John 4:5-42

Jesus’ words echo all the way down to us today and affirm us as we challenge systems that restrict access based on race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and religious gatekeeping today. If what Jesus said is true about access to God, it should also lead us to challenge systems that exclude access to justice. The Samaritan woman, who was marginalized by ethnicity, gender, and social stigma, is treated as a human being with value in John’s story. Her question matters. Her voice is honored. Justice work begins the same way: by centering those most excluded and trusting their questions as genuine sources of divine revelation. “Spirit and truth” resists empty religiosity that divorces worship from lived reality. Truth is not mere doctrine; in John’s Gospel truth is embodied in Jesus’ life-giving, boundary-breaking love, just as the synoptic Gospels define that lived love as concrete justice for those being harmed by Herod’s and the temple’s complicity with Roman exploitation. Worship that ignores oppression, poverty, racism, or patriarchy leads to worshipers who ignore these realities in our material lives as well, and that kind of worship and actions are incomplete. “God is spirit” in this context means that God is much larger than the institutions that try to trap the Divine and control access to it. God is Spirit and that Spirit is present wherever people struggle for for their humanity, liberation, justice, and wholeness. Streets, shelters, protest lines, classrooms, and kitchens all become legitimate spaces of worship when animated by Spirit and truth. The question is no longer where we worship, but how we live, whether our practices align with the liberation, justice, and love we see Jesus modeled towards others in the gospel stories. For more go to renewedheartministries.com

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