The worship of the Israelites is a response to God’s saving acts on their behalf, particularly the Lord’s action of deliverance in the Exodus event. Through such events God spoke, calling the people to faith and commitment.
The history of salvation conventionally begins with the calling of Abraham, “our father in faith,” though the liturgy includes in its scope the creation epic of Genesis 1 and 2, and like 1 Peter, sees the story of Noah as relevant to saving history (baptism). The whole of Old Testament history in a variety of ways is seen as preparation for the coming of the Messiah. He and his redeeming work of passion, death, and resurrection are the culmination of saving history, which is carried forward by the operation of the Holy Spirit in the church, which awaits the eschaton, the summing up of all things in Christ at the end. This pattern underlies the whole of the Christian liturgy. The proclamation of God’s word in the Old Testament lessons prepares the way for the kērugma of the New Testament lessons, culminating in the reading of the Gospel. The Eucharist is set in the context of the Passover festival and of the making of the covenant in the desert. The paschal mystery of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection is the very heart of the Eucharist, which by anamnēsis recalls it and makes its power present to the people here and now. In its celebration, and in that of the other sacraments, the church looks and reaches to the fulfillment of all things in Christ. The liturgical year from Advent to Pentecost follows the same course.
However, the history of salvation is not to be seen as a series of disparate events or as the mere record of what once happened. It is the record of God’s self-disclosure, made in and through the events, the disclosure of a God who gives himself. This is the deepest meaning of salvation history. The whole record can be seen as the self-giving of God, who takes the initiative, who approaches humankind to bring people nearer to himself to make them his own people, and who binds them to himself by covenant, which is the expression of his love. In this perspective Abraham is a figure of crucial importance. God called him to make him the father of many peoples; he responded with faith, and in that faith entered an unknown destiny (cf. Heb. 11:8). It was this response of faith that made him pleasing to God (righteous), and it was on account of it that God made covenant with him (Gen. 17:19; cf. 22:17; Rom. 4:11). The same was true of all the great figures of the Old Testament (Heb. 11:11–40). It was by faith that Moses accepted his vocation to become the leader of his people, it was by faith that he led them out of Egypt, it was by faith that he kept the Passover, and above all it was by faith that he responded to the God who revealed to him that he is the God who acts, the God who saves.
The story can be briefly continued. God showed his love for his people in the saving events of the Passover, in the rescue from Egypt, in the passage through the Red Sea, but above all, in the covenant, in which the people bound themselves to God, who is ever faithful to his promises. So close was this union intended to be that the later writers of the Old Testament could call the covenant the marriage union, or even the love match, between God and his people, thus foreshadowing the Pauline and Johannine teaching on the church as the bride of Christ (Eph. 5:22–32; Rev. 21:1–2). The role of the prophets was to recall to the people God’s faithful love shown to them in the Exodus events, which for them meant “salvation,” and to renew the response of faith of the people. But all was in vain. The response of faith that God sought, a response that would result in total commitment, was refused, and the divine purpose of salvation seemed to have been frustrated.
Then in the appointed time God sent his Son, “born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law” (Gal. 4:4–5). God had looked for the response of faith from his people, for their yes to his saving love. They were unable to give it, but Jesus, the second Adam, gave that radical assent to his Father’s saving will: “In him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the glory of God” (2 Cor. 1:19–20 rsv) The response of Jesus Christ is the correlative of the “faithful love” of his Father, or in other words, the whole meaning and intent of his life is to do the will of the Father, who sent him. But the radical change for the Christian is that now he is able to make the response of faith, to say yes to God in and through the response of Christ, whose yes we endorse with Amen “to the glory of God.” Here we come very close to a definition of worship, for the glorifying of God, the response in faith that issues into praise, thanksgiving, and supplication, is exactly what we are doing in worship. This response is also prompted by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:27), so that through Christ in the Spirit we respond to the Father’s love. This is the backdrop of all Christian worship.
In the Old Testament, as we have seen, God approached people in event and word, the word usually coming after the event to unfold its meaning. The Word of God is proclaimed in the Law; it is heard in the institution of the covenant. Above all, it is proclaimed by the prophets who recall to the people the primordial events by which they were made God’s people and who, by so doing, attempt to deepen the people’s understanding of these events so they may turn or turn back to the God who has made himself known to them. But coming through all the words is God’s Word, calling, inviting, urging the people to respond to him with the word of faith, to commit themselves totally to God. They respond to the Law by trying to keep it; they respond with a word of obedience at the institution of the covenant (Exod. 24:6–8); they respond with praise, blessing, and supplication in the psalms that were sung to accompany the sacrifices of the temple and the service of the word in the synagogue.
