Welcome/Call to Worship
Good morning! I’m Pastor Ashley Dargai. To those here in the chapel and those joining us online: we are so glad you’re here! It is so good to be back with you
We give thanks for all who have acted as loving father figures in our lives and in this community.
A couple of announcements before we begin:
Food Hub is this Saturday. If you’d like to join the efforts, be at the MUB at 8:30 AM.
Inside your bulletin you’ll notice an extra piece of paper that says “Table Talk” with next week’s scripture and Bible study questions on it. The Bible was given to us in community, to be read and interpreted by community. A new study will be provided each week as we walk through the Sermon on the Mount together.
There will be a deacon meeting next Sunday, June 27 immediately following service. If you can’t join us in person, you may also join us on Zoom. Zoom codes are provided on FB and in the eblast.
Mark your calendars for our End-of-Summer Party on Wednesday, July 28, at 6:30 pm. Food, games, music, church friends—the perfect way to celebrate the end of summer, which I want to be very clear to all the kids and teachers—is still very much in full swing right now.
Today, we continue our new worship series: Jesus’ Greatest Hits: A Journey through the Sermon on the Mount.
Let us prepare our hearts for worship.
Litany of Faith
One: As Christ’s coworkers we beg you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For God says through Isaiah, “At the acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you.”
All: Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation!
One: We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry. But as servants of God, we have commended ourselves in every way:
All: Through great endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, calamities, and sleepless nights.
One: We conduct ourselves in purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God.
All: We are said to be dying, yet we are alive. We are sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. We seem to have nothing, yet we possess everything.
(From 2 Corinthians 6:1-10)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
Join me in prayer.
(Adapted from a prayer by Safijah Fosua)
Most Holy One, Father to the fatherless, Parent who has lost a child, Guardian of the vulnerable and small, Faithful Witness to our lives, Ancient Wisdom and Gentle Strength,
We thank you for fathers near
Fathers with strong arms
And fathers with feeble knees
Present at table and at bathtub and at bedtime for prayers.
Thank you, God, for fathers near.
We thank you, O God, for fathers far away
Fathers who ache for their families
Fathers absent because of war,
Or imprisonment,
Or disease,
Or despair,
Or death.
Fathers who are present and absent at the same time.
Thank you, God, for fathers far away.
We thank you, O God, for caring communities
Where mothers fill in for fathers
And fathers fill in for mothers
And grandparents put on the apron and the towel.
Where aunts and uncles, and those who are absolutely no kin at all
Make our communities a home,
Fit for habitation.
We thank you, O God, for your nearness to those of us
Who have had to parent ourselves,
Who have worked to break generational cycles,
Who wish they could encounter this day with ease.
Thank you, O God, for being bigger than any one role
And loving us through so many people.
For those whom this day is a blessing, may it be so.
For those whom this day is more fraught, may they find comfort.
For those who would rather think of anything else, may Your love be near today and everyday.
And so with the metaphor of mother for you, O God, we pray with the metaphor of Father, as one of many ways to relate to You, using this prayer that Jesus 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
Matthew 5:33-48
33 “Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is God’s footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; 40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; 41 and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42 Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of God in heaven; for God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as Abba God is perfect.
This is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
There’s this phenomenon in Norway called Slow TV. Instead of network programming filled with juicy plots and cliffhangers and commercial breaks, you can turn on the TV and watch 5 days of a boat ride from different camera angles. And I struggle to describe this thing accurately: it’s not like reality TV or a documentary in which you watch something real or real-ish but with the narrative clearly framed for you by directors and producers. Nor is this like the fireplace you can turn on on Netflix or the scenery screensaver for your computer.
It’s more like when you would turn on a camcorder on Christmas morning, you know, like in the olden days, and keep it on as you went about opening presents and dealing with sibling squabbles. Slow TV is what happens when you literally let cameras run and watch life happen in real time with no director cuts, no commercial breaks, no camera angles that get us the tight frame of a facial expression. There’s no foreshadowing or musical cues for what is about to happen. Instead, the viewer gets everything.
And if this idea of watching a 5-day boat ride ride sounds absurd to you, you’re not alone. There have been a lot of people wringing their hands trying to figure out why this has become such a sensation in Norway. Why has the whole country been captivated by basically a Go-pro camera in high definition strapped to a boat or a train or a pair of knitting needles?
Cultural experts suggest that Slow TV is so popular because it allows for rumination.
When one’s mind is not possessed by a plot, it relaxes, which allows other parts of the brain to activate. One can look at the shore as the boat goes by and instead of looking for clues for what will happen next episode, a person can instead let the mind wander…to memories of childhood trips to the beach, to the ebb and flow of relationships as triggered by the ebb and flow of the tide, to dinner plans later, or the feel of socks on the feet. Wide discussions of Norwegian identity have come out of this mass Slow TV viewing because instead of being told what the story is and what to think, the Norwegian people just…think.
Instead of drowning out viewers’ inner lives with dialogue and action, it rather functions as a backdrop that gives rise to the viewers’ own inner lives. And I realize that there are lots of activities that provide a “busy hand, quiet mind” like knitting for yourself or gardening or woodworking or going on a walk. Essentially, getting away from technology.
But Slow TV does not resist technology. Rather, it provides a mindful space within it. It is void of nostalgia or a yearning for simpler times or the smugness that can come with rejecting technology. Instead, it offers a tool for navigating life today by providing a space to indulge in reflection and meditation. One might say, Slow TV does not come to abolish technology, but to fulfill it.
This week, I watched just 20 minutes of a 7-hour train ride through the Norwegian countryside with a body of water on the left and green terrain peppered with towns on the right. The train would sometimes go through tunnels, and the screen would be dark for so long that I’d wonder if the video had stopped. Occasionally, a woman’s laughter could be heard.
I found my thoughts wandering beyond my to-do lists and reactionary default to a slower, long form. I thought about how different this train ride would be if instead of the Norwegian countryside, it was the drive from here to Lubbock. I thought about the things I like to do when traveling—reading, doodling, staring out the window. I wondered what it would be like to be on a train ride with you. Would we sing old gospel hymns? Work a puzzle? Have moments of collective silence as we took in the scenery? Would our usually 5-minute drive-by conversation turn into a 3-hour heart to heart? I was bought in to this phenomenon immediately.
And don’t get me wrong: Slow TV does not mean that shaping a story for public consumption is inherently bad. Jesus did it a lot. God speaks to us in story. We psychologically naturally form narratives in our own life arc to make sense of the world. We do this by saying things like, “But God had a plan even though I couldn’t see it” or “My mother had a hard life, which is why she did what she did.” We take the raw data of our experiences and narrativize it to give it shape. And this is great. But what if for a moment, we removed the produced narrative, in order to disorient ourselves from our obsession with plots and scripts, with hopes that we might be reoriented differently?
It kind of feels like Jesus is channeling the spirit behind Slow TV in the Sermon on the Mount. Last week, Jenna talked about allowing the long walk with Jesus to shape us into children of the light. She observed that we can’t white knuckle our way through faith, but rather we are invited to be shaped and renovated by walking with Jesus. And he does this renovation by disrupting our sensibilities and our understandings of how things work. He surprises us in the Sermon on the Mount not with magic tricks or miracles, much to the disappointment of the crowd, but rather by slowing us all…the…way…down…to the steady, labored pace of God’s movement thus far. In this case, he’s talking about God’s movement through the law.
In today’s text, Jesus does what rabbinic Judaism calls “building a fence around the Torah.” The Torah, of course, is the Law. And as a fence around a house protects what is inside, so the fence around the Torah protects the commandments by creating circumstances that make violating the commandment more difficult. The thinking is that if one does not let anger fester, one is less likely to commit murder. It’s like the thinking in the movie Legally Blonde: “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t kill their husbands.” Maybe it’s a more little nuanced than that, but you get what I’m saying.
So what Jesus is doing here is fence building, he’s protecting the heart of what these laws are meant for. When all is said and done, it seems like Jesus is not really talking about physical violence at all, but rather agency.
Take for example, these three discussions: the slap, the suit, and the subjugation. To be struck on the right cheek presumes one’s attacker is giving a backhanded slap based on the social norms of the day. So instead of cowering in humiliation or instead of fighting back, which could result in death depending on the power dynamic of the slap, Jesus offers a third way: to look the attacker in the eye and offer the other cheek as a way to reclaim one’s agency and dignity.
And he does this again with the suit example. If the victim accepts the verdict of having his coat taken, he risks freezing to death. But if he refuses, well, he could be put in jail. But by offering also his cloak, his only remaining garment, he would thus be standing naked in a courtroom, revealing a lot, including the injustice and quite literally, the incivility, of the situation.
Likewise with the proscription to carry a military officer’s pack. To refuse to carry the pack one mile risks a beating. To comply is to be humiliated. But to carry it another mile takes back one’s agency and calls attention to the injustice of what is considered a norm.
The third way that Jesus offers in these three examples are a disruption to what is accepted as a given. He breaks from the script of his world and invites his listeners to do so as well.
Of course, to be able to go off script means one must realize that there is a script at all.
One of the reasons we come to a house of worship each week is because we are disrupting rhythms that we participate in on other days of the week. There’s this theologian that argues that liturgy is happening all the time, not just in church services, and our hearts are always being shaped by these liturgies.
For example, let’s go to Target. If you never go to Target, think of a store where you like to browse and spend time in. Did you know that Target is a place of worship? And I’m not just talking about the vague idea of consumerism or materialism as a god, though surely that argument can be made. No, Target is a place of worship because it promises a version of the good life, the life that philosophers since the beginning of time have been thinking about as the end goal of human existence.
And how is this good life promised? If we buy this organizational system, a system of discipline and attention, our life will finally be on track. If we purchase the garments worn by the mannequin, what some might call the acolyte, we will finally belong. If we buy this sports gear, we will be as happy as the person using it in the ad, or what some might call religious iconography. If we get this organic snack, a magic elixir, we will live forever. We don’t consciously think these things, of course, but these promises are embedded in the cathedral of Target.
There’s even an opportunity to take communion. You can do so by getting coffee as you enter at the Starbucks right inside. As we walk around the pattern laid out before us in Target, there are no windows in its architecture, which creates a sense of timelessness, which some might call eternity. And our worship culminates at the altar, where we make our offering. We come up to the one of the priests who takes our money, and in return they give a blessing to take home the gift that we believe will make our life better in some way. Go now in peace, this transaction tells us.
And even though we participate in this liturgy unconsciously, we are shaped by this experience. And I say this as someone who participates in the liturgy of Target often. We know the rhythm, the rules, the expectations, the promises. We can’t help doing these liturgies—these scripts are given to us by our culture, our society, our race, our gender, and even how our faith is performed publicly. I invite you to do this thought experiment for your workplace or a place you frequent. Because I wonder how going through these liturgies each week affect what we truly desire and love, in our heart of hearts.
When we gather on Sundays, we are recalibrating our hearts to love not the good life promised to us in Target or at ball games or in military drills or on Prime Time TV or by our favorite politicians and celebrities.
But rather we are training our hearts to love what Jesus loves, to desire the good life as defined by Jesus, whose values are upside down, whose practices seem foolish, and whose call is to lay down our lives.
This good life Jesus calls us to is so disorienting that he disrupts our factious patterns and says the most absurd thing of all: love your enemies. I know a lawyer once asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” But this pastor wants to know, “Who exactly is my enemy?”
Is it some foreign empire? Is it a militant group within my own country? Is is a predator? Is it a belief system that I find abhorrent? Is it a person who voted differently than me? Is it someone with whom I cannot even have a conversation without it turning into an argument? In our Worship Dream team discussion of this text, someone said, “I think this might be the hardest scripture of all,” and I agree.
For the Jewish people that Jewish Jesus was talking to, the enemy was the occupying Roman empire and its cronies. It was a power that pretended to be benevolent by allowing a Jewish puppet king to preside and letting Jewish people worship in acceptable ways to Pax Romana, pressuring religious leaders to police the divergent religious movements out of fear for their own preservation, which created a sense of paranoia and scarcity. It was a power that demanded adherence to norms and scripts. The good life as defined by the Roman empire was a charade of peace held in place by poverty, coercion, and oppression.
Yikes.
So, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that when Jesus was talking about loving our enemies he was talking about warm fuzzy feelings toward oppressors. What he said about the slap, the suit, and the subjugation acknowledges the lack of choices the Jewish people had when dealing with oppression, and yet, their available responses were not mere matters of the heart. They required something of consequence in the physical world.
So how does one then love their enemies? How does one turn the other cheek in dignity? How does one become a person of integrity in a world that rewards sleights hand and smoke screens?
I don’t know, y’all. But maybe we can figure it out together by slowing all the way down. By forgetting the plot given to us for a minute. By recalibrating our hearts.
Maybe if we give up the need to compete and conquer, the need to master the script—we might be able to ruminate together. To be shaped by a different narrative, even if that narrative sometimes seems nonsensical or plotless. Even if the plot ends in death.
Because if we keep watching, without any warning, we might round a corner and discover a landscape unknown to us, but known to God.
And as we let ourselves be taken on this slow and steady journey of faith, as if on a train across the Norwegian countryside, we might be changed.
Perhaps we will discover the heart of these laws with fences built around them in order to know better the heart of our Maker and the Author and Perfecter of our faith.
Maybe we will find ourselves in a new place, as a new people, with a divine story, if we just take it slow.
Amen.
Sharing Our Resources
There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church: participating in Food Hub or service projects around the church, or filling the Little Free Pantry. You can give financially in our offering box at the door. You may also give online on our website or find us on Venmo.
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 to me or Pastor Katie after service.
Benediction
Please rise for our benediction and final song.
May the peace of Christ go with you
Wherever he may send you
May he guide you through the wilderness
And protect you 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.