Hymn #4 - Holy Holy Holy
Welcome
Good morning, Church! I’m Pastor Ashley Dargai.
Make sure you have a candle and communion elements nearby.
A few announcements before we begin.
Right after church, we’ll have our Worship Dream Team for Eastertide at noon on Zoom. The Zoom info is in the comments.
This Saturday is Food Hub.
Despite our building being closed, we plan to gather outdoors, masked and socially-distanced, multiple times during Holy Week, which begins March 28. You can find information about the activities that week on Facebook and in your eblast.
Next Sunday, we’ll gather in the church courtyard for our Palm Sunday service, and then we’ll have our annual Easter egg hunt after church, with lots and lots of hand sanitizer provided.
We’re also doing a food drive for Maundy Thursday. On Thursday, April 1, bring nonperishable items for our Little Free Pantry, tell your friends and neighbors about the food ministries of our church and ask them to donate a can or two, and then when you arrive with your food on Maundy Thursday, we’ll share a brief communion service and then eat hot dogs and listen to live music provided by Nicole Hendley.
Two weeks from today is Easter! We’ll have an Easter sunrise service in addition to our regular Easter service—both will take place in the courtyard.
I invite you to light your candle at home. Turning on a lamp or opening window—any way to let some light in.
Pastoral Prayer
The lord be with you.
Loving God,
Walk with each of us this day as we navigate these uncharted waters. As we try to find a new groove we find that there are still so many unexpected challenges to face. As we continue to face racial inequality and injustices to our brothers, sisters, and neighbors, we turn to you now for reminders of peace, patience, and resilience. During this season of reflection we turn inwards.
Was it the path of privilege? A path of complacency? Or have we truly not learned to see the truth evidenced before us?
In the midst of our awakening, help us to reflect your love to all those that we encounter. We have allowed fear and hatred to exist in our community. As we prepare for Easter, may we be all be pulled even closer to you. Walk with us dear God, and help us to love one another as you love us.
Now we pray together the prayer your son taught us to pray.
Children’s Moment
Good Morning young ones. Magnets attract or pull certain types of metal. A magnet is a pretty amazing thing, they actually do a lot more than hang our artwork on parents refrigerators. Although you can’t see it there is some invisible force or power that pulls or draws metal objects to itself. Today we’re going to talk about how crosses can be magnetic. It doesn’t look like a magnet but Jesus said that if he gave his life for us on the cross it would be like a magnet pulling all people to himself.
He foreshadows His future death as He describes what He has come to Earth to do, and is affirmed by a Heavenly voice promising glory. Through this, we recognize the power in Christ’s identity.
Jesus communicates to them why He had to give His life for something greater, just as we must sometimes sacrifice for greater things.
“If I be lifted up…” Somehow, Jesus giving his life for us on the cross would be like a magnet for people.
On the cross, Jesus was literally lifted up for all to see. After His death, He was lifted up in resurrection. All who look to Him, then, are lifted up by God and will live with Him forever.
Now, when you see a cross, maybe it will remind us of Jesus dying for us in love, come towards it like you are being pulled by a magnet.
God, thank you for your son’s love. May we trust in him with our whole hearts and learn from his examples. Amen.
Sermon
John 12:20-33
Some Greeks were among those who had come up to worship at the festival. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and made a request: “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”
22 Philip told Andrew, and Andrew and Philip told Jesus.
23 Jesus replied, “The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their lives will lose them, and those who hate their lives in this world will keep them forever. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me. Wherever I am, there my servant will also be. My Father will honor whoever serves me.
27 “Now I am deeply troubled.[f] What should I say? ‘Father, save me from this time’? No, for this is the reason I have come to this time. 28 Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
29 The crowd standing there heard and said, “It’s thunder.” Others said, “An angel spoke to him.”
30 Jesus replied, “This voice wasn’t for my benefit but for yours. 31 Now is the time for judgment of this world. Now this world’s ruler will be thrown out. 32 When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to me.” (33 He said this to show how he was going to die.)
This is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Do you think Jesus had abs? Like a 6-pack, you know? Defined muscles on his core from his days of being a carpenter. I realize that this might feel borderline heretical—postulating on the physique of our Lord and Savior, but stay with me. Let’s think about it.
I mean, we generally believe that Jesus was a real person, right? We have historical records that tell us as much. And we have the gospels, while not historical documents in the way our history textbooks are or even in the way historical accounts of 1st century Jewish historian, Josephus, were, but they are an account of things that happened. They’re written documents that are from oral tradition, and because of this, we accept that there may some discrepancies or conflicting details. But we accommodate and seek a truth that transcends fuzzy records and biased tellings because we’re looking for God in the gospels. And we find God in Jesus, and this is our intention each Sunday in worship.
So saying all that, let’s ponder this. Could Jesus have had abs? Like Robert Redford in his hey day or Michael B. Jordan now. The trainer at the local Cross Fit or the guy doing head stands at the yoga studio. Could Jesus have looked like one of these people?
I mean, on one hand, he was a carpenter. He lifted heavy things. He did repetitive movements every day that probably toned his muscles. He was always walking. With these details, he could have very well been a toned young man, hair whipping into his face, his brown skin glistening with sweat as he talked with the disciples and the Greeks.
But on the other hand, he had a knack for disappointing people. Like if we wanted a warrior king who was going to topple the power systems that oppressed us, wouldn’t we want someone with muscles? Who knew how to wield a weapon? Some military experience, maybe?
But Jesus just kept saying things like, “Nah, that’s not me. I’m gonna die.”
And of course, body builders die. We all die, I get that. But Jesus was insistent on not conforming to people’s hope and understanding of victory and triumph. The things our culture values like ultimately arbitrary numbers such as BMI and credit scores and Instagram followers and net worth—those don’t seem like they would have mattered to Jesus at all. Or if they did matter to him it would because he was trying to subvert them. I mean, he did tell a rich young ruler to give away his net worth if he wanted to really follow God so there’s that.
Anne Lamott, patron saint of imperfection, wrote, “Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you're 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written, or you didn't go swimming in those warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It's going to break your heart. Don't let this happen.”
This feels like a quote Jesus might write in his journal especially if he had to choose between something like this quote or an excerpt from Forbes magazine. Because Jesus does not seem concerned at all with the metrics the dominant culture uses to measure success, happiness, health, and even life. For example, he’ll defeat death in the end…by dying. Which seems counterintuitive, if you ask me.
So. Did Jesus have abs? Don’t think about the pictures of Jesus you’ve seen. Definitely don’t think about the pictures of a white Jesus with the 1970s haircut or blue eyes or anything like that. We just took a picture of that Jesus out of our Fellowship Hall last week, and that’s not what he looked like. Ethnically impossible. We know he was from the Afro-Asiatic region, which means the probability of his skin having been brown or black is very high.
So close your eyes, and think about an empty room. Imagine Jesus steps into it and ask yourself this important question.
Does he have abs?
If we were in the sanctuary together, I’d do a thumbs up/thumbs down poll. Don’t worry, I’d have you keep your eyes closed. Thumbs up if you think Jesus had a six-pack. Thumbs down if you think Jesus had, in Anne Lamott’s words, a “nice comfortable tummy.” I’ll gather the results of this very scientific poll later.
So today’s story. Some Greeks would like to see Jesus. While not the focus of today’s sermon, it is always worth noting when the gospel’s inclusivity is showing like it is in this detail. If you remember Simeon’s prophecy over baby Jesus was that he would open the door for Gentiles AKA Non-Jewish people, to be welcomed into God’s kingdom. And while not many Gentiles became followers of Jesus during his lifetime, by the time the writer of John was writing his account down, Christianity had become primarily a Gentile religion. So prophecy fulfilled.
And Andrew and Philip were some of the very first Jewish disciples, who were invited into discipleship with the words, “Come and see.” And here are the first Greek disciples wanting to come and see. In these opening lines of the text today, we see the circle of discipleship expand significantly. Thanks be to God.
And in response to these new recruits, Jesus, in his typical probably-doesn’t-have-abs energy, starts his discipleship talk with a parable about of all things, death. He shares that it’s only when a seed dies that it becomes worthwhile because then in the ground it can bear fruit. And so it with the Son of Man, Jesus says. Last week, we had snakes. This week, we have seeds.
And Jesus says again for the umpteenth time, everything you think you know about how life works is being turned upside down. The way to find life is to lose it. The path to life is the cross. He says he’ll be lifted up again, and we know from last week, that “lifted up” means lifted up on a cross, that Christ’s glory can only be seen through his death and resurrection.
Because the story of Jesus’ death has a through line of sacred, subversive irony.
The people who killed Jesus thought they were burying him in a grave, but actually, they were planting him like a seed.
And we see that this kind of glory is affirmed by God’s own self, booming from the heavens. The people standing around know that something divine is happening because they attribute the noise to thunder and angels—both conduits for God’s purposes. But what they don’t get until later, as John tells us because John is written from a post-resurrection perspective, is that God is saying, “Yes, indeed. Glory comes through this way of discipleship—a way that seems to end with the cross. But things are not always as they seem. And what seems like the end, may be a seed planted. What looks like a burial ground may soon be the home of a garden or a vineyard.”
So then the faith community, those would call themselves followers of Jesus, consists of those who redefine the meaning of life on the basis of Jesus’ death. Those who say yes to Jesus know that he did not save his own life with a Thor hammer or a very tight superhero suit or smooth political speeches. The way of Jesus is not through the people our cultures naturally values, those with cleaned up acts and the right schools and traditional family units and toned bodies. We know that we have to look somewhere else to find Jesus.
This past week, a few of us had our Monday hijacked by a person in need in the community. What started as a simple phone call quickly became a saga of us trying to help somebody. The person’s story was not clean or clear, we had moments of wondering if we were being hustled, and the day ended with some disappointment that we couldn’t get the person to where they wanted to go.
But even in the disappointment of a moment like this, we trust from the story of Jesus today that it may very well still bear fruit. Because this person got a much-needed shower and food and a new set of clothing and safe place to sleep for a night and the company of a steady, faithful companion for a few hours. We didn’t fix his life. We don’t have the resources or the qualifications to do that. But we had a few dollars, and a few hours, and a few people who have said yes to following in the way of Jesus.
Our church is one of the few churches, if not the only one, in Azle that will help people in this way who knock on our doors. Who will say yes when people ask for us money. We have speculated that our contact information is written on a bathroom stall somewhere and that people find us through the intricate network that those in poverty must use to get the stuff they need to survive.
We buy tanks of gas, new shoes, meals. We pay electricity bills, we buy bus tickets, we fill up grocery bags. Last week, I delivered food from our Little Free Pantry to a woman and her wife in a hotel who didn’t have a car, whose housing status was unclear, who had called the church on a Sunday afternoon and someone had just happened to be there to pick up the phone. And when I gave her the bag of bread and peanut butter and chili in a can, she cried in my arms. And I’m not trying to say “Yay, me!” because honestly, I was a little grumpy that I had to drive to Lake Worth on my way home. I had wanted to take a nap that day. But she had food for the next three days.
And it’s because of your generosity and your radical commitment to the gospel of Jesus and the gospel’s embodiment in providing for the needs of your community. This gospel is one that compels us to give to the point of it feeling foolish. To trust that each person we come across is a beloved of God. And if all we can do is give a meal and a prayer, like a tossing of a seed into the ground, hoping that it will bear fruit in the next season, then glory be to God.
A lot of this works happens in ways unseen by the church at large. It’s not something we put on a billboard or allot Sunday morning worship time to. But the money you give to Azle Christian Church has direct impact on the community. The more you give, the bigger our budget is to help fill our pantry, to help people find a place to stay for the night, to buy them gas to take their kid to the doctor, to pay for a prescription for their family member. Every single thing I’ve mentioned this morning are things we’ve actually done as a church since January 1. And my hope is that our budget expands so much that we need to set up a network of help to distribute these resources to people in our community for whom our systems have failed.
There was a line in one of the readings I looked at this week that said, “Faith in the cross is the world’s greatest exorcism.” Now, we’re not much for exorcism talk in the Disciples of Christ, but Jesus does say in today’s text that the world’s ruler will be thrown out. And if we think about the ruler of the world being the structures and institutions that control our lives, what we might call, “the System,” then this exorcism immediately becomes important.
Because the system chews people up and spits them back out. The System’s characteristics include domination, violence, death, it shows up in things like racism, misogyny, xenophobia, things that contribute to the death of 6 Asian women this past week in Atlanta, to the death of people like Breonna Taylor, who was killed in her sleep one year ago this week.
And Jesus said that his glorification, his unjust death on the cross, means that judgment has come upon this world, and its ruler, the System, is driven out when life is not clung to on the world’s terms. When our Savior, who doesn’t conquer but rather dies, gives his life away and in doing so, redefines life altogether.
So that following Jesus is, from first to last, a matter of letting go. Letting go of control, of having the final say, of getting all our ducks in a row before helping people, of the very resources we think will make us safe and happy and whole.
Glory is found when we give ourselves away. Because we don’t find life by holding on to what is ours because as disciples of Jesus, we know that nothing is ours.
Everything we have is God’s. We are simply stewards, trying to plant a bunch of seeds wherever there’s ground, trusting it will bear fruit one day.
Because the way to life is to be like the seed. To go into the ground, knowing that it’s not a grave but rather the beginning of life abundant.
Anthem - Learning How to Die
Hymn #638 - In the Bulb There Is A Flower
Hymn #420 - I Come With Joy
Table
As we break our bread and pour our wine this morning, I am reminded that Jesus was always meeting people’s physical needs with no strings attached. He was healing people, he was feeding people, he was rescuing people from dangerous situations. He cared deeply about the spiritual needs of those around him, but he knew that our spirituality and our physicality are intertwined. We can’t pay attention to a sermon if our stomach is grumbling. It’s hard to pray when you’re struggling to survive.
So over the next week, I invite you to gather non-perishable food items from your trips to grocery store, from your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends and your family, brings lots and lots of food to Maundy Thursday for our Food Drive. If you can’t make it to Maundy Thursday, you can drop off the food at Rural Gas just across the parking lot, who has agreed to collect our food items for us.
Let’s nourish the bellies and the spirits of our neighbors who hunger and thirst. Because as Jesus says in Matthew and Luke, theirs is the kingdom of God.
Words of Institution:
It is with this hope that we tell the story each week that 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.
Join in me prayer.
Most Holy One that we find in the bread and cup each week, may we continue to see your presence in the resources we have to give to others. May this table not just be a stop on our way in the week, but may its generosity and inclusivity be the orienting force in our lives, affecting and challenging us every day. Bless this bread, bless this cup, may it multiply in our lives and bear much fruit. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.
Resources
I invite you to partner with us in this work of helping people in our community. When you give cash dollars whether through a check or Venmo or on our website, you are planting a seed that will bear much fruit. It will bear actual food! You fund the ministries of a church who prioritizes those who cannot pay us back but to whom we are committed to as disciples of Jesus. You can partner with us through covenant giving, where you say I am going to give $50 a month. You can fill out a covenant giving form on our website. Or you can give each week or month as you are able. You can also participate in Food Hub, in filling our Little Pantry, in being someone who is on-call to meet a person in need.
Any way you can give, give.
Invitation:
If you would like to become a member of ACC or become a disciple of Jesus, message us on Facebook or email us (in the comments).
Benediction:
Before we sing our last song together, receive this benediction:
May the love of Christ who shines like the sun, plant us like seeds, and may we trust that we will rise up again tenfold, blooming the brilliant colors of the manifold witness of God’s great welcome. Amen.