Early Christian Liturgics

Liturgics refers to those things having to do with a liturgy, and the obvious point of departure in gaining an understanding of liturgics is to understand the word itself. This is particularly relevant in terms of liturgical music, because the terms religious music or sacred music, while describing the type of music, do not do much to explain the origins or practice.

The word liturgy is from the Greek word leitourgia, and the most common translation is "the work of the people." It is that common act of God’s people together offering praise to Him in the manner which He revealed that they should. This is the type of worship which took place in the Jewish temple and synagogue, and which came into the early Christian Church.

Note that the emphasis is on "work," "praise" and "revealed." The original Greek term includes the term work, and conveys something much more vigorous than a congregation being entertained by a performer — rather, the people working together. Praise is that which is offered to God in thanksgiving for what He has done for us. Revealed makes clear that it is not a collection of actions of our own choice or convenience, but based on direction given to us by God. It is the collective work that assembled believers do together in offering praise and worship to God. Liturgical music is the music developed and either chanted, sung and/or played during this time, while liturgical ritual describes the action that takes place.

For non-Orthodox Christians liturgical worship may be a foreign concept. The question asked is often "why does liturgical worship follow such a set structure or order?" The question reflects an underlying assumption for many Christians that in the New Testament period worship was spontaneous, or reflects lack of knowledge about the origins of liturgical worship within the Judeo-Christian traditions. The fact is, this "order" has its very roots in the Bible, and much of Judaism and Christianity have been worshipping this way — more or less unchanged — for almost over 2000 years.

The core of liturgics is not just beautiful music or awe-inspiring ritual, rather it is a commitment to origins. Two concepts need to be kept in mind as one considers the "why" of liturgical worship and practice: origin and changelessness. Remember, first and foremost, that the Apostles and the first Christian disciples were Jews. That is, they were Jews who recognized and accepted Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah. From their heritage with its history of liturgical interaction with God, came the Jewish form of biblical worship, the basic structure, the "origin" of Christian worship. For this reason, we see in Church history a highly developed Christian liturgical order in use even by the end of the first century — that is, within sixty years of Christ?s resurrection.

The second concept is "changelessness." Perhaps one of the most striking and unique things about much Christian liturgical worship, especially that of the Eastern Orthodox Church in this age of rapid change, and even change for its own sake, is its permanence and changelessness. For example, it has been said that one of the most distinctive characteristics of the Eastern Orthodox Church is "its determination to remain loyal to the past, its sense of living continuity with the church of ancient times." [1] This commitment to protecting the Gospel and keeping its message and praise to God the same stems from the conviction that the faith which we have is that which our Lord Jesus Christ delivered to us, and to which we will add nothing nor take anything away. If Christians desire to be "apostolic," then they have to agree to belong to the same Church that Christ founded. That church began in the first century, and "there is a sense in which all Christians must become Christ?s contemporaries..." as a recent Orthodox Christian scholar points out. He goes on to remind us that "the twentieth century is not an absolute norm, the apostolic age is." [2, 3]

Over the course of the last millennia there has been change in liturgical worship. However, it is change that has taken place carefully, within this context of "changelessness." Within the traditional liturgical churches, the change has not been a change in the real nature or substance of the faith and practice. Never change for change’s sake, only change in order to remain the same. The underlying commitment has been the exhortation of St. Paul to Timothy to "guard the deposit of the faith" (I Timothy 6:20). But, at the same time, there has been a willingness to enhance the practice of worship in order to make it more heavenly, more spiritual, and more edifying.

The early Christian Church came into being as a liturgical church because Jews worshipped liturgically. The New Testament records numerous instances of liturgical worship, which range from pure Jewish practices (such as Peter and John going to the Temple because it was the hour of prayer) to Christian liturgical worship (which confirms that the early Christians met and worshipped following Jewish liturgical practices, and added to them the rite of the Eucharist).

Many present-day Christians do not understand why the worship services of the "liturgical churches" are so different and so structured. A common assumption is that in the New Testament, worship was spontaneous. However, worship in the early Christian Church, like Judaism, followed a specific order or form. This "order" has its very roots in the Scriptures. In fact, all of Christianity worshipped this way for 1500 years; the Eastern Orthodox Church has been worshiping this way — more or less unchanged — for nearly 2000 years.

Two words need to be kept in mind when one first experiences liturgical worship: origin and changelessness.

Origin.

Early Christian worship had an origin: Jewish worship form and practice. The early disciples did not create new worship practices any more than did Jesus Christ. They all prayed as Jews and worshipped as Jews. The earliest Christians were Jews who recognized and accepted Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah, and the worship that they practiced was liturgical because Jewish worship was liturgical. For this reason we see in the New Testament that the early Christians continued their Jewish worship practices, even while they added some uniquely Christian components. The most central new content was the sacrament of the Eucharist (or Communion) as instituted by Christ at the Last Supper. However, in the early Church this was celebrated as a separate service for many years.

This living continuity of worship from Temple to Synagogue and into the early Christian Church is why there is a highly developed Christian liturgical order in use by the end of the first century, within sixty years of Christ’s resurrection.

Changelessness.

Perhaps one of the most striking and unique things about liturgical Christianity, and especially in this age of rapid change and even change for its own sake, is its permanence and changelessness. This is especially true for the Eastern Orthodox Church to this day. (This was also true of the Western Roman Church until the past century when the reforms of Vatican II significantly altered the liturgical form of the Roman mass). It has been said that one of the most distinctive characteristics of the Orthodox Church is "its determination to remain loyal to the past, its sense of living continuity with the church of ancient times "[1]. This commitment to protecting the Gospel and keeping its message and praise to God the same stems from the conviction that the faith was delivered to Christians by Jesus Christ. If Christians are going to be "apostolic," then they must belong to the same Church that Christ founded. That Church began in the first century.

The musical forms of early Christian worship were initially Jewish, such as the chanting of Psalms. As the Gentile missions began, Christians began incorporating Greek music forms. The language of worship became almost universally Greek, which was the common language of the Roman Empire, and more and more Greek music forms and theory came into use in the Church. Within twenty to forty years, the Christian worship service was a composite of Jewish and Greek liturgical music forms, following the basic shape of Jewish Synagogue and Temple worship. Within a hundred years, as the Church spread across the Roman Empire and most of its members were Gentiles who spoke Greek and lived in a Greek culture, most of the musical style and theory had become Greek. It still retained some Jewish form and content such as chanting. After the legalization of Christianity in the early 4th century, this music form and style developed into Byzantine music, the Church’s first formal music form. Byzantine music was very broadly and consistently used throughout the Church through the seventh and eighth centuries.

Although Greek music was predominant, it was not the only form in use. In Egypt, there was a decidedly different form, as was the case in other parts of the Empire. However, most of the Empire used Greek as its common language, and the Byzantine music became almost universal throughout the Church. The two earliest Christian hymns, "O Gladsome Light" (referred to by St. Justin in about 150 A.D.) and a "Hymn to the Holy Trinity" (from Oxyrrhyncus, Egypt, probably mid-4th century), are decidedly Greek in musical form.

The term "early Christianity" generally refers to the time prior to the legalization of the faith by the Emperor Constantine. Theological development occurred during this time, as well. As the Christian Church worked through the implications of what had occurred in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, and as they grew in their knowledge and understanding under the leadership of the Apostles such as James, John and Paul, their worship began to incorporate these new understandings. For instance, the earliest church had two Sabbath services: a "Synagogue-type" service and a separate communion service. Over time these were combined. Another page in this section describes Worship in the Early Church, documenting the processes and influences by which Christian worship became formalized, and how the various rites in use locally became standardized throughout the Roman and Byzantine Empire. A further page details later developments in Christian worship as theology and doctrine became defined, and external cultural influences were exerted on the Christian Church.

Credits: Parts of this page are excerpted from: Williams, B. and Anstall, H.; Orthodox Worship: A Living Continuity with the Synagogue, the Temple and the Early Church; Light and Life Publishing, Minneapolis, 1990.

Development of Christian worwsip.

Where did liturgical worship and especially the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church or the Mass of the Roman Church come from? What were its origins? How much change has there been over time from the beginnings of Christian worship in the first century Jerusalem Church? One should begin by answering the most basic question: what is liturgy? The best translation is "the work of the people." That is the collective work which assembled believers do together in offering praise and worship to God.

Early History of Jewish Worship.

Editor’s Note: Stefan C. Reif, Director of the Genizah Research Unit of the University of Cambridge, England, compares what is known of the worship practices of early Judaism with the liturgical evidence of ninth/tenth-century geonic Babylonia, contrasting the fluidity of the early period with the liturgical fixity of the latter. The evidence suggests a radical reconsideration of early rabbinic liturgy, according to which we must imagine a great deal more flexibility and creativity than has traditionally been assumed. He sums up what we know of the many strands of Jewish liturgy from their inception in the first few centuries of rabbinic culture and takes us briefly to the period in which liturgical traditions were consolidated into prayer books and rites that have proved lasting ever since. Of particular significance, he shows how the discoveries from the Cairo Genizah can illuminate our understanding of the process by which prayer books and rites evolved out of liturgical traditions.

The function of this contribution to our discussion of the liturgical traditions of Christianity and Judaism is to explain how a formal, authoritative liturgy emerged in the history of rabbinic Judaism; when and where this process took place; and what factors dictated the adoption of such an office among the religious commitments of the Jewish community at large. In order to achieve an adequate explanation of such developments it will obviously be necessary to take as our starting point that period of Jewish religious history when a recognizable form of rabbinic liturgy may be identified and to describe in general terms the various characteristics of that form as contemporary research has identified them.

A leap of some centuries will then be made to bring us to a situation when a Jewish liturgical codex was given a position of some respect among the literary sources of the religious tradition and therefore to a time when it may no longer be doubted that there existed a written guide for regular communal worship sanctioned by a leading figure, or a number of such guides emanating from various such authorities.

A comparison, or rather a contrast, will then be drawn between the primitive form and the subtle shape that it later acquired, and it will be possible to pinpoint the differences that had emerged in the intervening centuries. Reference will be made to the attempts of various generations of Jewish liturgical scholars to account for any differences that may be detected between the earlier and later sources and to demonstrate, by and large, that these were differences of degree rather than of essence. By way of contrast and as a result of recent research in the fragmentary manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah, it will be suggested that what may be traced here are pivotal developments in the history of Jewish liturgy that have only recently gained the attention of scholars and that indeed characterize a period of Jewish history that has yet to give up all its secrets to the researcher. It will then be possible to set such developments in a larger context and thereby to achieve the aims set for this essay.

Jewish Liturgy in the Fourth Century.

By the fourth century of the common era it is fairly certain that there existed (1) an authoritative body of tannaitic traditions relating to biblical interpretation and the application of Jewish law, and (2) at least the early, dialectic responses, both supportive and disputatious, of the amoraim to these traditions. The process of developing these responses, or Talmud, as it came to be called, was under way in both Jewish Palestine and the major Diaspora community of Babylon; and the Jewish religious reaction to the loss of its temple, its holy city, and its independent state had had time to mature over a period of three centuries.[1]

What is more, whatever the length of the period during which the Jews and the early Christians, or Jewish Christians, enjoyed close religious and social contact, they had by that time gone their separate ways. The situation had been much more fluid in the first Christian century than is often claimed. At that early age, neither the founders of Christianity nor the precursors of talmudic tradition had a definitive theory or practice with regard to worship outside the Jerusalem Temple, and various competing forces had been seeking to dominate the liturgical scene. Whatever mutual influences were at work on the earliest, recognizable forms of rabbinic and Christian liturgy, these are more likely to date from the second and third Centuries, when the two communities were still operating in the same, or closely connected contexts.

Be that as it may, the schism was completed by the fourth century, and later effects, positive and negative, whether the result of emulation or reaction, were those of one religion on another and not of a single religion’s internal affairs. For all these reasons, it may be assumed that by the fourth century the foundations had been laid of what ultimately became talmudic Judaism and that the liturgical customs in vogue by then may fairly be identified as the early form of what later evolved into the rabbinic prayer book. [2]

It is beyond dispute that the wide variety of prayers and blessings that are attested in the talmudic literature were recited from memory and transmitted orally, and that there was a distinct disapproval of committing them to an authoritative, written text. While there is no doubt in the talmudic sources about the existence of such pieces of liturgy, there are no unanimous views recorded there about its degree of importance in Jewish practice, its essential character, and its detailed application. Not without controversy was it sometimes given a theological centrality equal to that accorded to Torah study and charitable behavior and directly linked with the cultic obligations that had once been met in the Jerusalem Temple.

Where, when, towards which site, how often, in which language, with whom, and for how long observant Jews — certainly men, but possibly women as well — should conduct their prayers, were questions that elicited a host of responses from the Babylonian and Palestinian rabbis. By the same token, the formalization of the reading and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible was already a feature of synagogal activity, but the precise content and structure of the lectionary was clearly open to debate and variant usage. [3]

As far as the synagogue itself was concerned, it was only gradually being transformed from a center of social and intellectual activity, particularly in the Diaspora, to the successor of the Temple as a central but not the central, focus of Jewish liturgical activity. The Synagogue was attracting to itself more and more of the disparate elements of earlier Jewish expressions of worship and their symbols, but arguments could still be made for alternative sites, such as the home and the academy, perhaps even for alternative cultic sites in the form of Jewish temples, and a distinction could still be drawn between prayer as the expression of individual piety and supplication and liturgy as the religious commitment of the community, whatever form that might have to take now that there was no Jerusalem Temple.

The architecture and function of the synagogue were by no means standard, but the trend was moving away from the simple towards the complex and from the functional to the symbolic. Although there were honorific titles and functions for leading members of the synagogue, the service could be led by any male congregant, no special mediator, professional or theological, being required. [4]

In the matter of prayer, as in so many other detailed elements of their daily religious activities, the rabbis of the Talmud, perhaps even more than those of the Mishnah, adopted a fairly pluralistic approach. This, of course, assumes that what they have to say is to be regarded as a reflection of reality rather than a collection of theoretical reflections of relevance only to their intellectual system of argumentation. Some stressed the mystical and the poetic while others opted for a more prosaic order and guidance. The student of liturgical issues in the oldest talmudic sources soon becomes aware of what I have, in a different context, called "the tensions, controversies, stresses and strains that accompanied early rabbinic Judaism’s attempt to define the place of prayer in the framework of its religious ideology."

This is not to say that there were no halakhic requirements and that it was left entirely to individuals to treat prayer as they pleased. Some traditions had existed long enough among the ordinary folk to have acquired a popular status, others were clearly attached to special occasions of one sort or another, and there were, no doubt, those that were treated as authoritative because of their origin in the Jerusalem Temple. In the detailed recitation, however, as well as in the degree of standardization of all the customs and the theological assessment of their importance, there lay the substantial pluralism just noted. Although many specific items of prayer and prayer custom are referred to, they often appear only as a title or as a few initial words, disembodied liturgy as it were, or they are offered in a variety of different forms. Types of prayer are mentioned, and numbers of words are sometimes specified; but to the critical observer it is not obvious where the theory ends and the practice begins.[5]

Before an attempt is made to summarize what constituted the corpus of Jewish prayer in about the fourth century, two further points need to be stressed. It should not be taken for granted at any stage of Jewish religious history that what the rabbis said and legislated was already the communal norm. There were certainly periods and areas in which rabbinic authority and centralization were dominant, but these were at least as often the exception as they were the rule. Talmudic statements may consequently reflect a rabbinic struggle to impose certain ideas and practices and need not necessarily record the contemporary, communal reality. Conversely, it is possible that what the rabbis record as accepted custom may to an extensive degree include items that had their origin among the common folk rather than the intelligentsia. But until we have fuller liturgical texts dating from that period, if we ever do, we can only speculate on the relative proportions of liturgical theory and practical applications.[6]

The second point to be made is that two major Jewish communities existed during the talmudic period, one in the Holy Land and the other in Babylon. There was considerable intercourse between the two, and influence was exercised in both directions. Some evidence suggests that in Eretz Yisrael, to put it in Heinemann’s words, "a certain amount of freedom and variety remained," and it may therefore be the case that the pluralism of the talmudic sources with regard to prayer will ultimately turn out to be a division between the popular, aesthetic, and liberal trends of one community against the elitist, standardized, and authoritative preferences of the other. [7]

A further complication is the existence of Jewish communities in the Greek-speaking Diaspora who might have been more open to external influences than those in Babylon and Eretz Yisrael. Some inscriptions point in such a direction, but the major sources are still the Palestinian Talmud and midrashim. Again, the necessary analysis remains to be undertaken, and it is not certain that such research can successfully be completed on the basis of the literary sources alone, as these have obviously passed through the hands of various editors and redactors since they were first compiled.[8]

Which Jewish prayers, then, were already in existence and use by the middle of the talmudic period? It seems clear that at least two paragraphs of the Shema were recited, morning and evening, and that a formal invitation to communal prayer, as well as benedictions concerning the natural order of the day and the unique role of Israel, preceded it. The Tefillah (or Amidah) was also to be recited in the morning and afternoon, but some doubts were voiced about its obligatory nature in the evening. Efforts were being made to ensure a continuity between the Shema and the Tefillah by the adoption of passages, with suitable benedictions, expressing faith in God’s special relationship with Israel, as demonstrated in the past, and confidence in God’s response to its more immediate needs. The daily Tefillah recorded these needs, but it is doubtful whether each of its benedictions had yet obtained a definite structure. Perhaps the first three and last two or three were less fluid than the remainder.

These were also recited on Sabbaths, festivals, and fasts together with one or more appropriate central benedictions relating in some way, also yet to be categorically defined, to the particular nature of the occasion. Elements of what had originally been individual prayer and benediction were becoming absorbed into communal or synagogal worship, and remnants of the public ritual once carried out on Mount Zion were being adopted and adapted for more personal use. It was not, however, universally assumed that the formal patterns suitable for the liturgy of the community were necessarily applicable to private devotions. Such devotions, generally pietistic or penitential, were associated with the names of individual rabbis and couched in the first person, although there were also poetic supplications that may have originated in the Jerusalem Temple.[9]

The other function of the synagogue — perhaps indeed its major and earlier function — was as a center of Bible reading and instruction. Pentateuchal scrolls were publicly read and expounded on Sabbaths, festivals, fasts, and on the market days of Monday and Thursday, and, while it was becoming customary to associate particular passages with related occasions, it is still anachronistic to refer to a fixed lectionary at this time. There was controversy about the place of the Decalogue and a tendency to make a theological point by abandoning its daily recitation in spite of its long and respectable pedigree. Translations from the Hebrew into Aramaic and interpretations of the text were a central part of what amounted to this system of regular religious education for the community.

Parts of the prophetic and hagiographical books also played a part in such public readings, but the process had yet to be liturgically formalized. The earliest manifestation of a custom to include a formal recitation of a set of psalms in the communal liturgy was the use of Psalms 113-118 as the hallel, but the wider liturgical use in a communal context of what has often been viewed as the hymn book of the second Jerusalem Temple was still a development of the future.[10]

As previously implied, liturgy for the talmudic Jew was not restricted to prayer but was expressed in the observance of mitzvot, the study of Torah, and in domestic customs. It there fore occasions no surprise to find the academy and the home as the normal settings for the remainder of talmudic prayer. Declarations of God’s sanctity, with the use of the trishagion, and pious aspirations for the establishment of God’s ultimate dominion were components of the praises that came to be associated with sessions of Torah study. At home, the commencement and conclusion of Sabbaths and festivals were marked by formulas that declared the sanctity of God and of the special day and that distinguished between various examples of the holy and the profane. Some prayers were couched in Aramaic, others in Hebrew, and there was even no objection in principle to the use of Greek in certain contexts.

Among the oldest Jewish liturgical forms are the Passover Haggadah and the Grace after Meals, and it should not be forgotten that benedictions were used to acknowledge God’s bounty in providing for human sustenance. Even the contract of marriage had, by talmudic times, developed its own set of benedictions on the themes of the creation of humankind, marital joy, and the return to Zion; the setting here, however, was not the synagogue but the independent entity of wedding ceremony and feast. The benediction, like the oath and the vow, had evolved from its popular origins into a more formal structure and, as has been argued by Heinemann, was gradually being applied as such to various liturgical contexts. [11]

Credits: This article is reproduced, in two parts, by permission of the author and the publisher, from The Making of Jewish and Christian Worship, University of Notre Dame Press. Professor Reif’s further treatment of the broad field of Jewish liturgy in his volume Judaism and Hebrew Prayer published by Cambridge University Press in 1993 is and still available in paperback.

[1] Schmuel Safrai, ed., The Literature of the Sages. Part One: Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosefta, Talmud, External Tractates (Assen/Maastricht and Philadelphia, 1987); D. Weiss-Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara (Cambridge, MA, 1986); Jacob Neusner, A History of the Jews in Babylonia, 5 vols. (Leiden, 1965-1970); G. Alon, The Jews in Their Land in the Talmudic Age 70-650 C.E. (Jerusalem, 1980-1984).

[2] Stefan C. Reif, "The Early Liturgy of the Synagogue," in W. D. Davies and Louis Finkelstein, eds., The Cambridge History of Judaism III (forthcoming); M. Meyers and J. F. Strange, Archaeology, the Rabbis, and Early Christianity (London, 1981); Paul F. Bradshaw, Daily Prayer in the Early Church (London, 1981/New York, 1982).

[3] B. Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript (Uppsala, 1961); Stefan C. Reif, "Some Liturgical Issues in the Talmudic Sources," SL 15 (1982-1983): 188-206; Joseph Heinemann and Jakob J. Petuchowski, Literature of the Synagogue (New York, 1975); Jakob J. Petuchowski, ed., Contributions to the Scientific Study of Jewish Liturgy (New York, 1970), pp. xvii-xxi.

[4] Joseph Gutmann, ed., Ancient Synagogues: The State of Research, Brown Judaic Studies (Decatur, GA, 1981); Lee 1. Levine, ed., Ancient Synagogues Revealed (Jerusalem, 1981); idem, ed., The Synagogue in Late Antiquity (Jerusalem, 1987); Baruch M. Bokser, The Origins of the Seder (Berkeley, 1984); J. Schwartz, "Jubilees, Bethel, and the Temple of Jacob," HUCA 56 (1985): 63-85; Joseph Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud (Berlin, 1976); Bernadette J. Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues, Brown Judaic Studies (Decatur, GA, 1982); B. Meg. 10a, A. Z. 52b, Men. 109b.

[5] Reif, "Some Liturgical Issues," especially p. 191. Ezra Fleischer (Eretz-lsrael Prayer and Prayer Rituals as Portrayed in the Genizah Documents [Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1988]) takes a less skeptical view than Heinemann (Prayer in the Talmud) about the degree of formality already in existence in talmudic prayer. See also Joseph Heinemann, Studies in Jewish Liturgy, ed. A. Shinan (Jerusalem, 1981); Ismar Elbogen, Der j?dische Gottesdienst in seiner geschichtlichen Entwickluhg (Frankfort, 1931; updated Hebrew edition, Tel-Aviv, 1972).

[6] Robert Goldenberg neatly sums up the problem of using talmudic sources for historical reconstruction in his essay in Barry W. Holtz, ed., Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts (New York, 1984), pp. 129-75.

[7] Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews B (New York, 1952); Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, pp. 285-87.

[8] Brooten, Women Leaders; L. Roth-Gerson, The Greek Inscriptions from the Synagogues in Eretz-lsrael (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1987).

[9] E. g., M. Ber. I-5, Taan. 2:2-3, Yoma 7.1, Tamid 5.1; T. Ber. 1-3; B. Ber. 4b, 27b-29b. See L. Ginzberg, A Commentary on the Palestinian Talmud (Hebrew; New York, 1941), 1, pp. 215-16, HI, p. 359. See also Stefan C. Reif, "Liturgical Difficulties and Geniza Manuscripts," in S. Morag, 1. Ben-Ami, N. A. Stillman, eds., Studies in Judaism and Islam Presented to S. D. Goitein (Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 99-122; Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, pp. 137-92, 218-50, and the various relevant essays in the collection edited by Shinan, Studies in Jewish Liturgy; Tzvee Zahavy, The Mishnaic Law of Blessings and Prayers: Tractate Berakhot, Brown Judaic Studies (Decatur, GA, 1988).

[10] Philo, B Som. XV 3.127 and De Opificio Mundi 43.128; Josephus, Contra Apionem 2.17.175; Luke 4:16-21, Acts 13:15, 15:21; M. Meg. 3-4; B. Meg. 2la-32a; Elbogen, Der jüdische Gottesdienst, pp. 155-84 (Hebrew edition, pp. 117-38); Petuchowski, Jewish Liturgy; Heinemann, Studies in Jewish Liturgy; G. Vennes, "The Decalogue and the Minim," Beiheft zur Zeitschrift f?r die Aittestamentliche Wissenschaft 103 (1968): 232-40 = idem, Post-Biblical Jewish Studies (Leiden, 1975), pp. 169-77; Ernst Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament, An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica, 4th ed. (London, 1980), pp. 75-79; B. Fles. 117b, Arakhin 10b, Ber. 56a.

[11] Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, pp. 27-29, 218, 256-75; M. Ber. 7, 8.1, 5, Pes. 10; B. Ber. 20b, Pes. 53a-54a, 106b, Keth. 7a-8b; R. Posner, U. Kaploun, and S. Cohen, Jewish Liturgy: Prayer and Synagogue Service through the Ages (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 35-38; Reif, "Early Liturgy," paragraph on liturgical language.

The Old Testament Basis for Christian Worship.

Jews at the time of Jesus Christ had already had a history of worship almost 1500 years long. Their history was full of interaction with God Who called them to be His people, and Who had revealed to them specific instructions as to the offerings and sacrifices which were part of the way in which He was to be worshiped. The Bible is clear that God revealed to Israel how to worship, and it was patterned after things in heaven. [1] These specific forms or liturgies of worship were first seen in the Tabernacle of the early Israelites, and were consummated in the Temple worship which took place later in Jerusalem. The worship of God in the Temple in Jerusalem was the first and most prominent focus of Jewish worship, which included the form and frequency of prayer and sacrifice.

For Judaism there had always been a constant cycle of prayers, blessings and meals: daily, weekly, monthly and annually. These constituted the second focus of worship for the Jews. In its most regular form it included practices in the daily hours of prayers and the annual High Feast Days. The High Feast Days included the sacrificial offerings of the Temple and contained Jewish messianic expectation. These meals included the "breaking of bread" and the "blessing of the cup," and contained parallels with both the temple sacrifice and the messianic feast.

As Fr. Louis Bouyer points out, "The synagogal worship, already before Christ, had its necessary complement in the ritual of the meals: the family meal, and better still at least at the time of Christ, the meals of those communities of the faithful brought together by a common messianic expectation..." [2]

There was a "meal liturgy" for the prayers of the meals, and in principle they were required for every meal. However, it took on the greatest importance in family meals and especially the meals of the Holy Days. The entire structure of the Last Supper as recorded by St. Luke mirrors the meal liturgy as practiced within Judaism at the time. [3] These meal prayers and their structure contributed directly in the formation of the early Christian celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

The third and later focus of worship was that of the synagogue. For the average Israelite, the Temple was a place of worship only on certain days of the year, and it was most specifically a place of sacrifice. During the Babylonian captivity, worship in the Temple was impossible. A new form of worship came into being, a form focused patterned on temple worship, but without the sacrificial element which took place only in the Temple, and with a strong didactic element of teaching and remembering. These two elements of Jewish worship — synagogue and temple — together formed the very basic components of the form or order of the liturgy for the early Christian Church.

Besides the structure or order of worship that came from Judaism into Christianity, one can also find the cycles of liturgy — the daily, weekly and yearly cycles of worship-coming from the Old Testament as well. Acts 2:46 says that "day by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart." On a daily basis the Apostles continued their Jewish worship practices in the temple, and on a daily basis broke the bread of communion. This regularity of time is further confirmed in Acts 3:1 where Peter and John were going to the temple because it was the hour of prayer. Not only did they continue in Jewish worship practice, but they kept the liturgical cycle of daily prayers at set hours of the day as well as the major feast days.

Christian worship, then, was a Christ-centered pattern that continued and preserved the traditional structure of synagogue worship and the meaning of temple worship that the Lord had established in Israel. This basic structure included the Old and New Testament practices of liturgy, baptism, and Paschal feast that became the Eucharist, and certain of the feast days.

The Shape of Temple Worship.

The continuity of temple and synagogue worship practices characterized the Church in its earliest days, and the synagogue form became the basic order or worship for the Christian Church. This structure was set very early during the New Testament era while the Church was still seen as essentially a Jewish sect, a messianic sect believing in Jesus Christ. The setting of this order or form of worship took place even prior to the admission of Gentiles into the Church, and before the spread of the Gospel outside of Judea. Therefore, by the time the Gentile missions began in about 38 A.D. (and later enhanced by Paul’s missionary activity), this order was established and accepted as the form of Christian worship. Into the basic synagogue form were blended other elements from the temple as well as some uniquely Christian elements.

Regarding the Temple, it is important to realize two things about its worship. First, the primary type of activity was sacrifice. The cadence in the spiritual lives of most Old Testament Jews was the celebration of the Holy Feast days — and their corresponding offerings. And what determined the manner in which these sacrifices would take place? God had given the instructions in Exodus and Leviticus which describe in detail the manner in which worship is to be offered to God. Secondly, worship in the temple — and in fact all Christian worship — was and is to reflect worship in Heaven.

The Scriptures provide glimpses of heavenly worship. There are reports of it in Isaiah 6, Daniel 7, and Revelations 4 and 5. It was upon this heavenly worship that the worship of God on earth was patterned. Exodus 25 through 27 provides detailed information about the nature of temple worship, including the physical structure of the temple and its dimensions, instructions for the Ark to be built, the internal d?cor of the Tabernacle, details of the priests’ vestments, the use of incense, the presence of an altar, the daily offerings, the use of anointing oil, and the use of images.

Exodus 25:17 begins the command of God regarding the making of the Ark of the Covenant. It includes the command to make two cherubim of gold, between which God said that He would "meet with thee and I will commune with thee from above the mercy-seat, from between the two cherubim." The mercy seat, or Ark of the Covenant, was understood as "the empty throne where nothing was to be seen; on this throne God was present — the sole object of worship in Israel... God spoke from between the cherubim — invisibly present on His throne — to Moses, Aaron, Samuel ... to His people. Here the blood of atonement had been sprinkled each year." [4]

The original Ark, which disappeared in the exile, had held the Tablets of the Law. It was understood both as the place of sacrifice and the place from which God spoke — the place of communion. This is one reason that in Eastern Orthodox Churches there are representations of two cherubim behind the altar on which the bread and wine are consecrated to become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ who was sacrificed for mankind. And between and before them is the altar at which the communion takes place in the Eucharist.

Jewish components of Christian Woeship.

Most scholars agree that the structure of Christian worship came almost directly from the Synagogue form of Jewish worship. [1] The importance of the synagogue to the Jews was due to a historical experience, the Babylonian exile. With no Temple in which to worship and sacrifice, faithful Jews were forced to gather around their elders to listen to the Word of God, for teaching, and to worship. This form was retained and matured after the return from the exile, and became a normal part of Jewish religious life. It was patterned on Temple worship, and was held at the same times as services in the Temple.

A brief description of the architecture of the average synagogue in the time of Christ can help explain these factors. There were several very distinct features. The first was the seat of Moses, which was represented by seats in the synagogue occupied by the rabbis. These seats were located on a raised platform called a bema, which had a central location in the synagogue building. Each synagogue had an Ark, which was protected by a veil and before which burned a seven-branched candlestick — the Menorah. "The Ark in the synagogue contained the Scriptures and spiritually pointed to the Ark of the Temple, as the physical alignment of the synagogue pointed toward Jerusalem. The ultimate focus of synagogue worship was the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem, just as the focus of worship in the Temple was likewise the Holy of Holies." [2] Note that the synagogue was oriented toward Jerusalem, as can be seen in the diagram below.

Luke tells us Jesus went to the synagogue as was His custom and was asked to read the prophet Isaiah (Luke 4:16-30). Alfred Edersheim in his book about the life of Jesus cites the typical order which Jesus Himself experienced the day he began his ministry in Nazareth. "On his entrance into the Synagogue, or perhaps before that, the chief ruler would request Jesus to act for that Sabbath as the Sheliach Tsibbur (the representative of the people). For, according to the Mishnah, the person who read in the synagogue the portion from the Prophets, was also expected to conduct the devotions... Then Jesus would ascend the Bema and, standing at the lectern, begin the service by two prayers:

"Blessed be Thou, O Lord, King of the world, Who formest the light and createst the darkness, Who makest peace, and createst everything; Who, in mercy, givest light to the earth, and to those who dwell upon it, and in Thy goodness, day by day, and every day, renewest the works of creation. Blessed be the Lord our God for the glory of His handiworks, and for the light-giving lights which He has made for His praise. Blessed be the Lord our God, Who has formed the lights.

"With great love has Thou loved us, O Lord our God, and with much overflowing pity has Thou pitied us, our Father and our King. For the sake of our fathers who trusted in Thee, and Thou taughtest them the statutes of life, have mercy upon us, and teach us. Enlighten our eyes in Thy Law; cause our hearts to cleave to Thy commandments; unite our hearts to love and fear Thy Name, and we shall not be put to shame, world without end. For Thou art a God Who preparest salvation, and hast in truth brought us hear to Thy great Name that we may lovingly praise Thee and Thy Unity. Blessed be the Lord, Who in love chose His people Israel.

"After this followed what may be designated as the Jewish Creed, called the Shema, consisting of three passages from the Pentateuch. This prayer finished, he who officiated took his place before the Ark, and there repeated what formed the? eulogies or Benedictions. After this, such prayers were inserted as were suited to the day. The liturgical part being thus completed... the (chief ruler) approached the Ark and brought out a roll of the Law. On the Sabbath, at least seven persons were called upon successively to read portions from the Law, none of them consisting of less than three verses. Upon the Law followed a section from the Prophets? the reading of which was in olden times immediately followed by an address, discourse or sermon."

From Edersheim’s description we can see the six basic components in synagogue worship, and with minor differences most scholars agree with his observation.

The Litany. The first and opening part of the synagogue service was a series of prayers, a litany, blessing God for His love toward mankind. In its present form, the Orthodox liturgy begins with the Great Litany. The celebrant says, "In peace let us pray to the Lord," and the people respond, as they do to each of the following petitions, "Lord, have mercy."

The Confession. The Litany was immediately followed by a confession of God’s faithfulness and of mankind’s sin. In the Orthodox Liturgy, these may be found in the prayer between the Great Litany and the Scripture reading.

Intercessory Prayer. The third part was the Eulogy, the prayers of intercession. Likewise these intercessory prayers complement the confessions in preparation for the Scripture readings.

Scripture Readings. This was followed by the Reading from the Law and the Prophets. In today’s Orthodox Church, as with any church using lexionary readings, these include Old Testament readings as well as Epistle and Gospel readings.

Preaching. The reading was followed by a discourse or sermon which expanded upon the reading and clarified its application to daily life. This is the homily or sermon in modern services.

Benediction. The service concluded with a Benediction, which means "good word."

On the Sabbath, the assembly gathered around the Ark with the rabbi to hear his teaching and to meditate on the Law and the Prophets, at a time in conjunction with worship in the Temple. Although the synagogue service centered on the reading of the work of God, it was not exclusively so; it was also communion with God in prayer and praise. It was also one of the forms of worship which Jesus practiced. Upon entering the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus was asked by the ruler of the synagogue to be the liturgist; He participated in the antiphonal litanies which blessed God and began that synagogue service. He joined His neighbors in confessing the faithfulness of God. The intercessory prayers were His prayers also. Then after the reading of the Law, He was asked to read the Prophets. This He did, and then to the amazement of those gathered, He did more — He interpreted them! It is unlikely that He heard the benediction, however, given the reaction He received that day.

The most common translation of leitourgos is "the work of the people." It is that common act of God’s people together offering praise to Him in the manner which He revealed that they should. This was the type of worship which took place in the synagogue, and which came into the early Church. Edersheim goes so far as to say that "the synagogue became the cradle of the Church." [3] And as if that weren’t enough, the components of Jewish worship which came into Christianity did so in the same order. This is evident in that the basic six-point structure of synagogue worship previously described still constitutes the core of Christian worship, and more or less has for two thousand years. This "dependency of order" verifies the historical and theological truth of the worship practices of the Christian Church as the fulfillment of that which God began in Israel.

As previously described, early Christian Churches used a design very similar to Jewish synagogues. A natural development occurred as the new Christian Church formulated its own theology and understanding, but the core connection to Judaic form was never lost. This can be seen in the oldest Syrian churches that have been excavated: "...the chair of Moses has become the Episcopal seat, and the semi-circular bench that surrounds it the seat of the Christian ‘presbyters.’ But as in the synagogue they remain in the midst of the congregation. The bema is also there, not far from the Ark of the Scriptures which is still in its ancient place, not at the far end, but some distance from the apse. It is still veiled with its curtain and the candlestick is still beside it. The apse, however, is no longer turned toward Jerusalem but to the East, a symbol of the expectation of Christ’s coming in His parousia?in the Syrian church this eastward apse now contains the altar before which hangs a second curtain, as if to signify that form now it is the only ‘holy of holies’ in the expectation of the parousia." [4]

The Passover.

Passover is perhaps the ultimate example of how Jesus Christ transformed a Jewish worship practice into something new and different. One of the three major holy days of Israel, Passover celebrated their deliverance by God from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. It included the sacrifice of a lamb in the forecourt of the Temple, and the partaking of the seder or Passover supper including part of the sacrificed lamb. This lamb called to mind the lambs slain in Egypt; their blood brushed on the doorposts and lintels to stay the destroying angel. More than just symbolic, this sacrificed lamb accomplished the deliverance of the people of God for yet another year, while the seder, the Passover supper, established the reality of communion between God and mankind. That is why every Jew made it a point to be in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover at least once in their life; only in Jerusalem was it possible to celebrate the Passover completely.

Jesus had entered the city of Jerusalem prior to Passover, desirous of sharing this final supper with His disciples. They asked Him what they must do to prepare for the Passover (Jn. 13:1 and Mt. 26:17), and He instructed them about preparing the upper room. The disciples undoubtedly expected to celebrate the actual Passover meal with their Lord, for they were in Jerusalem. What they were not expecting was that which took place: Jesus Christ in the context of a supper, offering Himself as the Lamb of the world. Jesus undoubtedly gathered them for a supper, for all the Gospels record it.

But the supper which Jesus and His disciples celebrated together was not the seder supper of Passover. It certainly was a supper in the context of Passover, and the types of the Passover festival were present, including the breaking of bread and the drinking of the cup, but it was not the actual Passover seder because it took place on Thursday evening. The Passover seder would have had to be celebrated on Friday evening, at the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, and in this case the beginning of the Days of Unleavened Bread.

Because the supper took place on Thursday night, the day before Passover, there was no slaughtered lamb from the Temple to partake of; and without the sacrificed lamb from the Temple, the meal would not be a seder. According to St. John, the death of Christ took place the next day, Friday, while the lambs were being sacrificed in the Temple (18:28). Thus, the Last Supper is an anticipation of the sacrifice of Golgotha, rather than an actual Passover meal. Jesus was crucified on Golgotha the following day, on Friday, in order that the Jewish authorities could complete His death before the Sabbath and the beginning of Passover on Friday evening.

Luke tells us that Jesus told the disciples at the table that he "desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; but I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God" (Luke 22:15-16). Jesus himself said that He would not eat another Passover until it had been fulfilled in the Kingdom; therefore, what was eaten by Him and the disciples must not have been a Passover meal. Our Lord gathered His disciples for a ritual meal, which was the same as the prayer of sacrificial representation?in the Temple. Jesus did not intend to eat Passover with His disciples in Jerusalem, for He knew that He was the lamb to be sacrificed on Friday!

The lambs being slaughtered in the Temple are of the Old Covenant; the Lamb being sacrificed on the cross is the New Covenant in Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. Jesus Christ, in the offering of His Body and His Blood, is the sacrificial Lamb. Rather than sharing lamb from the Temple to accomplish their deliverance for yet another year, Jesus was offering Himself in whom they and all the world would be delivered from sin and death. Our Lord himself took a specific Jewish worship practice, one that had been revealed by God, filled it with the new meaning of the New Covenant, and transformed it into Christian communion. He had become The Passover Lamb, ready to be sacrificed for the deliverance of God’s creation. And while the Eucharist was instituted for the Twelve within the context of the Passover Feast, it was not instituted at a Passover meal. In this Jesus actualized the Church and brought it into being. It is no wonder that the early Christians thought of the Eucharist as delivering them from death (bestowing life) and establishing communion with God (unity in Christ). Deliverance and communion were the focus of the Passover, which had now been refocused in Christ Himself.

The problem with understanding the Last Supper as the Passover seder and by extension of understanding the Eucharist as a re-presentation of the Last Supper is that it results in the observance becoming a dramatic memorial. The Last Supper was a historical event that occurred once. In contrast, the Eucharist is the actual experience of the Lamb who was eternally offered on the cross. True, the crucifixion occurred once in time and need not occur again, as the New Testament clearly states. But, the crucifixion of Christ is an event with eternal consequences. Through this event all humankind before and after the cross, in fact all creation, may be saved; and in this sense it is an eternal sacrifice. Not that Christ is eternally re-sacrificed, but that the scope of the crucifixion is eternal — reaching out to each communicant in the Eucharist.

That is why in the Orthodox prayer before Communion, the priest says: "remembering... the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the sitting at the right hand and the second and glorious coming..." What do Christians remember? Those actions of Jesus Christ which are eternal (past, present and future), which transcend time and space and in which Christians are saved to eternal life. The Eucharist is the actualization of the Cross, the Tomb, the Resurrection and the Second Coming.

The Jewish Berakoth.

Some scholars make a connection to the Jewish tradition of berakoth prayers. This Jewish word has been translated into Greek and English as thanksgiving, but is best translated in its Jewish usage as "blessings." Unlike the contemporary English usage of thanksgiving as meaning gratitude, berakoth, like the Greek word eucharistia is primarily a proclamation of the miraculous work of God, and is not limited to the gift received or the human response that it may prompt.

There are two principal types of berakoth in the Jewish traditon: "One type is a brief formula that became very soon stereotyped and is composed merely of a praise-thanksgiving, a ‘blessing’ in the narrowest sense. The other is a more developed formula in which the prayer of supplication has its place, although always in a ‘blessing’ context. The first is destined to accompany every action of the pious Jew from his awakening in the morning to the moment that sleep overtakes him in the evening. The second has its place either in the Synagogue service (in the morning, at noon and at night) or in the meal prayers, particularily those accompanying the final cup shared by all the participants." [5]

Of specific interest for understanding the development of the Eucharistic component of early Christian worship is the meal berakoth. In principle it was required for every Jewish meal, and included the expectation of the messianic banquet by the remnant of Israel, and so became a unique sacrifice of its own. The meal was preceded by an obligatory hand-washing, followed by the drinking of a first cup of wine by each person who repeated the following blessing:

"Blessed be thou, Yahweh, our God, King of the universe, who givest us this fruit of the vine."

The meal then began, with the father of the family or presiding member of the community breaking the bread which was to be given to all present, with the following blessing:

"Blessed be thou, Yahweh, our God, King of the universe, who bringest forth bread from the earth."

Following the meal, the father or presiding member, with a cup of wine mixed with water, invited those present to join with his act of thanksgiving, saying:

"Let us give thanks to the Lord our God."

And those present responded:

"Blessed be he whose generosity has given us food and whose kindness has given us life."

Then the father or presiding member chanted a series of berakoth (typically three), the first of which went back to Moses and was a blessing for nourishment. The second went back to Joshua and was a blessing for the promised land. The third went back to David and Solomon and was a supplication that the creative and redemptive action of God in olden times be continued and renewed today, and find its ultimate fulfillment in the coming of the Messiah and the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

The Passover meal followed this pattern, but was "distinguished by special foods, bitter herbs, and the lamb, which were used together with the special corresponding prayers and the dialogued recitation of the haggadah (a kind of traditional homily on the origin and the ever fresh sense of the feast). But the Last Supper was not a Passover meal, because it preceded Passover, and Jesus did not connect the Eucharistic institution to any of the details that are proper to the Passover meal alone. In every case, however, the essential ritual act came at the end of the meal." [6] A lamp was brought in and blessed by the father or presiding member of the community, with a blessing that recalled the creation of the luminaries to light up the night. After this, incense was burned with a proper blessing, and then a second general hand-washing took place; the one who presided received the water from a servant or the youngest person at the table.

If we consider the elements of the berakoth and compare them to the New Testament accounts of the Last Supper, we see a very high degree of similarity. The first cup that followed the first hand-washing is mentioned by St. Luke as the fruit of the vine which he would no longer drink with his disciples before they met again in the Kingdom. The breaking of the bread correlates directly with the bread which Jesus Christ blessed and broke. The second ritual hand-washing was changed by Jesus, in that rather than washing hands, He took the water brought by St. John, the youngest disciple, and washed the feet of his disciples, beginning with Peter.

The origins of the form of Christian worship come from and combine the praise and teaching elements of the Synagogue service with the sacrificial elements of Temple worship. At the very core of Christian worship is the Eucharist. Its form and structure is also Jewish, given new content and meaning by Jesus Christ. Fr. Bouyer provides this summary:

"From this point on we can understand that we must place what we call today the ‘words of institution’ of the eucharist back into their own context which is that of the ritual berakoth of the Jewish meal, so that we may perceive the sense and the whole import of their expression. The words announcing everything that was to follow in the Last Supper, as preserved for us by St. Luke, are connected with the preparatory berakoth over the first cup. The blessing over the body (or the flesh) of Christ is connected with the initial berakoth of the breaking of bread, and that over the blood of the new covenant with the second and the third final berakoth. Finally, the sentence about the ‘memorial’ corresponds to the feastday interpolations in the third berakoth.

"We must go further. These words of Christ which were to give rise to the Christian eucharist arise from a whole structure underlying the Gospels, the Jewish liturgy in which they were inserted. If we separate them from it, we misunderstand the whole movement which inspired them. Reciprocally, their exact meaning risks being lost once we no longer perceive all that they accomplish and complete. Early Christianity was preserved from ever committing such an error by the fact that Christian prayer continued to develop within the forms of the Jewish berakoth and the tefillah, i.e. the prayer of petition which evolves without ever becoming actually detached from it. The first formulas of the Christian eucharist, in imitation of what Christ himself had done, are but Jewish formulas applied by means of a few added words to a new context, which, however, was already prepared for them." [7]

[1] Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology; St. Vladimir’s Press, New York, 1973

[2] Louis Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture; Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, p. 13

[3] Edersheim, op cit, p. 55

[4] Louis Bouyer, Eucharist; Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1968, p. 26

[5] Bouyer, op cit, p. 50

[6] Bouyer, op cit, p. 80

[7] Bouyer, op cit, p. 106

Worship in the Early Church.

The early believers in Christ continued in the traditions of their Jewish forefathers, worshiping as they had in both the Temple and the Synagogue . To this worship practice they added the distinctly Christian components which were, in fact, transformed Jewish worship practices. These included Baptism, the Eucharist, the Agape meal, and others. Baptism was also present in Jewish religious practice as a personal repentance for sin. Baptism, like the Lord’s Supper, was transformed in both meaning and content by our Lord Jesus Christ. Baptism became not only a repentance for one’s sins, but being baptized in the name of the Trinity now also assured forgiveness and incorporation into the Body of Christ, the Church. Baptism was the once and for all initiatory rite whereby one received the Holy Spirit and came into the Church.

The early Christians with their transformed understanding of the central elements of Judaism had a practical problem: how to conduct worship? They wanted to carry on their old Jewish worship practices while at the same time incorporating this new meaning and content. They accepted the necessity for continuity with the old, and for the celebration of the new, but could not do both together. The result was doing both in parallel. The Temple hours of prayer and the Synagogue worship were kept, but were not centered in Christ. Each day of the week, those Christian believers in Jerusalem would attend the Temple for prayers during the daily cycle, and on Saturday — the Jewish Sabbath — they would attend either Temple or Synagogue.

Sacrifice in Christian Worship.

These elements constituted the revealed manner in which the worship and sacrifice of Israel were to be made to God. Again, the primary function here was that of sacrifice: the offering of an animal to propitiate and atone (make amends or reparation) for the sin of God’s people. The belief of the early Church was that the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ and His subsequent resurrection supplanted all temple sacrifice as a means of propitiation and atonement. In the sacrifice of Himself, Jesus Christ becomes the propitiation for all of mankind’s sins; He is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). Thereafter, for Christians, there was no need for an additional sacrifice. The Good News of Jesus Christ is that sins are forgiven in Him, and in Him Christians are reconciled to the Father.

So why continue any of the temple practices? — Because they included communion as well as sacrifice, and because they constituted revealed worship — they were part of God’s intent from the beginning. And because temple worship was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the worship which Christians offer to God goes on forever. It continues both here on earth and in Heaven before the Throne of God. To be specific, heavenly worship is the worship, the liturgy. That is, Heaven is a dynamic condition of praise and worship — of liturgy — to the Father. And earthly worship partakes now of the eternal, heavenly worship.

For example, Hebrews Chapter 8 describes the role of Jesus Christ as the heavenly High Priest in contrast with the Old Testament priesthood. And what is the word used to describe what the High Priest is doing? It is liturgy. The passage properly reads from the first verse of the chapter as follows: "We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a liturgist (leitourgos) in the sanctuary and true tabernacle which is set up not by man but by the Lord" (8:1-2). The worship of heaven, the liturgy, has been established forever by God Himself. Hebrews then goes on to demonstrate that what is done on earth should be patterned after that in Heaven — both in the Old and New Covenants. Literally, "now Jesus has been given a liturgical work (liturgist) which is superior to theirs, just as the covenant which He arranged between God and His people is a better one..." (8:6).

According to the Bible there is worship in Heaven, and it is to be our pattern. The original Greek word in every major early test is leitourgos. It means liturgy, or liturgical worship. It is easy to understand why the early Christians continued in their synagogue and temple practices. Worship had been revealed to them by God. Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of all that God had promised in the Old Testament; in Him all the hopes of Israel were fulfilled. It was only natural that in worshiping God through Jesus Christ, believers would continue to do so as they had been told, in the manner God revealed to them.

This was natural, almost automatic for the Jews who accepted Jesus Christ as Messiah. There was, however, one major change for these Jews which had been completed in Jesus Christ. The animal sacrifices of Old Testament practice had been fulfilled in the person of Christ. All that had been anticipated was now completed. All that had been prophesied was now reality. The Messiah had come. So for these early Christians, the Jewish worship practices were continued with a brand new understanding of the centrality of the victorious Christ, and new-found joy. Christians did not view their Jewish liturgical practices as pass? Nor did they simply continue in some kind of mindless habit of outmoded ritual. They maintained this liturgy as their own, as described in the inspired Scriptures of the Old Covenant carried over into the New. In fact, that Jewish liturgy made the work of God in Jesus Christ comprehensible. The Old Testament worship practices, now fulfilled and given new meaning in Christ, became the core of Christian worship within this New Covenant.

Early Worship in Antioch.

If one realizes that Jewish worship was liturgical and provided the worship structure for the early Church, and then one reads the New Testament seriously, a whole new side to the question becomes clear. The earliest and clearest reference to liturgy comes in Acts, the book which chronicles the inception and growth of the early Church. The church at Antioch was the first Gentile church outside of Jerusalem, established approximately A.D. 38 when Barnabas was sent to teach there (Acts 11:25 ff.). Acts 13 describes the selection of Barnabas and St. Paul for the first missionary journey. This would have taken place approximately A.D. 46, in what by then was a well-established and structured community of believers.

Luke records that the calling of Paul and Barnabas was the work of the Holy Spirit, and that it took place during the "liturgy." The text reads, "as they were ‘liturgizing’ (leitourgounton) before the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul to the work to which I have called them’"(Acts 13:2). Luke was a physician and well educated. He must have understood what he meant to say about worship: namely, that the community was together in formal and ritual worship, accompanied by fasting, when the Holy Spirit spoke. So in A.D. 46, this early church was worshiping in a liturgical manner using a Christian form carried over from the synagogue. And this was within sixteen years of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The continuity of worship between the Old and New Covenants is very evident.

The Eucharist and the Resurrection.

But what to do about the Eucharist? It could not be added to a Synagogue service, yet it was to be celebrated as the Lord had commanded. The answer was tied to the Resurrection. Jesus had been crucified on Friday, the day before the Jewish Sabbath, and had risen on Sunday, the third day. Thus the day after the Sabbath was seen as the day of the Lord’s Resurrection, the Lord’s Day. At the Lord’s Supper, the parousia or presence of Jesus Christ was experienced in the consecrated gifts; here people encountered Christ’s new life in His resurrection. It was only natural that the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper should be celebrated each Resurrection Day. Thus, the typical pattern for early believers became Synagogue worship on the Sabbath, followed by gathering for the Lord’s Supper on the "next day." For the Jews, the day ended at sundown and the next day began. Sunday began at nightfall on Saturday. As Luke records in Acts 10:7, "On Saturday evening we gathered together for the fellowship (communion) meal" (NEV). The pattern typically became one of worshiping in Synagogue on the Sabbath morning, and then gathering together again in the evening (the next day — Sunday) for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

In the early Church, the Lord’s Supper was celebrated at the end of the Agape (love) or fellowship meal. This was an extension of the Passover supper tradition, and was a means for believers to show each other the love and unity they shared together in Christ. All gathered, each bringing what they were able. At the conclusion of the meal was the Eucharist, the "thanks-giving" for the grace of Jesus Christ. The sacrament conveyed the understanding and symbolism of the Passover Supper, now consummated in the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. It is highly probable that it was the absence of this Jewish understanding that accounted for the disintegration and abuse of the Agape meal in the Gentile churches. Paul berates the Corinthians for being selfish, causing some to go hungry, and for drunkenness at the meal which became so pervasive that it even prevented the Eucharist from being celebrated (I Cor. 11:20-21).

What can be seen, however, especially during the early years prior to the Gentile missions, was a link between these old and new worship practices. A Jewish male who became a follower of The Way would have been circumcised as a child, and with his wife and family would continue in the normal Jewish worship pattern with a new Christian understanding. The early Church proceeded in this manner until two things occurred: the Gentile missions brought into the Church people without a Jewish tradition, raising the sort of problems just noted.

The Impact of Persecutions on Worship.

The persecutions shook this co-existence and steered the Jewish Christian worship transition into a more distinctly Christian form of worship. The first persecution was recorded in Acts 6 and 7, and involved the martyrdom of St. Stephen. The early persecutions were by the Jews, and aimed at this new sect that was winning converts from Judaism and was seen as heretical. With the persecutions, the life of the Church was changed because the result was exclusion from Judaism. And that meant exclusion from Jewish worship. Christians did no longer gathered in the Synagogues, and were unwelcome in the Temple as well as described in Acts 21 when St. Paul is mobbed within the Temple grounds. The active Jewish persecutions excluded Christians from the Temple, and forced them toward new worship practices.

The Core of Christian Worship.

What was this resulting Christian order? The Synagogue worship structure, consisting of a litany of prayers, a confession, eulogies, readings from the Scriptures, an address or homily, and a benediction. This form constituted the core of what was to become specifically Christian worship.

Evidence for this can be found in archaeological evidence from the earliest Syrian churches, as well as in the Apostolic Constitutions and the Didache, and in the continuous practices of the Nestorian Churches. "The old Syrian church appears as a Christianized version of a Jewish Synagogue." [1] There is a bema in the center, an Ark with veil and candle to hold the Word of God, and a seat for the bishop (that is) representative of the seat of Moses. To these Synagogue elements was added an altar, and now the Church had an orientation. The architectural arrangement can be seen in the following illustration.

Christian churches were oriented facing the East for a very specific reason. Christians look to the heavenly Jerusalem from which the Messiah will come, and know themselves to be the "temple of the Holy Spirit." However, the East is the place of the rising sun, and for early Christians this was "the only fitting symbol of the last appearance of Christ in His parousia, as Sun of Justice in Zecharia." [2] Tertullian speaks of public and private prayer to the East as being an Apostolic tradition, and it expressed the eschatological expectation that Christ will appear as the Rising Sun that will never set.

To the core Synagogue structure (commonly referred to as the Synaxis or the Liturgy of the Word) was added the fulfilled Temple worship, the Eucharist, which was inserted prior to the benediction. This included the use of sung or chanted Psalms which were part of Jewish worship, and to which St. Paul refers in Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 when he encourages the use of "psalms, hymns and spiritual songs." Again, St. Paul’s Missionary approach demonstrates this connection, for his approach in any new city was to worship first in the Synagogue using that base for proclaiming the Gospel. The Jerusalem Church was the "Mother Church" for early Christianity, to which the Church at large looked for guidance in all things theological and liturgical. The missionary churches naturally followed the form of the Jerusalem Church. Thus, the Gentile churches which came into being as a result of St. Paul’s preaching and teaching had this same Jewish rule of prayer, or order of worship. The similarity to the Synagogue ritual within the first century Church demonstrates an early universal acceptance of Jewish worship origins. [3]

In his book, The History of The Church (18.1), Eusebius, a fourth century historian and bishop, quotes Philo, a Jewish historian writing in the first century. Philo describes the Christian "all-night vigils of the great festival, the spiritual discipline in which they are spent, the hymns that we always recite, and how while one man sings in regular rhythm the others listen silently and join in the refrains of the hymn." [4] This is antiphonal singing of litanies, and certainly reflects Jewish worship practice, which Philo recognizes. By the end of the first century, the Christian Church was present throughout much of the Empire. There were established churches in most of the major cities and many smaller ones. These churches continued following the order of Jewish worship, essentially the Synagogue form with the inclusion of the Eucharist. But, the typical worship of the first and second centuries was by necessity simple. The Church was generally under persecution, so it tended to hold its worship services in secret, and usually in the homes of members. As Fr. Alexander Schmemann states, the liturgical form was commonly "the bishop, surrounded by presbyters (elders) facing the assembly, the Supper Table, on which the deacons placed the gifts (bread and wine) which were being offered, preaching, prayer, the anaphora (prayer before Communion) and the distribution of the Holy Gifts." [5]

The freedom of the first years of the church’s life in which she could be liturgically Jewish in Synagogue and Temple and also celebrate the Eucharist were over. What is evident is a liturgical contraction under the duress of persecution. By now the "unnecessary" material of the Synagogue service had been eliminated. What was left was a simpler service focused on the Eucharist, but one that still reflects the Synagogue form and contains its major elements. But this liturgical contraction does not imply that the Early Church was primitive, had no ceremony, and subscribed to simple beliefs. In his introduction to The History of The Church. G .A. Williamson says of Eusebius that in his own statements and those of the earliest authorities on which he draws, we see a church which we would recognize as our own. "We shall find the same line drawn between clergy and laity, the same division of the clergy into the three orders of bishops, presbyters, and the deacons, the same practice of Episcopal ordination and consecration, the same insistence on Apostolic Succession and on the establishment by Christ of One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. We shall find Christendom partitioned up into dioceses and archdioceses, presided over and ruled by bishops who are held in the highest esteem." [6]

Focus on the Eucharist.

By the second century, the Lord’s Supper (or Eucharist) began to be separated from the Agape meal. Differing opinions exist as to whether this was due to problems such as those in Corinth, or the growing Gentile expansion in the Church with a lack of Jewish perspective. The result was the celebration of the Eucharist without the Agape meal.

The word Eucharist means thanksgiving or the giving of thanks (see Luke 22:16). At the Last Supper, the institution of the Eucharist, Christ’s intent was not on the perpetuation of a mere meal or Passover supper. Instead, that meal was fulfilled in the partaking of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. And it is after the Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost that the incredible significance of the Eucharist comes to light. For the Lord Who gave the Church this sacrament became alive again and ascended! He is the living Lord Jesus Christ, Who reigns at the right hand of God the Father. He said not only "this is my Body and Blood," but He also told His followers "unless you eat of my Body and of my Blood you have no life within you" (John 6:53). One cannot get around this point in Scripture.

The early Christians took their Lord at His word, believing that in a mystery, bread and wine became the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and that it was life-giving. That is, through the work of the Holy Spirit, each believer was nurtured by grace (sacramentally) and received spiritual sustenance. Behind this understanding of the nature of the Eucharist was the understanding of worship held by the entire early Church. As Fr. Schmemann tells us, "the worship of the church has at its real center the constant renewal and repetition in time of the one unchanging Sacrament: unchanging that is in its meaning, content and purpose. But the whole significance of this repetition is in the fact that something unrepeatable is being recalled and actualized. The Eucharist is the actualization of one, single, unrepeatable event. [7] This is readily apparent in the portion of the Liturgy or Mass before communion; the memorial which remembers, which "re-presents every Sunday the saving death of Christ in the expectation of the resurrection... the Eucharistic meal has taken the place of the former sacrifices. No other sacrifice can have any meaning but the cross of Christ, celebrated in the Christian meal. Through it, while taking part in His passion, we are being given a foretaste of His resurrection." [8]

These liturgical actions plus the faith of the early Christians were on the Body and Blood of Christ. More specifically, it was the Biblical promise of the reality of His sacrifice made available in these gifts, and the reality of spiritual nurture they bring. Ultimately, it is a question of Life. Jesus said He came that believers could have life and have it more abundantly. He also said He would send His Spirit, the Spirit of Life, to transform believers and all creation, to set believers apart.

The belief of the early Church was that the Eucharist was this transforming life — spiritual life. It was not a memorial experience of the Lord. It was a miraculous experience of the Grace of God in the Holy Spirit. For St. Ignatius this transformation centered around the altar, the place of sacrifice, from which the believer receives the bread of life. On this altar was consecrated the elements which became the life-giving mysteries. [9]

This was certainly the belief of Justin Martyr, circa A.D. 150, who said: "For we do not receive these things as though they were ordinary food and drink... the food over which the thanksgiving has been spoken becomes the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus in order to nourish and transform our flesh and blood." St. Justin called this food Eucharist, thanksgiving or blessing, just as he called baptismal washing "enlightenment." For him this was a real and powerful act of God. [10]

Thus, for Christians now as for the Apostles then, the Biblical promise is that by believing on Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and being baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, believers receive new life in that sacrament through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And as believers partake of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, they continue to receive new life in Christ through the grace of the Holy Spirit. This indeed is something to give thanks for! Hence the name Eucharist: the Thanksgiving. This was the uniform view of the early Church. For St. Ignatius, who died in 107 A.D., "thought of the Church as a Eucharistic society which only realized its true nature when it celebrated the Supper of the Lord, receiving His Body and Blood in the Sacrament." [11]

Gregory Dix, in his classic treatise on the development of liturgical worship, states that in the earliest accounts of the Eucharist, the Church places the words of institution central in the Eucharistic Prayer. He goes on to point out that it used formulas which were in keeping with those of John’s Gospel, "that Bread which cometh down from Heaven and giveth life unto the world, he that eateth of this Bread shall live for ever." [12] He then quotes St. Ignatius who had described the Eucharistic Bread as "a remedy bestowing immortality, an antidote preventing death and giving life in Jesus Christ."

Worship and Belief.

This belief of the early Church can also be seen in how they worshiped. For the majority of the service the Bishop would be seated on the bema or stand thereon. The Ark had become in the Syrian Church the place where the Gospel Book was "enthroned"; and this was probably so throughout the early Church. The Word was taken from the Ark and proclaimed from the bema. By it the believer was led to the altar and beyond it to the Kingdom. This happened literally as well as spiritually! There were no pews in the early Church. This was true almost universally up until the seventeenth century in the West, and is still true in most Orthodox Churches today. Upon the completion of the prayers and Scripture readings, the clergy would take the bread and wine and proceed to the East — to the altar for the Eucharistic meal. The vital nature of the early Christian worship is expressed in this procession toward the East (that is, the Kingdom). "Therefore the whole assembly, far from being a static mass of spectators, remains an organic gathering of worshipers, first centered on the Ark, for hearing and meditating upon the Scriptures, and finally going toward the East all together for the Eucharistic prayer and the final communion." [13]

The Great Entrance.

This movement toward the altar with the gifts is the origin of what is now called the Great Entrance in the Orthodox Liturgy when the clergy bring the bread and wine from the Preparation Table to the Altar before the Eucharist. The only major change over time in the structure of this portion of the Liturgy was the movement of the Gospel into the sanctuary before the Altar, in advance of its reading to the assembled congregation. In part, once again, this was due to the circumstances the Church experienced. For the early Church, the Gospel Book was of inexpressible value, for it was the Word of Life. One of the common goals of the persecuting Romans was to confiscate and destroy the Gospel Book. Thus, along with the sacred vessels, it was kept in a safe place during the week, and only brought out for the service of the Divine Liturgy. This circumstance would have existed through the early part of the fourth century changing only with the end of the persecution of Diocletian.

What transpired then, was the assembling of believers before the Liturgy began, typically singing Psalms of praise in anticipation of the impending communion with God. The clergy would arrive bearing the Gospel Book and the sacred vessels and enter the Church, carrying the Gospel Book to the center of the building (onto the bema in the very earliest churches). Then, after the reading of the Gospel lesson to the assembly, the Gospel Book would be carried to the Altar. From this real experience has come two portions of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy; the Antiphons and the Little Entrance.

The Antiphons.

The Antiphons (two or three are commonly sung) are composed of Psalms that are antiphonally sung by cantor and choir or congregation. These go back to the Psalms sung by the assembled congregation while awaiting the arrival of the clergy. The Little Entrance is the bearing of the Gospel into the sanctuary, and it likewise can be traced to the carrying of the Gospel Book into the church. With the end of persecution it could be kept in the church. Until recent times, the practice was for the Gospel to be in the middle of the church at the beginning of the Divine Liturgy, and from there to be carried into the sanctuary during the Little Entrance to be read before the altar. Having been brought into the midst of the assembly, the Book of Life is then carried into the sanctuary, where, through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, all of the assembly enter into the Kingdom to partake of the Eucharist.

St. Ignatius of Antioch referred to the Church as a "Eucharistic community" who realizes her true nature when she celebrates the Eucharist. His view of the Church was the local community gathered around its Bishop, celebrating the Eucharist. It is important to note that St. Ignatius became Bishop of Antioch in A.D. 67 — in the midst of the New Testament era while most of the Apostles were still alive and active. St. Ignatius was the second Bishop of Antioch succeeding St. Peter. Thus we can safely trust that this understanding of the nature of the Church and the Eucharist was representative of that held by the Apostles and the Church at large.

By the end of the first century the basic form or order of the Liturgy was established and universally celebrated throughout the Christian Church, though with regional and cultural differences in expression. The Liturgy had as its center the worship of Jesus Christ and the partaking of His Holy Gifts. In the process she remained true to her origin in Jewish worship which the Lord Himself had practiced and which had been revealed by God. The shed blood of bulls or goats was no longer at the core. This sacrifice was fulfilled for all time in the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, which is central still to the life of the Church in the Holy Eucharist. Thus, as the lives of the Apostles ended, as the responsibility for the Church was being handed on to the next generation, her worship of God was established. The basic form of the Liturgy was settled, to be refined and enhanced over the coming years, but never altered in its basic form and meaning.

The major structural change in the development of the Christian rite took place by the latter part of the third century. Until this time it was not uncommon for Christian worship to still have two separate components, the Synaxis (directly derived from the Synagogue) and the Eucharist. The Eucharist was for believers only, and while all were expected to attend, this portion of the service was closed to non-believers. With the removal of persecution and the development of public worship, the need for separate services disappeared. By the end of the sixth century, holding one rite without the other had become very uncommon. The two rites had some similar and overlapping components, which were easily incorporated into each other. Prior to this synthesis, the Synaxis and the Eucharist services had the following components:" [14]

Synaxis or "Meeting"	Eucharist
Greeting and Response	Greeting and Response
Lections interspersed with Psalmody	Kiss of Peace
Psalmody	Offertory
Sermon	Eucharistic Prayer
Dismissal of Catechumens	Fraction
Intercessory Prayers	Communion
Benediction	Benediction

It is very easy to see how these two services could be fused together to form two parts of one celebration. In the Eastern and Western Church this synthesis occurred and included liturgical enrichments, including the addition of hymns, expanded use of litanies, and the inclusion of the Nicene Creed. As shown, this synthesis was true to the original worship of the Early Church. The Synaxis is very similar to the Synagogue service. And the Eucharist is almost identical to the Eucharist which Justin Martyr describes in his First Apology as taking place at Rome in 150 A.D.

[1] Louis Bouyer, Eucharist, Notre Dame University Press, Notre Dame, 1968, p. 25.

[2] ibid, p. 28.

[3] Alexander Schmemann, Introduction To Liturgical Theology, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, 1986, p. 154.

[4] Eusebius, The History of The Church, Dorset Press, New York, 1965.

[5] A. Schmemann, op. cit., p. 119.

[6] Eusebius, op. cit, p. 9.

[7] A. Schmemann, op. cit, p. 43.

[8] L. Bouyer, op. cit., p. 32.

[9] Willy Rordorf, editor, The Eucharist of the Early Christians, Pueblo Publishing Co., New York, 1976, p. 61.

[10] ibid, p. 75.

[11] in Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, New York, Penguin Books, 1978. p. 21.

[12] Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, The Seabury Press, New York, 1982, p. 137.

[13] L. Bouyer, op. cit., p. 35.

[14] G. Dix, ibid, p. 434.

Heavenly Worship.

Worship begins in heaven. The Holy Scriptures record numerous instances of the drama of heavenly adoration taking place before the very throne of God. It may be that for the person familiar with Scripture, some of these are so apparent they are overlooked. The concept of heavenly worship begins with God’s revelation to the children of Israel about the building of the Tabernacle, and the manner of worship to take place within it. This revelation formed the basis for the Old Testament worship of the Jews. Worship on earth was to reflect worship in heaven.

Worship on Earth — As It Is in Heaven.

The summary New Testament passage on heavenly worship is Hebrews 8:1-6. Here Jesus Christ is described as the High Priest, seated at the right hand of God, Who has accomplished salvation and reconciliation through His mediation. Verse 2 says that this High Priest has another role also. He is the Liturgist (the word is leitourgos) of the sanctuary. Jesus Christ Himself is the Liturgist, and this liturgy takes place in the "sanctuary of the true tabernacle" which is in Heaven before the throne of God. Verses 4 and 5 say that worship on earth is patterned after that in Heaven. This is described in verse 6 as the "more excellent liturgy" which He has obtained because He is the mediator of "a better covenant." The teaching is quite clear — liturgical worship is not optional. Rather, it is normative for Christians.

Worship on earth, then, is to be an extension, a reflection, of that in the Kingdom. It is to be a window to heaven. Christian believers cannot decide that this or that is unnecessary and disposable because it is not contemporary or is not in vogue. The obligation is to follow and to serve God, to accept His Word of revelation. This is the guardianship of Tradition in the life of the Church; to remain true to the faith as revealed, as it was in the beginning.

Recall in the book of Acts when the followers of The Way were first called Christians, meaning those who followed or acted like Jesus Christ. The implication is clear. The believers were living lives which appeared like the very life which Christ lived. So are all believers to live: conformed to the will of God, loving and caring for all brothers and sisters. And so are believers to worship: In a heavenly pattern which shows forth the Kingdom of God in which Jesus Christ reigns. The Kingdom of God is the critical element of worship for good reason. It was the reality and advent of this Kingdom which constituted the core of the preaching and teaching of Jesus, especially in His parables.

From the New Testament one can make three summary observations about the nature of the Kingdom of God. First, it is a present spiritual reality (Rom. 14:17), as well as the realm or dimension into which followers of Jesus have entered (Col. 1:13). Second, it is the reign or rule of God which has been established in Jesus Christ, and will be consummated when He returns (Matt. 8:11, 11:27). Third, it is the inheritance which will be bestowed upon God’s people when Christ comes in glory (Matt. 25:34).

Christ came to bring followers into the Kingdom of His Father. This is where the focus must be. Fr. Thomas Hopko describes it well when he says, "The two comings of Christ are held together in Christian thought, action, and prayer at all times. They cannot be separated. When they are, it is the end of the Christian faith, life and worship. The first coming without the second is a meaningless tragedy. The second coming without the first is an absurd impossibility. Jesus is born to bring God’s Kingdom. He dies to prove His kingship. He rises to establish His reign. He comes again in glory to share it with His people. In the Kingdom of God there are no subjects. All rule with the risen Messiah. He came, and is coming, for this purpose alone." [1]

Believers in Jesus Christ live both in this world, and in the Kingdom of God. They experience the Kingdom in their midst through the work of the Holy Spirit. Based upon their faith, they know it is the eternal life they have begun to experience. They recognize that is it not yet fully manifested in this world, but will be so at the return of Christ. It is in the Church that Christians have the fullness of the foretaste of the Kingdom of God.

Thus Jesus said, "I will build My church" (Matt. 16:18). His Kingdom is Life, and it is what life on earth is about. Belief in Jesus Christ brings believers into the Kingdom of God through Baptism and makes them its citizens. At the same time, they are made members of His body, the Church, to be a holy nation unto Him. The Divine Liturgy focused on the Eucharist as the mystery and sacrament of that Kingdom is indeed a living continuity with the beliefs and practices of early Christianity.

The Ascent to Heaven.

Both of these truths, that of worship as "heaven on earth" and of the Church as the presence of the Kingdom of God, are crucial to understand Early Christian liturgical worship in its fullness. Worship is an entrance into the dimension of the Kingdom. The Eucharist which is the focus of the Liturgy, is a sacramental thing — that is, a thing of grace, a thing of the Kingdom which involves "the idea of transformation, which refers to the ultimate event of Christ’s death and resurrection, and is always a sacrament of the Kingdom." [2] For the Christian, the Eucharist is not a mere remembrance, a symbolic acting out of an historical event in the life of Jesus Christ. Christians take the Lord and Savior at His word when He said, "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you; he who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life..." (John 5:53-54). In communion believers receive bread and wine that has become the Body and Blood of Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit, by the grace of God.

Like that of the early Church, "For Orthodox tradition there is no difference between the Body of the risen Christ and His Eucharistic Body, that is, the Church in its two-fold nature, spiritual and sacramental. The Eucharist constitutes the Church more surely, more essentially, than any of its sociological aspects. In and through the Eucharist, the Church becomes a chalice from which flows the power of resurrection ‘for the life of the world’." [3] The Eucharist is not of this world, it is of the Kingdom. It is the Body and Blood of Him Who rules in the Kingdom of God. Thus, how can Christians expect to receive the things of the Kingdom on this earth? For them, Christians must go to the Kingdom. That ultimately is the "purpose" of the Divine Liturgy. It is an ascent to heaven, to the Kingdom of God. It is the liturgical and sacramental dynamic that carries Christians from this world into the dimension of the Kingdom where they may partake of spiritual things, and participate in spiritual worship before the Throne of God!

At a common sense level, this is simply applying to the Eucharist what Christ expected believers to apply to their lives, for as St. Paul enjoins, "our citizenship is in heaven" (Phil. 3:20). Believers are to live in a manner that demonstrates their citizenship is in heaven. Applied to worship, this is likely what Jesus meant when He told the Samaritan woman that "the hour cometh when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father." But as He went on to point out to her, "the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the Father seek to be His worshipers" (John 4:21-24). Worshiping God is not a thing of this world, it is a thing of the Spirit. And if the Kingdom is the place of God, then the Kingdom is where the Christian had better be worshiping "in spirit and in truth!"

The destination of the Liturgy is known from the outset — the first words said by the priest are "Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages." The believer’s destination is the Kingdom of God, to worship Him in spirit and in truth; to join the saints and the Host of Heaven in worship.

Fr. Schmemann writes that "to bless the Kingdom is not simply to acclaim it. It is to declare it to be the goal, the end of all our desires and interests, of our whole life, the supreme and ultimate value of all that exists. To bless is to accept in love, and to move toward what is loved and accepted. The Church is thus the assembly, the gathering of those to whom the ultimate destination of all life has been revealed and who have accepted it. This acceptance is expressed in the solemn answer to the doxology: Amen. It is indeed one of the most important words in the world, for it expresses the agreement of the Church to follow Christ in His ascension to His Father, to make this ascension the destiny of man." [4]

Experientially, the Liturgy is an act of Divine Beauty. To witness and to participate in it and become aware of its aesthetic value is to become aware of God’s love for us. The point of any writing or analysis of the Liturgy is to encourage the reader to experience and appreciate it for its true worth. Its value, of course, is in the lasting spiritual sustenance it provides. Here is the element that sets the Early Christian liturgical worship apart; it is not this-worldly, rather it is an other-worldly experience. Christians ascend to heaven, of which they are now citizens and to which they are ultimately destined, to commune with the God who loves mankind and has shown forth this love. There Christians worship this God and receive His gifts. This is truly what worship was meant to be: the ascent to heaven in the company of the saints to worship and to know God.

[1] Thomas Hopko, The Winter Pascha, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, 1984, p. 67.

[2] Alexander Schmemann, For The Life Of The World; St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY, 1973, p. 64.

[3] The Living God; St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood,, 1989, p. ix.

[4] Alexander Schmemann, For The Life Of The World, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, 1973, p. 28.

The Royal Priesthood.

In saying that the communion of Saints is at the heart of Eastern Orthodox worship, it must also be understood that worship or liturgy is celebrated. More than celebrated, it is co-celebrated by the clergy and the people gathered to praise the one true God. But, it is also co-celebrated with the Saints and the Heavenly Host, for all worshipers in the Church are saints together, equally children of God brought into the Kingdom by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. It is communion that forms the basis of worship: believers join with those in Heaven before the Throne of God, and offer Him praise and blessing. Those who have been reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ in Holy Baptism become members of the royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9).

What is a priest? One who stands before God and offers to Him in thanksgiving that which He has given to us: life. Because of the fall of Adam and Eve, humanity turned away from the worship of God and became self-centered. In the book of Romans, St. Paul identifies the key mark of sin: unthankfulness (1:21). Man refuses to say thank you to God, to love Him back. But reconciled believers are "an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation" (1 Peter 2:9-10), the people of God. Having been restored to priesthood, believers return to worship.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann writes, "All rational, spiritual and other qualities of man distinguishing him from other creatures have their focus and ultimate fulfillment in this capacity to bless God, to know, so to speak, the meaning of the thirst and hunger that constitute his life. ‘Homo Sapien’, ‘Homo Faber’... yes, but first of all, ‘Homo adorans,’ The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God — and by filling the world with this Eucharist, he transforms his life, the one that he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him." [1]

Priesthood and Vocation.

And at the most practical level, what does this mean for believers? It means that believers were created to bless and praise God, to worship Him. This is the primary human vocation because this is precisely what human beings were created to do: to be in communion with God as His priests, and in that role to worship Him. The dictionary defines vocation as follows: "Any occupation or pursuit for which one qualifies oneself, or to which one devotes one’s time or life; a cal1ing." [2] Believers are called to this vocation because human beings are created for it. And in accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and entering into the Church, believers are enabled by God’s Holy Spirit to carry out that for which human beings were created. Liturgy literally means the work of the people. It is not just that which worshipers are to do during the Divine Liturgy, but that work which they are to be doing throughout all of their lives.

There is a personal issue to be considered which has to do with the fulfillment of this fundamental attribute for which all human beings were created. The inherent ability to be a priest may be exercised to varying degrees or not at all. Those who are outside the New Covenant of faith in Jesus Christ and are not members of His Body are not fulfilling this created purpose. They possess the capacity by having been created in the image of God, but they are not able to actualize it until they are reconciled to God in Jesus Christ. Those within the New Covenant have been restored to this priesthood. Then the question of fulfillment becomes the issue.

The understanding of humans as priests is but one part of the created role. In Christian theology Christ is understood to have manifested Himself in three offices, to have worked in three ways: as king, priest and prophet. Jesus Christ is King, He is High Priest and He is Prophet. Christ is King because He is the anointed Messiah; He is Priest because He offered Himself for the life of the world; He is Prophet because He fulfilled all the prophecies in coming in human form.

Notice that all three key off of the human nature which Jesus Christ took upon Himself in the Incarnation. It was through taking on and fulfilling His calling, in human form, that He became King, Priest and Prophet. As Divine, as a part of the Godhead, there is no need to refer to Him in these ways; it is self-evident. The point is that these three offices or characteristics of Christ are also the created offices or characteristics of human beings. Human beings were created to be priestly, prophetic and kingly; and though fallen, it is what they can become in Jesus Christ.

St. Paul observed that "God works all things together for the good, for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose" (Rom. 8:28), indicating a fundamental inter-relationship of all that believers are and do in Jesus Christ. This is equally true of the Church. The liturgical and the sacramental character of the Church are linked together, and they are the way the Church is to be and to worship. This was so from the beginning of the New Testament Church. The ability to fulfill this vocation or calling is directly tied to the liturgical and the sacramental and cannot be fulfilled outside the Church.

It is this priesthood that undergirds Christian worship, and most particularly the Divine Liturgy. Why? Because worship of the One True God can and must take place in the only place of true worship, the Kingdom of God. The Liturgy is a celebration of salvation. It is a feast of the joy that is accessible in the Holy Trinity which Christ came to give. It is saying thank you for the grace of God which is continually available through the Holy Spirit in the sacraments. It is a festival with all the accompanying joy and gladness that characterize heaven itself. Jesus described the Kingdom of God in terms of a royal feast, "And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down (lie at table) in the Kingdom of God" (Luke 13:29). And St. John says in Revelation that the Saints at the heavenly wedding feast cry out, "Allelulia! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lord has come, and the Bride has made herself ready" (Rev. 19:6-7).

The Priesthood In Action: Worship.

In worship, celebration takes two forms: con-celebration and co-celebration.