Daily Lesson for January 19, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 4 verses 16-24:

16 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ 17The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”;18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ 19The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ 21Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’

Jesus knows this woman. He knows her history — the five husbands and all the pain and shame that have come with them. Jesus knows the woman at the well like he knows all of us. He knows us intimately. He knows our story. He knows what’s been done to us and he knows what we’ve done to ourselves. He knows our secrets. And he wants to talk about our lives. 

But the woman would rather not go there. She switches the conversation to worship. “On which mountain does true worship happen?” she asks. In other words, she basically asks, “What style of worship does your church have? Tell me, can I get my worship on there?”

But Jesus sees through the distraction. 

“True worship,” he says, “must be in spirit and also in truth.” In other words, worship with lots of spirit but no truth is not true worship. It’s distraction. It’s diversion. It never really gets to the depth of our issues — of who we really are.

True worship goes beyond the narcotic of another come and go experience. It gets at us. It tells the truth about us — even the hard truth. 

We don’t much like to look at or talk about the hard truth. But that’s where we have to dig the well, where the living water is — where the healing happens.