Insights
Rev Gav
Why does Theology matter?
John 4.5-42
So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
Reflect
Theology is the study of God. ‘Theo’ means God and ‘ology’ comes from the word ‘logos’ meaning words, so theology is ‘words about God’. And theology matters. What we think about God matters because it shapes how we live and have our being. For example, if we think of God as being a misogynistic, tyrannical dictator, then we will live in fear of being smited; watching out for those lightning bolts being fired from the sky. Or, if we think of God as being loving and inclusive then we will feel accepted and loved and extend that welcome to others.
The truth is, we all have a theology — even if we are atheist or agnostic. We all have thoughts about God and it is true to say that there are many different views about God — perhaps as many as there are people — but because theology matters, the truth about God is a cause worthy of pursuit.
We must endeavour to have an open mind and be willing to be shocked, surprised, or challenged in our knowledge. We must be willing to be critical of our understanding, recognising that the pursuit of truth is a journey, and that we are not infallible. God is bigger and better than we can imagine and if we think we have God all sewn up and in a box then we will never grow in our knowledge and understanding.
One of the first things we can do is recognise that we all bring preconceived ideas and assumptions to the table. We all have a worldview and look through the lens of that worldview. We all have experiences that shape and mould us. We were all brought up in a culture that influenced us. We were all raised in families or relationships that formed us. For example, we may have been nurtured by parents, carers, or teachers who were atheists and we learned that God does not exist. Or, perhaps we were raised by strict, religious zealots who indoctrinated us into fixed ideas about who God is and what God is like.
Whatever our upbringing and education, it is important to recognise that we have a view about God and that view has been influenced heavily by our social, educational, and cultural context.
So, then, how do we go about the pursuit of the knowledge of God? How do we know which path is the right one? How can we know which bits of our assumed knowledge we should keep and which should be consigned to the trash can?
Every Sunday, when we gather for worship in our church building with its skyward pointing tower, we do our best to meet with God and to have an experience with God. For some, they encounter God through the special words, for others the devotional music, some through the act of breaking bread, some through the sense of sacred space, others through the silence, yet others through the acts of love and service from friends. There are as many ways of encountering God as there are facets to our human characters and there is no one-size-fits-all.
What is important is that we do not try and manufacture emotion or whip people up — we simply allow people to come into God’s presence and let God minister to them as God sees fit. And when people do encounter God for the first time, well, then we can collectively share our wisdom and understanding — what those of us that encountered God a long time ago have learned and experienced. And this is where the Bible comes in.
The Bible is a wonderful collection of recollections, stories, poems, letters, histories, teaching, narratives, and theological affirmations from a community of people that encountered God. Their understanding of the character and nature of God changed over time. Sometimes they got it right, and at other times horribly wrong. They too, like us, were influenced heavily by their cultures and backgrounds and looking at the texts we can understand the context of their writings.
In our pursuit of God, when we look at any aspect of the sciences or humanities, we ask ourselves, given its context, “What does this tell us about the character of God?” We consider everything to have the potential of having some value or something to contribute to our knowledge and understanding. In the same way, when we approach any biblical text we, understanding the context in which it was written, ask the question, “What does this tell me about the character of God?”
This past Sunday we celebrated International Women’s Day, and the set Bible reading was an encounter Jesus had with a Samaritan woman at a well. The context was that Jewish rabbis had strict rules about being distant from both Samaritans and women and yet Jesus engaged her in personal conversation — in fact the account is the longest recorded narrative conversation between Jesus and another person. What does his breaking of social norms tell us about the Character of God? It certainly speaks to me, and as I reflect on this person Jesus and his encounter with the Samaritan woman, it provides another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that forms the picture of what God is like.
The Apostle Paul sums it up in one of his final paragraphs in his letter to the church in the ancient city of Phillippi. He writes,
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me — put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”
It is my prayer that this week, you will encounter God and grow in your knowledge and understanding of what God is like. May you experience God’s grace, mercy, peace, love, acceptance, and forgiveness. Amen.
and then