Sermons

Epiphany 2
11 January 2026
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia

Gregory Pope
IN THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS: The Sacred Acts of Worship
(#2 of 8)

THE ENTRANCE INTO WORSHIP:  IN THE PRESENCE OF THE HOLY

 Isaiah 6:1-8. Hebrews 4:12-16. Psalm 103:8-12

We gather each week as the Body of Christ during this hour to worship the living God, to gather our hearts and lives as an offering to God, and to connect with each other while doing so.

Before we consider what it means to enter into worship let’s think for a moment about our preparation for worship. Worship leaders – preachers, musicians, and other liturgists – begin preparing for a worship service sometimes weeks in advance. Angela begins preparing for Christmas in May. I will take a week of study in February to plan for the months ahead.

What about you? How do you prepare for the worship of God? I think we have something to learn here from our Jewish roots, especially in the way the Jewish day is designed. In Judaism, a new day begins not at dawn but at sunset. Biologically, this makes perfect sense. You know from experience that your strength and sharpness of mind on a given day depend largely upon the night before – what you ate and drank, what you did, how late you were out, what time you went to bed. But what about our preparation for Sunday worship? How intentional is our preparation to enter the presence of God for the purpose of offering ourselves to God together in worship?

Worship takes energy and focus. A primary biblical word for worship is translated “liturgy,” which means “the work of the people.” Worship is work. It is not a time to be a spectator, to relax or sleep (though sermons may entice us in that direction!) The energy it takes for worship demands that we prepare ourselves body, mind, and spirit.

I encourage you to take worship seriously enough that you think about how your Saturday night plans will affect your ability to worship on Sunday morning. Perhaps spend time in prayer or read the scripture passages for the upcoming Sunday or look over the worship bulletin for the upcoming Sunday on our website. Your worship experience will in many ways depend upon your preparation.

There’s a sign you sometimes see on country roadside barns that says “Prepare to Meet Thy God.” Though the artist of those roadside barns usually have death and the Judgment Seat in mind, we would do well to heed the advice to prepare when we think of meeting God in Sunday morning worship.

Having prepared ourselves for such a holy encounter, we then gather for the purpose of worship. Let’s think for a moment about how we gather. Churches gather for worship differently. Some enter the sanctuary in silence for purposes of prayer and meditation. Other congregations fellowship with one another before and during the prelude. I understand both approaches, and think there is much to be said in favor of both.

Will Willimon tells of a young pastor who came into the sanctuary to begin worship, and it was full of loud talk. He told them it sounded like a turkey farm. He scolded the congregation and said they needed to be silent and reverent before worship. At the end of the service, an old farmer approached the young minister and said, “Young man, I heard what you said about our talking before the service. Let me tell you what I was talking about. As I entered the sanctuary Sam told me about Joe and Mary’s milk cow, how she jumped the fence and tore her udder.  I knew Joe and Mary needed that milk for their kids, so I told Sam that after worship we’d get one of my cows and take it over there and then take their cow to the vet. Now Preacher, after I told Joe and Mary that, I was ready to worship.”¹ We preachers sometimes have to taught lessons.

There are those who want those conversations to take place in what we call our anterooms, what others call a narthex or vestibule. Here at Vineville, we talk with each other as we gather and as the prelude is playing. And I don’t think it sounds like a turkey farm!

Then the choir enters to let us know that worship is about to begin and that I need to make my way to my seat. In some churches, worship begins as the choir processes in to the sanctuary in the tradition of the ancient Hebrews processing into the temple. Here at Vineville,

as the prelude concludes and the choir is seated, one of the ministers steps up to the pulpit to welcome us all to worship.

The most ancient way of greeting going back to the early beginnings of the church was to begin worship with the words found in the book of Ruth where one person says: “The Lord be with you,” then the congregation responds, “And also with you.” Many churches begin that way even today. It is a way of beginning this hour each Sunday morning with an affirmation of God’s presence among us.

Our tradition has been a simple “Good morning,” welcoming guests and members to worship and sharing information about events coming up in the life of our church. Worship has not yet technically begun.

Following the welcome and announcements are usually some words of transition that call us into worship because it’s important to remind ourselves each week why we are here. A Call to Worship is important because it reminds us that we are here at God’s invitation. Our worship is a response to God’s initiative.²

In addition to the ancient greeting of “The Lord be with you”, “And also with you” has been the invitation by the one speaking to “Lift up your hearts,” with the congregation responding, “We lift them up to the Lord.” It provides an explicit response from each person affirming their willingness to lift up their hearts to God in worship. Because the gift of your heart is the gift God wants most.

The Call to Worship may be a Psalm or a reading. The Call to Worship for us is most often enhanced by some musical piece, as it was today, designed to enable us to lift up our hearts to the living God. Whether it is the prelude or a song or some other instrumental piece – it is not for our entertainment. It is a musician’s offering to God. Led by that offering, we are then encouraged to offer our own gifts to God.³

The call to worship is then followed by a prayer we call an Invocation or Morning Prayer

where we accept God’s invitation to worship, invite God to act not only in the world as we pray for the needs of the world, but especially in our midst as we worship. And our deacons do it beautifully and thoughtfully.

The Entrance into Worship is not be done lightly. Before we too eagerly invite God to act, we may want to heed Annie Dillard’s warning, who tells us we’re actually crazy for doing so. She exclaims: Why do people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?  . . . Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.⁴ Dillard may be on to something.

We sometimes pray, “O God, we seek your presence,” with hardly a thought of what we are saying. God told Moses at the burning bush, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Exod 3:5).  But how often do we enter worship, mindless of where we are or what we are here to do?⁵

Pastor Lisa Hickman says that invoking the presence of God means inviting God’s Spirit to be turned loose upon us. And God on the loose might demand us to change, might challenge us to re-prioritize our lives. In taking worship seriously we should ask ourselves: Do we really want to leave worship different than we came in?⁶

Before we enter God’s presence and invite God to act among us, we should ask ourselves: “Are we ready for the consequences?”⁷  It is a fearful thing, says the writer of Hebrews, to fall into the hands of the living God. Do we really believe that? Has worship ever scared you? I’m not talking about the threat of hellfire and damnation. I’m talking about surviving unchanged an experience in the presence of the Holy. Perhaps worship should frighten us a little, or at least make us nervous.

Will Willimon says we are sometimes guilty of transforming our worship into the backslapping conviviality of a Rotary Club luncheon, everyone smiling and reassuring one another that this is only church, nothing to be alarmed about. When was the last time you felt a holy fear in worship?⁸

In the place of holy fear, the church has sometimes overemphasized a warm intimacy with God. Some of the biblical encounters with God are direct, but they are not all about the intimate, self-affirming values of warmth and gentleness. Some of these encounters leave human beings hiding their faces, trembling in awe before the Holy Presence. And sometimes the face of God is hidden and God’s presence is not immediately felt. God does not always move us in worship, and everything that moves us in worship is not God.⁹

Our attitude and behavior in worship reflects what we think about God. That’s why worship can never be “casual” or “laid-back.”  You can dress in whatever ways you feel appropriate to the occasion of worship, but don’t get comfortable. Who knows, the sleeping God may wake some day and take offense and draw us out to where we can never return.

The words of the great hymn must become the song of our hearts, rising up within us a sense of reverent awe, where we are “lost in wonder, love and praise.”¹⁰  Praise.  That is what we do in worship. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. We are here to praise, honor, glorify, exalt God’s name, and bow before the mystery of God.

But let’s be honest. Some Sundays we feel like praise and some Sundays we don’t. Some Sundays we feel very close to God and very grateful for God’s gifts to us and some Sundays we would rather be back home sleeping late. That’s just the way we are. And that’s all right. But because that is the way we are we humans need times when we intentionally put ourselves in the right place so that we might arrive at the point where God’s love and care and presence are so real that we rise to our feet and sing.¹¹

That is why the first hymn in worship is often one of praise. In Isaiah’s vision of God in the temple surrounding by beauty and mystery, with seraphs and angels hovering above, the temple is shaking and filled with smoke, and the hymn is rising to the heavens: Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of God’s glory.

Such an awareness of God’s beauty and majesty leads not only to high praise, but also sorrowful confession. What did Isaiah say? “Woe is me! I am undone! I am a person of unclean lips and I live in the midst of an unclean people.” “It is very hard,” says writer Robert Benson, “to come face-to-face with God without coming face-to-face with [ourselves].”¹²

In general, we are not too excited about confession. We do not want to admit our sins or failures. If we’re honest, we tend to be perfectly willing to talk about the pain inflicted upon us, but we are less than enthusiastic when it comes to talking about the pain we have inflicted.¹³ We are hesitant to follow the admonition of James to “Confess our sins one to another” (5:16).

A common objection to congregational confession is to say: “These are not my sins!” But it’s important to realize that sin is not private, nor is it only individual. Our sins affect others. And we participate in sin with others – corporate, systemic, institutional sin of which we are often unaware, but from which we benefit. From racism to economic oppression to excluding others in the church or from the church, it is important for us to acknowledge together in worship the sin in which we all participate as the human race. When we gather for worship, we confess the sins of the church and the world, of which we are a part. Congregational confession is yet another reminder that this is congregational worship not meant to be centered around the individual.

One worshiper who appreciates congregational prayers of confession said, “It helps me know I’m not the only sinner in need of forgiveness. It puts us all on the same level.”  In congregational confession we also might say something we would hesitate to acknowledge if left to confess in silence.  Others have said, “Hearing our voices confessing together is very holy.”

Confessing sins is sometimes the hardest work of worship. As one writer put it: Nobody likes to do that. But all of us need the experience.¹⁴ Confession keeps us tied to the truthful reality about our lives and our life together.¹⁵

You’re not going to believe this, but some people say the church is full of hypocrites. Well, confession allows us to admit that we are a gathering of sinners in the hopes of avoiding hypocrisy. So we pray each week, “Forgive us our trespasses.”  But we also need more specific confession as individuals, as a congregation, as a nation and as a global community.

And let us be clear: Prayers of confession are not for the purpose of beating us into a sense of guilt. We confess our sins in the security that we are loved and that God will not let us go.¹⁶ We confess our sin in order to confront our guilt and be met with God’s forgiving grace in Jesus Christ. In the words of Robert Benson, “Confession is not only about the stupid stuff we did yesterday, it is also about the magnificent stuff God did while we were yet sinners.”¹⁷ Because of God’s great love we can be honest with God, with one another, and with ourselves. We have no need to hide our sin. For we have a high priest, says the writer of Hebrews, who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, one with whom we can boldly come before the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. As far as the east is from the west, the psalmist sings, so far God has removed our transgressions from us.

The guilt of confession apart from the grace of forgiveness is absolutely deadly. We must hear the word of pardon. And such an encounter with grace through confession and pardon has the power to create a transformation within us. With forgiveness: Worship can continue. Life can go on. We can bask in the delight of God’s love. We can live in the joy of sins forgiven and relationship restored. We give thanks for the immeasurable, never-giving-up-no-matter-what love of God.

There is no experience like an encounter with the Holy God of Creation, the Artist of All Beauty, whose presence brings fear and joy, whose love and grace has no end. Amen.

 

___________________________

 

1. William Willimon, With Glad and Generous Hearts, The Upper Room, 1986, 31-32.
2. Welton Gaddy, The Gift of Worship, Broadman, 1992, 97-98.
3. Gaddy 100
4. Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper, 1988.
5. Thomas Long, Beyond the Worship Wars, Alban Institute, 2001, viii
6. Lisa Nichols Hickman, The Worshiping Life: Meditations on the Order of Worship, Westminster John Knox, 2004, 17
7. Hickman, 19
8. William Willimon, With Glad and Generous Hearts, Abingdon, 1986, 37
9. Long, 31-32
10. Charles Wesley, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” 1747.
11. Willimon, 58, 66.
12. Robert Benson, Living Prayer, Putnam, 1998, 173.
13. Benson, 26
14. Gaddy, 127
15. Willimon, 40-41
16. Willimon, 39
17. Benson, 27