In Spirit and in Truth

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... and for everything
which is natural


“On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 1:4&5 NIV)

We talked about the possible meaning of “being baptized with the Holy Spirit,” and what it had meant to us when as Mennonite-raised youth we were challenged at camp to accept the Spirit’s baptism. We went through the Pentecostalist “evidence” of being spirit-gifted: the tongue speaking, the ecstatic utterance, the sense of being touched by a divine presence, the expectations of the miraculous; and some of us acknowledged that we’d lived our entire lives with faith in God’s providence, but had no ecstatic, life-altering, watershed experience to witness to.  

I thought of Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman at the well, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” (John 4:23, NIV) And I wondered about the prayers and songs we utter as worship in church; I questioned whether I, or you, or they are offering their worship in the intended manner: that is to say, “in spirit and in truth.”

I think I get the “in truth” part; why would anyone fudge the truth in worship at the same time as knowing that the object of one’s worship is omniscient? Unless it be to show our best side, hide our downsides. And maybe the “in spirit” part follows on his teaching the woman at the well that to worship God, one need not be in Jerusalem like the Jews or on a mountain like the Samaritans, that the physical rituals of worship are not of the essence; but rather the mindful, soulful unity with your creator that enables, possibly initiates worship even when alone in the desert on a non-Sabbath, after-sunset fading of the day-- in spirit and in truth.

Spirit, I think, is what keeps strong families strong. That’s not a definition, but an attempt at finding a metaphor that might help us understand Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman. A biological dad can say to a transgressing daughter, “get out of my house; you are no longer a child of mine!” Even so, can the mindful, soulful bond be broken with angry words? Is it possible to destroy the spirit like burning a piece of paper? Does a brother cease to be a brother when far away, out of sight and out of mind; or in a gutter, homeless? Does a prodigal son cease being a son? The soulful, mindful bond doesn’t depend on being in Jerusalem or on a mountain; the tie that binds is “spirit-ual.”

Neither does the creator of life—be he/she/they unimaginably distant and remote—cease to be the giver of life. Each breath I take, each step I take, each song I sing, each experience of love given and received is a reminder that I needn’t be in Jerusalem or on a high mountain to breathe, to walk, to sing, to give and receive love.

Perhaps being mindful, soulful of that again and again is a clue to “worship given in spirit and in truth.” Perhaps it’s true that living a mindful, soulful life and “worship given in spirit and in truth” are the same thing. Unbounded by time or place.

I’ve quoted this poem by e.e. cummings (1894-1962) before. To me, it’s a worship hymn offered in spirit and in truth:

I thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

 

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