highly-charged political environment. Political activity is certainly a necessary element of civilized society. Being political is part and parcel of American citizenship—no less for Christians who live in this country than for anyone else. Turning a collective back on political activity is a tempting option. Yet leaving politicality to a realm outside of faith is unsatisfactory for various reasons, not the least would be the danger of diminishing the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Absent an appropriate balancing influence, the political character of the life, teachings, and ministry of Christ falls too easily into worldly maneuvers that are inconsistent with biblical faith. (So also the witness of Christ’s followers.) The kingdom of God exists in, but not of, this world and has political responsibilities that are yet distinct from the machinations of this world. It is my conviction that the necessary balancing influence for the political character of God’s reign in Christ is liturgical. In spite of modernity’s ability to deftly separate elements of life into sacred and secular dominions, what appears to be two—political and liturgical—may indeed be more nearly one in the economy of the kingdom of heaven.
There are political implications for faithfulness in Christian worship. To deny that is to diminish the truth about worship. The challenge lies in subtlety, at times, for what is added to worship that may be questionable, but more frequently for what is not sufficiently manifest. Worship among evangelicals in the U.S. is rarely flagrantly nationalistic on a weekly basis. Yet is it often enough unclear about which—or whose—politics it favors, those of Caesar or those of God revealed in the story of ancient Israel and in the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus was clear in his pronouncements about the reign of God. These truths were not always easily understood by those who walked with Jesus and heard his teachings. Even today truths about God’s kingdom require an entirely dissimilar orientation to reality than the world has always assumed as correct. The followers of Jesus must be obvious in living as witnesses to the reign of God. Doing so is somewhat complicated for Christians in America, a country whose national ethos-myth is steeped in a blatant worldly exercise of power within its own borders as well as on the global stage. Followers of Jesus have a citizenship that transcends and supersedes all earthly loyalties. Faithful worship makes this distinction clear.
It is not enough to simply inquire about the political character of worship. This work would be incomplete without some regard for the witness that faithful worshipers bear into this world. That witness calls for service, humility, and a conviction that God has come in Christ to be Lord of all creation, not confined to one realm or another. The church exists for the glory of God and for the sake of the world. Therefore, the quality of worship among Christians has a direct influence on the value of their witness in the world. The measure of encounters with the world will be revealed by the depth and richness of encounters with God in worship.
Faithfulness to triune God in worship is crucial for navigating such challenges encountered by congregations as they seek to live their witness into the world through actions that proclaim the reign of God. It must give substance to our understanding of Christ’s injunctions to his followers who are to be salt and light in the world without being of the world. Herein is a dynamic rubric for interpreting the dimensions, elements, and acts of worship in light of God’s politics, which represent a reign already begun but not yet fully revealed.
Worship Beyond Nationalism is an exploration of topics identified in this Introduction. It is not intended to be an overarching volume on worship per se. The focus is intentionally narrow in scope. No doubt there are many related topics not addressed here. What the reader will encounter in these pages is probably more descriptive than prescriptive—more consider this than do this. The thoughts presented in these pages will probably raise as many questions as they answer. While I have sought to write confidently about these matters, there is no attempt to declare these to be complete or final words on any of them. My purpose is to be faithful with concepts as I have come to understand them, and to foster significant conversations within the church regarding its worship and witness.
The terms world and worldly will appear frequently throughout Worship Beyond Nationalism. In this context, it should be understood to refer to the social, cultural, spiritual, and political paradigms present in human experience in any given age in history. In general the term will be used to refer to ways of life that are distinct from the living witness of Christians—explicitly identified as Christ’s followers representing faithfulness to God in worship, the church’s identity as the body of Christ, and the church’s Christ-formed agency on behalf of God’s kingdom.
Faithful worship requires absolute clarity about the worship of God in Christ. It properly orients Christ’s followers to the politics of God’s reign rather than those of worldly Caesars, and shapes the church for liturgical participation in missio Dei. It is precisely as the people of God become a holy nation and a royal priesthood that they indeed become church in the fullest, most biblical sense.
Worship Beyond Nationalism explores faithful worship as a political act by which the church declares allegiance to God in Christ rather than to any worldly empires. Faithful worship enables congregations to enact the reality of God’s kingdom and to embody the gospel for the glory of God and for the sake of the world.
1 / Liturgy of the Kingdom
The incarnation of God in Christ Jesus was tangible evidence of the in-breaking of God’s kingdom, an arrival of the most radical sort. God’s appearance in Christ was historically organic, expressed in a specific season of human history, in a particular geography with deliberate ethnic imprimatur. Yet the coming of this transcendent kingdom and its definitive Sovereign was also historically dynamic. It encompassed long seasons of prophetic anticipation, was revealed in Christ’s personhood through sometimes confusing parables and numinous miracles, and pointed to an eschatological realization.
The coming of God in Christ was certainly an act of grace and mercy without equal on the part of a holy and loving God. That does not, however, mitigate the fact that it was also an enormous provocation designed to serve notice to all of creation that the Creator was wholly committed to redemption and re-creation. When taken at face value, the message of Christ’s life, teaching, and ministry brings the world face to face with the eternal kingdom of love. It is this kingdom, and the worship of this kingdom’s Sovereign, that require our attention in these pages.
Scripture is clear that the sovereignty of God’s reign in Christ extends to the fullest reaches of life and existence. No realm of creation is exempt—including the political arena. The apostle Paul signaled this truth when he wrote that Christ “is the image of the invisible God” and “in him all things in heaven and earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him” (emphasis mine).1 In Christ “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” and he “is the head of every ruler and authority” and “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them” (emphasis mine).2 Again, Paul wrote regarding “the immeasurable greatness of [God’s] power for us who believe.” This is the very power that worked in Christ who is not only resurrected from the dead but has ascended to God’s right hand in the heavenly places. It is the glorious Father who “has put all things under [Christ’s] feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”3 The obvious force of God’s sovereignty invested in Christ is a bold statement of God’s political initiative.
To say such things about anyone cuts against the grain of the world’s self-affirming confidence in its own ways and wisdom. For those things to be said of Jesus Christ as identified in the biblical narrative is an offense of even greater magnitude. Jesus of Nazareth claimed not only to be the Son of God, but also claimed to
