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:
If you’d like to join us for Sunday School at 10 AM on Sundays, you have a couple of options. There is an adult group meeting right now in the Seekers room that is reading Max Lucado’s Anxious for Nothing. Beginning next Sunday, there will be another adult group beginning that will meet in the Heritage Chapel that will be studying Rachel Held Evans’ book, Wholehearted Faith. There is also a combine youth and children’s class that meets in the Parlor that is studying the big stories of the Bible.
Today is Community Care Sunday. After worship, we will gather in the Fellowship Hall and assemble care packs to be available for distribution as needed.
Next Sunday, February 13th, we will have a Super Bowl party—a Soup-er Bowl party. Come watch the game and bring a can of soup either to church or the game for our Little Free Pantry. Location TBD.
To keep up with all the life we live together here at Azle Christian Church, make sure you follow us on Facebook and subscribe to our weekly e-blast and monthly newsletter. To sign up for the eblast and newsletter, go to our website, azlechristianchurch.org, and subscribe. There is also a live calendar on our website where you can see what we have going on each month. You can also find us on Instagram and TikTok, both at @azlechristianchurch.
We continue our Epiphany series today: Holy, Wholly, Holey, as we sail out on the Sea of Galilee 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: I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise;
All: I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness,
One: For you have exalted your name and your word above everything.
All: On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.
One: You will fulfill your purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.
All: Do not forsake the work of your hands.
(From Psalm 138)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
This morning, we mourn with the Nicholl family over the death of Cherith, Kat’s sister.
For the month of February, which is Black History Month, we will be praying prayers from Black ministers and theologians. This morning, we borrow from the heart of Patrice Gopo, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants and lover of the earth. (Prayer is called “A Lament for an Unrelenting Earth” from the prayer book Rally)
Since it is the first Sunday of the month, we will sing the Lord’s Prayer together at the end of our prayer.
Join me in prayer.
Most Holy One,
This earth we inhabit is a place
Where hurricanes ravage and mudslides refuse to retreat,
Where hate carries torches instead of cowering in fear,
Where too often we speak of lives lost as numbers and not names,
Where our place of birth impacts the length of our life.
Our children sing of a world held in your hands.
The psalmist writes of righteousness and justice, the foundations of your throne.
In Lamentations, we read of your mercies.
Your mercies, O Lord, are new every morning.
But what happens when the foundations of righteousness and justice
Become rubble beneath our bare feet?
When we wake in the morning and the new day is worse than the old,
When we don’t see the sightings of wrongs,
When we don’t find you in the groan of the wind,
In the splintering of quaking land,
In the heat of flames and fire.
Instead, al we hear is a whisper: a still small voice.
But, Lord,, we don’t want just whispers.
We long for the might of raging rivers that carve canyons,
Of hands raised that calm the storm,
Of a light that defeats the darkness.
We cry out, “Show us the foundations of your throne!”
And you, Lord, invite us forth into a sacred confession that gives rest.
Make us people who can say, “We confess there are ways we have kneeled before a power that ignores instead of falling face down at the foot of the cross.”
“We confess that we are complicit in maintaining the very world we say we want changed.”
“We confess we have thirsted at the fount of a comfort that blinds.”
With these words of confession, we say for ourselves and our communities,
Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty!
The very foundation of all that was and is and is to come,
You hold this spinning planet between your holy palms.
This earth is held, this earth is held, this earth is held.
If your mercies are new each day, O Lord, then as the earth spins on its axis
And faces the rising son,
Make us fearless beacons of your radiant light.
We ask it in the name of our brother and redeemer, Jesus, who taught us to pray…
Sermon
Luke 5:1-11
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, 2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered, “Teacher, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” 6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.
8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” 9 For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will fish among humankind.” 11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
The year is 1979. It’s been 10 years since humans first walked on the moon. And somewhere deep below the ocean’s surface, a quarter-mile to be exact, a woman is walking on the ocean floor for the very first time. In her iron scuba suit underneath 600 pounds of pressure per square inch, she explores the inner space of the earth, something that does not drawn the same attention as the exploration of outer space a decade ago.
Her name is Sylvia Earle, experienced oceanographer, also known as “Her Deepness.” Today she is 86 years old, and she still dives deep into the ocean to see the mystery that the depth holds, to explore the miraculous things that we have only known since her first ocean floor stroll: that the ocean is alive—every spoonful a living system, from the largest whale to the tiny, most submicroscopic particles, and this living organism keeps us land-dwellers alive.
What Sylvia knows firsthand, we only know through tales of divers and scientific instruments able to withstand the immense pressure of the deep ocean: that way down below where sunlight cannot reach, the creatures have found a different way to see. Whether they have some kind of luminescent feature to their bodies or they navigate their waterscape through sound waves and pressure changes, they possess a knowledge of navigating the bottom dimension of the earth that those of us who live above the surface do not.
There is a beauty and wildness that is hidden from us, way down in the deep water, where life is lived much differently than we know it.
As billionaires scheme to be the next rocket man, 95% of the ocean depth remains unexplored. Maybe the draw upward has something to do with our language. We want to be “uplifted,” but not “in over our head.” We want a higher love, as Whitney Houston sang, but we don’t want to feel down or in the pits. There is a natural, linguistically deterrent to plunging below, hunkering down, and exploring the mystery of the expanse beneath our feet.
But on the ocean floor, Sylvia found not only creatures who had learned to see, but she also found a landscape previously unknown to humans, and a history that our minds cannot even fathom. Before ocean walkers came to be, when submarines could only go a little ways down, we did not know about the vast mountain ranges in the oceans or the volcanoes harboring mercurial energy. And now we realize it’s not just rocks and sands for little crabs to pilfer, but there is an entire geography of life that graces the ocean floor.
And speaking of crabs, those little critters reveal a history of 300 million years—their scuttling projecting an evolutionary resilience that we can’t even comprehend. So many life forms were found in the ocean long before there were multicellular creatures occupying space on the land, and we know of but a few.
But even before we knew the little we know about what lives beneath the light in the water, we humans have been rightly fearful of the sea. The God of the Sea, Poseidon, dreamed up by ancient Greeks, was tempestuous and moody, ready to swallow whole boats whole.
And the dark waters have played a role in our faith. God hovered over the waters in the beginning, creative brooding bringing life to the world. And the primordial sea appears in the Hebrew scriptures as a symbol of chaos.
Even though we have not always known what lies beneath in the deep waters, we have recognized there is a mystery in them.
And it is into the deep waters that we go together now.
In our story today, Simon Peter and Company had been fishing all night, like they do every night, and they had come up with nothing. They had put in in back-breaking, callous-forming, skin-searing work with very little to show for it. As dawn began to break, they were likely looking forward to docking their boat, changing into fresh clothes, and eating breakfast before getting some sleep.
But then along came Jesus, the miracle-working preacher who had recently healed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law and has earned a reputation for his teachings. I imagine Simon’s weariness as he saw Jesus, the carpenter-turned prophet who knew more about building a boat than loading it up with fish. But before he could say anything, Jesus tells them to put their nets down one more time into the deep water.
Part protest, part polite compliance, Simon replies, “We’ve been doing that all night, and have caught nothing. But if you say so, I guess we’ll do it just this once.”
Well, we know how this story goes. To everyone’s surprise, the deep water yielded so many fish that the nets threatened to break, the boats threatened to sink, and back-up was called to contend with all that they caught.
Emptiness turns to epiphany, and Simon Peter falls to his knees and says, “Stay far away from me, Jesus! I am not worthy!” But Jesus gives him a holy, wholly, holey calling: “Get up for from now on, you will be casting your nest on the shore, among humankind.”
From holes in the net, to holiness in the call, Simon Peter, and also James and John, drop everything and follow Jesus until the end.
I wonder about our own weariness, the kind that comes from carrying on our faithful, ordinary work, the kind we’ve been trained to do, the kind we have known for so long. I wonder what we see on the horizon as dawn breaks.
As our muscles ache, as our stomach rumbles, what do we see when we look up today from our work, from our modest yield, from our discouraging results?
If it’s Jesus we see, the one who has such a strange relationship to water—he both seems to walk on it and allows himself to be dipped underneath like the rest of us—will we hastily put away our nets, hoping he will get the hint that we’re done, thank you very much, and heading back to our cozy homes and regularly scheduled programming?
Or might we look at the nets anew, the holes making labyrinths on our palms, inviting us to try one more time, this time in the deep water, the dark conduit of mystery and peculiarity?
I wonder if in our long obedience in the same direction, in our faithful attention to the directions of the winds and the smell of the changing tides, we might discover strange abundant life, unable to be contained by what we have prepared.
I wonder if we might encounter an entirely new landscape, a new geography of faith, similar to what we have known but able to thrive in places we previously thought were dead.
I wonder if we just might come across new ways of seeing, evolving to our circumstances and learning from ones that might appear like aliens before us.
I don’t know what we’ll find in the deep water. That’s part of the faith required for casting our nets one more time. But we’ve gathered a few boats together, and we can help each other with whatever comes up.
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.
Our benediction this morning comes from Psalm 42:
As deep calls to deep
in the roar of God’s waterfalls;
As all of God’s waves and breakers
sweep over us,
May the Lord directs holy love to us in the day,
And sing over us at night.
We pray this prayer to the God of our life.
Amen.