God is Spirit; worship in spirit
I. Christ lived in another region than that of religious quarrel. To Him, both Judaism and Samaritanism were worn-out forms of truth, and He came to put them both aside and to lead men into a new world. But had He been like some of our modern prophets, who place themselves above religious disputes, He would not have thought it worth while to decide which of them had most truth, which of them thenwas worthiest. "Both are nothing to Me," He would have said; "leave them both alone and come and sit with Me." But Christ did not take that position. Though He lived in the loftiest region, at home with absolute truth, He could come down among the strifes of men about relative truth, and see on which side in the lower region the greatest amount of truth lay; He thought only of the cause of truth itself and of the advantage of mankind. He thought of the cause of truth, and He felt that it was of high importance that He should plainly say whether Jerusalem or Samaria were the nearest to truth. And if we live with Him in a world above forms and opinions, churches and sects, we shall often have, if we wish to do any good, to follow Him in this. We must take trouble and say, Jerusalem is better than Samaria.
II. But there was a further answer to the woman's question. The woman had stated the whole question of religious strife, and we have discussed that part of Christ's reply which had to do with existing circumstances. Jerusalem was better than Samaria. But there was something better still the higher spiritual life, in which the questions in dispute between Jerusalem and Samaria would wholly cease; the life in the spirit and in truth which should pass beyond Jerusalem as a place of worship, and everywhere worship God, in which the temple and altar were neither on Mount Moriah or Mount Gerizim, but set up in every faithful heart. And we, taking this new conception of His into our hearts, rise with Him into the higher region, where the woman's question seemed to have no meaning, where religious strife is dead, because God is worshipped as Spirit and known as Truth. To us God is everywhere, and we worship the Father most truly when we enter the realm of Infinite Love, where He abides beyond the strife of men.
S. A. Brooke, Sermons,2nd series, p. 324.
References: John 4:20-29. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 250.