Welcome/Call to Worship
Good morning! I’m Pastor Ashley Dargai. To those here in the chapel 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 as much or as little in our prepared liturgy as your spirit is willing.
A couple of announcements before we begin:
If you missed a Sunday and want to catch up on the worship series, you can listen to our church’s podcast wherever you get your podcast.
This Thursday at 9 AM in the MUB, Rick Seeds and others are going to get the golf tournament mailers ready, so if you’d like to help, please be here Thursday morning.
Thanks to everyone who has signed up for the Vanco Mobile app. If you haven’t done so yet and need help, you can call the church office and we’ll help get you set up.
On September 11, we will have a booth set up for Azle’s Sting Fling. If you’d like to volunteer to help pass out water bottles and be the face of ACC, of if you want to volunteer in a more behind the scenes mode of set up and tear down, please email see Nancy after service or email Andrea at secretary@azlechristianchurch.org.
On September 18, we will have our Cabinet Retreat here at the church and on Zoom. It will be our first official attempt at a hybrid meeting, which is the future of our meeting formats.
On September 26, the last Sunday of our worship series, we will have Dedication Sunday for our building.
There is a sign-up for Food Hub available by the check-in tables to get you plugged in and make sure those mornings are fully staffed. The sign-up sheet is also available on the eblast, will be posted on Facebook in the coming weeks.
We continue our new series this morning: Homecoming: Stories of Return. Today, we’re eating lunch by the river and welcoming whoever meets us there.
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.
Let us prepare our hearts for worship.
Litany of Faith
One: You created my inmost being and stitched me together in my mother’s womb. For all these mysteries I thank you—for the wonder of myself, for the wonder of your works—my soul knows it well.
All: My frame was not hidden from you while I was being made in that secret place, knitted together in the depths of the earth.
One: All my days were written in your book, all of them planned before even the first of them came to be.
All: How precious your thoughts are to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! I could no more count them than I could count the sand.
One: Examine me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.
All: See if there is misdeed within me, and guide me in the way that is eternal.
(Psalm 139: 13-18, 23-24)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
Today, we mourn the loss of Jimmy Davis and hold his family in our hearts in prayer. His viewing will be tonight from 6-8 pm at White’s Chapel, and his service will be tomorrow morning at 10 AM at White’s Chapel.
Join me in prayer.
Holy One of the seasons, of the years flying by, of the ages and eons, Alpha and Omega behind us and before us, we are looking for some good news. We ask with the prophet Jeremiah, “Is there a word from the Lord?” We clutch your shirt as Jacob did when he wrestled the messenger for a blessing.
As our earth warms and fires rage and sea levels rise and the earth quakes and the most vulnerable peoples on the planet suffer the most from our carelessness, we wonder if there is good news for us, for them, for creation.
As the COVID numbers rise again in a fourth and preventable surge, as our children fill up ICU beds and our parents wring their hands in worry and our leaders play with our lives, we wonder if there is good news for us, for them, for our collective health.
As violence peppers our headlines, as terrorists over there take cities and terrorists over here make hostages of us all in our day-to-day lives, we wonder if there is good news for us, for them, for our prayers for peace.
As we grow weary of the many battlefronts of racial justice, poverty and inequity, dire diagnoses, accumulating bills, chasms between us, we wonder in desperation if there is good news. We struggle for any good news. A single drop of water, perhaps. Is there a word from the Lord?
And in this moment of bated breath, waiting for you, always waiting it seems, we join with all those who have waited in the seasons and years and ages and eons past. We move into an in-between time where the air is thin and the connections palpable.
And perhaps, O Lord, in our waiting and hoping and praying, we find ourselves buoyed by one another, by others waiting and hoping and praying, too. Perhaps your everlasting arms are the people around us, around Your table, around Your good, good world. Perhaps the word from the Lord will come to us, finally, through the words of each other, for us, for them. So that we find the word from You is us.
And we entrust ourselves to 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.
Sermon
Acts 16:6-15
6 They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. 7 When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; 8 so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. 9 During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10 When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.
11 We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, 12 and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district[a] of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. 13 On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. 14 A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. 15 When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Awhile back, I read this fascinating book about elephant grief.
One of the researchers who studied elephants on a reserve emphasized the importance of the herd over and over again. For example, she described what an elephant birth is like. After twenty-two long months of gestation, the mother goes into labor, and the elephants immediately form circle to protect the vulnerability of the laboring mother. When the baby is born and the gestational sac drops to the ground, all of the elephants trumpet loudly in celebration, and they help the new mother figure out how to tear the sac in order for the baby to come out, and help clean the new elephant and stand nearby as the mother helped the baby stand on its own.
It takes years for a female elephant to be mature enough to become a mother. Although she reaches her full size in a few years, it takes many more years of practice mothering the baby elephants in her herd for her to be ready to become a mother herself. The research calls the young female elephants “big sisters” because they would practice mothering behaviors on the babies, helping them up as they stumble, spraying water at them, taking turns protecting them as they traveled. It literally takes a herd of elephants to raise a calf, and it takes the herd’s babies to raise a mother—a beautiful evolutionary mutuality, a wisdom that existed long before the oldest elephant in the herd had been born.
Just as the herd is vital for birth and new life, the herd is also essential for death, particularly when a calf dies. Sometimes a baby elephant is stillborn or its trunk is damaged or it gets sick—for whatever reason, it doesn’t make it. The mother will exhibit what the researcher labeled mourning behaviors—standing vigil over the body, cleaning it, rubbing its trunk all over it, dropping dirt on top of it, chasing off jackals and vultures.
The others in the herd will stand nearby, standing vigil with the mother, bringing her food, taking her place so she can go get some water, rubbing their trunks over the body, almost reverently. The researcher noted that years after a death, if the herd comes across the bones of an elephant from their herd, they will stop and rub their trunks over it and stand there for awhile, as if they are taking a moment of silence.
But what struck me as particularly poignant was what happens a few days after the calf dies. The other elephants in the herd will trumpet, signaling to the mother it’s time to move on, and they will accompany her as she leaves the body of her calf for good. In the thick of the mother’s grief, the other elephants will tell her what to do, to put one foot in front of the other, to keep going, to follow them.
Our text today begins in a bit of a whirlwind. Paul, Timothy, and Silas cover a lot of ground quickly, the Holy Spirit guiding their travels, keeping them from making any pit stops, and then one night in the city of Troas, Paul has a vision. And this vision has a distinctly human element: a Macedonian man pleads, “Come and help us.” Paul’s response is immediate: the next morning, the group packs their bags, hops on a boat, and sets sail for Macedonia. They eventually arrive in Philippi, the location of what will become the church of the Philippians to whom Paul writes, and they settle in for a few days.
On the Sabbath, Paul goes in search of a synagogue—his MO in Acts. Preaching in synagogues in the city is kind of his jam, but Philippi is the first of his European tour, and this place is not exactly teeming with Jewish people. There’s certainly a lot of religious activity in Philippi, but it’s not happening in synagogues. So they go outside the city, by the river, looking for a place of prayer, perhaps looking for that Macedonian man, and what they find at the river is a group of women who have gathered for worship.
Among the group is Lydia, a woman from the East, earnest and attentive. The text says that the Lord opened her heart to the good news, and she along with everyone in her house is baptized. She persuades Paul and company to stay with her awhile because when one is part of a rag-tag church, hospitality is a virtue.
Many scholars argue that when Paul went searching for a synagogue, he never found it or the Macedonian man—you see, officially, you need a quorum of 10 Jewish men to make a synagogue, and what Paul found was a group of women. But whether or not someone else labeled Lydia’s river gathering as a bonafide “place of prayer,” it’s clear to us what was happening, right? She was holding church. Take it from a group of people who have worshiped in living rooms, courtyards, and a tiny chapel in the past year, we known what was happening by the river outside the city.
And sure, our three amigos arrive and Paul begins talking in gospel, but if these men had not happened to show up, church would have happened anyway. This faithfulness of Lydia and this gathering allows the Holy Spirit to basically plop Paul down in this place where church was happening. And then they all carried church with them back to Lydia’s house for dinner.
When we gathered in the courtyard for a few months for worship, there was an elaborate set-up of sound equipment, chairs, mic stands, the livestream, and the table. Each week, people would arrive and set out the candles and the hymnals and the communion cups before service. And then when worship ended, we’d tear it all down, and we’d disappear from that patch of grass completely except for maybe some stray candle wax. There was this dynamic movement in which church existed whenever Azle gathered, and then it would disseminate as we all went our separate ways.
But I like to think that if someone were to walk up to our Little Free Pantry after we all left, there would be a lingering sense of the sacredness from what had just happened. Perhaps they might think, “Surely the Lord was in this place.” Because while we disappeared from the place, what happened together was imprinted in our hearts.
And even now, as we anticipate a return to the main building where we will have space to spread out and bathrooms, we find ourselves making this place work for worship! We still arrive early to figure out what configuration our mic stands need to be this week, to set out chairs and make sure the A/C and the lights are on, to prepare the table by walking back and forth between here and the MUB. We all crowd into the space, and hymns and creaky floors and gospel talk fill the room. And then, each Sunday afternoon, we finish by singing, “Amen” and we cover the sound equipment, we feed the leftover bread to the birds, and then disappear into the sunshine, the only evidence of our gathering being a stray bulletin and a lingering sense of holy riding shotgun as we drive away.
We have had to make do for so long with whatever space we had, with the lowest risk we could achieve, and we are anxious to move back in to the main building and be church again. And I know what we mean.
But we’ve been church all along………because what makes church a church is not a steeple or a chancel or communion trays, but you. Us.
And in our text for today with Paul and Lydia, the center of gravity seems to be showing up, even when plans change and church doesn’t like you expected. Paul goes looking for a synagogue and finds a group of women by the river. Lydia holds a prayer meeting by the river and finds herself hosting an evangelist. And then they carry what they’ve made as a church back with them to Lydia’s house.
Paul had been on the road and on the run throughout Acts. He was not getting invited to dinner often, and he was certainly not getting invited to rest and recuperate at someone’s house. Yet, here, in the wake of Lydia’s baptism into the community of Christ, Paul and Sons are invited to her house after being chased out everywhere else. Lydia’s first action as a baptized believer was to take care of someone else.
And when Paul goes and finds not a man but instead, a group of women meeting outside the city, he joins a gathering he could not have imagined and tells them of the good news, prompted by the Spirit to care for them. Because while Lydia invited Paul into her community, Paul also invited Lydia into a community that transcends history and time through her baptism. Lydia’s fidelity and the girl gang’s faithfulness in meeting prepared the soil for this baptism, for this hospitality. Let me take care of you, this showing up seem to whisper, because that is what we do here. That is the work of God.
Today, returning home means returning to the work of mutuality, of showing up for one another. And it’s not that this has stopped in the pandemic. In some ways, this work of showing up for each other has been the sustaining life force of Azle Christian Church throughout this past year and a half.
But as we return, perhaps more slowly than we had hoped, perhaps interrupted by COVID surges and building delays, we are returning to our promises to one another. We are rededicating ourselves to each other.
Maybe you have been on the run, and finally, you have found a place to rest and be fed. Or maybe you have been faithfully showing up in hope and trust, and today is the day the Spirit reveals Herself to you.
Sometimes we show up to church in its many forms for ourselves. We’ve been looking for a place where our voice is valued, where we can breathe easier and rest, where we can find hope bubbling up. And sometimes we come to church in its many forms because we are what someone else needs.
Because the thing about church, what we call a covenant community, is that we’re making a promise to show up and be the elephant herd. Just like the female elephants learning to be mothers, and the mother elephants being cared for so tenderly by their herd, we need each other. We don’t know when we will need that tender care, perhaps we are needing it right now. And being a part of the covenant community is a promise of mutuality of care because that is what we do as worshipers of God. We promise to represent the care of a tender, mothering God to one another.
Because sometimes we’re the ones surrounded by her people giving birth to new life in its many forms, and sometimes we’re the ones trumpeting in celebration for someone else.
Sometimes we’re the ones learning how to walk, and sometimes we’re the ones helping others who have stumbled.
Sometimes we’re the ones standing vigil over what has been lost, a loss so deep that we could not make it without the herd. And sometimes we’re the ones bringing food and standing guard for the one grieving.
Sometimes we’re the ones who can’t walk away, who are paralyzed by grief and pain, and sometimes we’re the ones nudging the grieving onward, sharing the collective wisdom, the gospel narrative that is older than the oldest person in this room, older than the oldest church in the world.
Sometimes we’re looking for a place of prayer outside the city, and sometimes we’re the ones gathered by the river, or in a courtyard, or an old chapel in the back of a parking lot. Sometimes we’re the one baptizing and sometimes we’re the ones saying, “Come to my house. Let me feed you.”
This mutuality of care, this promise to keep showing up and letting others show up for us—this is church. This is the promise we return to today.
Amen.
Sharing Our Resources
There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church. Volunteering at things like Food Hub or Sting Fling or golf mailings. Filling our Little Free Pantry. And the sharing of your financial resources. There are many ways to do this: Venmo, giving online, giving box, offering plate.
I’m going to pass these plates 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.
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 to me after service or sometime this week.
Benediction
Please rise in body or spirit for our benediction, the final song, and the Doxology.
Receive this benediction:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
And the love of God,
And the communion of the Holy Spirit
Be with you all
As you bear witness to the love of God in the world,
So that those to whom love is a stranger
Will find in you generous friends.
Amen.