Welcome
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 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.
Cabinet members, mark your calendars for Saturday, January 15, for our Cabinet Retreat. The retreat will be from 9 AM to 12 PM on Zoom.
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.
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.
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
Join me in prayer.
(From Sarah Bessey)
Most Holy God of hope and faith, be with us in this coming year.
Help us to take the time today to look back over the past year and honor those days and the people we were in them. We recognize that everything sad won’t come untrue in 2022 and this year will hold its own tragedies and sorrows. Help us to relearn lament and fight for joy.
May we say good-bye to the things that do not serve us - the selfishness, the fear, the illusions of control, the bitterness, the doom-scrolling, the self-pity, the martyr complex, the us-and-them fire stokers - and say hello to wisdom, to kindness, to justice, curiosity, wonder, goodness, generosity, possibility, peace making.
May we throw open the doors of our lives to the disruptive, wild, healing Holy Spirit. May this be a year of unclenched hands and new songs, of good food and some laughter, of kind endings and new beginnings. May we be given a mustard seed of faith.
We understand now that we may not see an end to the pandemic. We may not see the great changes we hope for, at least on grand scales. We do pray for it though. We dare to pray for it. May God bless and keep those working to keep us safe and healthy. We pray and we work towards it while also praying that those realities, those challenges, the powers and principalities that rule in our world still, will not reduce us or twist us.
Instead, may we rise to the demands of our time with dignity, grace, and not-sitting-down-not-shutting-up hope. May justice roll down like mighty waters, as the prophet Amos said, sweeping up and away everything meant to diminish the image of God in any of us.
It is precisely in these moments, in this wilderness, in this apocalypse, that we need to be rooted in the love of God. May our roots go down deep into that marvelous Love. May we bear the fruit of the Spirit - that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control - right in the teeth of despair and brokenness. We pray that our lives will become an outpost of hope and love. May the things that were meant to destroy us be cast down and come to nothing. May we rise from the ashes with a grin, a wild heart that won’t be talked out of love and possibility.
May 2022 bring us unexpected goodness and hope. May we light candles in the dark night and tend that flame, set it high in a window, let the world see that we are not undone, not yet. In fact, we pray for love - however that looks and however it comes - for us this year. Lashings of love, love that covers us and holds us, love that restores us and blesses us.
May we release our efforts to save ourselves and to save the world, resting in your good salvation, more than enough salvation. May new strength come to us in our sleep and in the stars. May we endure well. May our lives be peaceful and whole from the inside out.
And finally, we pray for gentleness within us and for us this year. May we see the goodness of God in our actual days. May we be given wisdom and joy, may we walk in truth and justice. I pray for cold water when we are parched, for warmth when we are cold, for a hand to hold when we are lonely, for the steady and abiding presence of God in the night.
We ask these things in the name of Jesus, who gave us this prayer to pray together:
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
Our plans have changed this morning due to the weather and illnesses, so we will not be having a panel of people giving their testimony today. We’ll save that for a later date.
So because of this late change in plans, our text today is actually an insert in your bulletin.
Mark 2:23-3:6
One sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” 25 And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? 26 He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” 27 Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; 28 so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”
3 Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2 They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3 And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” 4 Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. 5 He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 6 The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
On Twitter this past week, a well-meaning person wrote that you don’t have to stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve. It was okay to be in bed by 10 pm because the new year was going to come anyway. Another person responded, “I’m not staying up to welcome the new year, I’m staying up to make sure 2021 leaves.” It’s been a banner year, hasn’t it? A really difficult year following a very difficult year in 2020.
And as we head into the New Year and the third installment of the Pandemic Trilogy, I imagine we are not as bright-eyed and hopeful as we have been in years past. We are bone weary and perhaps even resentful that this is how we are spending our one wild and precious life.
We come to this place of worship on our Sabbath, looking for some what? Reprieve? Encouragement? Hope? But as we sing through our masks meant to protect us and look around for those who are missing for all kinds of reasons, we realize that no place in our lives remains untouched by the lurking threat of COVID-19. Why are we here today?
Maybe Mark’s telling of the man with the shriveled hand might have some answers for us.
Let me start off by saying that I think it’s generally a good practice not to automatically identify with Jesus when we read the gospels. I think it’s just wise not to see ourselves as the Savior of the World in most of the stories. Call me crazy, but it’s more likely we’re the hapless disciples, or the earnest religious leaders, or even every once in awhile the people who get healed, forgiven, and freed.
But I wonder if you know what it’s like to be angry and deeply grieved by the unyielding hearts of those in power.
I wonder if you know what it’s like to see a group of very religious people, a group of powerful people, perhaps just a group of men, and wonder if they are plotting to bring you harm.
I wonder if you know what it’s like to be held responsible for others. To be told that it’s up to you to keep others from sin. That it’s up to you to keep everybody safe and sober and innocent. That it’s up to you to keep everyone.
And I wonder if you know what it’s like to present a rational argument: “Look, even King David ate the sacred bread. Look, the time is always right to do what is right,” and it not matter one bit.
Maybe we know a little more about being like Jesus than we thought.
You see, I keep thinking about this question that Jesus asks in the synagogue, about whether or not it was legal to heal on the Sabbath—he probably walked in and everybody stopped talking and stared. And I wonder how he asked that question with the eyes of everyone on him. Did he ask it…
Sarcastically?: “Is it “legal” on the Sabbath?” A little, “Yes, let’s ask this “question” since you, well-educated scribes and teachers of the Torah, by all intents and purposes experts on the Sabbath, seem to actually not know this answer.”
Or indignantly: “Is it legal on the Sabbath to do good or evil?” A little, “Are you serious right now? Who raised you?”
At first glance, it’s easy to see this story as a classic Jesus juke. The Very Religious People are following him around trying to slip him up, drumming their fingers together in an evil plot with maniacal laughter erupting every few minutes. Then Jesus embarrasses them with a boo-yah and a mic drop and walks away, glowing in victory, leaving the religious leaders sniveling and sneering to themselves. But I don’t think this story is quite as comedic and triumphant as we might hope.
Because perhaps Jesus asks the question from the deeply grieved part of his heart: “Is it legal on the Sabbath to save life or to kill?” A little, “Where is your humanity? How can you be doing this? Come, let us reason together.”
You see, Jesus was messing with something sacred. The Sabbath wasn’t just a day of rest or the day you get dressed up for church. The Sabbath was inextricable from Jewish identity. It was a sign of the covenant God had made with Israel after leading them out of slavery in Egypt and meeting them in the wilderness. It was a gift of chosenness. With the Ten Commandments, God said, “You are mine.”
The Sabbath was particularly important when the Israelites were forced out of their home into exile, families separated, their Temple destroyed, and they were carried off to live in a foreign land.
Their place of worship, the home of the Holy One was gone—a memory now. But they could still observe the Sabbath. In this, they were able to keep a little bit of who they were as a people.
The Sabbath was saying, “We are God’s! No matter what happens.
And yet, this story is not about the Sabbath. Keeping the Sabbath or not keeping it, or breaking it for a really good reason, or whatever. It’s merely the backdrop of what is going on.
This story from Mark is in the middle of a trajectory of stories illuminating who Jesus is and why he’s here. Before this narrative, Jesus had been healing other people and getting rid of demons. The Very Religious People had caught wind of this good work and were suspicious.
If those works weren’t dangerous enough to the religious leaders’ carefully guarded system, designed to protect them from the Roman empire’s ire, then breaking the Sabbath (twice!) is akin to rabble-rousing and sedition. That kind of stuff can get a person crucified.
Let me be clear—the Sabbath is not the issue here. The issue is the power that regulates people’s actions and bodies. It’s the power that says to the man with the shriveled hand, “Your healing can wait” and “We’re going to use you for our sinister purposes.” It’s the power that is watching the every action of someone and then holds them responsible for the actions of others. It’s the hypocrisy of the power that does not allow for healing on the Sabbath, but will allow for the powerful to conspire to murder.
When Jesus says in the grainfield before his trip to the synagogue, “The Sabbath was created for humans. The Human One is lord even over the Sabbath,” Jesus is saying to those in power, “I am not yours.”
Jesus understands the risk he’s taking in the synagogue. Be assured he understands what the Sabbath means to these men because it means the same thing to him. But it is clear to him that this innocent man with the withered hand is a plant by religious leaders, shoved to the front of the group to trap Jesus into breaking the law.
And even so, Jesus turns to the them, calling out what is in their hearts, and heals the man anyway. There are so many questions. So many things to consider. The man has not run up to him pleading for mercy and healing, no friends have lowered him through the roof, no family member has begged for Jesus to come to their house. He is there as a pawn, probably by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And yet. Jesus chooses to heal him.
Because Jesus knows that the Sabbath means that he is God’s. No matter what happens.
It doesn’t matter why that man was at the synagogue that day. It doesn’t matter what kind of day or year he was having. It doesn’t matter whether he felt hopeful or desperate. The message given to him was, “You are God’s. No matter what.”
And what’s more is that his first words to the man, “Come forward,” can also be translated, “Rise up.”
Even in a booby-trapped synagogue, resurrection is afoot. And also let us remember what has to happen before resurrection.
You see, healing work is done in all sorts of ways. For some, it’s making amends and reuniting with a once lost loved one. For others, it’s breaking free from a toxic and dysfunctional relationship to find wholeness. Sometimes it’s saying hello again, and sometimes it’s saying goodbye for the last time.
The healing work of people who resemble the man with the shriveled hand is probably going to be different than the healing work of people who resemble the religious leaders. For the latter, it might be using your privilege, my privilege to hold others accountable or to put ourselves between sneering power and our friends.
In any case, the healing work is all of ours.
Let’s be sober-minded about this healing work—because we know from our brother Jesus where that healing can get you. Healing work has consequences. Loving first and asking questions later can be dangerous work.
But let’s do it anyway.
Even when a pandemic continues to take the lives of the ones we love and continues to radically change how we move through the world, may we continue to speak of the world that God wants—one of good, not evil; one of life, not harm.
Even when we are tired of arguing, tired of keeping updated, tired of taking precautions and doing risk calculus, may we stretch out our hand in hope.
Even in power plays that mean us harm, may we whisper to one another, “Rise up.”
Because one day God will get everything that God wants. One day the healing work and the resurrection talk will no longer be the work, it will no longer be talk. It will just be.
Today is not that day.
But until then, let us continue the healing work remembering who we belong to, even when it’s dangerous.
And you know, wasn’t that the point of the Sabbath? To be able to say, “We are God’s! No matter what happens.”
Maybe this story was about the Sabbath after all.
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 contact Pastor Ashley or talk to an elder.
Benediction
Please rise in body or spirit for our benediction, the final song, and the Doxology.
I bless you. I bless you for the work God has given you to do. I bless you for the ways you have loved this past year, for the resolute faithfulness of you. I bless the unseen and uncelebrated ways you have done your bit to repair the world. I bless your resilience and your suffering, I bless how you have forgiven and released and welcomed this year. I bless the work you do and pray that you find God’s good rhythm there.
As we turn towards a new year, may the God of all goodness and hope walk with you on this road, singing as we make our way home. May you be welcomed in this new year with joy and rest.
And may you greet 2022 with courage and grace, knowing and resting and abiding in your belovedness.
Amen.