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. For our young ones, there is a coloring page and crayons for children to participate in worship as well as a designated area with toys in the back for families of little ones who need to move around and play to worship God. We believe that every age offers a unique perspective of the image of God, and 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.
Our nursery opened today and is available from 9 AM until the end of service for any little ones.
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 begin a new worship series this morning: Full to the Brim: An Expansive Lent. It’s an invitation to be authentically who you are, to counter scarcity and injustice at every turn, to pour out even more grace wherever it is needed. When we allow ourselves to be filled to the brim with God’s lavish love, that love spills over. It reaches beyond ourselves; like water, it rushes and flows, touching everything in its path. This morning, we begin our expansive Lent in an unlikely place: the wilderness.
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: You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the LORD,
All: “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust."
One: Because you have made the LORD your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place,
All: no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.
One: For God will command God’s angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.
All: On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.
(From Psalm 91)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
Since it is the first Sunday of the month, we will sing the Lord’s Prayer at the end of our prayer time. It’s #410 in our Chalice Hymnal.
Join me in prayer…
God of the wilderness places in our lives,
It can be hard to hear you in the desert.
It can be hard to you in the city,
In the midst of our calendar reminders,
Rush-hour traffic, and notification alerts.
It can be hard to hear you, so we ask:
Make everything quiet.
Pause the chaos.
Still the rushing.
Ease our rushing thoughts.
Give us the ears to hear your Word for us today
Which promises that even in the desert
You are full to the brim.
We are listening.
We ache for your good news.
Holy God, as we wait, help us learn what expansive, abundant life means.
When we think that expansive life is about power—
Teach us a new way.
When we think that expansive life is about material wealth—
Teach us a new way.
When we think that expansive life is about control—
Teach us a new way.
Teach us to live as you live.
Teach us to love as you love.
We ask it in the name of our brother and redeemer Jesus, who taught to pray…
(Sing Lord’s prayer)
Sermon
Luke 4:1-13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”
5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered him, “It is written,
‘You will worship the Most High God;
God alone will you adore.’”
9 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,
‘God will tell the angels to take care of you,’
11 and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
12 Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
We began Lent this past Wednesday as we brushed our foreheads with ashes and turned our hearts toward a posture of repentance. This holy season is marked by repentance and humility—each Lent, we empty ourselves of pride, of neglect, of apathy, of hostility, of all the things that keep us from God, as we move toward the cross. Traditionally, this is done by clearing out space in our lives either by giving something up or adopting a spiritual practice. Each year, through this practice, we consider what it means that we are small, mortal, vulnerable, and defenseless.
Our series for Lent is called Full to Brim: An Expansive Lent, and it’s meant to be a subversive shift of what we usually think of Lent. The premise is that our emptying out is not for emptiness’ sake, not for us to be hollowed out bowls with nothing but cobwebs inside. But rather the point is that we empty ourselves so that we may be filled with God’s lavish love, God’s ineffable grace, God’s own self.
Lent is a different holy season than Advent in that rather than anticipating an arrival, we are preparing for a death. Rather than lighting candles to fill the room with warmth, we extinguish them to allow for shadows. Rather than preparing gifts and songs for our coming King, we are preparing spices and oils for his body for burial.
We clear away all that keeps us from facing the reality that is the cross. Like shoveling snow out of our driveway or clearing brush off the road, we are making the path clear for us to return to God.
And because of the themes of Lent, it seems rather appropriate that we begin today with Jesus’ time in the desert.
This is classic spiritual formation stuff. 40 days, being led into the desert, temptation. These are literary signals to people familiar with the Hebrew scriptures. Just as we hear, “Once upon a time” and know what kind of story we’re getting, the people who received this temptation story would know what to expect based on the way this story is set-up.
So for example, 40 days does not necessarily mean 40 days. It simply means a long time. We see 40 show up in other places in scripture: it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. The Israelites wandered the desert for 40 years. Was this an exact calculation? Probably not—but the point is made: it was a long time.
And then we have the wilderness: a place of temptation, of questioning, of isolation.
If you’re thinking about the Israelites wandering in the desert eating manna and complaining when you think wilderness, then your brain is going to the right place.
The Gospel writers are trying to show that Jesus was not forming some new, disruptive religious cult, but that what he’s doing is very old and has ancient roots. What God did out in the desert all those years ago—shaping a people, kneading out the muscle memory of enslavement to Pharaoh, and establishing a new, covenant-based identity—that has something to do with what God is doing in the wilderness right here with Jesus.
Except, well, God doesn’t show up in this story. The devil does.
And that’s another literary clue: rather than thinking about the devil as some red-tailed arch nemesis of God, we can see him function as a confronter in this story. Someone offering an alternative way of life.
And like the devil so often does, he makes some good points.
Hear me out. This first temptation: turning a stone to bread. Is that so bad? Like for a guy who turns water to wine, wouldn’t it be handy to make stones, which are everywhere, into loaves of bread for the impoverished multitude around him? If Jesus can turn stone into sourdough for himself, surely he can make it happen for others.
What about the second temptation? Considering that we understand Jesus to have some idea about his coming fate and what he is trying to do in the world, wouldn’t it be helpful to have the command of all the kingdoms in the world? He will be killed by one such kingdom in the not so distant future. And with this option from the devil, he can just bypass bureaucratic choreography and get everybody on the same page in an instant.
And this third temptation, that God will keep Jesus safe because God loves him. Without raising your hand, how many of us believe this on some level? Or if we don’t believe it now, then at some point we believed a version of it? Or someone we love believes it? That if we are beloved by God, which we supposedly are, then God will keep us safe. Safe from physical and emotional harm, safe from frailty and disease. Safe from accident and incident. Safe from death. If we just have faith, then things will turn out alright. That sounds really great. I’d love it if that were true.
But I think we all understand it’s not. Given what we’ve seen in the past two years, in the past two weeks—we know that being beloved by God has nothing to do with safety.
So in a lot of ways, the devil is proposing a more enticing religion than Jesus. I’m not worried about being smited, smote?, but I do feel a little prickly saying that. At a very primal level, I like what the devil is selling better. It makes me feel strong and secure.
But there’s another part of me that finds Jesus’ response intriguing. He had just spent a long time in the desert. He was hungry. He was lonely. He was grimy. He had sand in his loins and blisters on his feet.
The desert is not a place one goes to be entertained or empowered. It’s not even a place one goes to hear from God because the desert says nothing. It just lies there like a bare skeleton: sparse, austere, and utterly worthless. It is motionless and silent.
You can only be satisfied in the desert by giving up what you’re trying to comprehend.
Becoming disoriented is the point. Losing control is the point.
That doesn’t sound like a fun time.
And I’m not trying to be flippant here or paint the devil as a mischievous being trying to get Jesus to eat some ice cream and max out his screen time.
What I mean is that in the devil’s economy, unmet desire is an unnecessary mistake. Rather than part of being human, not getting what you want is unacceptable and must be fixed immediately. The devil points at a part of creation, a stone, and immediately turns it into an object he can exploit, possess, and consume. By denying the hunger Jesus feels as a part of being human, he denies incarnation—the most miraculous gift of all.
The devil also shows Jesus “in an instant” all the kingdoms he could possess—unfettered power if he just buys into the life of exploitation. But the fact that he can show the kingdoms “in an instant” gives us a clue at how temporal kingdoms can be. Empires rise and empires fall. Jesus will be lifted up one day, that’s true. But it won’t be on a throne, it will be on a cross.
And then of course, the promise of safety. That somehow Jesus can leverage his own belovedness into an impenetrable shield. But we know that God’s precious ones still bleed, still ache, still die. Because being loved by God means we are loved in our vulnerability, not out of it.
This life the devil offers sounds so good. I can’t imagine how it sounds when the world around feels desolate.
Except, well, maybe I can.
Wars and rumors of wars, pestilence and famine—it sounds like it’s out of the ancient scripture, but it’s actually right out of our headlines.
Maybe we know a little about wilderness in our lives, in our congregation, in our community.
We know what it feels like to be lonely, to be hungry for the comforts of yesterday, to feel like the whole landscape has changed underneath our feet.
I have to imagine that on some level, we are all itching to get out of this wilderness. That we feel like it’s a mistake or a judgment or an anomaly. This is not how the world is supposed to work, we might think. This is not what life is supposed to be like. And we are told by the devil, by our culture, capitalism, even some of our political and religious leaders—that the only way for us to proceed is to not be in the wilderness any more.
Whether that means pillaging creation for our production and consumption, or aligning ourselves with power at any cost, or buying into the lie that immortality and invincibility can be ours with just one more purchase. These ethical dilemmas Jesus is offered are evergreen. They are offered to us every day. Because we have somehow been persuaded that the wilderness is no place for life, for God, for hope. That it’s unnatural to flourish in a desolate place.
But did you know that one-fifth of the earth’s land mass is desert? Over a billion people—that’s one-seventh of the world’s population—live in desert lands. Communities have existed in deserts for as long as communities have existed. People have made their home in the wilderness and found life and love and meaning not as a temporary place to stay, but as home.
The wilderness may lack babbling brooks and thick forests and forms of habitation that we have come to expect. But people who trust the desert as their home delight in its quality of simplicity. The desert imagination thrives on the absence of what others consider essential. It revels in negation, attending to what is unseen and what can’t be proved, and thought it provides few comforting assurances, it is still a place where one can flourish. It is still a place where hope can be found and meaning can be cultivated. It can even provide a home to those who have found themselves displaced.
I wonder if our own wilderness journey is not about getting out of the desert. I wonder if our call in this desolate time, in a world that feels uninhabitable in every way, is to make ourselves at home.
Rather than trying to find a way out, or to bring things back that once brought us comfort, or to worship what we consider “normal,” what if our call here today is to learn from those who know what’s it like to live here in the wilderness? What if we are meant to adjust our vision so that as we look at an endless geography of sand, we don’t see a barren landscape, but an invitation to find God here, too?
Our ways of living will be different. The things that sustain us will require new rhythms. Our daily habits will adjust to respond to the harshness of the elements. Even the way we clothe ourselves and make our places of rest and work will change to accommodate this new terrain. But we can make a home here. We can find hope. We can find meaning. We can find God. We can flourish here, too.
Amen.
Table
As we prepare to take communion together in just a moment, I invite you to prepare your communion now.
Join me in prayer:
Most Gracious Host, bless this bread given to us generously and indiscriminately. Bless this cup that overflows with the hope of a new covenant, the coming reign of God. We ask it in the name of Jesus, amen.
As we look for God in this new landscape, adjusting our eyes to the blazing sun and arid horizon, we remember that God can be found everywhere. Where can I go from Your Spirit? If I make my bed in the depths of the sea, you are there, the Psalmist wrote.
But what I like about communion is that it’s like a standing appointment with God. Sometimes it’s mundane, and we sip our juice in dutiful silence and munch on our wafer with a hymn in our heart.
And other days, it’s like the stars have aligned, all creation sings, and our heart feels as though it will burst.
What matters most is that we keep our appointment. It’s the practice, the rhythm, that creates a path for the Holy One to catch our eye over bread and wine. And once the Holy One has our attention, our ears perk up, our attention narrows, and for a moment, nothing else matters.
And so, we keep our appointment today, and tell the story that on the night he was betrayed, Jesus broke the bread and said, “This is my body, given 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.
Stewardship Moment
There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church: Venmo, giving online, or the offering plate. I also invite you to bring nonperishable items for our Little Free Pantry. The collection shelves for the pantry are in the Fellowship Hall right outside the kitchen.
The deacons are going to hand these plates over during our final song, starting at the front row and they just to need make their way to the back where a deacon will collect them. You can drop your offering, an “I gave online card,” or an information card.
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.
No matter how lost we feel,
May we remember that God’s grace is full to the brim.
It overflows in the desert places.
It finds us where we are and covers us in mercy.
Amen.