To be sure, Jesus Christ lived among humankind in a specific time and place. Yet the primary context in which he did what he did and said what he said was not a Jewish society struggling to survive under first-century Roman rule. The primary context of his birth, every encounter, conversation, miracle, and even his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension was the kingdom of God. Christ literally inaugurated life in this new kingdom in his very self. Hence for Christ’s followers to be in Christ and to obey the commands of Christ is to be in the kingdom.
The incarnation of God in Christ revealed the kingdom of God to the world. What is difficult to accept, however, is that the purpose of the incarnation was not to prove the kingdom of God was relevant to the world. If that was truly the purpose of the incarnation, one could argue that the incarnation was a failure. Isaiah’s prophecy regarding Messiah became all too tragically true; the One who would be “despised and rejected” and “oppressed, and . . . afflicted . . . like a lamb that is led to the slaughter” 13 was not even welcomed by those of his own ethnic heritage.14
During his earthly life Jesus Christ was questioned regularly, often by persons allied with groups attempting to catch him in some heretical or treasonous act. He had a propensity for responding to them in ways that curtailed their capacity to entrap him. At every turn, Jesus was faithfully representing the perspective of the reign of God. It was clear that by God’s presence in Christ, God’s reign was breaking into the world, yet it was not of the world. Jesus’ responses were rarely intended to confuse, yet they continually confounded the world’s ways. His answers constantly challenged the assumptions of the inquisitors. He also challenged their presumptions about their prerogative in deciding what was right and what was true.
In his gospel narrative, Matthew records a monumental conversation, one between Jesus and a group of Pharisees.15 A scribe asked Jesus, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” They were seeking to test Jesus. It did not occur to them that they, like so many others, were offering Christ the opportunity to speak truth almost beyond their willingness (if not their ability) to understand. The first commandment, Jesus replied, is “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” This is a response the inquisitors could have even predicted. Jesus’ reference to the opening statement of the Shema16 was likely a pleasing sound to their ears. Christ answered their question, succinctly and directly. Yet his response was only beginning. He continued: “The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” As predictable as the first portion of Jesus’ response was, this auxiliary dictum likely caught them unprepared.
These high-minded experts in the law were unaccustomed to such testing. Jesus’ statement likening the love of people to the love of God transcended their long-held traditionalism. Their devotion to the Decalogue and the practice of their own well-established rules were legendary. Respect for another person and that person’s possessions, family, and life was far from a strange notion. Yet the notion of esteeming another person on the same level as oneself made for an interesting juxtaposition with Jewish and even Roman social customs that maintained distinctions between persons of privilege and those outcast by virtue of economic, gender, health, or ethnic status.
Jesus makes yet another astounding claim—that all of the prophets and law are bound up in these two commandments.17 The law and prophets constituted the Hebrew Scriptures, an enormous body of highly regarded and historically momentous teaching. By likening the two commandments and saying that all other prophetic and ruling principles were summed up in them, Jesus pointedly drew the inquisitors to the locus of God’s reign. This is the grand liturgy of the kingdom of God: God is to be loved first and foremost with every fiber of our being and every moment of life, and treating people with dignity and care is like unto honoring God. Here Jesus laid a necessary foundation for faithfulness in worship according to the eternal kingdom of heaven.
What must become clear to the church is that faithfulness to God in worship in affect “establish[es] a world” and “worship makes available to us a different world than the one we normally inhabit.”18 As will be noted below, the church’s worship in various times and places became more focused on managing life in this world with its own “settled arrangements” rather than encountering God’s coming reign—present now, yet coming to its fullness. “Church,” when it is faithful however, “is where we worship God by enacting and proclaiming a different set of values, a different understanding of reality.”19
Jesus’ contemporaries were confused regarding his refusal to participate in their grand schemes for gaining worldly sovereignty. That same temptation has confronted Christ’s followers in every moment of the church’s history. The challenge for Christ’s followers is that participating in the in-breaking of this new kingdom not only seeks different meaning and ends to those of the world but also requires discernment regarding ways and means to those ends. As evidenced by Jesus Christ himself, the ways of the kingdom of heaven will at times conflict with the ways of the world’s established practices.
Jesus came saying, in effect, by his life, teachings, and ministry, that the way the world operates—its cultures, societies, nations, and values—is irrelevant to the reign of God. Christ came to call people to participate in the irrupting reign of God, which has a vastly different tenor to it than worldly structures or entities. Much of the mystery of the kingdom of heaven is “that it is rooted in a new reality, a new social order, a new way of doing things.”20 Yet it is not enough that God’s reign defines a distinct reality. The divinity-in-humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ is a signal this new reign must be lived, even if at immense risk.
Liturgy and Kingdomness
The dynamic fusion of love of God and love of people as outlined by Jesus invests liturgical exigency in the participation of God’s people in the continuing in-breaking of the kingdom of heaven. It is essential to grasp the deep implications of what is perhaps one of the most misunderstood yet meaningful and necessary words to understanding worship—the word liturgy. The word derives its meaning from the Greek leitourgia, a word commonly found originally in the official idiolect of Greek city-states; it described service rendered by individuals or groups “on behalf of the political community.”21 Like the use of the term ekklesia (which has similar heritage), the use of such a term from the broader culture indicates the perception of the Christians that their faith community had political connotations.
Liturgy is certainly the work of the people of God in worship. Described in that phrase, liturgy exists as a functional characteristic of communal worship. It is service rendered to God by all participants through various acts and elements of worship in a communal setting. Yet the term has lost much of its patina within many free-church traditions. A resistance to the use of any traditional liturgy has itself become a de facto liturgy, with deeply entrenched patterns of various acts and elements. Even further, the exclusive use of the term in reference to corporate worship settings has limited its meaning among many faith communities, representing a formalistic approach to worship largely devoid of worth or vitality.
True liturgy, however, does not limit itself there. The liturgical dynamic has a profound effect upon the communal identity, becoming more than simple function. The whole range of actions form the community since “a group of people become something corporately which they had not been as a mere collection of individuals—a whole greater than the
