Epiphany 7
15 February 2026
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
Gregory Pope
IN THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS: The Sacred Acts of Worship
(#6 of 6)
THE SENDING FORTH INTO CHRIST’S SERVICE: WHEN WORSHIP BECOMES A WAY OF LIFE
Numbers 6.22-26. Isaiah 1:10-18. Ephesians 3.20-21
Frederick Buechner says of the “worship” “service”: “To worship God means to serve [God]. And basically there are two ways to do it. One way is to do things for [God] that [God] needs done – run errands for him, carry messages for him, fight on his side, feed his lambs, and so on. The other way is to do things for [God] that you need to do – sing songs for him, create beautiful things for him, give things up for him, tell him what’s on your mind and in your heart, in general, rejoice in God and make a fool of yourself for him the way lovers have always made fools of themselves for the one they love.”1
Today is the sixth and final sermon in this series on worship. For most of the previous five sermons we’ve been talking about the second way of worshiping and serving God – doing things for God that we need to do: Praising God. Giving thanks. Confessing our sin. Receiving God’s grace. Voicing our prayers. Listening for God to speak. Offering to God who we are and what we have.
This morning I want us to consider the first way of worship – doing things for God that God needs done in the world. This is about extending our worship out beyond these walls, making our worship a way of life. It’s what Paul had in mind when he said, “Make your lives a living sacrifice, which is your spiritual worship.” It’s what George Herbert was trying to say in his poetic lines: “Seven whole days, not one in seven I will praise Thee; Even eternity’s too short to extol Thee.”
I said in the first sermon of this series that true worship is directed toward God not ourselves. One of the results of such God-directed worship is that it “ultimately produces an outward focus [to our lives and our life together] marked with generosity and inclusiveness toward the oppressed and the needy, the hurting and the lost.”2
The pattern of congregational worship is not just an orderly way to organize the service; it is actually a pattern for daily living every day. It is a liturgy for living that says we: spend time intentionally in God’s presence full of awe and wonder, offering to God our praise and thanksgiving, confessing our sin, bathing in God’s grace, listening for God to speak a word into our lives a word of encouragement, wisdom, challenge, forgiveness, and healing, then going forth into God’s world to love and serve in Christ’s name, offering all that we have and all that we are for the sake of the world God loves so much3 where our worship becomes a way of life.
It is significant, I think, that in the Hebrew language, the word for worship is derived from a root term meaning “to serve.” Liturgy is more than the forms of worship we use on Sunday morning. Liturgy is also the form our faith assumes apart from the sanctuary. Liturgy includes our attitudes and actions at work, at play, at school, and at home – attitudes and actions that are shaped by the transforming power of congregational worship. Liturgy is essentially everything we do. Scripture says we are to do all that we do for the glory of God. “The stuff of our everyday lives – how we conduct ourselves – is, in fact, the essence of our truest worship.”4 In the words of musician and theologian Harold Best: “Whatever we do as Christians, we do as worshipers.”5
Failure to make worship a way of life was what the prophets accused God’s people of doing. God said through the prophet Isaiah: “When you pray and sing, I will not listen. When you bring your sacrifices to the altar, I will turn my face. I cannot endure your worship services. And I will ignore your assemblies until your worship becomes a way of life, until you wash yourselves and make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Only when you do these things will your songs and offerings be pleasing to me,” says the Lord.
Our worship is empty and vain not when it is repetitious or full of ritual, but when no matter what the style it fails to produce a life for others. True worship is not judged by the beauty of the liturgy or the emotion of the worshipers or the amount of sweat on the preacher’s forehead. God doesn’t care if you sing with a band or a symphony, drums or a pipe organ, whether you clap your hands or worship silently in contemplation. Those are non-essentials based on taste and personality. They do not determine true worship.
True worship, according to the biblical prophets, is judged by whether or not you actively seek justice for the poor, give generously to those in need, be a voice of power for those who are powerless, welcome the stranger, live in love toward your neighbor, practice forgiveness toward your enemy, act and speak with integrity in the workplace and do your schoolwork honestly. That is the judge of true worship. That is the life into which authentic Sunday morning worship leads us.
A Quaker invited a friend to join him for worship at a Quaker meetinghouse. Not knowing the customs of the Quakers, the friend was confused when he saw the congregation sitting in silence. After several minutes of silence, he whispered to his host, “When does the service begin?” His friend replied, “When the meeting has ended.”
It’s been said that the most important moment in worship arrives when worshipers leave the sanctuary. Only then does it become clear whether or not worshipers have understood the meaning of the experience in which they have been involved.6
At the benediction and dismissal we ask, “What will come of our worship? Is it all just a flash in the pan?” Or to quote Shakespeare, is it just a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?”7
In worship, we willingly expose ourselves to the power of God’s word and the love of God’s table and the fellowship of God’s people. And we ask: What difference will it all make? At 12:00 noon we can’t say for sure, for the difference will be out there in the world, in the way we spend our time, our money, and our lives.8
In worship we discover that “God is a worldly God” (James White’s phrase) who delights in worship that causes us to engage the world in service. When discontinuity exists between our actions in a sanctuary and our lives in the world, it is then we have great problems with our worship.9
The Lord’s Prayer in worship helps us connect the sanctuary and daily living: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We pray for the kingdom of a God who wills justice, compassion, and righteousness, who calls us to forgive those who trespass against us and to resist temptation, and to pray for deliverance from evil. True worship in the sanctuary leads to compassionate service in the world, making worship a way of life.
We depart from the sanctuary into the world for service each week with words of blessing and benediction. Biblical worship always concluded with a blessing. In ancient Israelite worship,
the blessing was voiced by the priest and was intended to convey to individuals the truth that the power of the worshiping assembly would go with each of them personally. In the New Testament, worshipers were dismissed in His name with assurances of His grace.10 But worship does not end with the benediction. The benediction (literally, “good words”) is not a prayer but a commissioning for the community of faith to continue doing God’s work in the world.11
From the earliest days of Hebrew worship, at least 1200 years before Christ, God knew God’s people needed to leave worship with a blessing ringing in our ears and resounding in our hearts, reminding us that we are God’s beloved. God gave words to a priest named Aaron, recorded in the book of Numbers, words to pronounce at the close of every worship service, and many worship leaders say them still: The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
God wants us to go out from worship in the grace of blessing, assured of God’s love, power, and hope, surrounded by God’s presence. And so I say to you almost every week: May God give you the grace to know that it was by the love of God that you were brought into this world, and it has been by the power and presence of God that you have been sustained throughout all the days of your life even until this very moment, and it is with the hope and presence of God that you enter into tomorrow.
As we go, our worship must continue in our thoughts, words, and passions. And so I commission you with words from the fourth century: As you go, may God take your minds and think through them, may God take your lips and speak through them, may God take your hearts and set them on fire, through Jesus the Savior.
The benediction helps us realize that we are as much in the presence of God when we exit from the sanctuary as when we assemble within it.12 The benediction proclaims to the congregation that the end of worship is not with the postlude; the end is “out there” in lives laid down as Christ’s life was laid down, lives of love that will not be denied.13
There is a song of benediction that captures well the relationship between a service of worship and worship as service. It goes like this:
Sent forth by God’s blessing our true faith confessing,
the people of God from this dwelling take leave.
The service is ended,
O now be extended the fruits of our worship to all who believe.
The seeds of the teaching receptive souls reaching
shall blossom in action for God and for all.
God’s grace did invite us and love shall unite us
to work for God’s kingdom and answer the call.14
The service of worship leads to and includes mission to the world.
Presbyterian minister Lisa Hickman summarizes the purpose of our worship gathering with these words: “We gather to muster up the courage to confess. We gather to join our voices with others when ours are lacking, to sing praise and sing lament. We gather to be strengthened to go out into the world and live a life faithful to the gospel. We gather to be challenged to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God. We gather to be assured that we are forgiven and loved. We gather to confess and address the injustices of our world. We gather because life is hard and we find strength in community and hope in our faith.”15
To summarize our six-week journey through the drama of worship, I would put it his way: Gathered for worship to glorify God we enter into the presence of the Holy as the people of God to offer our full-hearted praise in song and make our soul-cleansing confession. Through scripture and sermon, song and silence we listen for a word from God. In prayer we remember our lives and world to God. We make a sacrificial offering of all that we have and all that we are. We are fed at God’s table where we meet the risen Christ. And we are sent forth from God’s table into Christ’s service where our lives sing praise and thanks, justice and joy to the God whose love has no end as our worship becomes a way of life. Amen.
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- Buechner, Wishful Thinking, Harper Collins, 1973, 97-98
- Deborah Moore Clark, O Come Let Us Bow Down and Worship, Smyth and Helwys, 2003, 59
- Paraphrasing Thomas Long, Beyond the Worship Wars, The Alban Institute, 2001, 47
- Clark, 54
- Best, Music Through the Eyes of Faith, Harper San Francisco, 1993, 146
- Paul Hoon quoted in Welton Gaddy, The Gift of Worship, Broadman, 1992, 77
- Macbeth, V, v. 26-28, as quoted in Patricia Wilson-Kastner, Sacred Drama: A Spirituality of Christian Liturgy, Fortress, 1999, 113
- William Willimon, With Glad and Generous Hearts, Abingdon, 1986, 146
- Gaddy, 50
- Gaddy, 169
- Russell Mitman, Worship in the Shape of Scripture, Pilgrim Press, 2001, 122
- Gaddy, 170
- Kastner, 109-110
- Omer Westendorf, “Sent Forth By God’s Blessing,” 1964
- Lisa Nichols Hickman, The Worshiping Life, Westminster John Knox, 2005, 9