Welcome/Call to Worship
Good morning! I’m Pastor Ashley. 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.
For those watching online or for those who would like to follow along, our liturgy for every service is posted on our website before the service begins.
Our kids go to camp this week! Be sure to wish them well and be in prayer for God’s movement in their lives while they’re at Disciples Crossing.
Thank you to everyone who has already brought plants for Ordinary Time. If you haven’t yet, and you’d like to, we are inviting people to donate a plant to the church to decorate our chancel for Ordinary Time as well as populate our Narthex with plants. If you remember, we lost most of our church plants during the Great Flood of February 2021, so we’re collecting plants in the month of June!
We invite you to Sunday School at 10 AM every week. There’s classes that meet in the Seekers room and the Parlor. There is an older kids’ class that meets in the MUB as of today, and Godly Play meets behind the sanctuary for our younger elementary students.
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 continue our new worship series today: Dear Church: A Study of Philippians. Today, we get a glimpse of Paul’s state of mind in prison.
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: I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord; I will remember your wonders of old.
All: I will meditate on all your work and muse on your mighty deeds.
One: Your way, O God, is holy. What god is so great as our God?
All: You are the God who works wonders; you have displayed your might among the peoples
(Psalm 77:11-14)
Pastoral Praye
The Lord be with you.
Join me in prayer.
(Adapted from Walter Brueggeman)
Most Holy One, we hope that we might “perfectly love you.”
Indeed, we have been commanded from the beginning,
To love you with all of our hearts and
All our souls and
All our minds and
All our strength.
We have pledged to love,
Pledged in our prayers and in our baptism,
At our table and with our best resolve.
But we confess…
We love you imperfectly;
We love you with a divided heart,
With a thousand other loves
That are more compelling,
With reservation and qualification,
With passion withheld and
Devotion impaired.
We do not now come to pretend before you,
But to confess that we do not,
As we are,
Love you perfectly;
We do not keep your commands;
We do not order our lives by your purpose;
We do not tilt toward you as our deepest affection.
But we would…
We would love you more perfectly,
By the taste of bread become your flesh,
By the swallow of wine become your flood,
By the praise of our lips and beyond our usual reasoning,
By the commandments that are not burden but joy to us,
By embracing your passion for neighbors,
By your ways of justice and peace and mercy,
By honoring the world you have made
And all creatures great and small,
By self-care that knows you as our creator.
Lead us past our shabby compromises
And our cheap devotion;
Lead us into singleness of vision
And purity of heart,
That we may will one thing,
And answer back in love to your great love to us.
Free us from idolatries,
And our habits of recalcitrance,
Tend our hearts,
Gentle our lips,
Open our hands,
That we may turn toward you fully
Toward you world unguardedly.
Let us bask in your freedom
To be fully yours, and
So trusting fully our own.
We ask this in the name of our brother and redeemer Jesus, who loved you singularly, perfectly, fully, to the end, and 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: I am hard pressed
Philippians 1:12-26
I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually resulted in the progress of the gospel, 13 so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ, 14 and most of the brothers and sisters, having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear.
15 Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry but others from goodwill. 16 These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; 17 the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. 18 What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true, and in that I rejoice.
Yes, and I will rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my salvation. 20 It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be put to shame in any way but that by my speaking with all boldness Christ will be exalted now as always in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me, yet I cannot say which I will choose. 23 I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better, 24 but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. 25 Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, 26 so that, by my presence again with you, your boast might abound in Christ Jesus because of me.
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Last week, we began our study of Philippians, and we talked about how Paul was imprisoned by the Roman Imperial Guard for sharing a gospel that seemed dangerous to imperial power. And from prison, he wrote to the church in Philippi, a church he dearly loved, a woman-led church in a city bustling with commercial and religious activity. The Philippians shared in Paul’s suffering, for they, too, were struggling against the powers that be.
And Paul encourages them to take the long view, to remember that any work they do, as important and crucial as it is, is ultimately completed by God. That their main job was to love each other fiercely and follow Christ.
Our letter continues today as Paul gets into what’s been going on with him. He shares that his time in prison has not been wasted—Roman guards and fellow prisoners have come to know Christ. Though Caesar meant to stop the spread of the gospel with Paul’s imprisonment, he’s actually fueled it. Paul may be in bonds, but the gospel is not.
And then Paul reports that the gospel spreads not just among his friends, but also his rivals. People are proclaiming Christ for all sorts of reasons, and Paul shrugs his shoulders, and says, “Honestly, who cares why they do it? They’re talking about Jesus, and that’s all that matters. Besides, I’m literally in prison. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
And Paul writes all of this with his trial looming. Will he be set free or will he be executed? He’s staring death in the face. And in this vulnerable moment, he shares some of his unresolved thoughts and feelings with his friends in Philippi. This vulnerability and honesty is the highest compliment Paul ever paid a congregation. He entrusts them with his anguish and uncertainty as he considers what it would mean to die, what it would mean to live. This is the text where we get the famous phrase, “To live is Christ, to die is gain.”
Paul lived in a world where death was everywhere. High infant mortality, low life expectancy, natural disasters that killed without discrimination of age, gender, or ethnicity, health care was primitive, disease and dysentery were especially common in squalid prisons. In ancient Rome, life was considered cheap, and the governing authorities did not have any qualms about ordering someone’s death on a whim.
And in this context, Paul’s resolve seems to be that whatever happens, he will be faithful to God until the end. This is not mere stoicism or a naive defiance of death. He’s not offering us a quaint platitude that wherever the Lord is there is no suffering, but rather his conviction is that wherever there is suffering, there the Lord is.
Perhaps Paul’s stream of consciousness about his unknown fate gives us a glimpse of how to live and how to die. That the glory is not in holding on for dear life, but rather in living and dying in the grip of grace. Maybe he’s showing us how one finishes the race in faithfulness to God—by sharing in vulnerability and suffering with one’s beloveds, in partnership with fellow workers of the gospel.
This kind of thinking does not come natural to us as Western, first world, 21st century Christians. We are surrounded by messages that essentially gaslight us. Though death and decay can be found at every level of life, we are sold the lie that we can live forever. Use this face serum and your sadness will not leave a mark. Eat this superfood salad and your body will never do anything embarrassing or disappointing. Join this Crossfit cult, I mean gym, and you will be strong enough to move all of your heartache to the side. Get a Peloton bike and maybe you will be able to outpace your crippling despair. Invest in this stock and you’ll never feel lack again. Secure this retirement account and hopelessness will never touch you in your old age.
That’s not to say that washing your face and exercising and saving money are somehow evil things. I do all these things.
The danger is when we believe these things will somehow insulate us from pain and suffering. That we will be protected from the fate of humans. That we will be saved.
But dying is the one certain thing about all of us. We will all take a final breath. And yet so much money is spent on keeping us from believing it.
Periodically, the liturgical calendar pierces the prevailing narrative and reminds us of this, that we are mortal.
On Ash Wednesday, we brush our foreheads and remember our dustiness. On All Saints, we light candles and remember the dustiness of the ones we have loved and lost.
And on Good Friday, we remember that none of us venture into a place where our Savior has not yet gone. Kate Bowler, a church historian who lives with chronic cancer and who I quote every chance I get, says about that day: “Good Friday—my favorite day. The day where no one can lie to you. Anything we say that’s true about God needs to be said within earshot of a dying Christ.”
If our Savior can die, then there is no shame in death.
But there does remain shame around death in our cultural narratives. Like it’s a failure or a defeat.
But it’s the most natural thing in the world. And it is somewhere our Lord has gone before. We should not be ashamed to go somewhere Christ has already gone. Bodies give up. Institutions decline. Communities ebb and flow. Things run their course.
We know with the hindsight of history that Paul will not be executed this time. He will live. To live is Christ. But he will die eventually. His work will conclude.
And I wonder if this open-handed view of faith and life allowed Paul to pour himself out in a daring, courageous way that he could not have, had his priority been preserving his own life or protecting his legacy or safeguarding his investments.
I wonder what would happen to us if we lived in such a way. As people of God, as a church, as a community who did not fear its own demise because we know it’s not the final word. How would that impact the work we do together, in the name of Christ?
We are resurrection people, after all.
However, this kind of boldness Paul exhibits is not bolstered by the promise of life after death, but by entrusting himself to Christ and entrusting his uncertainty to his friends.
This kind of faith does not soak into our skin through serums or metabolize in our bellies like kale. It does not sink down deep with cheap platitudes or a bull market.
Faith is shared. It is passed back and forth like a casserole dish, expanding as its broken again and again to feed another. It multiplies in the presence of each other. It bolsters and buoys and emboldens.
I am encouraged by Paul’s vulnerable moment with the church in Philippi. As bombastic and abrasive as Paul can be at times, this moment of transparency is important.
So in the same vein of Paul, I’m going to take a moment of privilege and be vulnerable with you all for a moment. It was difficult to get up this morning at the pulpit as one of the few people of childbearing age in this room after the Supreme Court decision on Friday. This is not the first Sunday when I have wrung my hands wondering what to say, to be sure. And I realize that there are some who would prefer I just not say anything. And I get that. In some ways, that would be easier for me, too.
I’m going to say the word for the first time to get it out of the way: abortion. Regardless of your personal belief about abortion, the overturning of Roe v. Wade just a couple of days ago will have a monumental impact on church and society. It will change how the Big-C church ministers, and how this very church ministers.
I would bet money that that there are some people worshiping here today who have rejoiced over this decision, and who truly and genuinely believe it to be a movement towards justice and wholeness. People who I love.
And I would bet money that there are people worshiping here today that have wept and truly and genuinely believe it to be a movement away from justice and wholeness. People who I love.
I would bet money there are people worshiping here today who did not have a strong reaction either way for it has been a long time since pregnancy was a pressing matter, and who truly and genuinely believe not talking about it is the way of justice and wholeness. People I love.
And I would bet big money, serious money, all the money I have, that there are people worshiping here today for whom abortion is not theoretical or political, but is deeply personal. People who I love. People who you love.
It is deeply personal for me and I don’t know how to get up here and face you, knowing that there is a mixture of support and opposition, a mixture of passion and apathy for Friday’s ruling.
This ruling, like so many other things these past few years, finds itself entangled in love and community. This is not Ash Wednesday, All Saints Day, or Good Friday, but it is a day where we are acutely aware of our limits and boundaries and edges. We are running our hands over the ties that bind us, wondering how strong or how fragile they are.
I am a puddle of dread, and I don’t know what to do.
I do know that reproductive healthcare is complex and incredibly nuanced. It is so much more complicated than binary rulings and simplistic laws. It is so much more personal than many of us realize.
And while I don’t know what to do, I do take heart in Paul’s commitment to stand firm where he is. For him, he is at odds with the Roman empire and in the heart of the church in Philippi. No matter what happens, he is buoyed by the love he shares with them, by his conviction that the presence of God is with him no matter his fate.
That’s not as clear cut as I would like to be. This is a letter after all, not an instruction manual. This is somebody’s mail, not an official ruling.
But as we move forward from this space together, may we find that our bonds are strong. As we face the limits and finitude of our bodies, of our institutions, of our hope, may we trust that no matter what we face, there the Lord is. Amen.
Sharing Our Resources
There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church. 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.
Our benediction for this series comes from the first chapter of Philippians. Receive this benediction:
This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. Amen.