Matthew 22:34-46 (NRSVUE)
“Worship”
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
October 25, 2026
I’ve served on the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry for about ten years now, the last five as the chairperson, and I say that to say that I have been part of interviewing a lot of women and men called into ministry in the United Methodist Church. Much of this interview process involves questions that help us understand their theology – what they believe about God – and one of the big things we focus on is their theology of worship.
Perhaps you might wonder, What does it mean to have a theology of worship, and does it really matter if my pastor has one?
A theology of worship answers questions like
Why do we worship?
What is the goal of worship?
Who is worship for?
And it does matter if your pastor has a theology of worship because worship is the very foundation of our life together as Christians. If we don’t have a theology of worship – if we don’t think critically about what we’re doing together in the sanctuary and why we’re doing it, this hour or hour-and a half or however long we stay here, can turn into a lot of things that aren’t worship. It can look like a talent show, a Ted Talk, or even a parade.
Worship is the very foundation of our life as disciples of Jesus Christ. And what we do in here should inform every single moment of what our lives look like when we’re not in here.
Will you pray with me and for me?
Lead us, O God, by your light and your truth. You are our hope and our refuge. Focus our hearts on your word this day, that we may worship you in joy and hope. Amen.
Apparently it’s been awhile since I preached through the gospel of Matthew because I honestly forgot how confrontational it is. A few weeks ago our scripture was the story of the wedding banquet – the guy who comes to the wedding banquet and isn’t wearing his wedding robe and the king orders the servants to throw him into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Someone said later that they were a little worried when they heard the story because they weren’t sure what I was going to do with it. Me too.
I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t get any better. Today’s text is Jesus’s last face-to-face confrontation with the religious leaders in Matthew’s gospel, but we’re not done with outer darkness or weeping and gnashing of teeth just yet, so buckle up.
At the risk of the accusation that I am avoiding Jesus’s harsh words to the Pharisees in verses 41-46 of today’s text …I’m going to avoid Jesus’s harsh words for the Pharisees in verses 41-46. But only because what he says in verses 34-40 is really what I want to focus on this morning, so let’s turn there.
Verse 34 tells us that Jesus has just concluded a confrontation with the Sadducees – they are a group of religious leaders – and that
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees they gathered together, and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him
Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?
I could spend the next three hours on these seven verses, but we have babies to baptize and football games to watch and lunch to eat, so I’m going to get right to what I want us to pay attention to this morning:
Jesus’s answer is this:
‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets.
On these two commandments hang all the law and prophets. He doesn’t say, “None of the other commandments matter.” He says that these two articulate all of the others.
Neither of these commandments is new. One comes directly from Deuteronomy chapter 6 and the other comes from Leviticus chapter 19, so the people gathered around Jesus that day had heard these their whole lives. But Jesus puts them together in a way that makes them inseparable. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets.
One of the first sermons I ever preached was on this text, minus verses 41-46, and I used the analogy of the doors on the cabinets hanging in your kitchen. I did not come up with this analogy myself, but all these years later it sticks with me. These two commandments are the hinges on which our whole lives hang. If you only use the top hinge, your cabinet door is crooked. If you only use the bottom hinge, it’s going to get really weak really fast and it’s going to break. If you have one without the other, your life as a child of God and follower of Jesus isn’t going to hang like it’s supposed to.
Why do we worship?
Worship is one of the hinges. It is the singular experience for us – for followers of Jesus – where we offer our love to God through our prayers and our praise and our songs and our thanksgiving.
And it is the shared experience in which God reminds us of who we are and where we fit in the order of things.
We are God’s beloved children, so precious to God that God became one of us and lived in our messiness and died for us. But we are not – we are not – the center of the universe. The world does not revolve around us. That sounds obvious and it sounds silly, but it is so, so easy to drift into self-centeredness if we’re not always being reoriented in our relationship with God through worship. God is God and we are not. This is the fundamental posture of humility.
God loves us more broadly and intimately than we can imagine, but God also loves them more broadly and intimately than we can imagine. Whoever them might be for you. Them is whoever makes you scrunch up your nose.
God knows the number of hairs on your head and God knows the number of hairs on their head. Humility.
If we are not regularly reoriented and resituated to our place in the order of things then we risk losing our posture of humility. And then we won’t be able to love our neighbors the way God wants us to love them. We’re always going to count them a little less. They are always going to be not quite us.
Which is why Jesus combines these two commandments. Worship reorients us to our place in the world. We are not God. God is the one to whom we offer praise and glory and thanksgiving. We are not the center of the universe. God is the center of all things and holds all things together.
There are lots of visuals around the church during this stewardship season to help you see how each of these ministry areas – worship, discipleship, fellowship, and mission – form our life together. We begin with worship because it is the foundation of our life together. Your financial gifts go to funding the people and resources that help create worship experiences where we can offer thanks to God, and that make room for God to orient us rightly to the world around us so that we can love our neighbors as God loves them. But there are other ways to offer yourself to the ministry of worship. You can sing in the Choir or play Handbells. You can serve as an acolyte, usher, or greeter, or liturgist. In fact, I just want us to get an idea of how broadly this congregation participates in worship. So I want you to raise your hand and keep it raised if you
Sing in the choir
Play handbells
Sing or Play in the praise band
Acolyte
Serve Communion
Greet
Usher
Help with Hanging of the Greens
Come up front for the Children’s Moment
Serve as liturgist
Look around and see how many of us God uses to create this experience. Would you offer thanks to God with me for the way God has called us to be in this ministry of worship together?
On baptism Sundays I like to talk about bringing our baptism person into the sermon somehow, so let’s talk about Hillman. Let’s think about how we want Hillman to experience worship as he grows up. What do we want this to be like for him?
We want it to be a place where he learns to thank God for everything. Where he learns that every good gift in his life comes from God. We want it to be a place where he can ask his church family to pray for him when he is disappointed or sad. We want him to feel the bigness of God in worship, and we want him to know that this great big powerful God loves him. We want him to hear God’s call to love and serve the people around him through the gifts that God has given him both inside and outside the church. And we want him to hear the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ and to one day profess his own faith in Jesus.
In just a moment we will hear Reid and Rachael profess their faith in Jesus Christ, and we will promise to surround them with a community of love and forgiveness as they raise Hillman and Collins and Harris in this church. And worship is where it all starts. Thanks be to God.