Слово в неделю о самаряныне, сказанное в Предтеченской церкви архиерейского дома 20-го апреля 1858 года.

“The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23). All of us, brothers, without a doubt, would like to be true worshipers of the heavenly Father. Therefore, it is very important for all of us to know what it means to worship Him “in spirit and in truth.” It is all the more important that there are people around us who call themselves spiritual Christians, who misinterpret these words of the Savior and, on the basis of them, reject all external worship that we contain. And we will understand the true meaning of these words if we consider them in the entire composition of the speech in which they are found, and not fragmentarily, as wrong-thinkers usually do, and if we compare them with other places of Holy Scripture, which also speaks of the true worship of God. The Samaritan wife, talking with Jesus Christ, whom she initially mistook for a simple Jew, soon saw that He was a prophet (John 4:19) and wanted to propose to Him for resolution the issue that was then the subject of a dispute between the Samaritans and the Jews and was considered the most important. The question was: where should God be worshiped and public worship performed - whether on Mount Garizin, where the Samaritan church was located, or in Jerusalem, where the Jewish church stood, and therefore - which worship, which divine service is better, more pleasing to God, Samaritan or Jewish. Answering this question, which contained, as it were, two halves, the Savior raises the thought of the Samaritan wife to another, higher worship and divine service, which He brought to earth, and which is much more perfect, both Samaritan and Jewish. “Woman, by them, I believe,” He said, resolving the first part of the question, “for the hour is coming, when you will worship the Father, neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem” (John 4:21), that is, when true worship and divine service will not be tied either to Mount Garizin or to Jerusalem, but will be performed throughout the whole earth, in every place. Here the first superiority of Christian worship over Jewish and Samaritan worship is indicated. Judaism could, according to the law, be performed only in the Jerusalem temple; the Samaritans were performed only on Mount Garizin. Consequently, both were local and could not become common to the entire human race. The Christian faith is intended for all people and is weighted to all peoples; Therefore, Christian worship should be performed everywhere; Christian churches can be established in all countries of the world and are not tied to any specific place. In response to the last part of the question, the Lord said to the Samaritan woman: “You, Samaritans, “bow to him without knowing; we, the Jews, “bow before him: for there is salvation from the Jews” (John 4:22), that is, your worship of God is false: for it is known that the Samaritans were pagans and although they accepted the law of Moses, they did not cease, however, “to serve their idols according to the custom of the tongues” (2 Kings 17:33); and our Jewish worship is true: for the Jews contained the true revelation of God and salvation was to shine from Judea for the whole world. But, the Lord continued, despite the fact that the Jewish worship of God is true and better than the Samaritan, “the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father,” not only not as the Samaritans worship, and not even as the Jews worship, but they will worship Him in spirit and truth: “in the spirit” - in contrast to the Samaritan worship, which is exclusively sensual; “truth” - in contrast to Jewish, symbolic and representative worship. The Samaritans, although they “feared the Lord” (2 Kings. 17:32–33), although they honored Jehovah, they also worshiped soulless idols; therefore, all their worship was limited to external rituals and sensory sacrifices. The Jews worshiped the true God, God the Spirit, and therefore, while offering sensory sacrifices to Him, at the same time they ascended to Him in spirit and faith in the coming Messiah, even confessing that “the sacrifice to God is a broken spirit” (Psalm 50:19); but their very sacrifices, which constituted the essence of their external worship, were only a “shadow of future good things,” and not the truth (Heb. 10:1), prefigured the great sacrifice offered on Calvary and offered daily in Christian churches. In this sense, the ritual law of the Old Testament is opposed to grace and truth and says: “the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth were made by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Therefore, the second, most important superiority of Christian worship and Divine service lies in the fact that, contrary to the Samaritan, it is not limited to sensual rites alone, but is also spiritual, and, contrary to the Jewish, does not consist in the offering of representative sacrifices, but in the offering of the true sacrifice - Christ. Christians believe that God is Spirit, and therefore, while worshiping Him with the body, they inseparably worship Him with the spirit, and consider external worship alone without internal worship to be unworthy of God. They believe that they received the boldness to worship the Heavenly Father only because of the merits of His only begotten Son on the cross, and therefore the basis or focus of all their public worship is the offering of a bloodless sacrifice and they send their prayers to the Heavenly Father only “in the name” of Jesus Christ, “full of grace and truth” (John 14:14; 1:14). After this, you can judge whether pseudo-spiritual Christians rightly think that worshiping God in spirit and truth excludes all external worship and divine service. But such speculation, contrary to the meaning of the entire speech of the Savior with the Samaritan woman, is no less contrary to other places in the Word of God about true Christian worship and Divine service. Here, for example, is how, back in the Old Testament, God Himself prophesied to the Jews about the abolition of their representative Divine service and its replacement with a new, most perfect one: “And the doors will be shut in you, and you will not light fire on the altar of My tuna: My will is not in you, says the Lord Almighty, and I will not accept sacrifice at your hands. From the east of the sun to the west, my name was glorified among the nations, and in every place incense was offered to my name, and the sacrifice was pure” (Mal. 1:10-11). Isn’t it obvious here that the same high advantages of Christian worship are indicated, in comparison with the Jewish ones, which are indicated in the Savior’s conversation with the Samaritan woman, namely, that it will be performed in every place and will consist of offering incense and a pure, true sacrifice to God? Is the offering of incense and sacrifice possible without external actions? But in order to more accurately understand the meaning of the prophecy, let us move our thoughts to the event itself and see how Christ really established the offering of this pure sacrifice and commanded his followers to bring it: “and Jesus received “bread,” we read in the Gospel, “and he blessed and broke, and gave to the disciples and said: Take, eat: this is My body; do this in remembrance of Me. And having received the cup and given praise, he gave it to them, saying: drink of it, all of you: this is My blood of the new testament, which was shed for many for the remission of sins; Do this, as often as you drink, in remembrance of Me” (Matt. 26:26–28; Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:23–25). Isn’t it clear to everyone that the offering of a pure, New Testament sacrifice must be performed under the sensual forms of bread and wine and must be combined with sensual actions: offering praise to God, blessing and breaking bread? However, without further touching on the offering of the New Testament sacrifice, which constitutes, as it were, the focus of the actual public Christian worship, we will propose two more questions - in general about the true worship of God. Did our Lord Jesus Christ worship his heavenly Father “in spirit” “and in truth” during his earthly life? Did they worship St. “in spirit” “and in truth?” apostles? Without any doubt. Meanwhile, the Lord Jesus “lifted up his eyes to heaven” when he prayed, and expressed his prayer in sensual words (John 17:1), the Lord Jesus even “fell on his face, praying” in the garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39). The apostles “Peter and John ascended into the sanctuary” of Jerusalem “to pray at the ninth hour” (Acts 3:1), and this was after the descent of the Holy Spirit on them. The Apostle Paul, having gathered to himself and instructed in detail the elders of Ephesus, in conclusion, “kneel with them all and pray” (Acts 20:36). And all the apostles “raised their voice” “to God” during prayer and expressed it in sensual words (Acts 4:24). Is it possible after this to doubt that worshiping God in spirit and truth does not at all exclude bodily prayer signs and should be combined with external worship? Let us not cease, my brothers, from worshiping our heavenly Father “in spirit and in truth,” just as our Lord Himself worshiped Him, as the saints worshiped Him. the apostles, as we had hitherto worshiped Him: to worship “in the spirit,” however, expressing our inner worship through external prayerful actions and “glorifying God not only in our souls, but also in our bodies” (1 Cor. 6:20); to worship “in truth”, always being present with faith at the performance of a bloodless sacrifice and in general during public worship. And rest assured that we will then remain true worshipers of God, as we have been before and as all true Orthodox Christians should be. Amen. You might be interested in: