Jesus Christ the Worshipper

In this brief sketch of the Old Testament account of worship, we have been able to see something of the distinctive pattern of the worship of Yhwh that made it distinct from the idol worship of other nations. In particular, I have noted the pattern of response to the divine initiative in specific acts and in the whole of life that characterizes the worship of God’s people. The problem with my account thus far has been that I have abstracted it from the history of Israel. The strong critiques of false worship with which we began should alert us to the fact that something is still incomplete in the account of worship given in the Hebrew Scriptures. Despite everything, Israel’s life of worship became corrupted and diminished by the failure of the people to attend to the distinctive characteristics of the pattern of life they had been given. The final exile of Judah to Babylon was surrounded by a flurry of prophetic activity in which Israel’s worship was subjected to judgment and also promised a renewal. The most terrible disaster of all was the utter destruction of the temple at this time, which meant the end to the God-ordained worship at that spot. What would worship look like without the temple and its ritual practices? This was a crisis of worship. Ezekiel, for one, spoke of an extraordinary new temple with supernatural dimensions – one that would, somehow, replace the one destroyed by the Babylonians (Ez 40-48). The word ‘somehow’ is deliberately chosen: for while the prophets foretold an intervention by God himself to restore the worshipping community of his people and to judge his enemies, they were not specific on the details. Isaiah spoke with poetic vigour about the ‘Servant of the Lord’ who would suffer for the iniquities of the people (Is 40-66); and many prophecies recalled the commitment of the covenant with David, that his line would be everlasting (2 Sam 7; see, for example, Jeremiah’s emphasis on Davidic kingship).   

Even given the divine initiative in engaging with people and the clarity of the pattern of response he demands – homage, service, reverence – the human response is inadequate. This is the point at which the New Testament claim is that in Jesus of Nazareth the history of Israel finds its fulfillment. Jesus is, of all human beings, the one who worships the God of Israel, the creator of heaven and earth, as he demands to be worshipped – in purity and holiness. As the one human being who represents not simply Israel but all of humankind to the Father, he in himself enables a renovation of human worship. There is, following Christ, a significant continuity but a substantial discontinuity with Old Testament worship.

The notion of Jesus as the true worshipper is reflected across the New Testament, but finds itself refracted in particular through the imagery of the New Temple and the declaration of a New Covenant. In the light of these, the New Testament authors felt able still to speak of the Christian life, individually and corporately, in terms that echoed the ‘worship’ language of the Old Testament. 

The disruption that Jesus’ ministry caused, which apparently led to his death, was chiefly caused because he operated from within the temple as a strong critic of the contemporary temple life. In Matthew, Mark and in John he is heard prophesying the destruction of the temple and claiming that he can rebuild it in three days. John in particular picks up the language of God’s presence and his glory, which is so indicative of what the Israelites expected from the tabernacle and the Temple: ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.’ (John 1:14) Jesus takes the prophetic vision of the new temple and, extraordinarily, shows how he himself realizes that hope in his life, death, resurrection and ascension. The temple as the location for the encounter between God and his people is, in Jesus, relocated. In him, the need for sacrifice to prepare the people for meeting God is obviated. The source for the renewal and restoration of Israel and by extension ‘all the families of the earth’ is now Jesus himself – which is the prompt for the inclusion of the Gentiles. Engaging with God is now mediated to human beings in the person and work of Jesus Christ; which in turn shows that the temple was merely of foretaste of what has now appeared in human history. 

At the same time as he is the means through which people are to come to worship God ‘in spirit and in truth’ (John 4) it is also the case Jesus has become himself the worthy object of homage. I hinted previously that this is, in many ways, the most difficult theological problem that the New Testament authors have to face. How is it that a strict monotheism such as Judaic faith can give birth to, or be held to pave the way for, a faith in which veneration is offered to (apparently) more than one divine person? And yet, the heart of the New Testament gospel is the declaration ‘Jesus is Lord’, a statement of homage that ascribes an authority to him that only a divine person deserves (Romans 10:9, 1 Cor 12:3). The New Testament answer is to speak about Jesus’ unity with the Father (Eph 4:4-7, 1 Cor 8:6). 

Jesus also portrayed himself and was portrayed as the inheritor and fulfillment of the pattern of covenantal relationship with God, which stretches back to Abraham. As with the temple, the ministry of Jesus was felt to be a critique of the law by his opponents, and they took great offence. Yet a more careful reading of his words and actions show him to be a skilled interpreter and advocate of the law. He was not rejecting it; he was rather meeting its requirements and transcending it. He was, he claimed, inaugurating a new covenant (something promised in Jeremiah’s prophecy – Jer 31:31-4). At the Last Supper, he made explicit the link between his sacrificial death and the notion of a new covenant (language picked up in Heb 9:14-5) – pointing thereby to what worship would now mean: namely, that he would make true worship of God possible by means of his atoning blood, and that he would thereby by the focus of the homage of the new covenant people.