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:
Tonight is Bible and Beer. We will gather at John and Sondra Williams’ house at 5 pm. You bring a snack to share, the Piercys will supply home-brewed beer, and we’ll study a scripture text together as we watch the sun set.
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.
If you can believe it, Holy Week is not that far away. Palm Sunday is April 10—just two weeks away. Our Maundy Thursday event will be like last year’s—we’ll host a food drive for our Little Free Pantry, DMM will fire up the grill, and the ukuleles will lead us in a singalong. We’ll join with First UMC of Azle down the road for Good Friday. And then we’ll have our Easter sunrise service as well as our 11 AM service on April 17. Be sure to check your insert, your eblast, and our socials for details.
Next Sunday, April 3, we will have a Congregational Meeting immediately following service to confirm officers for 2022. It will be a brief meeting in-person and on Zoom for those at home.
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 worship series this morning: Full to the Brim: An Expansive Lent. This morning, we revisit the familiar story of the prodigal son with fresh eyes.
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: Seek the Lord while the Lord may still be found. Call upon the Lord while God is near!
All: Let the corrupt abandon their ways, the evil their thoughts.
One: Let them return to the Lord, so they might receive mercy.
All: Because God is generous with mercy.
One: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways, says the Lord.
All: As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are God’s ways above our ways and God’s thoughts above our thoughts.
(Isaiah 55:6-9)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
Join me in prayer.
God of open doors,
We often long to come home to you,
To love,
And to ourselves,
But we aren’t always sure how to get there.
We know that we need you,
But the road back to you is heavy with distractions.
So if we can dare to be so forward, we pray—
Reach into the noise of our hearts and minds and make yourself known.
Quiet everything but your word for us today.
Come as thunder or come as a still, small voice;
We don’t care which, we just pray that you will come near to us.
Oh, God. The prodigal son isn’t given a name, but we know his name. It sounds like ours. And we know his story. For who among us hasn’t burned a bridge? Who among us hasn’t forgotten that we belong to each other? Who among us has not ached for home?
Help us to trust that you are a God who waits in the driveway for us, who scans the horizon for us.
Help us to know that you are a God who leaves the porch light on and throws a feast when we are found.
Help us to believe in a God who doesn’t stop looking for us when we get lost.
And in response to this profound grace, may we hold tighter to each other. May we remember that humans are not meant to go through life alone. May we look for ways to welcome each other in with excessive, extravagant, over-the-top grace.
Gratefully, we ask it in the name of our brother and redeemer Jesus, who taught 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
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32 (CEB)
All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. 2 The religious leaders and legal experts were grumbling, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3 Jesus told them this parable:
11 Jesus said, “A certain man had two sons. 12 The younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the inheritance.’ Then the father divided his estate between them. 13 Soon afterward, the younger son gathered everything together and took a trip to a land far away. There, he wasted his wealth through extravagant living.
14 “When he had used up his resources, a severe food shortage arose in that country and he began to be in need. 15 He hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to eat his fill from what the pigs ate, but no one gave him anything. 17 When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have more than enough food, but I’m starving to death! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I no longer deserve to be called your son. Take me on as one of your hired hands.” ’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.
“While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion. His father ran to him, hugged him, and kissed him. 21 Then his son said, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his servants, ‘Quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him! Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet! 23 Fetch the fattened calf and slaughter it. We must celebrate with feasting 24 because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life! He was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
25 “Now his older son was in the field. Coming in from the field, he approached the house and heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the servants and asked what was going on. 27 The servant replied, ‘Your brother has arrived, and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he received his son back safe and sound.’ 28 Then the older son was furious and didn’t want to enter in, but his father came out and begged him. 29 He answered his father, ‘Look, I’ve served you all these years, and I never disobeyed your instruction. Yet you’ve never given me as much as a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours returned, after gobbling up your estate on prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.’ 31 Then his father said, ‘Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found.’”
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
There are a few questions in Scripture that cut right to the heart.
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
“Who is my neighbor?”
“Why have you forsaken me?”
And there’s a lesser known one that comes from the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. The story goes that a landowner goes out to hire workers in the morning and agrees to pay them a day’s wages. Then he goes out at lunchtime to get more workers and agrees to pay them a day’s wages. And then he goes out at the end of the day and hires a few more workers and agrees to pay them a full day’s wages. When pay time comes, the landowner pays each worker a full day’s wages, even those who worked only an hour. Understandably, the ones who had been working since morning thought this was unfair. They had worked much longer than the others. The landowner reminds them of their agreement and then he asks this question: “Are you envious because I’m generous?”
I think about this question a lot. Are you envious because I’m generous?
We all know the parable of the prodigal son. It’s one of the most well-known Bible stories—so much so that people who have never set foot in church know it because it’s part of our cultural lexicon. A prodigal son is another term for a wayward child. The elder brother is the jealous sibling. There’s an expectation that if someone is labeled a prodigal son that they will one day return home.
It’s hard to see a parable with new eyes when it’s this well-known because we feel so certain that we know what it’s about. And maybe we have good cause to feel certain. It does feel straightforward compared to some other parables Jesus tells.
For the sake of consistency, let’s recap the story.
A man had two sons. We’ve heard this trope before.
The younger son asks for his inheritance and his father gives it to him.
He leaves home and squanders it with “extravagant living.” It is not explicit that it’s sinful living—that’s just an assumption we make. We are safer to assume it’s foolish living.
Eventually, he runs out of money and is eating the pig feed and decides to return home to be a servant because he knows that his father’s servants eat and sleep better than he does right now.
He heads home but while he is still far off, his father sees him and runs to embrace him. He gives his son a ring, a robe, a fattened calf, and throws him an epic party.
This son was dead but now he is alive! He was lost but now he is found!
Well, the older son comes in from the field, not having been notified that his brother has returned or that a party is happening.
He asks a servant what is happening and when he finds out, he sulks outside.
His father goes to him and the older son lays out the facts: he stayed home, did what he was supposed to, and he’s never been celebrated like this. He accuses his brother of squandering his dad’s money on prostitutes and being celebrated for it.
His father assures him of his love: all that is mine is yours, he says. And then he leaves the ball in the older brother’s court: your brother was dead and now he is alive. He was lost and now he is found. We have to celebrate.
The typical interpretation of this parable is that the younger son is repentant and comes home to forgiveness and the older son is just being grumpy.
But here’s the thing: there is not really evidence that the younger son is repentant. When he is destitute and eating pig feed, he hatches a plan to return to his father and grovel so that he can gain lodging and food. And he mostly does this, despite the display of love he receives upon his return. We have better evidence that the younger son returns home because he’s hungry, not because he’s remorseful.
And the elder son makes some good points. His brother returns from his escapades not as a ruined and repentant sinner, but rather as a self-serving con man, essentially the same scoundrel he was when he left.
So this is not really a story about repentance or even sibling relationships. It’s about a man who had two sons. It’s about this father.
The line, “while he was still a long way off” is telling because it implies that the father has been continually on the lookout for him. It means he had a habit of scanning the horizon, hoping to see the shape of his son enter his view again.
And despite the lack of repentance and brotherly love, this story becomes one about grace filled to the brim. The younger son doesn’t even get to give his rehearsed speech because his father engulfs him in a hug and clothes him with the finest things, one of them being a cloak of abundant grace and mercy.
And as the older son comes home from the fields to find that he has not been alerted that his brother is home or that there is a party going on, he broods outside, replaying all the times he’s been wronged in his head so intensely that he is ready to pounce on his father when he steps outside. But the man who had two sons gives him a cloak of abundant grace and mercy, too.
And he says, “Everything I have is yours.” Which is to say that the father is cloaked in grace and mercy, too, for he gets his sons back when it was unclear that he would ever have his family back together again.
In my notes in the margin for this section of the sermon, I’ve just written “mercy mercy mercy, everyone gets mercy.”
Now, don’t get me wrong, speaking as an older sibling, I can say confidently that the older son was right—he had every reason to believe in his vindication. But in the presence of mercy, being the rightest doesn’t matter.
The gospel is for sinners, not former sinners. God doesn’t love us because we’ve picked ourselves up by our bootstraps in the swine field. That’s the opposite of the gospel. God loves us even if—even if we’re con artists coming home, or we’re wayward lambs, or we’ve lost our way, even if we’re disgruntled siblings unable to say, “brother” yet.
So if we resist the traditional reading of repentance and forgiveness, and we come up even more to the surface of this well-worn story, we might find a simple way of living in the abundant mercy of God. A grammar of mercy, if you will.
By living into the grammar of mercy, we might recognize that the one we lost may be right in our household. We might resolve to do whatever it takes to find the lost and then celebrate with others, both so we can share the joy and so that others will help prevent the recovered from ever getting lost again.
We might decide not to wait until we receive an apology because we may never get one. We might not wait until we can muster the ability to forgive because we may never find it.
Instead, we may just go and have lunch. We may celebrate and invite others to join us. And we may resolve to take advantage of resurrection when we can find it—because it is unlikely to happen twice.
Are you envious because I’m generous? Maybe. But that doesn’t have to prevent me from receiving the generosity of the mercy and grace of God, too. Maybe in the celebrating, in the sharing of bread and wine, I might find myself laughing with ease again, I might be happy that my brother is home, that I’m home, that my kids are home, and I might let grace and mercy fill in the gaps.
Amen.
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.
May we trust that God’s reach is endless, God’s mercy unstoppable, God’s grace lavish.
May we remember that God’s love is constant, God’s wisdom vast, and God’s hope stubborn.
And may we proclaim that God’s presence is here—with us, among us, moving through us.
Amen.