Welcome
Good morning and happy new year! I’m Pastor Ashley Dargai. To those here in the chapel and those joining us online: we are so glad you’re here!
I say happy new year because we turn the calendar page today as a church, moving into a new liturgical year with this first Sunday of Advent.
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 an Advent coloring page and crayons for children to participate in worship as well as a designated area in the back for families of little ones who need to move around with a box of quiet toys and crafts for children and their grownups to pull from. 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.
A couple of announcements before we begin:
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.
There are Advent Home Kits available for pick-up today and they’ll be in the office after that. If you need a kit delivered to your house, please contact us on FB or call the church office. There are lots of opportunities to observe Advent with us. A calendar is set out at the entry tables, available online, and in your Advent kits.
This Saturday afternoon, December 4, ACC will have a booth at Azle’s Christmas on Main Street. Sign-ups for shifts at the booth are available at the entry table and online. They are 2-hour shifts, and we’re handing out Christmas ornaments. This is a great way to tell people about ACC, so I hope you sign up!
Next Sunday, December 5, immediately following worship, we will have our annual congregational meeting to approve the budget and other decisions proposed by the Board. The meeting will be in-person and on Zoom, so please join us for this important day. The Zoom information is in your eblast and on Facebook.
On December 6, the annual DWM Christmas Party will take place in the Fellowship Hall at 6 PM.
And on Wednesday, December 15 at 7 pm in the sanctuary, we will have a special Advent service dedicated to joy, our Joy as Resistance service. Joy is a spiritual practice—it is a call for us to boldly trust in the grace all around us. So during this service, we will engage in whimsy and delight, singing the most joyful carols and using all of our senses to say yes to the grace of Christ. We invite you to join us! There will be transportation available for those who cannot drive in the dark, so if you will need a ride, please contact us and let us know.
Order forms for poinsettias will be available in the church office beginning on Wednesday. You can purchase a poinsettia for the church sanctuary or you can do a virtual poinsettia, which means your donation goes to the general church budget. Poinsettia are traditionally purchased in memory of a loved one. They’re $10, and you can drop by the church office or call or email secretary@azlechristianchurch.org to order them remotely.
Finally, we have a new administrative assistant, Macie, who begins this week. I know everyone will give her a warm welcome.
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 begin a new series today: Less Is More. And we begin Advent the way we always begin a new liturgical year: with the apocalypse. Happy Advent! :)
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.
Hanging of Greens reading (Becky)
With what shall we come to God’s house this first Sunday of Advent? With branches of cedar and holly, evergreens and a pine tree, wreaths and garland. In the tradition of hanging greens and listening to the words of prophets, let us make our hearts and this space a place of preparation for the One who comes to give us second birth.
This morning, we celebrate the first Sunday of Advent with the final act of the Hanging of the Greens: lighting the Christmas tree. With the Christmas tree, we remember God’s everlasting promise to the poor and needy. The prophet Isaiah spoke of God’s making of the wilderness a place of blessing where water and plants, even pine trees, would manifest God’s loving action to save and provide.
Here in this place, we prepare for the coming of the Lord. Here we will remember his Advent, his birth in Bethlehem, weak and helpless as an infant. And here we rekindle our prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus” as we await his coming as the bright and morning star.
Litany of Faith
One: The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
All: In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he will do what is right and just in the land.
One: In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.
All: And this is the name by which he will be called: "The LORD is our righteousness."
(Jeremiah 33:14-16)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
Join me in prayer.
Most Holy One, as we turn the page on a new church calendar year, we are again surprised that the new year begins in darkness. Long, dark days as the genesis of a new beginning seems paradoxical in this season of light. But though this is indeed a season of twinkly Christmas lights, candle-illuminated faces, and cozy hearth fires, we are reminded that You are found in darkness, too. It is, after all, Your most creative space—generating something out of nothing, life out of the depth, a world out of the waters, a baby out of a womb, a promise out of the twilight. We find you in both darkness and light.
And if Advent is where light and darkness meet, then this first Sunday of Advent is like a holy kiss at dusk. In this dusk, we move from what we think and what we believe to unveiling what we hold dear, what we cherish. As we move softly into that manger space, make us ready to behold the carnal and the beautiful, the traumatic and the tender, enfolded in the revelation of Your own self as a baby. We ask for your help to let our rational, enlightened minds that You gave us, rest while we take in the beauty of your arrival with our gaze, the softening of our shoulders, the release of our breath, the swelling of our hearts.
At least, this is what we hope for, we pray for, today.
We ask it in the name of the one for which we wait, Jesus, who gave us this prayer…
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: Focused Hope
Luke 21:25-36
“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
We begin a new series today: Less Is More. In a season of bustle that screams of doorbusters, supply chain issues, and packed calendars, we are coming back to the bones of what Advent is for: things like hope, peace, joy, and love, all as we go through the rhythm of preparing for Christ’s arrival again.
Advent begins our new church year. Ordinary Time is a time of exhalation and rest. But Holy Season is the season where we breathe in the Divine, filling our lungs with the Spirit of the Living Christ, making every cell in our body jump in jubilation and hope. Advent gives us a nice runway—it prepares us for what it means for Christ to come into the world and turn it upside down. Just as John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus, so Advent is our way of clearing the paths in our own hearts, sweeping away the brush, wiping the sleep from our eyes, and opening the curtains.
And though Advent is a beginning, it always starts at the end. We always begin the new church year talking about the end of the world. And we always begin the retelling of Jesus’ birth story with his teaching before he was crucified.
I know we’re ready to bust out the egg nog and jingle bells and just have a nice time, but Jesus is the buzzkill relative who corners you to talk about ozone layers and somehow ropes you into a justice-oriented protest before you can finish your pie. Perhaps you have this relative in your family. Perhaps you are this relative.
We’ll get to sweet baby Jesus soon enough, but for now, we have to deal with apocalyptic Jesus. We have to hear him out before we move on to the farm animals and swaddling clothes.
We are at the final straw in the testimony of Luke about Jesus. Jesus has been talking about some really controversial things with his disciples in others’ earshot. The Very Religious People, the VRPs we’ll call them, tend to be the subject of his ire: those that would confuse loyalties to God and loyalties to state, those for whom religious details are more important than caring for the poor and vulnerable, those who would maintain the status quo at any cost, those who would oppress in the name of God.
Now we want to be careful when talking about run-ins with the VRPs in the gospels. The VRPs for Jesus happen to be Jewish. Anti-semitism is never okay, generalizations about other religions is never okay, only listening to critics of those religions is never okay. Jesus was Jewish when he was born, and he was Jewish when he died. Jesus was not a Christian. The first people of the church were not considered Christians until later. They thought of themselves as an off-shoot of Judaism.
Often the gospels are used as weapons against Jewish people now and Jewish people then. Martin Luther, our Protestant Church founder, read the New Testament in the 1500s and mistakenly equated the criticisms in the gospels with the legalism and exploitation he saw in the medieval Catholic Church, which has contributed to a lot of anti-semitic and anti-Jewish sentiment over the centuries. The issues of the Medieval church are not the same as the issues Jesus is talking about here. Let the reader understand. It is irresponsible for us as readers to conflate the two.
And also, what we can see as 21st century readers of the gospels is that the criticism Jesus has for the VRPs in his world can be translated in way into our Western Christian context. Very Religious Christians are also known to confuse loyalties to God and loyalties to state, they care more about religious details than caring for the poor and vulnerable, they maintain the status quo at any cost, they oppress in the name of God. I’m sure we don’t know anyone like that. I’m sure we have never been someone like that.
But I go to great lengths to draw a distinction between Jewish people and the VRPs Jesus is addressing because as Christians, we came to over half of our scripture very late into the game compared to our Jewish siblings. We can only understand Jesus by having profound respect and humility toward our Jewish siblings and their practice of faith, including evaluating our own assumptions about who Jesus is talking to and what he’s talking about. There are VRPs in a lot of faiths, especially ones that proclaim to know something about the beginning of the world and the end of it. And Luke has some choice words for the VRPs that we do not want to apply generally to everyone from that time or that faith.
And so we arrive at the end, according to Jesus. There will be signs, he says. Pay attention to them. Keep watch. Stay awake. The whole cosmic order will tremble: terrors on land and sea as foretold by the prophets, whom Jesus points out earlier, were ignored or killed for saying stuff like this. And we know he will meet a similar fate.
But Jesus is not telling his disciples about the end in order to call them to arms or prepare a bunker. He’s not giving them a 3-step prayer to heaven to escape from the world on fire.
His instruction is to watch. To pay attention. To bear witness.
And with this call to witness, Jesus adjusts focus like a camera zooming in and out to find a subject.
He points outside our world to the stars and moon. He points to the sea and the roaring waves. He points to the clouds in the sky. He zeroes in on a fig tree. It’s as if he’s trying to bring his point into view by adjusting a camera lens so that we can see clearly.
There’s this thing in photography called aperture. It’s the opening of a camera through which the light travels. It limits the amount of light that can reach an image so that we can see the image clearly without over saturation or overexposure. The lens narrows and widens as the light changes.
Think about how our eyes work: as we move between bright and dark environments, the iris in our eyes either expands or shrinks, controlling the size of our pupils. Our eyes do that to filter the light coming in.
The bigger the aperture, the more the light can get in. But the interesting thing is that the aperture gets bigger in darker environments. So that when it is darkest, the aperture is widest, to make way for the maximum amount of light to get in. Eyes wide open.
And in order to get the subject of the photo in view, you have to blur the background. Not everything in a photo can be the subject. So for example, if you’re taking a group photo, and you have a really nice tree that you’d like to get in the frame, you have to choose what is the subject: the group or the tree. One will be clearer than the other.
And Jesus in this text is looking at a very big picture, trying to pull things into focus for us to pay attention to, so that we understand the subject. Do you see the signs of the moon? Do you see the roaring of the waves? Do you see the fig tree sprouting in late summer? Now do you see what I’m talking about, he asks? It’s okay if you’re still scratching your head.
Advent is like the movement between darkness and light and the way the aperture has to move in and out. Our vision has to adjust as we move into this new year, pulling things in and out of focus in order to get the subject in view. The subject being, of course, Christ.
We have to readjust from grown-up Jesus that we’ve been walking with all through Ordinary Time to infant Jesus, to new beginnings. Our way of seeing literally has to change in order get a good picture of what Jesus coming into the world means.
Our vision of the world has already changed in so many ways. The pandemic is not going away anytime soon, and it has already caused all kinds of apocalypses—remembering that apocalypse means “revelation”—so that things have been revealed of which we had no idea or had pretended could remain hidden. Things being seen that we wish we could unsee. Things being realized—about the church, about others, about ourselves—that have laid bare truths that we can now never forget.
There’s been too much roaring of seas, fear and foreboding, and the shaking of our every foundation. Can we even handle the truth of Christmas this year?
But maybe that’s why we need the first Sunday of Advent. To let the waves wash over us in a way, to let the darkness roll us up like a little baby, to let the shaking jostle us into attention. Advent is about waiting, sure. But this year, it’s about watching.
And this text from Luke begins our Advent journey by reminding us that the cosmic order is disrupted by the coming of Jesus. A chain of transformative events was launched at the announcement of the coming of God-incarnate, and its strangeness and peculiarity, can only be proclaimed with frightening apocalyptic imagery. The mountains crash into the sea, the valleys rise up in the rumbling of the spheres, the sun and moon will send signs. I don’t know how to make this any clearer, Jesus seems to be saying. Everything—everything—will be different. Don’t you see?
And so, we open our lens wide in the darkness to let light in. The paradox of light and darkness is that they aren’t contrasts or equated with good and evil, but rather they’re friends, companions, partners in the work of God’s revelation.
And what we see today in this zooming in and out of focus is the subject of Advent, the promise of Advent, of Emmanuel, God-with-us. That just as in the beginning, so it will be in the end: God-with-us.
God is here, has been, and always will be. And the powers that appear to be in control are not the powers that control who we are and how we choose to be in the world.
And this call to pay attention, to watch, is a call to bear witness because our witness matters to God’s activity in the world, the power of the Son of Man, the Truest Human.
And as his mother will sing later on in Advent, the power of Christ will never be coercive or manipulative. It will seek out the lost and liberate the bound. It will regard the lowly and lift up the overlooked. It will believe in salvation for everyone. This is the hope for which we wait.
And so we echo Mother Mary’s words to the announcement of Jesus’ arrival: Let it be as you have said. May it be so.
We see it. We’re watching. We are expecting it to happen.
Amen.
Table Meditation
As we prepare to take communion together, I invite you to prepare your elements now. If you’re here, that means you are opening your little communion cups. If you’re at home, that means you’re getting your elements ready to go. We will take them together during the Words of Institution.
Ask Isabelle: Can you tell me of a meal you shared with other people that was really meaningful for you?
Advent is about preparation, but when we come to the table, we find that the table is already prepared for us. Barton Stone, one of the founders of our denomination, wrote this about the Table: “Here you see that the feast was absolutely prepared, and offered freely. Those who were invited, had no hand in preparing the provisions. All were ready furnished, before the guests were invited—before they heard of it; consequently could have had no hand in it. They were bidden, and were only to come and receive what was so freely given, and prepared for them.”
Sometimes, we tend to think of the table of Christ as a potluck, where we bring our best dishes and sort out crockpots after dinner, but that’s not the table of Christ!
Like Old Bart said, we’ve got no part in the preparation. We bring nothing but ourselves and find a seat with our name on it, a plate overflowing with food we did not prepare, a cup of abundance that we did not pour. The candles have already been lit, the napkins are folded, the playlist is set, and our host is waiting for us patiently.
This particular table and our practice of coming to each week is a symbol of the real table of Christ. We do our best to communicate the welcome that emanates from it, to share that broken and empty are actually okay, and that somehow, everyone God has ever loved is around this table in a mysterious, mystical way.
And so today, we prepare the table symbolically to represent what it already looks like. We’ve got a lot of plates. Some extra candles for ambience. Plenty of cups. We’ve got a memory that represents the cloud of witnesses, brought to this table by God’s eternal memory.
And we keep watch, staying alert to how Christ calls each of us to this table, how God-with-us will appear, for if we know anything about Advent, it’s that Christ appears in unlikely places. In the bread, in the cup, in a baby in a manger.
Words of Institution (Isabelle)
It is with this hope that we tell the story each week that on the night he was betrayed, Jesus broke the bread and said, “This is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
And then he took the cup also and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins. Drink it in remembrance of me.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” All are welcome at the Table of Christ.
Prayer
Most Generous and Gracious Host of this Table, we ask for you to bless this bread and cup as symbols of Your presence and transformative work in the world, in Your church, in each of us. May it prepare the way for this Advent season, for you to come again here. In Christ’s name we ask it, amen.
Stewardship Moment
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. 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 to me after service or sometime this week.
Benediction:
Please rise in body or spirit for our benediction, the final song, and the Doxology.
For our benediction this morning, repeat after me:
May we keep watch for the hope that is coming and is indeed already here in Christ.
Amen.