2nd March 2026

2nd March 2026


Pray (ACts)


Read (John 4:16-42 focus v16-26)


Message (Alan Burke) 


I’m not often topical, but here, did you see that photo of Andrew Mountbatten‑Windsor in the back of the car when he was arrested? Of course you did, unless you were living under a rock; it was everywhere for a few days. The picture is one of someone who has had the foundations of his world shaken. I’m not going to get into the ins and outs of what Andrew has done or not done, but there are lots of things in our past that we wouldn’t be happy for the world to know. Maybe not you, because I know you’re like Mary Poppins and practically perfect in every way, but there are lots of things in my life that I look back with regret. Before you’re panicking that I’m going to like Andrew get lifted by the police, as far as I know there is nothing that would get me a custodial sentence, but the sin within me is such that even my best intentions have hurt others. We come to a passage that Jesus displays as he displays his supernatural knowledge of this Samaritan woman’s life. 


While we know who Jesus is, we have already been confronted in John’s gospel of his divinity, how he was True God, and that as a result, he knew all people; he himself knew what was in man (Jn 2:24–25), so the supernatural knowledge that Jesus has of this woman and her circumstances isn’t surprising to us. But think of the surprise that there would have been within her, as she responds to Jesus “I have no husband”; it was an attempt by her to keep her privacy and a semblance of respectability. Yet as Jesus speaks, he reveals knowledge about her that from a human point of view was impossible and tears away the facade: this woman had five husbands, and the woman that she was now with is not her husband. This woman would have been through the mill. The question of Jesus was not to attach blame to her, it was not to point the finger, but to confront her with the shattered hopes of her life. She need not hide it though, not from Jesus; he knows the ins and outs of her life; she perceives that Jesus is a prophet for he knew her life circumstances. 


It helps us to understand why she was there, drawing water at the hottest part of the day, and the words of Jesus would have left her feeling vulnerable. After all this, the man whom she had never clapped eyes on before a few moments ago knew her; he had knowledge of things that she would not have been able to explain away. Hence, she recognises that he is a prophet. But notice she tries immediately to move the topic from herself to worship. She might have actually wanted an answer to this, but it’s more of a smoke screen to distract. Without getting into the debate between Jews and Samaritans, Jesus takes her to how someday soon that it will not matter. The hour is coming, the hour being when Jesus would be crucified for the sins of many, that worshippers would worship in spirit and truth (see Jn 12:27). At that time, debates between Jews and Samaritans will not matter. 


To worship in Spirit is to worship in the Holy Spirit, worship in his power; when this happens, the place becomes irrelevant, for we are in Christ, united to him by the Spirit of God within us. We can only worship in Spirit if we are in Christ, if we have been born of the Spirit as Jesus had already told Nicodemus (Jn 3:1-8). To worship in truth, well, if you fast forward to John 14:6, Jesus says I am the way, the truth, and the life. To worship in Truth is to worship through Christ. True worshipers, those who worship the Father, worship in the Spirit through Christ. This is the kind of worship that God had always wanted from his people, that he would be worshiped in Spirit and truth (Is 29:13-14). Our God knows us better than we know ourselves; he knows the very hairs on our head or the increasing lack of them in my case, and if we drink of the living water that Christ offers, then we worship him in Spirit and truth, born again, able to approach our heavenly Father through what he has done on our behalf. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q4 What is God?
A. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
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