It is one of the most stunning passages in the New Testament and all of Scripture. It turns out that the road to God is open to everyone. But, unfortunately, not everyone understands this even today. And today there are cases when a woman comes to a priest, and he drives her away, saying: "After what you have done, I have no right to confess you," although in the literature addressed to the clergy it is constantly emphasized that there is no such sin that would not be forgiven to the penitent. Repentance is possible in any case, and no matter what a person has done, God is always open to him. God can do anything, He can raise a person after the most terrible fall.

The Samaritan woman, thinking that she is a prophet, begins to talk to Him, not about herself, not about her marital status, not about the contempt of people that she undoubtedly feels. No, it speaks of faith. Addressing Jesus, the woman says that the Jews worship God in Jerusalem, and they, the Samaritans, worship on this mountain (meaning Mount Gerizim). And how and where should we worship God correctly? Jesus answers her very simply and clearly: "You do not know what you are bowing to." Later, the Apostle Paul would say the same thing, addressing the Athenians: "This is this, whom you worship without knowing it, I preach to you" (Acts 17:23). The religion of the Samaritans has moved so far away from Revelation that they no longer seem to know Whom they honor. They do not know the books of the prophets, they read only the Pentateuch in some of their own, Samaritan version, they no longer know, they do not feel Whom they revere. In other words, the point here is that those who profess other religions, not knowing but still honoring God, still worship Him, although they do not know Him.

The Samaritans worship God without knowing Him. "But we know what we worship," says Jesus, "for salvation is from the Jews." Through the Jews, God speaks through the mouth of the prophet. From among the Jews came Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Amos, and other prophets. But the time will come, and it has already come, says Jesus, when you will not worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. This is a very important, although at first glance paradoxical formulation. "The time will come" means that it has not yet come. And immediately - "and it has already come". It's already here. It's already here, it's a time that's just coming. An extremely important point for understanding the Gospel: Christianity is the religion of the future, but of the future that is already here, which has already come, which is already experienced by us. And we speak of this at every Divine Liturgy, thanking God for the fact that He has "granted thee the kingdom to come." "Thou hast granted" means that Thou hast already granted the future kingdom. The Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, eternal life, is something from the realm of the future, but this future has already been granted to us. This is also indicated by the phrase: "For the hour is coming, and now is..." – "But the time will come, and it has already come."

And so the time is coming when "ye shall not worship the Father on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem." God here is not simply called God, Creator and Creator, no, here He is called the Father: "They will worship the Father in spirit and truth..." What truth is, we more or less imagine. Truth liberates if we know it: "And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:32). The truth is revealed to us in Christ. The truth is He Himself, because to Pilate's question, "What is truth?" each of us would probably answer, "Here is the Truth, it stands before you in the person of Jesus." And He Himself says: "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Today, in Russian, "truth" means "truth", but in the Slavic language, "truth" means "justice". The word "truth" translates the Greek word "justice" into the Slavic language, and it is not difficult to understand that truth and truth, truth and justice are different things. What we mean today by the word "truth" means what is not invented, what really is, namely "aletheia" or truth.

"To worship God in truth" means to conduct a dialogue with Him, to really feel His presence, not to invent Him, but to be in a real connection with Him, in a real relationship. And what does it mean to "worship in the spirit"? The word "spirit" appears on almost every page of the Bible. But we know that in one case it is translated into Russian as "spirit", and in others as "wind", that it is not something abstract, incomprehensible – it is something reminiscent of Breath or touch. When the prophet Elijah waits for God to appear to him, he says that there will be "a great and strong wind that rends the mountains and breaks the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord is not in the wind; after the wind there is an earthquake, but the Lord is not in the earthquake; after the earthquake there is fire, but the Lord is not on fire; after the fire a gentle wind blows (and there is the Lord)." —1 Kings 19:11-12. That is, God tells the prophet what will be revealed to him in the blowing of a gentle wind.

The blowing of a gentle wind is His quiet touch. God, the Holy Spirit touches us. This is an extremely important concept for Christianity, for our religious experience, for our faith – the Holy Spirit. This real touch, the touch of God, must be experienced, and we do experience it. God reveals Himself to us by His Holy Spirit in our real, personal, unique, living Christian experience. And perhaps this is what the Lord means when He speaks of worship in "spirit and truth."

Father Alexander Schmemann liked to repeat that there is no ritual in Christianity, that ritual is always something essentially meaningless, but sanctified by tradition. There is nothing of the kind in our faith. In the Church of Christ, everything is meaningful, meaningful and not ritualistic. Everything here is done, as Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh likes to repeat, anti-mechanically. Worship "in spirit and truth" is our real approach, our contact with God, our real encounter with Him, and not at all the filling of life with some rituals, perhaps beautiful, but meaningless, even if they are sanctified by traditions.

… The disciples arrive, and Jesus says to them: "Do you not say that there are still four months, and the harvest will come? But I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and behold the fields, how they are white, and are ripe for the harvest" (John 4:35). From the point of view of real time, the harvest should come only in four months, it is in the future, and the fields have already turned white. Here it is, the future that is already coming and has come. What was said above: "But the time will come and it has already come" is now repeated in this sketch. The fields, which, according to the laws of nature, should turn white only in four months, have already turned white. This means that the reality of the Gospel does not live according to the laws of earthly logic. The future is coming and has already come. It's already here. This is one of the most important moments that we encounter in the Church when we come into contact with her living experience. Christianity is in many ways the faith of the future that has already come.

The mention of whitened fields is an example of the expressive means used by the evangelists. First, an event or phenomenon is told, then the same thing is shown, as it were. Or vice versa – first it is shown, and then it is told. In the Gospel there are truths told and there are truths shown, where a verbal sketch is given (in the ancient manuscripts of the Gospel there are no illustrations, but a verbal image was given). If we remember these purely visual images, then gradually what the Holy Scriptures say will be revealed to us. This, perhaps, is the phenomenon that the word of the Gospel is like the seed that is told in the parable of the sower: once in the ground, that is, in the depths of our "I", it swells and sprouts, gives sprouts, and then fruit. Moreover, it happens that the seed is stored somewhere for many years and then, once in a humid environment, germinates. In the mid-70s in St. Petersburg, during a flood, water flooded the hall of the Botanical Museum, where seeds of collection varieties of plants were stored in boxes for several decades, and some of these seeds germinated. So is the word of God. It happens that, once in a dry heart, it lies there for years, if not decades. But then something happens, and living water appears in this heart, and the seed sprouts... Gospel sketches, unusual, paradoxical phrases are immediately remembered, stuck in the memory for a long time. And after years, decades, suddenly some phrase sprouts, and then bears fruit. This is the fundamental difference between the Gospel text and any other.

… Leaving the city and coming to the Teacher, the disciples asked Him to eat.

"But He says to them, 'I have food that you do not know.'" The disciples, thinking that someone has preceded them, ask one another: "Has anyone brought Him food?" (John 4:30-33).

But the Savior switches their attention to something else, the main thing. He encourages the disciples to look at the fields, which are already white and ready to harvest. He says, "Lift up your eyes..." or, as in the translation of the New Testament edited by Bishop Cassian: "Lift up your eyes, and look into the fields."

We often encounter the expression "lift up the eyes" in the Old Testament, for example, in the Psalms: "I lift up my eyes to the mountains, from whence my help will come. My help is from the Lord, Who created heaven and earth" (Psalm 125:1-2). The same expression is often found in the prophets when talking about God. This shows that by interrupting the disciples' reflections on who brought Him food, Jesus calls them to turn their eyes to God and think about the main thing.

Further, Jesus says: "He who reaps receives a reward and gathers fruit into eternal life, so that both he who sows and he who reaps will rejoice together" (John 4:36). The sower is the One Who sows the word, God. "A sower went out to sow," says the parable of the sower in the synoptics. The reaper is the man whom Jesus sends into the harvest today. They, Jesus says, will rejoice together. And what will happen later in the Church is the common joy that God and the people who gather around Him, God and those whom He sends to work, rejoice. There is a psalm that speaks of this joy of the harvest: "Those who sow with tears will reap with joy. With weeping, he who bears the seed will return with joy, bearing his sheaves" (Ps. 125:5-6). It speaks of the joy of the laborer in the harvest-fields of Christ, which is similar to the joy of the peasant who has gathered the harvest. This is a very important point in understanding the essence of Christianity.