This is My Father’s World
Welcome
Good morning! I’m Pastor Ashley Dargai. To those here in the courtyard and those joining us online: we are so glad you’re here!
A couple of announcements before we begin:
Food Hub is this Saturday. If you’d like to help, please be here at 8 AM!
Our next Worship Dream Team for our summer worship series will be May 23, immediately following service. Lunch will be provided.
Sunday, May 30, we will be hosting Trinity Sunday Brunch here in the courtyard. Our worship service will be around tables. We will stream the first part of the service that includes song and prayer on Facebook, and then for those here, we will finish our worship service with brunch together.
This Wednesday, we will have our monthly board meeting, and all are welcome to join us.
Today, we continue our series entitled, Re: Membering, a look at the various markers of Azle Christian Church members. Our focus this morning is our practice of discipleship.
Let us prepare our hearts for worship.
God, Whose Giving Knows No Ending - #606
Litany of Faith
One: We accept the testimony of human witnesses, but God’s testimony is much greater—and this is God’s testimony, given as evidence of the Only Begotten of God.
All: Those who believe in this One have this evidence within their hearts.
One: The testimony is this: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in the Only Begotten of God.
All: Whoever has the Only Begotten has life, and whoever does not have the Only Begotten does not have life.
One: I have written all this to you who believe in the Only Begotten of God
All: So that you may know that you have eternal life.
(From 1 John 5:9-13)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you. And also with you.
If you have prayer concerns you want to share with the church, please comment them below or if you’d like them to remain private, you can Facebook message us or email us.
Join me in prayer.
From Peter Bankson and Deborah Sokolove:
God of words and wisdom,
God of beginnings and endings,
God of truth and hope,
You lead us into each bright, new morning,
Inviting us to listen as the sparrows and wrens and robins
Announce the coming of the dawn;
Inviting us to watch as the lily opens its mouth to the sun.
You call us to delight in your presence,
To be like trees planted by streams of water,
Giving shade to all who pass by,
And yielding fruit in due season.
We give you thanks for the countless forms of beauty
That tell us of your abundant love:
For all the colors of skin and hair and eyes
That adorn the members of your Body,
For all the languages and sounds in which we sing and pray,
For all the hopes and dreams
That help us to live the vision of your holy realm.
Because Christ is always risen,
We give our thanks and praise to you aloud and in the silence of our hearts.
Even as we give thanks for so much,
We hear the cries of the broken-hearted.
Our bodies are subject to illness and disease,
Our friends and loved ones die,
Our neighbors fall prey to those who would harm them.
We pray for all who live with heartache and sorrow,
We pray for all who work to ease the pain of others.
As we sing and pray and share the stories of our life in you,
Help us to remember that you are always with us and around us and among us,
And that Christ is always risen.
In the name of the Risen One, we 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.
Children’s Moment
Anthem - Patient Kingdom
Sermon
John 17:6-19
6 “I have revealed your name to the people you gave me from this world. They were yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. 8 This is because I gave them the words that you gave me, and they received them. They truly understood that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.
9 “I’m praying for them. I’m not praying for the world but for those you gave me, because they are yours. 10 Everything that is mine is yours and everything that is yours is mine; I have been glorified in them. 11 I’m no longer in the world, but they are in the world, even as I’m coming to you. Holy God, watch over them in your name, the name you gave me, that they will be one just as we are one. 12 When I was with them, I watched over them in your name, the name you gave to me, and I kept them safe. None of them were lost, except the one who was destined for destruction, so that scripture would be fulfilled. 13 Now I’m coming to you and I say these things while I’m in the world so that they can share completely in my joy. 14 I gave your word to them and the world hated them, because they don’t belong to this world, just as I don’t belong to this world. 15 I’m not asking that you take them out of this world but that you keep them safe from the evil one. 16 They don’t belong to this world, just as I don’t belong to this world. 17 Make them holy in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 I made myself holy on their behalf so that they also would be made holy in the truth.
Our Eastertide series has been an examination of who we are as disciples of Jesus here at Azle Christian Church in the 21st century, as members of a small covenant community with deep roots. We’ve been thinking about who we are.
And the texts we’ve been reading together with the vine and the branches and the shepherd and the doubters are all meant to help us understand who Jesus is after the resurrection. We’re looking back at some of his monologues and conversations from before he was crucified with new, resurrection eyes. Now that we know what we know, now that we understand the plot twist at the end of the story that thus begins a new story entirely, how does this change how we see things?
Our text today is an excerpt of what is known as Jesus’ Farewell Address. It’s John’s testimony of the Last Supper, Jesus’ final conversation with his friends and disciples about who he is, who God is, who they are, and eventually, who we will be. The air is heavy in this conversation—there is sense of foreboding, a feeling of being on the cusp of something world-altering that colors this text. And each year, on the seventh and last Sunday of Eastertide, right before we head into Pentecost, we read an excerpt from this Farewell Address. We always end our Easter contemplation with John’s rendering of Jesus’ final instructions and theological insight.
Before the Holy Spirit comes with fire and wind, knocking down our doors and igniting our tongues, we read this solemn prayer from Jesus for his disciples? Some people call this the other Lord’s Prayer, but this prayer is not instructive, not like the one we recited a few moments ago. This doesn’t seem to be a teaching moment for Jesus, so much as a rending of his heart.
In this passage, he reiterates multiple times his close relationship with God and his tender, yet fierce love for his disciples. He acknowledges the particular situation they are in as people of God’s reign in a world that is not yet the kingdom come. He spend considerable time naming the world as a reality of his disciples—but he’s not calling them to a utopian community away from the world. But rather he calls them to live set-apart lives, holy lives, consecrated lives in the midst of the world.
While this excerpt seems to be a meandering prayer with no anchoring metaphor or helpful rhymes—no offense to Jesus—all the ingredients for discipleship seem to be here: communion with God, identity of disciples, the way of Jesus, and relationship to the world. And this is all wrought by Christ’s intercessory prayer for his beloveds.
We sang at the top of the service a song that I sing to Annie each night: “This Is My Father’s World.” There’s a line in the song that ….. : “In the rustling grass, I hear her pass. She speaks to me everywhere.” The entire hymn is about how God speaks to and through creation. That the earth is a conduit of God’s love. Sallie McFague, the late ecotheologian, said that the earth is the closest we get to God’s body. That just as God speaks to us through creation, the way we love the earth is the way we love God. And when we ask who is my neighbor? The answer necessarily includes God’s creation.
I say all of this to say: for Jesus, the world and the earth are distinct. It is not that we are just biding time until eternity here in our bodies on this earth. We are in eternity now. Our bodies and this earth are gifts from God. God came to us in a body, prayed in a body, and was interred in the earth until resurrection.
The world on the other hand, that Jesus painstakingly names in this text, is what humans have done to dominate and obtain power and do violence. All the isms, all the controlling structures and hierarchies, all the weapons and warfare, all the manipulation and coercion—this is the world. We live on the earth, and we live in this world. We cannot escape these things simply because we are disciples. They are the reality we live in, and we are “sent out” into this world by Jesus.
And how we live in this reality is what makes us disciples of Jesus.
And how we live, Jesus asks on our behalf at the end, is as a people set-apart. Not set-above or set away from, but living with the knowledge that we are always in God’s presence, we are always presented with ways to love God, and our understanding of discipleship is simply helping our minds and bodies become more attuned to what is already true. We can think of these things as spiritual practices, as engaging the markers we have already explore in this series, as a life of prayer.
At Don Hufstedler’s funeral this week, we looked at a text in Psalms, that said the righteous are like trees planted by streams of water, and that they produce fruit and do not wither. And there’s a sense that the fruit and the sturdiness of the righteous do not come because the righteous are good people but rather because they are connected to a life-sustaining source.
And thus, the end goal of our life of set-apartness, of discipleship, is not to check off boxes or be a super Christian or pacify some deep-seated existential anxiety, but rather to be nourished by a sustaining source, like a tree planted by streams of water. The end game is not Christian soldiers or religious machines, but rather to be able to live in the love and tenderness of this prayer Jesus prayed for his beloved disciples.
To, perhaps, as Sallie McFague suggested, love God in the most tangible way possible: planting flowers, sitting in the sun, learning to listen for God’s voice in creation, in each other, in our hearts.
I feel that so often discussions of discipleship can feel like a yoke around our neck, heavy with expectation and guilt. But may today’s feel like a prayer, or the babbling of a brook, only with the aim of bringing your heart closer to the heart of God in the tenderest way possible.
Amen.
In Loving Partnership - #497
Sharing Our Resources
There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church. You can give in our offering box. You may also give online on our website or find us on Venmo. You may fill our Little Free Pantry or help at Food Hub.
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
Please rise for our benediction and final song.
Because Christ is always risen,
May we face the world boldly because of the love and grace that is our source.
Amen.