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:
Just to remind you, if you need you use the restroom, we ask that you use the ones by the kitchen. The rooms, bathrooms, and hallway behind the sanctuary are blocked off due to safety concerns that are being addressed.
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 podcasts.
Next week, we will have Regional Executive Minister and Vice President, Rev. Christy Drechsel, here to preach.
As the Pandemic Response Committee continues to monitor the COVID situation in our area, most extracurricular activities are either suspended or online. On October 10, two weeks from today, a Sunday School class offering for adults will be available in the Heritage Chapel at 10 AM before service. It will explore that week’s Table Talk. There will be a children and youth offering outdoors under the porticache at the same time.
This Wednesday is our first Gospels and Groceries event at 6:30 PM. We’ll eat dinner together, provided by DMM, sing hymns, and collect food for our Little Free Pantry.
We conclude our Homecoming series this morning as we turn to the Psalms. You may have noticed that there are slips of paper in the pews and pens in the slots. During worship, I invite you to write a word or two that you hope for the church in this new chapter as we reenter the building. We will collect them in the offering plate at the end of the service and frame them to hang as a prayer. For those watching at home, I invite you to put your word in the comments and we will transfer them onto a slip of a paper.
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: O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you;
All: My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
One: I have seen you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.
All: Because your loving-kindness is better than life, my lips will praise you.
One: So I will bless you as long as I live;
All: I will lift up my hands and call on your name.
(From Psalm 63)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
We have gathered as a family of God to celebrate with thanksgiving the renovation of this sanctuary and to rededicate it to the glory of God. Aware of our rich heritage, we celebrate the lives of those who in times past have devoted themselves to the building up of this congregation and who now surround us as a great host of witnesses to the power of God at work in the church. Holding this heritage in sacred trust, we come now to consecrate afresh this house of God and the service of the world. Let us, then, commemorate with joy this occasion with prayer.
The prayer is an insert in your bulletin. Where it says “all,” the congregation will read. We will conclude our prayer with the Lord’s Prayer, which is printed in your bulletin.
Join me in prayer.
Ashley: God of all glory, whose habitation is the whole of creation, we rejoice that you make yourself known to us particularly in the midst of those who gather as your people in Christ’s name. May this place be a holy meeting ground between you and your people. Make yourself known afresh to us today as we dedicate anew this building and ourselves to your service. May this sanctuary ever resound to praises of your glorious name.
Rick: We rejoice today in having completed the renovation of our place of worship. With heartfelt gratitude we now reconsecrate this sanctuary and church to the glory of God. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ we do this.
All: We rededicate this house to the glory of God, who has called us by sheer grace; to the glory of Jesus Christ, who loves us and gave himself for us; and to the glory of the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies us.
Lisa: We rededicate this house for the worship of God in praise and prayer; for the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, and exalted; and for the celebration of the holy sacraments of God’s grace.
All: We rededicate this house for the giving of comfort to all who mourn; of strength to all who are tempted; of light to all who seek the way.
Isabelle: We rededicate this house for the hallowing of family life; for the teaching and guiding of the young; for the building up of all who believe, and the perfecting of the saints.
All: We rededicate this house for the increase of righteousness; for the spread of the spirit of love, and for the extension of the reign of God.
Ashley: And now, as a people within the household of God in the unity of faith;
Rick: In the communion of the saints;
Lisa: In love and goodwill to all;
Isabelle: In gratitude for the gift of this house to be a dwelling place of God through the Spirit;
All: We dedicate ourselves to the worship of God and the service of God’s reign.
We ask all of this in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer, as we conclude with the prayer Jesus 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
Today, we dedicate our sanctuary. To dedicate means to name something as special and set apart for a special use. In this case, we are saying this building is for the special use of worship and fellowship. Some of the building is new, some of it is the same. Maybe you remember that the paneling on the chancel used to be darker, and maybe you don’t remember what things looked like when we left! We have had a lot of changes with how we do church over the past year and half. Our building has changed, the way we worship together has changed, but one thing that has remained the same is that when we worship, God meets us where we are. When we gather together, whether online or in person or some mixture of the two, we are in the presence of God—no matter what church looks like.
We read this book earlier this year, but I’d like to read it again, to remind us that the reason this place is holy is not because of the structure or some special God magic. It’s because we are filling it together.
Read This Is the Church
Let’s pray:
God, we thank you that we don’t have to go far to find you. You always find us and make our hearts your home. We love you, God. Amen.
Sermon
Psalm 84
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
2 My soul longs, indeed it faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
3 Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.
4 Happy are those who live in your house,
ever singing your praise. Selah
5 Happy are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
6 As they go through the valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength;
the God of gods will be seen in Zion.
8 O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah
9 Behold our shield, O God;
look on the face of your anointed.
10 For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than live in the tents of wickedness.
11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
God bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does the Lord withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
12 O Lord of hosts,
happy is everyone who trusts in you.
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
On Tuesday, February 16, 2021, late in the evening, we received a call that something had happened to our building. A person braving the historic winter storm to retrieve food from our Little Free Pantry had seen water rushing out of our kitchen door and called somebody. Late that night, a few members showed up here, feet drenched in cold water as they surveyed the extensive water damage.
That night, the rest of us huddled in our homes, with varying levels of electricity and fresh water. Some of us took refuge at a family or friend’s house because of the lack of power and deadly cold in our own homes. Others of us endured rolling outages, wondering if the next outage would become permanent. Some of you ventured outside not to build a snowman, but to feed your livestock, to check on your neighbors, and to help others.
We had been in our homes for awhile. Throughout the pandemic, we had learned to work from home, socialize on Zoom, and find ways to pass the time. Others of us juggled childcare and work, a relentless impossibility, all while living in the chronic and sustained crisis of a deadly, global pandemic. And we had also learned to hold church online, an often disheartening task, never quite like the real thing, missing the smells and bells of in-person gatherings. Along with many churches, we had found that the answer to the very difficult question of “Could we worship from our living rooms?” was yes.
The next day, when we sent out the word to everyone about what had happened to the church building, the messages came flooding in. What can we do? How can we help? Who can I call? The supplies are strained but I’ve got a friend who can help. The service people are booked to the brim, but let me call my buddy and see what we can do. Is there a need for a PVC pipe? A fan? Movers? Even though most church members, save the few who put on worship each week, had not been to the building in months, the love for what this building represents overflowed into acts of service, even as we all were wading through the aftermath of the storm in our homes.
The following Sunday, we weren’t quite sure what to do about worship. We couldn’t stream it from the sanctuary. There was no Wifi in the Heritage Chapel at that point. The MUB, naive to all it would hold once the renovations began, was already full of storage items. We had done church in our living rooms, but could we do it without a building?
So Nicole, our then interim worship minister, said, “Let’s do it from my kitchen.” And we figured out how to light Lenten candles in a tight 2x3 table full of sound equipment, how to move around a kitchen table without tripping over wires on a livestream, how to not get distracted by a crying baby in the other room, and somehow, we worshiped together that Sunday. After nearly a year of worshiping apart in a pandemic, trusting in the Spirit who connects us all, we challenged that trust yet again.
We are Disciples and we leaned in hard to what we value most. We don’t need much more than communion to make it church. And it doesn’t even need to be unleavened bread and fruit of the vine to count for us. Truly, we need a mere carb and liquid, and we’re satisfied.
And besides, we were leading worship from a table. Literally, we prayed and read scripture, at a table. In a way, it felt more like church than worship in a sanctuary. From Nicole’s home to each of your homes, we remembered Christ together.
Could we worship from a kitchen table? We found out the answer was yes.
And then as the renovations slowly began and the weather warmed, we drew on our church’s earliest roots of worshiping outside. We outfitted the courtyard for something like a tent revival, tolerating the sounds of traffic and salivating at the smell of chips from El Paseo across the street, and we sang and smiled hard with our eyes. Each week, we pulled stuff out of the MUB, arranging flowers and plates and chairs, all to conclude service and pack it all back up again, leaving nothing but a stray communion cup as evidence of what happened there. We warned each other of ant piles, some of you got sunburned heads, and at times, we glistened, not because we were transfigured, but because spring lasts about 10 seconds in Texas.
Could we worship from the outdoor space beside our building? We found the answer was indeed, yes.
And then, following the path of Azle Christian Church’s forebears, we moved from the outdoors to the Heritage Chapel, heeding the wood floor’s protestations and using every inch of that space to make room. We put up curtains, washed windows, hung bird feeders, and made that worship space cozy. We hosted guest preachers, guests musicians, and somehow no one injured themselves trying to maneuver in that tight space, thanks be to God. The long-standing question of could we worship online in the Heritage Chapel? Yes, we learned. Yes, we could.
Throughout this slow transition to in-person worship, we held in our hearts that we were still not all together. Some of you worshipped and perhaps continue to worship from home. While our spaces changed and our proximity ebbed and flowed, we have practiced the reality that the table of Christ is long and transcends time and space. As we took our individual communion cups, we remembered that we ate from a common table, from a feast that was prepared by our Lord. Not even a potluck meal, the table of Christ is instead a gift from God’s own self. We don’t bring the wine or the napkins or extra ice—we just show up hungry. And that’s what we’ve been doing all this time. We’ve been showing up so hungry. We’ve longed to return. We’ve yearned for this movement back.
And yet, even as we move back into this space, the only movement we are capable of, is forward.
Not only are we individually different, each of us changed by all that has transpired since we gathered last, but we are also collectively different—the dynamic of this congregation has changed. We gather today without some of our beloveds. And we gather with new beloveds. Some of you have grown and all of us have grown older. Some of you have become parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, or in-laws for the first time. Some of you retired or went back to work or changed jobs.
The Body of Christ in its place here, this “local outpost of the kingdom,” as Thomas Campbell of our Stone-Campbell tradition, would say, is a dynamic entity, not a static one. The new floors, the fresh coats of paint, the different colored cabinets—they remind us that time has not stood still. The world did not pause in March 2020. The building in many ways reflects how we all have changed. It’s apropos for things to look different because we are different.
And today we ask, can we worship in this new space? Yes.
Because we have found over and over again during this sojourn the Eternal Yes, the Affirmation of All That Is Good: God. We have found the Most Holy One in our living rooms, our cars, at kitchen tables, in courtyards, in creaky old buildings, and now here again, we find God.
We sing with the Psalmist, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O God! Everyone comes from their homes and finds a home here, even the sparrows. Hear our prayers, hear our songs, receive our tears, which have baptized the driest places and given them new life. It is good for us to be here. We have longed for this moment.”
Amen and amen.
Sharing Our Resources
There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church: Venmo, giving online, giving box, offering plate.
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.
This is also the time to drop your slip of paper with a word of hope or prayer for the building in the plate.
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:
We are going to remain sitting for our benediction and the final song as the ukuleles will lead us. Nicole will remind us after to stand for the Doxology to conclude this service. Receive this benediction:
Peace be to this house, and all who worship here.
Peace be to those who enter, and to those who go out.
Peace be to those who love this house,
And who love the name of Jesus.
Amen.