Worship at the well: From Dogmatics to doxology (and back again)

Trinity Journal, Spring 2002 by Vanhoozer, Kevin J

WORSHIP AT THE WELL: FROM DOGMATICS TO DOXOLOGY (AND BACK AGAIN)*

I. INTRODUCTION: WELLS, WOMEN, AND WORSHIP

Lake County, as the name itself indicates, hardly resembles the and lands of Palestine, where having access to water is a matter of life and death. Like everything else, the value of water is determined by the laws of supply and demand. There will always be a demand for water, for it is essential to life. No wonder that water is such an important image in the Bible.' As Americans and Europeans build cities on rivers, so in Palestine communities formed around supplies of fresh water, such as wells. Wells became social centers, a place to meet one's future wife.

Imagine my surprise, then, upon receiving notice not long ago from the Lake County Department of Public Works informing me of the contents of our drinking water which, it turns out, comes from a well! Although I do not know just where this well is, I strongly suspect it is no longer the best place to meet girls. In any case, I now know the contents of my drinking water, down to the last micron. Besides a number of natural minerals, there are various chemical contaminants, maybe even a radioactive isotope or two, though all well within what the EPA considers acceptable limits.

My interest here is on the last in the series of biblical stories of meetings at the well, the account of Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4. Water is a rich theological theme in the Fourth Gospel. Jesus mentions water in John 15 in connection with regeneration ("born of water and the Spirit"), but here in chap. 4 it is well water that is in view in a conversation that eventually leads to teaching about the nature of proper worship. While it may not be the locus classicus on the subject, our passage in many respects does seem to represent the final word on right worship.

We get our English word "worship" from an old English term that referred to a person of worth: your "worth-ship."2 What do we do when we worship? We acknowledge and celebrate God's worth.3 In worship we come together to remember and to respond to who God is and to what God has done for us. In short, we come together to do theology, though in a form that is more informal, participatory, and musical than it is systematic.

Given the confusion that reigns at present over the nature and style of worship, it would be nice to know: what would Jesus do on Sunday morning? Where would Jesus go to worship? How would he worship? Would he prefer high-church liturgy or low-church choruses? Smells and bells or acoustical guitar and drums? Perhaps no other passage gives us a better clue as to how to answer these WWJD questions than John 4.4 Augustine's comment about Jesus' discourse with the Samaritan woman is apt: "great mysteries were stated there, and analogies of great matters."5

IL L'AFFAIRE SAMARITAN. LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

A. The Larger Historical Context: Worship Wars

We begin by considering the broader historical context of John 4: "l'affaire Samaritan." The Samaritans were a mixed race, descended from the remnant of Israelites who were not deported by Assyria after the fall of the northern kingdom in 722 B.C. and from the foreign colonists brought in from Babylon and beyond by the Assyrian conquerors. We learn of the origin of the Samaritans in 2 Kings 17.

1. Worship War I: Where? What Place?

The woman's claim (4:12) that Jacob left the well to his descendants the Samaritans is a tradition that has no biblical support. The well itself, however, is "perhaps the most identifiable site in modern Israel connected with the ministry of Jesus."6

Some earlier commentators thought that the woman's five husbands stood for the five gods of the nations that formed ancient Samaria, since the Hebrew word for "husband" is ba'al, also the name for pagan deities. Josephus mentions "Five nations . . . each brought its own god to Samaria." The sixth-Yahweh-was not really a husband, that is, one to whom the people had an exclusive commitment. However, by the time of our episode-the first century-the Samaritans were confirmed monotheists.

When the woman begins to realize that Jesus is a prophet, she quickly turns to one of the most controversial theological questions of her day, namely, the location of the religious center of the world. There was a long-standing opposition between the Jews and Samaritans over the right place of worship. According to Samaritan tradition, Mount Gerizim, at whose foot Jacob's well was located, was the mountain where Abraham had climbed to sacrifice Isaac.

Because the Samaritans recognized only the Pentateuch as authoritative, references later in the OT stipulating worship at the Jerusalem temple were not considered binding. The Samaritans actually made the obligation to worship on Mt. Gerizim a part of the Decalogue.7 Differences were accentuated after the Jews returned from the Babylonian exile, when the Samaritans put obstacles in the way of the restoration of Jerusalem and the temple. Finally, in the second century B.C. the Samaritans helped the Syrian monarchs in their wars against the Jews, a favor the Jews returned by destroying the Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim in 128 B.C. "Worship wars" indeed!