Welcome/Call to Worship
Good morning! I’m Pastor Ashley Dargai To those here in the sanctuary and those joining us online: we are so glad you’re here!
This morning, we will sing songs of worship, pray together, hear from scripture and one another, as we move toward the pinnacle of our service: the table of our Lord, where we will take the bread and drink the cup in remembrance of our most Gracious Host, Jesus. The purpose of our time together each Sunday is to bring our hearts closer to the heart of God, so I invite you to participate in as much or as little in our prepared liturgy as your spirit is willing.
We welcome all sounds and smells from the youngest to the oldest among us. The Kids Corner is in the back for anyone who needs to move around and play to worship God this morning. There is also a nursery available. We know that the energy and spirit of children can be different than adults and we consider that reality a gift.
There are visitor cards in the pew in front of you—if you arrived during the pandemic or later, of if you have moved and have not updated your info with the church, please fill it out and drop it in the offering plate when it goes by later in worship.
A couple of announcements before we begin:
We invite you to Sunday School at 10 AM every week. There’s classes that meet in the Seekers room and the Fellowship Hall. There is also a children and youth class that meets in the parlor.
To keep up with all the life we live together here at Azle Christian Church, make sure you follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Subscribe to our weekly e-blast and monthly newsletter on our website.
We new worship series We Call Ourselves Disciples: A Worship Series on Our Identity.
Let’s pray to turn our hearts toward God for this hour.
Spirit of truth, open to us the scriptures, speaking your holy word through song, through the bread and cup, and through offering ourselves, and meet us here today in the living Christ. Amen.
Litany of Faith
One: Bless the LORD, O my soul. You have set the earth upon its foundations.
All: You send the springs into the valleys; they flow between the mountains.
One: All the beasts of the field drink their fill from them, and the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
All: Beside them the birds of the air make their nests and sing among the branches.
One: You water the mountains from your dwelling on high; the earth is fully satisfied by the fruit of your works.
All: You make grass grow for flocks and herds, and plants for people to cultivate.
One: That they may bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden our hearts.
All: O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
(From Psalm 104)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
We mourn together with Nancy Robbins, whose husband Frankie passed away unexpectedly this past weekend. His service details are forthcoming.
This past Friday, April 22 was Earth Day, first observed in 1970 — which makes this year the 51st anniversary. Largely inspired by Rachel Carson’s work, among others, the original Earth Day was a widespread, bipartisan response to the negative impacts of industrial development. With close to one billion people now participating annually, Earth Day is considered the largest civic-focused day of action in the world. Jews and Christians, among other religious people, have been involved all the way along in Earth Day’s history — and no wonder, since Genesis so vividly casts humanity as creation’s steward in the first creation story; as Eden’s gardener in the second creation story; and as custodian of creation’s biodiversity in the Noah story.
Our prayer today begins with an adaption of Psalm 8.
Join me in prayer:
God, brilliant Lord,
yours is a household name.
Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you;
toddlers shout the songs
I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
your handmade sky-jewelry,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
Why take a second look our way?
Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods,
bright with Eden’s dawn light.
You put us in charge of your handcrafted world,
repeated to us your Genesis-charge,
Made us stewards of sheep and cattle,
even animals out in the wild,
Birds flying and fish swimming,
whales singing in the ocean deeps.
God, brilliant Lord,
your name echoes around the world.
Creator of all, thank for giving us life. Thank you creating us as part of a planet that sustains our lives and for entrusting this sacred gift to our care. Help us in our various roles to be good stewards of all you’ve made. Unite us who dwell on the earth as your beloved creatures that we might share your gifts and mutually thrive. Open us to your wisdom not just here but in every bird song, dancing leaf, and flowing wave. May we see you everywhere we look and may we follow the ways of Jesus, living in communion with your Creation.
We ask this is the name of our brother and redeemer Jesus, who taught us to pray…
Our Father, who art in heaven
Hallowed be Thy name
Thy Kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever.
Amen.
Sermon
John 20:19-31
19 It was still the first day of the week. That evening, while the disciples were behind closed doors because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. When the disciples saw the Lord, they were filled with joy. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” 22 Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you don’t forgive them, they aren’t forgiven.”
24 Thomas, the one called Didymus, one of the Twelve, wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples told him, “We’ve seen the Lord!”
But he replied, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, put my finger in the wounds left by the nails, and put my hand into his side, I won’t believe.”
26 After eight days his disciples were again in a house and Thomas was with them. Even though the doors were locked, Jesus entered and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here. Look at my hands. Put your hand into my side. No more disbelief. Believe!”
28 Thomas responded to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Jesus replied, “Do you believe because you see me? Happy are those who don’t see and yet believe.”
30 Then Jesus did many other miraculous signs in his disciples’ presence, signs that aren’t recorded in this scroll. 31 But these things are written so that you will believe that Jesus is the Christ, God’s Son, and that believing, you will have life in his name.
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
In our text today, the gospel of John tells us of some post-resurrection appearances by Jesus. Jesus first appears to the disciples minus Thomas, showing them his hands and his side. His disciples were hiding because they were scared of the Very Religious People, the VRPs. They had seen what had happened to Jesus, and people had seen them with him. They weren’t taking chances.
So when Jesus appears to his friends, he says not once but twice, “Peace be with you” as they examine the wounds on his body.
It’s important in the testimony of John that risen Jesus is still very much the Crucified One. The crucifixion was not a blip on Jesus’ timeline, but essential to his identity. The wounds he bore were part of their faith now. Acknowledging and remembering the marks of the crucifixion were crucial to recognizing and remembering Jesus.
Well, Thomas gets word of this appearance, and he’s like, “Yeah, right. Unless I see with my own two eyes these wounds, I won’t believe this for one second.”
A week or so passes and Jesus once again shows up to where his disciples are meeting. This time, Thomas is with them. Jesus says for a third time: “Peace be with you.” He offers his body to Thomas for examination, and it is when Thomas sees the wounds that he realizes this is really Jesus.
Jesus offers no scolding, no history lesson, no Resurrection 101, but rather makes space for the skepticism, the varying levels of understanding in the room, and offers his broken body as an entry point of faith. The very wounds in his body provide more space to enter into this mystery.
This morning, we begin a new series on our denominational identity for the season of Eastertide. As we journey through the post-resurrection stories of John together, we’ll be thinking about what it means that we’re a Disciples of Christ church. To some outsiders, we’re the sleepy church behind El Paseo. To others, we’re the “little church that could” that works the Drive for Compassion golf tournament. We have a passion for outreach. We have a long history and deep roots in this town.
But one of the most essential parts of our identity is that we are a Disciples church.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at distinctive markers of our identity as a reminder of who we are. As resurrection people, as an Easter people, as Disciples.
Our denomination has an official motto: “a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.” But we also have an unofficial one that we’ll be walking through for a little while. And it goes like this: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things charity.”
Today, we’re going to begin in the middle of the phrase, “in non-essentials, liberty” and save the others for the coming weeks.
I begin with liberty because there are actually not that many lifelong Disciples here. A majority of us, including myself, come from a different denomination and have somehow ended up here in this quirky congregation. We have our reasons. Maybe Azle didn’t have the tradition you grew up in. Maybe you needed to call it quits with the church you formerly attended. May you’d never even heard of the Disciples of Christ before but liked our style or liked our people and decided to stay. Or perhaps you are one of the few among us who have been taking communion weekly for so long that it runs through your blood.
For whatever reason you’re here, we give thanks that you are. And though our diversity may seem like a haphazard point of entry to a very specific worship series, it’s actually very Disciples of us to begin here.
Let me explain.
Our denomination began after the Revolutionary War. The roots of who we are were around in the first half of the 1800s. And because we began post-Revolutionary War, we are considered to be one of the first wholly American denominations. Other big mainline denominations have European origins: Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians—their roots are overseas.
But our Presbyterian and Baptist founders looked around after the war, the air thick with the whiff of freedom, and realized that because everyone was so spread out on this continent, there was a need for a different way for people to practice their faith. A way a bit more localized, a bit more freed up to follow Jesus in ways contextualized for their spaces. Enter the concept of liberty.
Our founders considered liberty, or freedom (I’ll use these two words interchangeably), of interpretation of scripture a key component of this kind of church. In their understanding, people should be free to interpret scripture, using the proper tools and in community, and work together on how to live out that faith as a congregation. Though we have in time constructed regions and we have a General Minister and board, and our denomination has official stances, these structures speak to us at churches, not for us. Congregations practice independence. We are bound not by hierarchy or creed, but by a covenant of mutual accountability and the simple confession that Jesus is Lord.
In this mindset, Alexander Campbell, one of our founders, called congregations “local outposts of the kingdom of God.”
“Outpost” is kind of a dated word, but I appreciate the sentiment. To modernize it, I like to think of congregations as local pop-up events. In a way distinct to our time and place and to the body of people who make up a congregation at any given moment, a congregation lives out an expression of faith they have collectively decided on to continue the work of Jesus here.
And so, all of us with our diverse origins of faith, our different memories of what scriptures means and how church functions, make up this particular pop-up event of the reign of God. Who knows how long we’re here, but for now, we’ve set up camp.
I think of Jesus appearing to his disciples with their array of understandings. Thomas, the bold one, saying, “I’ve got questions. I’ve got doubts. I’m skeptical. I need to walk through this for a second.” There was space for everyone in that room. They could take their time to work out their salvation.
Our own congregation’s tag line is “Be who you are with us.” Bring your questions, bring your baggage, bring your doubt—we’ll sort through it together. Peace, peace, peace, Jesus says three times in this passage.
Of course, the picture is not always as rosy as I have made it out to be.
Over the years, we have wrestled as a country with words like liberty and freedom, and we have come to understand how fraught they can be.
For example, after the Revolutionary War, I am sure the air felt electric with possibility for many. Hearts beating the word, “Freedom, freedom, freedom.” But we know that while that may have been the case for land-owning white residents of what would become the United States, it was certainly not true for everyone. Not for enslaved Africans, not for Indigenous people fighting for their land, and not for various immigrant populations. We understand today that it is not true freedom if not everyone is free.
Even now, we have seen the way conspiracy theories and vitriol have spread like wildfire in the name of things like liberty, in the age of social media. We get in a way we perhaps wish we didn’t that not every idea is as valid and rooted in good faith as the next. We understand today that true liberty is not a free-for-all.
So how do we come to understand this Disciples’ notion of liberty in light of how things have changed as we have learned more?
Well, thankfully, we don’t have to figure it all out ourselves. Lots of intelligent and faithful people have already been talking about this decades. Thanks be God.
Our beginning point is that while we were one of the first wholly American denominations, we are first Christians. Sometimes version of American freedom get mixed in with the freedom scripture talks about, but it’s vital for us to parse this out. While a core cultural value is rugged individualism in which we are encouraged to exercise our freedom by pursuing our own end without external constraint, it is not a Christian value.
The freedom that scripture talks about is freedom in covenant, a very Bible-y word.
A covenant is like an agreement between parties, but it’s not just an agreement between two humans. It is a living promise that involves our commitment to God through our commitment to one another in love.
Covenants operate on a because/therefore basis. Rather than saying, “If I love my neighbor, then God will love me,” we carry the responsibility of each other: Because God loves me, therefore I am freed from all that keeps me from loving my neighbor.” Covenants, though at first seeming like containing limitations, actually free us from living for ourselves. We acknowledge our God-given interdependence.
And because of this freedom in covenant, we are able to be honest about our differences. We don’t have to ignore our differences, but rather, we acknowledge them. We celebrate them. We marvel at them. Just as an ecosystem needs diversity to thrive, so does the Body of Christ. Our differences can make us stronger, and we rejoice in that diversity.
And in this covenant, we consider our differences mindfully, allowing mercy and grace to be the currents that run through us. This doesn’t that we are free from accountability or hard conversations, or free to cross boundaries or cause harm. And neither is our freedom a simple live-and-let-live ethic.
Our freedom in covenant means that we may not always agree on things, but we have a promised to walk together in an attempt to discern where God is moving and where God would have us go. And this freedom expands our understanding of these little local pop-up events of the reign of God that we call congregations.
Church doesn’t exist only to meet our needs, or to be a source of fellowship, or the occasional inspiration, though church likely does that at least some of the time. No, Church is the place where we are shaped in a way of living that is Christ-like, set apart from the values of our surrounding culture.
Our liberty that we take so seriously as Disciples, is liberty for each other. For the sake of Christ. We are always considering each other as we work out our salvation.
And this post-resurrection story with Thomas, where Jesus shows his disciples his wounds and allows his broken body to be a vehicle of faith, shows us that perhaps it is in the places that some might say are broken or divided that Christ reveals himself most poignantly. Perhaps it’s our fault lines, our rough edges, our cracks, that are entry points of faith.
As we journey together with our diverse understandings of scripture, in the freedom of faith, may we do so with the blessing Jesus gives his disciples: Peace, peace, peace.
Amen.
Table Meditation
Let us begin in prayer over the elements:
Holy One of this table, our generous Host and loving God, may we receive this bread and cup in your mercy, trusting in you who gathers us together. May the space between us grown thinner every time we gather, that we may be one. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.
There is an insert in your bulletin of our Disciples Affirmation of Faith. We will read it together a couple of times over the next few weeks. I’ll begin us and you will read the part in bold.
Now I invite you to prepare your elements.
In the story of Thomas, Jesus shows his broken body to the disciples, and it becomes a source of faith. It was his wounds that he offered as a way to help them trust. And it is at this table that we remember the wounded and broken body of Christ. We break the bread and pour the cup as symbols of his body and blood. We know that broken things are not necessarily bad things. They can be places of love and devotion. They can be places of faith.
I invite you to allow this table to be a place of faith for you over the coming weeks, whatever that looks like. May it be a place that our lives are oriented around, trusting not in a perfect body, but in one given for us.
Words of Institution:
Because on the night he was betrayed, Jesus broke the bread and said, “This is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
And then he took the cup also and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Drink it in remembrance of me.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
All are welcome at the Table of Christ.
Sharing Our Resources
In the beginning of Acts, the writer tells us that the early Christian community shared everything they had with one another. I like to think that this means they were constantly passing faith and hope back forth to one another like you do with a cake pan and tupperware at church.
And likewise, they pooled together their material resources. Maybe they didn’t have a coin to spare, but they had an extra cloak, or they had a position open at the local carpenter’s shop. We know that the early faith communities were a hodgepodge of class statuses—the rich and poor all mingled together, defying social etiquette one meal at a time. So the people with financial resources gave in accordance with their wealth and ability, and the people with fewer financial resources did the same. This was their community, doing good, sharing the Lord, and believing the impossible, and they gave what they were able as a way to commit to this faith that had changed their lives forever.
You can give online on our website, on Venmo, or in the offering plate as the deacons come by during our final song.
Invitation
If you’d like to become a member of this faith community, or if you’d like to become a disciple of Jesus, please talk with me after service or sometime this week.
Benediction:
Please rise in body or spirit for our benediction, the final song, and the Doxology.
May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,
Wherever He may send you.
May He guide you through the wilderness,
Protect you through the storm.
May He bring you home rejoicing
At the wonders He has shown you.
May He bring you home rejoicing
Once again into our doors.
Amen.