was all about performing the right rituals in order to please God and be considered righteous and worthy.  So her question came from the depth of her soul.  In essence it was this: Are you (meaning the Jews) right?  Am I unworthy and unacceptable, because I’m a Samaritan, because I’m a woman, so I don’t worship in the right place?  Is there any hope for me?  That’s really our question to Jesus, isn’t it – at the root of it all?  Is there any hope for me?

Jesus’s answer blasts apart her assumptions and the assumptions of her entire culture.  When she asks where to worship he replies, “Neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.”  They’re discussing worship here, but it’s not the worship of your grandmother dressing you up in your Sunday finest to go be a good little boy or girl in Sunday school.  They’re talking about the heart-shattering and earth shaking question that cries out from the heart of worship – is there any hope for me?

Jesus reframes the whole issue.  He says it’s not about doing the right thing in the right place, so you can be right, and therefore acceptable.  It’s not about winning your hope like the prize in some contest, or lucking out to be part of the right gender or culture like fishing a toy out of a Crackerjacks box.  He is saying that hope is not something that is conferred upon you by merit of your right actions, or thoughts, or place in life, or by singing the right hymns or saying the right prayers.  Hope is something that wells up from within you when your heart is touched by the timeless and boundless Spirit of divine Grace.  Listen to how he answers her.  It’s not about worshiping in the right place, he says.  It’s about the nature of worship itself:  “. . . the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Why do we worship?  Some of us are here because we’re looking for something, because we want to learn something, or experience something, or receive something that will help us get through our days.  And there’s nothing wrong with reaching toward the hand of Eternal Grace for help and guidance.  Some are here because it’s the right thing to do – because praising the Lord is what the Bible tells us to do, and it’s what our parents did, and what’s expected of us.  That also is not a bad thing.  We certainly have plenty of examples throughout our religious history to teach us the value of tradition.  Some are here for reasons they hardly even comprehend.  There’s simply a big question mark in their lives, and they hope that somehow an answer is waiting, maybe in a place like this.  That’s also a good thing.  The unknowns and uncertainties of life are where the real battles are fought, and the greatest victories are won.

But there are great hazards in our natural tendencies that can eat the very heart out of our worship and our fellowship and leave it lifeless and meaningless.  You and I tend to cling to old answers to new questions and familiar patterns that lull us to sleep in our pews.  The great rabbi, professor, theologian, and civil rights activist, Abraham Heschel writes: “It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society.  It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats.  Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid.  When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion – its message becomes meaningless.”¹

Heschel might be paraphrasing the words of Jesus: “. . . the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship . . . in spirit and truth . . . God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”  I would submit that we not here either for our sake, or for the Lord’s sake.  We don’t need a worship service to improve our lives, we’ve got self-help books, therapy sessions, support groups, families and friends that give us plenty of resources for coping.  And if God is God – the unknowable, unnameable, source of all Being – then that Lord of Life doesn’t need us to be here either.  I suspect that the universe will continue to hold together without our hymns and prayers.  No, we’re here because Spirit is drawn to Spirit.  We’re here because truth seeks out truth.  What you are, at the deepest level of existence, connects in these hymns and prayers and words of scripture with the Ground of all Being.  You are more than a collection of body parts, bits of knowledge, memories, and relationships.  In the core of your being there is Spirit – it is a Spirit formed in the mystery of divine creation and called good.  It is a Spirit fashioned at creation in the image of  God, and through ancient rituals and modern praises, that “Götterfunken” – that God-spark – within you comes home to the flame.  And that inner spark of yours is a light amidst the dark world of half-truths, compromises, white lies and equivocations that surround you.  At the deepest level of your being you are an embodiment of the truth that Jesus spoke about – the truth that sets free the captives.  And in the words that spill down from this pulpit, words of scripture, words of challenge, words that anger, and words that inspire, and in the magic of our Sunday gathering, and in the earnestness of our prayers, the spoken prayers and the silences of our hearts, the divine truth that dwells within you embraces the eternal Truth of the ages.  That’s what Jesus was saying: “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth . . . God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

William Willimon says that, “Worship is a countercultural activity in a hedonistic, auto-salvation-oriented, pragmatic, utilitarian society. It is scandalously ‘useless.’  Worship serves no more worthy purpose than the joy of being with the one who loves and is therefore loved.  It ranks somewhere near the top of the list of other useless and purposeless activities such as singing songs, kissing, giving a gift without expecting anything in return, sitting quietly with a good friend, or doing nothing but watching a winter sunset.  We can’t really blame those busy, serious folk who look at worship and wonder, ‘What’s in it for me?’  Their very question answers itself – for someone like them, alas, nothing.”  Willimon goes on to ask the question that challenges us to set ourselves apart from the values and purposes that draw our world into chaos.  He says, “What more revolutionary, subversive activity could one undertake in this ‘Me Generation’ than to be caught singing a doxology?”²

If Jesus surprised any one of us some morning on the street corner, maybe we wouldn’t need to ask him anything at all.  Maybe with enough practice at being here and allowing the spark of our spirit to ignite in the presence of the flame of the Eternal Spirit, and letting divine Truth wash over us and connect with the truth of our own hearts, we might find ourselves no longer desperate for a word of hope.  Maybe we could eventually find ourselves living beyond self-involved purposes, and worshiping for no explicable reason at all.  Perhaps, if Jesus came to any of us and fixed our eyes with his, all that were necessary could be communicated in a smile.

Why worship?  If you must, come seeking guidance.  If it’s in your make-up, come out of tradition or habit or the expectations of others.  If you are so driven, come looking for answers.  But in the end, as you increasingly claim the spark and word that dwell within your bones, come in spirit and in truth, and find here nothing greater and nothing less than your soul’s sweet home.

¹ Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1976, p. 3.

² William Willimon, “Pulpit Resource”, Volume 28, no. 1, p. 41.