*2.2. Principles of Kingdom-Oriented Worship*

NT Wright freely admits he is not a liturgist, but as a "New Testament scholar working in a community whose daily life is structured around public and corporate worship" (Wright 2002), he understands the centrality of worship in the kingdom-centred church. Worship, he says, is the "central characteristic of the heavenly life; and that worship is focused on the God we know in and as Jesus" (Wright 1997, p. 5). Understood in light of the kingdom of God, such worship is all-encompassing: the gospel summons us to life "as kingdom-people, reflecting God's image into the world. The way to that goal is worship: worship of the true, sovereign, creator God, Father, Son, and Spirit" (Wright 2002). Wright's vision of the centrality and kingdom-orientation of worship dovetails with the Orthodox Christian vision of liturgy as articulated by Zizioulas. The principles of his kingdom-based theology of worship may therefore complement—and even provide a more pragmatic footing for—the deeply philosophical eschatological liturgical theology of Zizioulas. We will explore here three principles of kingdom-oriented worship outlined by Zizioulas but elaborated by Wright: worship that celebrates the paradoxical climax of the story of Israel, worship that is properly Trinitarian, rejecting all false images of God, and worship that enacts the renewal of the human person, community, and world.

### 2.2.1. Worship That Celebrates the Paradoxical Climax of the Whole Narrative of Israel

Throughout his writings, Wright insists that the work of God in Jesus can only be understood as the climax of the story of Israel. Zizioulas too notes the primary importance of Israel, stating that the nation created from the seed of Abraham "is the source of the Messiah and his eschatological community" and that the church must be understood as the "new Israel" (Zizioulas 2008, p. 126). The church's self-understanding of imaging the kingdom of God in worship arises from the fulfilment of the promises of God and "the expectations of the people of Israel that the scattered people of God would be called together around the Messiah 'on the last day'" (ibid., pp. 127–28). This gathering of the "many into one" becomes one of Zizioulas' most cherished ecclesiological and eschatological themes. It is his central philosophical concept, but it does nevertheless have a certain *narrative* content: "One of the basic elements of the coming in the last days is the gathering of the scattered people of God—and by extension of all mankind—'in one place' around the person of the Messiah, in order for the judgement of the world to take place and the Kingdom of God to prevail" (Zizioulas 2011, p. 46). Linking this broad narrative picture directly to the worship of the age to come, he cites the beautiful description of the eucharist "as an image of the eschatological gathering of the scattered children of God" from the liturgy within the *Didache* (9.4)*:* "Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy Kingdom" (ibid., pp. 46–47). Tellingly, it is precisely the breakdown of this eschatological vision of the gathering of many into one that represents for Zizioulas the alienation of Orthodox worship from the kingdom-oriented liturgy of the early church. In his view, it "survives" (!) in the early second century in Ignatius, and as we have already seen, as late as the seventh century Maximus still calls the Divine Liturgy "synaxis" and image of "the state of things to come," but today the proliferation of eucharistic gatherings points to a distorted image of the "dispersal of the faithful" in stark contrast to the gathering in one place the Divine Liturgy is intended to symbolise (ibid., p. 47).

Where Zizioulas moves quickly from the broad canvas of the story of Israel to a philosophical framework of "many into one," in Wright we have an ongoing appreciation of the full narrative of Israel as the basis of the life of Jesus and subsequently Christian worship in light of the kingdom of God. In liturgy as in the gospels themselves, we have not merely a narrative embroidered with elements of the story of Israel, "detached themes and hints from long ago," but rather the "towering sense of *a single story now at last reaching its conclusion*" (Wright 2012, p. 72). Jesus' life is told by the evangelists in the context of an "unfinished narrative, an unfinished *agenda*" in which things were "supposed to happen that haven't happened yet" (ibid., p. 66). In the context of the scriptures, the story is badly stalled: there had been "great beginnings and wonderful visions of God's plan and purposes, then a steady decline and puzzling and shameful multiple failures, all ending in a question mark." By the first century, the exile of the people of Israel was not properly over. Some had returned from Babylon, and a second temple had been built in Jerusalem, but they were ruled by pagan foreigners and were slaves in their own land, and the great promises of the prophets had not yet come true (ibid., p. 69). Wright outlines three specific expectations of Israel that would herald the day of the Lord and inauguration of the age to come: Israel would be freed from pagan rule, Israel's God would become "ruler of the world, bringing birth to a new reign of justice and peace," and thirdly, "God's own Presence would come to dwell with this people," enabling them—and with them all the nations of the world—to worship him fully and truly (Wright 2016, p. 160).

The faith and worship of the very earliest Christians grew directly from their conviction that in the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah Israel's God himself had arrived at last to renew and restore his people and fulfil this triple hope. Significantly, though, this was not at all as it had been imagined, and a key element of the kingdom in the early church is "*that it bursts upon Jesus's first followers as something so shocking as to be incomprehensible*" (Wright 2012, p. 197). This paradox lies at the heart of the New Testament: the evangelists and early apostolic writers insist that in Jesus the reality of the kingdom has been made present and Israel's God was already king of the world, though they require their readers to understand Israel's story and hopes in a new way. For Wright, the experience of the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24, 13–35) is paradigmatic of the revelation in true worship of this paradoxical fulfilment of Israel's hope. The disciples, who had been longing for the redemption of Israel by Jesus and whose hopes had been dashed by his death, are led to an event of joyful revelation in the opening of the scriptures and the breaking of bread, that is, in a liturgical event of word and sacrament. Wright points especially to the fact that Christ interprets for the disciples "*all* the scriptures" (Luke 24, 27)—in other words, true revelation and worship involves the *whole* narrative that, "like the risen Jesus himself, is visible to the eye of faith. The story makes sense as a whole or not at all" (ibid., p. 77).

For Wright, the worship of the church must be "soaked" in the whole narrative of Israel as set out in the scriptures so that we "worship in a way which is both sign and means of new creation" (Wright 2017). This worship is "dramatic, performative, setting out and celebrating God's story with the world": the biblical narrative is "a great drama, a great saga, a play written by the living God and staged in his wonderful creation" and in liturgy "we become for a moment not only spectators of this play but also willing participants in it" (Wright 2002). Though, as noted above, he places far less importance on the narrative itself, Zizioulas nevertheless concurs with kingdom-oriented worship being an enacted celebration of God's climactic intervention in history: the story, sacraments and images of liturgy "are created as the Holy Spirit draws us and all our history into relationship with the end time, the reconciliation of all partial kingdoms in the true history of the kingdom of God" (Zizioulas 2008, p. 153). For Zizioulas, this links directly to the *anamnesis* embodied particularly in the eucharistic liturgy, the remembrance—by participation *now* in the eschaton—of all time and all kingdoms, of the truth of the world, and "not only of past events, but also of future 'events', i.e., of the Kingdom of God as the culmination of the whole history of salvation" (Zizioulas 2011, p. 41).

#### 2.2.2. Trinitarian Worship That Rejects Idolatry, Ideology, Dualism and Individualism

The second principle of kingdom-oriented worship is that it be properly *Trinitarian*. This principle is famously one of the hallmarks of Zizioulas' theology: it is in the image of the triune God that the church participates now through the eucharist in the gathering of the many into one in the kingdom. Both the church and the eucharist represent communion (κoινων*ι*´α), a Trinitarian way of being; the Trinity is a communion of divine persons that gathers into the kingdom all dispersed human persons and reveals to them a new relational

way of life, a living for the other (Zizioulas 2010, p. 52). Due to the triune God's desire to have communion with the whole of creation, this living for the other extends also to creation "in its non-human form" (ibid., p. 57). In this way, worship of the true God in Trinity is a turning away, not only from false gods (idolatry) and faiths and worldly powers (ideology), but an overcoming of the dichotomy between spirit and matter (dualism) and the fallen human tendency to live for oneself rather than the other (individualism).

Wright elaborates these same themes in his own exploration of worship within the kingdom of God. His starting point, following the line of thinking in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, is that the essential problem of human existence is not sin, but *idolatry*: it is "a failure of worship, which leads to, but is itself deeper than, the multiple failures of human living" (Wright 2002). This emerges from the central biblical narrative of the *temple,* sweeping from creation to the eschaton, wherein God's purpose is to unite heaven and earth and dwell with his people, and the vocation of the image-bearing human being is to freely offer his love, thanksgiving and praise on behalf of all creation. For this worship to be true, however, it must obviously be "the true God you're worshipping" (Wright 1997, p. 7). This was precisely the conflict gripping the entire history of Israel, a struggle of Israel's true God against the pagan deities and tyrants of the world. Over and again, the prophets call Israel to turn from idolatry and return to worship of the true God. Not insignificantly, this clash of the kingdoms—the kingdoms of the tyrants of this world versus the kingdom of the true God to be revealed in the age to come—is especially expounded in the *messianic* prophecies of Isaiah 40-55 and Daniel, which early Christians saw fulfilled in Jesus.

The distinctively Christian Trinitarian theology of worship emerges directly from Jewish monotheism and its confrontation with idolatry, including pagan polytheism, imperial ideology, and dualism. Worship of the true God is a complete reversal and overthrow of the darkness of idolatry; founded in the death and resurrection of Jesus, it is a "deathblow to the dark forces that had stood in the way of God's new world, God's 'kingdom' of powerful creative and restorative love, arriving 'on earth as in heaven'" (Wright 2012, p. 246). Wright points out the corporate nature of this reversal: all too often in our post-Enlightenment western world we are quick to individualise Christianity and grasp at the personal meaning of *repentance* and *forgiveness*, but in doing so we miss the "breathtaking sweep" of the advent of God's kingdom: "Jesus's followers are to go out into the world equipped with the power of his own Spirit to announce *that a new reality has come to birth*, that its name is 'forgiveness,' and that it is to be had by turning away from idolatry ('repentance')" (Wright 2016, p. 384). At the core of Christian worship is the celebration of this new reality. As Wright says, all those who join in with our worship "ought to be able to sense that living rhythm, that longer vision, that larger horizon of promise" of the fulfilment of God's kingdom (Wright 2017). Even though it will be "complicated, contested, and controversial," we need to continually strive to proclaim in worship and life "the forgiveness of sins and the consequent breaking of the enslaving powers" and the dethroning of all the world's kingdoms (Wright 2016, p. 394). In its place, we do not set another kingdom of the same sort, but we labour for the kingdom "whose power is the power of the servant and whose strength is the strength of love" (Wright 2012, p. 205).

Like Zizioulas, Wright observes that the life of communion of the divine persons of the triune God provides the *model* for Christian worship. As knowing is defined in relation to its object, "so worship, as a mode of knowing and/or being known, is defined by its object: the God whom we worship." Therefore, the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit "is himself in his threefold unity the means and the pattern of our worship" (Wright 2002). United to the Son in an offering of sacrifice and praise to the Father, enabled by the Spirit who calls "forth worship of the Father through the Son," Christians take their place in true kingdom worship that takes place at once in heaven and on earth: in the temple of the body of Christ that unites heaven and earth. Zizioulas notes that the worship around the throne of God and the Lamb depicted in Revelation 4 and 5 corresponds to the "structure of the eucharistic gathering as described to us clearly from the earliest sources" (Zizioulas 2011, p. 17). For Wright as well, the portrayal of heavenly worship in

Revelation in which we take our place "amongst all the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven" is normative for all worship: and this "is not a vision of the ultimate future—that comes in chapters 21 and 22—but of the heavenly dimension of *present* reality" (Wright 2002). One of the key functions of kingdom worship is that it enables us *to see things as they really are*, to grasp within our present sphere the heaven-and-earth unity inaugurated by the death and resurrection of Jesus: it is "in prayer, in scripture study, in the sacraments and in working for God's kingdom in the world" that we "sense fitfully" the heaven-and-earth overlap of the kingdom (Wright 2016, p. 148). This is at heart a Trinitarian action: "Heaven is not a long way away. It is where Jesus and the Spirit are, revealing the Father and drawing us into worship, love, and obedience." Wright explains that in Revelation 4, the expressions used by the apostle, "coming up to heaven" and "being in the Spirit," mean the same thing: "heaven and earth are the interlocking spheres of God's single creation, and when John is 'in the spirit,' he is suddenly open to and aware of the heavenly dimension of what we call ordinary life" (Wright 2002).

#### 2.2.3. Worship Oriented towards the Renewal and Restoration of All

Out of this Trinitarian object and shape of worship arises our third principle, that the worship of the one true God in the age to come is oriented towards the renewal of image-bearing human beings in community, for the restoration of the whole world. For Zizioulas, the restored communal life of the kingdom is patterned on the life of the Trinity; by uniting the many into one, the eucharistic community reveals this Trinitarian kingdom, our "ultimate reality" and the "future to us in the form of the present" (Zizioulas 2008, p. 137). To take part in the "community of the end of times," we must become church, because it is "the Church that reflects the transformation of the entire material world and with it all human society and community" (ibid., p. 135). In its eschatological worship, the church reconciles and unites all creation in Christ, and already participates in the uncreated light and glory of God. Though it draws its very existence from the end, however, the church is nevertheless in constant *progression* towards that end. Zizioulas laments that—in the predominant Platonic view that sees the earthly liturgy as the image of an *ideal* heavenly liturgy without reference to time—the Divine Liturgy has come to be viewed as static, whereas it should be understood as both the dynamic *journey to* the kingdom and the proleptic *coming of* the kingdom (Zizioulas 2011, p. 48). This ongoing progression of the church, he says, lies along a narrow path in which the kingdom is being realised within it. As the life of the age to come *already is*, it is not a matter for kingdom worship to simply depict this life by way of "parable or allegory"; rather, it is "the symbolism of an *icon* as that is understood by the Fathers of the Church," meaning that the church participates directly "in the *ontological content* of the prototype" (ibid., p. 50). The liturgy of the age to come reveals the overcoming of evil and defeat of the devil, and "the future of the world, in which both society and all material creation overcome corruption" (Zizioulas 2008, p. 135). This experience of participating in the end reveals a new way of being in which we live no longer according to the present evil age but, by the power of the Holy Spirit, according to the life of the kingdom to come. This new participative eschatological ontology heals our distorted relations for we know each other, not as *we have been*, as sinful, self-centred individuals, but as *we will be* in the glorious life of communion of the age to come, and it therefore leads to new actions and new witness within the world.

Wright mirrors Zizioulas in emphasising the transformative character of worship, though as ever he bases this more deeply in the scriptural narrative of the kingdom and on biblical imagery than systematic theology and ecclesiology. Worship is intended to be the primary means by which God's temple project outlined in Genesis is taken forward. It is worship that makes us human: it is what we were created for, the purpose of our image-bearing, and it is the "truly human stance" (Wright 2002). Jesus Christ himself, in his true humanity, fulfils and renews the image of God and becomes the "source, model, and goal or our own becoming truly human." In Jesus a new mode of being human is established, founded in self-sacrificing love and forgiveness, and it is in worship that this

new way of being human is acquired, for "we not only become like the God we see in Jesus Christ, but we reflect this God in our own lives and to the people and places where we are placed." Indeed, true worship is the real world, Wright says, echoing Zizioulas; it is the ultimate basis of human reality. It is precisely as we worship the triune God that we make "real what is true of us through baptism and faith, whereby we become living members of the Jesus Christ who in his perfect manhood offers to the Father that love, obedience, and loyalty which is the true human vocation" (ibid.).

For Wright, this true kingdom worship should lead directly to living here and now the signs of that new world. Liturgically, those signs are the sacraments, and above all the eucharist, through which all of creation can become the signposts of God's new heavenand-earth creation, and in which "symbols of the natural world become vehicles of the heavenly world, of which we are called to be citizens" (Wright 1997, p. 11). Alongside the sacraments, though, another of the key signs of the new kingdom is that worship find expression in active political and social engagement, in which we are "urged and encouraged to celebrate the lordship of Jesus Christ over the whole creation, in anticipation of the day when at his name every knee shall bow" (Wright 2002). By contrast, Zizioulas admits that the church's "eschatological dimension has a public outworking," but he is minded that it not involve itself in organised social outreach and its secular administrative systems: avoiding the extremes of "quietism" and political engagement, he argues for "unforced person-to-person charity" reflecting the kingdom's personal encounter and love, which "must always be free" (Zizioulas 2008, p. 127).
