Rehearsal
This week, the word rehearsal has been sitting with me in a meaningful way.
Today would have been my maternal grandmother Geraldine’s 85th birthday (she shares her birthday with Pastor Jad!). I mentioned her briefly in my first sermon back at St. Luke’s, but her influence on my faith deserves more space. I grew up worshiping in her Pentecostal congregation, Church of God by Faith. That was my first church home. It’s where I learned how to sit still in worship, how to listen, how to show reverence and yes, where I first wore a suit to church, especially on Easter. It’s also where I gave my first Easter speeches, standing nervously before the congregation, rehearsing words meant to honor God.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that church was teaching me something essential: worship is rehearsal. Week after week, we were practicing how to live God’s story of love, learning posture, humility, gratitude, and praise. Looking back now, I can see that it was also rehearsal for my calling to preach, lead, and stand before God’s people today.
Rehearsal is on my mind for another reason this weekend. Many of us are excited for Men of Motown, a joyful celebration of music that shaped generations. What we’ll experience on stage didn’t happen by accident. It came through countless hours of rehearsal: voices blending, rhythms tightening, cues learned, mistakes made and corrected. Rehearsal is where individuals become a unified song.
And then, of course, this weekend is also Super Bowl Sunday.
What we’ll see on the field is the result of an entire season of preparation—skills and drills, film study, scrimmages, conditioning, and countless practices no one ever televised. The Super Bowl isn’t won on Sunday alone. It’s won in the rehearsals that came long before the kickoff.
That same truth carries us into Sunday’s worship.
This weekend’s sermon centers on Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4:19-26. What begins as an argument about where worship should happen becomes a revelation about what worship truly is. Jesus reframes worship not as a place, preference, or performance, but as a rhythm of returning again and again to God’s presence. “True worshipers,” Jesus says, worship “in spirit and in truth.”
Worship, then, is rehearsal for real life. It’s where we practice telling the truth about ourselves and receiving the truth about God’s love. It’s where we rehearse gratitude, confession, generosity, mercy, and trust–so that when we leave this space, we are ready to live differently in the world.
This Sunday, we’ll also return to the waters of baptism for renewal and reaffirmation. Baptism reminds us that before we do anything, God has already named us beloved. It is the first rehearsal of love and one we return to again and again.
Whether you worship in person, online, with others, or in quiet prayer, worship remains central to who we are. My hope is that this Sunday, together, we’ll remember why we gather… to rehearse God’s great love story, until that love leaves its mark on our lives.
See you Sunday… it’s not St. Luke’s with U!
With love,
Pastor Corey
