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 is open and available from 9 AM until the end of service for any little ones.
Our next Food Hub is coming up on Saturday, March 26! You can sign up to help by clicking the link on Facebook or in your blast.
Two weeks from today, we will have another Bible and Beer night. 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.
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. You may have noticed some artwork on our walls—there are two pieces of art that coincide with each week of Lent. You will also see these pieces in your Lent devotional that was part of your Lent kit. This morning, we heed a warning about what is to come with Jesus.
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: The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?
All: The LORD is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?
One: Though an army should encamp against me, yet will I put my trust in the LORD.
All: One thing have I asked of the LORD; one thing I seek;
One: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life; to behold the fair beauty of the LORD, to seek God in the temple.
All: You have been my helper; cast me not away; do not forsake me, O God of my salvation.
(From Psalm 27)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
Join me in prayer.
Holy God,
This life of ours is full to the brim.
Our days are overflowing with emails and to-do lists,
schedules and notifications,
Assignments and deadlines.
We wake up feeling behind,
We go to sleep worrying about tomorrow,
And we know—there has to be more than this.
So we pray:
Bend down and show us the way.
Leave breadcrumbs in the street.
Point us toward awe and wonder.
Guide us to intimacy and trust.
Gift us with laughter that will make us cry
And hope that will make us feel alive.
We want a new kind of fullness.
Show us the way.
We are listening for your cues.
For you are our light.
You surrounds us like a warm, familiar blanket,
Layered in grace. Whom shall we fear?
You are our sturdy foundation
And the roof over our head.
We will not be afraid.
When the world is at its worst—
When grief clings to our bones,
When fear eats at our confidence,
When loneliness moves into our house—
You set the table,
Turn on the lights,
And invite us to dance.
So we ask you, O Lord,
We seek and we pray—
Let us live in your house
All of our days.
Gratefully, we ask it in the name of our brother and redeemer Jesus, 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.
Children’s Moment
In today’s story, Jesus compares himself to a mother hen. He says he wishes he could gather all of his people, all of his little chicks, under his wing like a mother hen does for her babies.
So today, we’re going to think about this metaphor for Christ. Every week we pray the Lord’s Prayer, which begins, “Our Father.” And the Bible often refers to God as Father, especially when Jesus talks about God.
But did you know that the Bible also talks about God as mother? There are quite a few scriptures in the Old Testament that talk about God as a mother bird. And when God describes what God is like, God uses the word, hesed, which literally means “womb-love.” God loves us with a “womb-love”—like a person who carries a baby in their womb!
There are lots of great ways to think about God—Father, Mother, Monarch, Shepherd, Sun—every image gives us a different way of thinking about God, who we get to spend our lives getting to know.
So today, I thought we would read a new book called Mother God, which explores the way scripture talks about God as a mother.
(Read Mother God)
Let’s pray: God, thank you for giving us so many different ways of thinking about you. You are both a mystery and also as close as the family we live with. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.
Sermon
Luke 13:31-35
31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 32 He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ 34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
In our Wholehearted Faith Sunday School class last week, we talked about people who made us feel loved in our childhood. It’s probably not surprising to you that the majority of people mentioned grandmothers. I can think of quite a few grandmothers in this congregation, in this room, who cluck about their grandchicks even if they live far away.
The name Mary Pendery, Chris Piercy’s grandmother and a late matriarch of Azle Christian Church, may elicit in some of you clear memories of working alongside her. Others of you may know her by name and stories alone. And others still, will hear this name today for the first time, not realizing how her love and legacy still reach today to all who enter these doors. Such is the best of what a grandmother can be.
My mother-in-law, a stalwart Hungarian woman who has endured so much hardship in her life, greets my daughter each morning with doting utterances in a language I don’t understand, wrapping her in a warmth that I pray Annie carries for the rest of her life.
Both of my grandmothers died this past year after contracting COVID. I know I’m lucky to have had them for 31 years of my life, and I knew intellectually they would not live forever, but there was a childlike sense deep in my heart that perhaps they would. Such is the best of what a grandmother can be.
My paternal grandmother had been in poor health for a long time, and her time edged closer and closer until the tell-tale process of active death set-in. We said farewell over months, then days, then hours.
My maternal grandmother left us much more quickly. We all rushed to say our goodbyes in disbelief, still struggling today to comprehend her absence.
I am still my grandmothers’ grandchild, even though they have died. Just like so many of you are still the grandchildren of your grandparents, even as some of you are grandparents and great-grandparents yourself.
I know not every family member in our life gets to live as long as we wish they would, or be as loving or kind as we wish they were, or be present in the ways we need them to be. Sometimes family members are the ones who hurt us in the cruelest of ways. The familial hurt inflicted, we have learned, is often not a one-time occurrence but rather a generational pattern, holding families in a fierce grip for a long time. We don’t all get memories that wrap us in warmth for the rest of our lives.
So with this truth in my hands, I cup it between them in a posture of prayer, giving thanks for the grandmothers I know here, the mothering and the grandmothering and auntie presences I encounter here every week. We give thanks for those for whom their cup overflows with love for they spill over as they bump into us. We are splashed, sprinkled, baptized, if you will, by the cups brimming with care and compassion, filled by decades of communal love and faithfulness.
For those whose parents gave them what they needed, for those who parent in a way that buoys your children in love and hope, your cups are spilling over, and for that we give thanks. The mess of what your cups cannot contain is a salve for so many, so please keep bumping into all of us.
For such is the best of what a grandmother can be. For such is the best of what church can be.
In our text today, we are out of the desert and facing Jerusalem. Jesus is warned by some religious leaders that Herod is planning to kill him, and this is not mere hyperbole. Herod is from a family where murder is a casual pastime. His father Herod the Great had murdered three of his sons, one of his wives and one of his mothers-in-law along with former friends and servants, and according to Matthew’s Gospel, he tried to kill Jesus before he was out of the cradle. Herod is one whose family was held in the death grip of trauma and harm.
And though Jesus takes this seriously, he still intends to travel to Jerusalem. He must be on his way, he says. He will go to Jerusalem not to escape death, but in order to die there.
Today, he is performing cures and casting out demons, and tomorrow he will do the same. And then he will go to Jerusalem, knowing what awaits him there.
But he does not go with a warrior’s resolve. Instead, he goes with a weeping mother’s heart.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
Luke’s gospel invites us to think of Jesus as a mother hen whose chicks don’t want her. Though she stands with her wings wide open, offering belonging and shelter, her children refuse to come to her.
Jesus knows what is waiting in Jerusalem—he knows the pulsing violent undercurrent, the paranoid power structures, the misguided desire for a revolution. And if the city of Jerusalem were filled with hardy souls, this would all not be so dangerous. But unfortunately, the city is filled with little chicks and at least one fox. Without a mother hen, some of the chicks have taken to following the fox around. Others are exposed to the elements and the dangers that lurk close by.
If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them.
And this is the most vulnerable posture in the world, isn’t it? Wings spread, chest exposed. The Gospel of Luke seems to say that this is the posture of fierce love.
The fact that Jesus uses this image—a hen, who cannot fly, who cannot deliver a fatal wound with her beak, who can only sit on her eggs and cluck around her chicks, is noteworthy. The options for a life become very clear in this little comment by Jesus: you can live your life by licking your chops or you can die protecting your chicks. And if the fox wants the chicks, he will have to kill the hen first.
And he will. He sneaks up on her one night while her babies are sleeping. And when her cry wakens them, they scatter. She dies the next day, where everyone can see the image of her fierce love: wings spread, chest exposed. No chicks beneath her feathers.
“How often have I desired to gather you…but you were not willing.” It’s a haunting refrain of love. A love so full that is spills over even as it bumps into violence and fear. Even as it bumps into death.
For such is the best of what love can be.
I spent a lot of summer and sick days with my grandmothers. Some of my earliest memories are in their living rooms, in their kitchens, slurping potato soup and rummaging through cabinets.
They had a lot of experience cleaning up the messes of their rambunctious grandchildren. They would pull out a rag or a tear off a paper towel, and soak up spilled lemonade, giving us a scolding while also trying not to grin.
And I wonder about this act. Of soaking up what has been spilled, either by careless accident or because the cups are so full. We are all being poured out anyway—such is the best of what life can be. Poured out, with not one drop left.
And I wonder if a grandmother love, a mother hen love, an auntie love is like a paper towel that soaks us up.
It’s a love that is known not through scholarly articles or theological treatises, but through dusting hands off on an apron, and cleaning spaghetti of a toddler’s face, and cradling a sick child.
It’s a kind of love that spreads her wings and exposes her chest, ready to die to protect her chicks.
If we have not learned how to love like that, and I would wager it’s frightening to many of us, perhaps we would let ourselves be loved like that. Perhaps we would be willing to be absorbed by all the paper towels in the hands of the love bending to clean us up.
Perhaps we could let ourselves be gathered by the mother hen Christ, through the wrinkled hands and leathery feet of Christ’s body. Perhaps we could nestle into the warmth of all the chicks nestled in together, realizing that we don’t have to be out there alone or follow a fox around. We could be loved here.
Because Lent doesn’t just tell the story of what was. It also tells the story of what could be. Of such of the best of what could be, of what is becoming even now. 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.
As you leave this place,
May you be awestruck by the beauty of this world.
May you laugh, and may it be contagious.
May you overflow with love for those around you.
May you be effusive with hope and quick to point out joy.
And in all of your living, and breathing, and being,
May you find yourself full with God’s Holy Spirit,
And may it change your life.
In the name of the Lover, the Beloved, and Love itself—
Amen.