I'd like to give you a bit of background before answering your question. As told in the Bible (2 Kings), in 720 BC, much of the population of the northern kingdom, Samaria, was exiled by the conquering Assyrians who then brought in people from other areas.
Some Jews remained in Samaria and intermarried with these incoming foreigners, thus losing their racial purity and often adopting worship of the foreign gods of the incoming people.
Rebuild the Temple
A few centuries later, a similar defeat and exile happened to the southern kingdom who clung to their Jewishness. When they returned to Jerusalem, they began to rebuild the Temple.
The Samaritans' offer of help was rejected because, according to the Jerusalem Jews, by losing their racial purity they had no right in this sacred task. The Jerusalem Jews destroyed the temple on Mount Gerizim. These events resulted in the two groups turning against each other with a bitterness that still existed in Jesus' time.
The Samaritans accepted only the first five books of the Bible, thus rejecting the messages of the prophets and the devotional Psalms. They made up their own history in order to glorify their mountain as a place of worship, teaching that Mount Gerizim was the holy site where Abraham had brought Isaac to be sacrificed.
The woman asked Jesus where she should go to offer sacrifices for her sins since, the Jerusalem Jews said it was Jerusalem and the Samaritans said Mount Gerizim.
Jesus tells her that Samaritan worship is a false worship. It is selective because they pick and choose what they want from the truths God has revealed in the Scriptures. It is superstitious because they worship God out of fear that something bad may happen if they don't. Instead, worship should be out of love and gratitude.
Jesus tells her that soon will come a time when worship will be in neither place but in spirit and truth. Since God is spirit, worship of God is not confined to place. Therefore, to limit worship to either the Hebrew or the Samaritan site is to set a limit to God who is limitless.
The highest part of human beings is the spirit, which is the source of ideals, dreams and rational thought. It is the spirit that seeks God and the friendship of God. Therefore, the only gifts humans can offer to God are spiritual: love, loyalty, devotion, and obedience since these come from the heart.
God's universe
Jesus told her that she need not go anywhere to find God nor to offer a sacrifice. The old ways of sacrifice and old rivalries were gone. A new age, brought by the Messiah, was dawning. The whole universe is God's and God is everywhere, so people can worship wherever they are.
Where does that leave us as far as our worship is concerned? Remember, Jesus told us, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst" (Matthew 18:20). We, too, are to worship God in spirit and in truth, always and everywhere. God is with us always and we are to live in that loving presence of God every moment of the day. Paul told us to "Pray always" but of course, we can't be in church all day.
Does that mean we don't have to go to church? We are created in the image of a triune God and therefore, we are not created as solitary beings but we are placed in a loving family to learn to reach out to others.
We belong to the communion of saints and are the body of Christ. Loneliness and isolation are not what God intended for us.
When we go to church, we worship God in spirit and truth for we follow Jesus' command at the Last Supper, "Do this in remembrance of me." We accept all that Jesus has taught and not just what suits us. When we gather in community to celebrate the Eucharist, we find the love and support and strength to travel the sometimes difficult road to our final destination in God.
