Epiphany 6
8 February 2026
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
Gregory Pope
IN THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS: The Sacred Acts of Worship
#5 of 6
WORSHIP AS OFFERING: RESPONDING AS GOD’S PEOPLE
Micah 6:6-8. Romans 12:1-8. Mark 12:38-44
Central to biblical worship is the act of sacrifice and offering. In biblical days, the sacrifice of animals and the offering of the first-fruits of one’s harvest were primary acts of worship. When it comes down to it, all of what we would call true worship is an offering. We offer praise and confession, thanksgiving and lamentation, petition and intercession, open ears and open hearts, our possessions and ourselves. True worship requires the offering of the self to God. The psalmist calls us to “bring an offering and come into God’s courts.”
In words we heard earlier, the apostle Paul describes the essence of “spiritual worship” as making an offering – an offering of gifts and our very lives. So central to the Christian life is the concept of offering that during the first three centuries of the church, a Christian was called an “offerer.”1
And not just any offering will do: a sacrificial offering is required. Like the widow who gave everything she had and was praised by Jesus. Like King David who said, “I will not offer to the Lord that which cost me nothing.” Words that speak not only to giving sacrificially of our resources, but also to giving sacrificially of ourselves.
Gandhi chose Hinduism, but would have become a Christian, having so much respect for the teachings of Jesus, had white Christians not kept him out of their worship due to the dark color of his skin. Gandhi said: “Worship without sacrifice is sin.” Christian writer Evelyn Underhill says that true worship is summed up in sacrifice.2
Somewhere along the line the focus of worship changed. Instead of coming to worship to “make an offering” we started coming to “receive a blessing” or to “be fed.” Worship changed from seeing what we could offer God to seeing what God had to offer us. To participate in congregational worship in order to receive a blessing is self-serving. Christian worship is God-serving3 and self-giving. Worship is about offering to God the very best of who we are and what we have.
Will Campbell writes of his Grandma Bettye: “She wore the flannel bathrobe to church the very first Sunday after Christmas because it was the prettiest thing she had ever seen, and the Lord deserved the best.” This is the attitude behind an offering appropriate to God. Worshipers give their best.
Think about the worship you offer: Are you here this morning to make a sacrifice? Do your offerings of money, time and self really cost you anything?
The time of offering in Baptist worship has often been before the sermon. This morning we have moved it to the end of worship. Hopefully by the end of worship today we will have a better appreciation of why.
Having entered into the presence of God with reverence and joy, offered our words of praise and thanksgiving to God, confessed our sins and received God’s pardon, then listened for a word from God through song and scripture and sermon, we respond to God in a time of commitment – the commitment of ourselves and possessions to God.
We join together in a hymn of response – a hymn whose lyrics are designed to be a response, often based on the theme of worship that day. Our singing in itself is a response. Sometimes while the hymn is being sung a commitment is made to follow Jesus and be baptized. Sometimes commitment takes the form of deciding to join a particular congregation as an expression of our being baptized into the Body of Christ. For most of the people present who are Christians, this time provides an opportunity for rededication to the way of Jesus, a renewed commitment that should take place each week. Sometimes those decisions can be made privately where we are as we stand and sing. Sometimes those decisions are made public.
I don’t know exactly what goes through your heart and mind during the hymn of response. But I am challenging us all at the conclusion of worship each week to give serious prayerful reflection as to what kind of commitment and sacrifice God is asking of us now.
The prophet Micah asked the question: “What does God require?” He answered with what many have called a summary of the entire Old Testament: “to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” This kind of prayerful response can take place during the hymn of response and the time of offering where we ask questions about our lives: How can I love God more fully? How can I follow Jesus more closely? How can I love my neighbor more faithfully? Do I need to give more of myself and my resources based on God’s calling in my life and the needs of the world?
At issue in the response and offertory is what will be given to God.4 The offering is an act of worship, a time where we may not only place a monetary gift in the plate, but also as a moment in worship where we make a sacrificial offering of ourselves and our possessions. And with the offerings we make of who we are and what we have, we support acts of justice for the poor, we perform acts of mercy, helping those in need, and we walk humbly with our God acknowledging all that we are and all that we have belongs to God.
One pastor reminded his congregation: We’re not here for a weekly meeting of the religiously inclined. We’re not here for a little Sunday visit to church, a little singing, a little listen to a little sermon. We’re here to give ourselves to God.5
The offering is a significant testimony of faith. It helps keep us from divorcing Sunday worship from daily life. The offering is one of the primary tests of our worship. It is the time to literally put our money where our mouths of praise and gratitude have been. You may recall how Jesus noted that our hearts are usually where our money is and vice versa. The offering is not an unwarranted intrusion into worship. The offering is the acid test of what we are about. It connects our faith to our jobs, our daily cares and concerns, what we wear, what we eat, where we live.6 Sacrificial giving forms our faith and changes the way we live our lives. It changes what we buy. It changes the kind of persons we become.
A couple of weeks ago in my “sermon on the sermon” I said that perhaps we have wrongly considered the sermon the central act in worship. We have made it the point around which and toward which everything in the service moves. I would suggest to you that the offering and response, the time of sacrifice and commitment, is the place toward which all worship must move.
Church musician James Berry wrote: “The point toward which the entire worship service is directed is the Offertory.” It is more, he said, than the reception of money to support our ministry and mission. It is a time of decision in response to all that has happened in worship to that point. It is a dedication or rededication of our lives with all our resources. “When the offering plates are brought forward and placed upon the altar it is the symbolic offering [to God] of the lives of those present.”7
Several years ago, I experienced for the first time a service where the offering was the most moving part of worship. I was at a Baptist church in Richmond, Virginia. There is a picture of the front of the sanctuary on your bulletin cover. The sanctuary resembles a cathedral. It has a cruciform shape with a split chancel where the choir faces each other as they sing and a beautifully crafted wooden pulpit up some stairs off to the left where the sermon is delivered and a lectern to the right where scripture is read. The altar is some twenty feet further back between the choir rows at the very front of the sanctuary underneath a glorious stained glass window. The choral anthem is often sung as the offering is received. At the end of the anthem, the sounds from the pipe organ begin to swell with great beauty. The ushers come forward with the offering meeting at the transcept aisle where the cruciform shaped floor of the sanctuary comes together. Two ushers meet two of the ministers in the center and hand them the offering plates. The four of them then turn and head back toward the altar, between the split chancel with the choir on each side as the organ begins to swell and the congregation rises to their feet. When the two ministers reach the altar table, facing the altar, they lift the offering plates toward the heavens and everyone joins in singing: Praise God from whom all blessings flow! Praise him all creatures here below! Praise him above ye heavenly hosts! Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Amen!
As that took place, I thought to myself: “I want my gift, my life, to be a part of that offering!” It was a powerful moment of true worship. I was ready to depart having made my offering. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I felt confirmed in my conviction, based I believe on biblical grounds, that a sacrificial offering is the climax of worship.
In much of our worship I think this moment has lost some of its power and meaning. I wonder if part of the difference is that many of us now give to the church monthly or quarterly, even annually. Some of us give through the mail. The offering plates are rarely full as they pass by us.
One father was stunned when his young son who sat by him every Sunday in worship asked one day, “Dad, why don’t you ever give anything to the church?” The father actually gave very generously but never in ways his children could see, and never during the offering as an act of worship.
I would like to encourage you to consider your giving as an act of worship, either placing your offerings in the plate each week or scanning the QR code in your bulletin as the offering plate comes past. Though if you can’t be here we will be most happy with the U. S. Postal Service! But even then, mail it as an act of worship, not as just another bill or payment.
We are here in worship to offer all that we are and all that we have to God. Annie Dillard
provides one of the most striking images of sacrifice I’ve ever read. She spent a year living alone in a cabin in the American Northwest writing her book, Holy the Firm. While writing one night with a candle burning on her desk, a moth flew too close to the flame. She watched as the wings caught fire and blazed until they were gone. But the wingless body attached itself upright in the hot wax next to the wick and became a second wick for the candle, its body brightly bearing a new flame. She reflects on that scene with these words: There is no such thing as an artist: There is only the world lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning who looks at the wick? When the candle is out who needs it? But the world without light is wasteland and chaos, and a life without sacrifice is an abomination.8
The image of your life like that moth’s body aflame may feel frightening to you, especially if it feels like the annihilation of the self. But if you think of it in terms of the giving of yourself, of being aflame with God and helping light the world – there is something deeply stirring about that image. Do you not want to bear a light to the world? to be a wick shining with the light of Christ even if no one notices you? Are you not stirred by the idea of sacrifice?
Annie Dillard is right: Life without sacrifice is an abomination. To live for nothing but yourself, to risk nothing because you are afraid, to live and move in your own little world protecting what is yours, never making of your life a sacrifice for something greater than yourself – such a life is an abomination. For we were made in the image of Christ to be self-emptying vessels of love and blessing and light to the world. Worship should help us become such vessels.
A desert monk wanted his life changed. So he went to his desert father, his abba, and said, “I’ve followed all the commandments but I’m not yet where I want to be. What can I do?” The abba said, “You could become flame.”
You could become flame. You could offer yourself in the words of Isaiah: “Here am I, send me.” It is here at the Offering where we rise and follow Jesus. Worship as sacrifice. We are here to offer all that we are and all that we have to God. What will you offer God this day?
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- Welton Gaddy, The Gift of Worship, Broadman, 1992, 161
- Evelyn Underhill, Worship, Eagle, 1936 [rev.1991], 37
- Gaddy, 161
- Gaddy, 41
- Gaddy, 164
- William Willimon, With Glad and Generous Hearts, Abingdon, 1986, 129, 131
- James Berry, In the Beauty of Holiness, an essay on worship at Myers Park
Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
- Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, Harper and Row, 1977.