All Creatures of Our God and King - #22
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!
A couple of announcements before we begin:
Immediately following service today, we will have a brief deacon meeting. If you are watching from home, you can log on to Zoom.
Tomorrow evening at 6 pm on Zoom, we will have DWM Happy Hour. Zoom information is in the eblast and will be on Facebook.
Mark your calendars for our End-of-Summer Party on Wednesday, July 28, at 6:30 pm.
Today, we continue our new worship series: Jesus’ Greatest Hits: A Journey through the Sermon on the Mount.
Let us prepare our hearts for worship.
O God of Vision - #288 (vs. 1,3,4,5)
Litany of Faith
One: I will exalt you, O LORD, because you have lifted me up and have not let my enemies triumph over me.
All: O LORD my God, I cried out to you, and you healed me.
One: You brought me up, O LORD, from the dead; you restored my life as I was going down to the grave.
All: Sing to the LORD, you faithful ones, and give thanks for the remembrance of God’s holiness.
One: God’s anger is fleeting, but God’s favor endures for a lifetime.
All: There may be tears during the night, but joy comes in the morning.
(Psalm 30: 1-4)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
We hold in our hearts in prayer those among us and those we love who are suffering. And we continue to pray for those who are affected by the building collapse in Miami and those enduring an extreme heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. May God have mercy.
Join me in prayer.
(A prayer from Lydia Wylie-Kellerman)
O God of gratitude,
Who delights in the goodness of the world,
We give thanks today
For the lives in this circle,
For the home that holds us,
For the work that challenges us,
For the history that calls to us,
And for the gift of this life.
For we trust that love deepens between us, and the Spirit dwells among us.
O God of communion,
Who counts the hairs on our heads,
Help us to have the strength to honestly name what we need:
The humility to listen when we are wrong,
The courage to face conflict,
The trust to share vulnerably,
And the ability to laugh with abundance.
For we trust that love deepens between us, and the Spirit dwells among us.
O God of gentleness,
Who catches each raindrop as it falls,
Remind us to be gentle with ourselves
When the dishes pile,
When we make mistakes,
When the work is slow,
Or when what we hope for does not come to be.
For we trust that love deepens between us, and the Spirit dwells among us.
O God of justice,
Who hears the cries of your people,
We pray for those who are in pain this day.
We remember their names silently before you now.
For those suffering under systems of oppression,
For those sick, dying, or mourning,
For our neighbors,
And for one another.
For we trust that love deepens between us, and the Spirit dwells among us.
O God of silence,
Who speaks into the stillness of our hearts,
We pause to listen,
To rest in your peace for a moment
Walk among us today as love deepens us, and the Spirit dwells among us.
And we ask all of this in the name of 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.
Anthem: Not in a Hurry by United Pursuit
Sermon
Matthew 5:13-16; 6:1-6
13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
14 “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your God in heaven.
6:1 “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your God in heaven.
2 “So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and God who sees in secret will reward you.
5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to God who is in secret; and God who sees in secret will reward you.
This is the word of God, for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Sometimes I can get up here on a Sunday morning and blame the lectionary. Whether it’s a weirdly cut excerpt or a challenging text, I can scratch my head with you at the pre-set scripture for this Sunday. But in series like this one, where we go off book, and choose our own scripture, I have no one to blame but myself. And Jesus, maybe. I don’t think he’d mind me blaming him.
But this is a weirdly cut text, right? And the parts seem to contradict each other.
Let your light shine, but also don’t draw attention to yourself doing good.
Season the world with goodness, but keep your goodness a secret, from even yourself.
Be like a city on a hill for all to see! But don’t pray loudly or in front of people.
And I get that I have seemingly arbitrarily joined these two sections for today’s text. So maybe they’re not talking about the same thing at all, or at the very least, are disconnected. The Bible, after all, is a living document, the voice of God still calling out from its pages to us today, so there is not a need to domesticate it and make it fit neatly in the categories we have created.
Maybe it would be helpful to put back for a moment what is missing from this text. These two sections are separated by the law discourse we’ve been camped in the past two weeks. To refresh your memory: Jesus spends a lot of time talking about laws people would be familiar with: both laws from the Torah and laws of Rome. And he builds a fence of protection around them: in order to keep us from things like murder, he says to not even harbor anger in our heart. In order to resist the mighty Roman empire, turn your humiliation into dignity. They take your coat? Give them your cloak and force them to bear the indecency of the unclothed person in front of them.
By providing safeguards and building resilience, Jesus invites his listeners to think about the norms of our lives in imaginative ways. Remember, this is the guy who began his sermon with “Blessed are the poor in the spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” which would be totally bananas to hear living in Rome in the Iron Age. That Jesus guy had a wild imagination.
But even those these two sections are separated and seem in contradiction with one another, if we look closely, maybe we can see how they are speaking to each other.
The first part of this text contains metaphors that are almost too familiar: light, salt, city on a hill. They feel self-explanatory and have nearly lost their meaning. Did you know there is a term for this? Dead metaphor. A dead metaphor is when a metaphor becomes the actual word for something so that we no longer think of it figuratively.
For example, legs of a table. Those have just become the term for the poles that the top of the table rests on. But when we first called it the legs, we were using a metaphor: the legs like, our legs. And if we contemplate it for a moment, the metaphor revives a little in our mind. Ah, yes, legs. It animates the table to think of it. The table comes to life and suddenly has a bit of soul, which feels like an appropriate reflection for a Disciples church.
I imagine if the table we use in the Heritage Chapel for our altar started walking on its legs, it would waddle like a penguin because of how the legs are constructed like an upside down Y. Which makes me think of how male penguins will sit on their eggs, keeping them warm and letting them incubate, while the female penguins go get food, a reversal of how we think about traditionally prescribed gender roles.
Which also feels appropriate today with the fact that you have a woman preaching from the pulpit and it’s done without fanfare here at Azle Christian Church. I’m not the first or even the second female senior minister, and I’m sure I won’t be the last. At many churches in the area, this is not even a possibility, but yet here you are, not even impressed by the fact that your preacher wears makeup and earrings and also goes by the name “Mom.”
And this makes me think of how the legacies of Azle Christian Church run long and deep and wide, how we are sitting in pews and standing on floors that are a legacy in themselves, in a building whose bones are older than any of us. Some of you have family that stretch back to the beginning of this church and this town, but others of you just got here. And the soul of Azle Christian Church is both as decided as this structure and as dynamic as the people inside it. We are always transforming, letting the Spirit change us and shape us by each new person that enters this covenant community.
And it makes me think of a discussion that happened a few years back at some meeting about ACC being the “best kept secret in town,” and while I don’t think the word “secret” should ever be associated with church for a lot of reasons, namely various institutional scandals within different denominations and congregations, I do think there’s something interesting about this idea that ACC has flown under the radar in many ways.
That the generosity has had a slow, yet exponential effect across town, that somehow this church has become associated with a safe place to doubt and ask questions and be different, that while many still know us as that little church behind El Paseo, there is a commitment in this church community that puts even marriage covenants to shame.
And I take you along this meandering journey with me because in a way, this text is already being preached by this church.
Azle, you are a light in the world, carrying on the work of Jesus, who said himself that he was the light of the world in another gospel. And a light doesn’t turn on to be seen, but so that other things can be seen.
And I wonder what exactly your light has illuminated all these years?
What has your light illuminated this past year?
And this salt of the earth metaphor is equally provocative if we allow it to be for a moment. Salt is a preservative and a seasoning. It was a commodity in Jesus’ time—it represented value in this context. And I have always thought salt losing its saltiness was an interesting warning because does that happen? I like to cook but I don’t really understand this idea. Is salt different now?
But apparently salt loses its saltiness when it becomes diluted with other things. And yet there’s a fine line with salt because salt is best when it is almost undetected. We’ve all had something that’s too salty, so we know salt is best when it brings out the flavor, the essence of what it is seasoning.
And I wonder how you have brought out the essence of this community, of the gospel, of the heart of this congregation over all these years?
What essence have you revealed this past year?
And in a way, you sit as a city on a hill. I can see the steeple from the highway as I drive in, and while there is deep love for the church among the congregation, there is also this unassuming, unpretentious loyalty. Like you love your church so much but you also know that you’re not the only church here. You know you’re not the only one doing good work and learning from Jesus. You just shine and season, without fanfare.
And what is interesting about the way we chopped up the Sermon on the Mount text for this week, is that we also have these verses from chapter 6, when Jesus says not to practice your piety or your righteousness or your justice for the purpose of being seen. But rather, do it in secret. In other words, don’t let your righteousness be performative.
And don’t give in such a way that everyone congratulates you, but rather let those in need be taken care of with dignity, let those who have but a little to give not be shamed by the pomp and circumstance.
And likewise, don’t make prayer about you. Prayer is supposed to be about God, not how nice or long or loud or fancy you can pray. It might be better to just pray in private for awhile until you sort that out.
And while these sections seem at first to be in contradiction, they are essentially saying similar things: Keep doing good, but not so you can be considered a “good church” or even a “thriving church” or an “effective church” or a “progressive church” or a “faithful church.” If our end goal is to be seen by the outside or even by ourselves as a “fill-in-the-blank church” then our motivations are twisted. Because the end goal is not so we can pat ourselves on the back, but so that people can be brought closer to the heart of God.
Just as the church is not a static entity, a fixed identity, so what we illuminate and reveal is not static or fixed. I sang timidly a few weeks ago that, “The times they are a-changin’,” and they are, as they always have.
I am preaching in this chapel because our church has gone through so many changes in the past year. And we will continue to change and transform and follow the Holy Spirit wherever she blows.
But even in the midst of all of these changes, our call remains the same: be a light so that others can see not us, but Christ. Be salt, preserving the fragile and revealing the essence of what is true. Be a city on the hill, going about our business with the lights on, as a safe haven for the weary traveler.
Amen.
You Are Salt for the Earth, O People (Insert)
Sharing Our Resources
There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church: participating in Food Hub or service projects around the church, or filling the Little Free Pantry. You can give financially in our offering box at the door. You may also give online on our website or find us on Venmo.
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 or Pastor Katie after service.
Benediction
Deacons, please stay after service for our meeting.
We are sad to announce that Katie Medlin's last day as Minister of Family Life at Azle Christian Church will be next Sunday, July 4. Many of you know she is an outstanding social worker at JPS, and she plans to devote more time to that good work. We will offer a special prayer of blessing for Katie during service next Sunday, so please join us here in person or online to add your prayers and well wishes for her next chapter.
Please rise for our benediction and final song.
May the peace of Christ go with you
Wherever he may send you
May he guide you through the wilderness
And protect you the storm
May he bring you home rejoicing
At the wonders he has shown you
May he bring you home rejoicing
Once again into our doors.
Amen.