Welcome/Call to Worship
Good morning! I’m Pastor Ashley Dargai To those here in the sanctuary 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. The Kids Corner is in the back for anyone who needs to move around and play to worship God this morning. There is also a nursery available. 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.
A couple of announcements before we begin:
We invite you to Sunday School at 10 AM every week. There’s classes that meet in the Seekers room and the Fellowship Hall. There is also a children and youth class that meets in the parlor.
This Wednesday, May 11, we’ll have our next Gospels and Groceries. Be sure to grab some nonperishables for our Little Free Pantry and a request for our hymn sing that night.
Over the next few weeks, you will receive an email from us to join our church directory platform called Realm. It’s going to make a lot of our lives easier and streamline communication and make information a lot more accessible. We invite you to follow the directions on the email, which will have a link that takes you to Realm to set up your account.
On May 22 immediately following service, we will have a tutorial on how to do that and how to access the church directory and customize how you receive church announcements. Lunch will be provided. We’ll have a screen up walking you through it as well as people milling about who know what they’re doing and can help you.
On Sunday, June 5, at 2 PM, there will be a dedication for a bench in honor of Glenda and Wendal Hoover, who many of you know, were long time members here at Azle Christian Church. You are invited to come and mark this momentous occasion.
To keep up with all the life we live together here at Azle Christian Church, make sure you follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Subscribe to our weekly e-blast and monthly newsletter on our website.
We continue our worship series We Call Ourselves Disciples this morning.
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.
Litany of Faith
One: Hallelujah! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise the LORD in the heights.
All: Praise the LORD, sun and moon; praise the LORD, all you shining stars.
One: The LORD made them stand fast for ever and ever and gave them a law which shall not pass away.
All: Young men and women, old and young, all of us together: let us praise the name of the LORD,
One: For the name of the LORD only is exalted, and the splendor of the LORD is over earth and heaven.
All: Hallelujah!
(Psalm 148)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
Today on Mother’s Day, I share this prayer written by Amy Young and adapted by Rev. Heidi Heath. Whether this day is your greatest joy, or deepest heartache, know you are loved.
Join me in prayer.
God who is like a Mother to us,
We pray for those who are like Tamar, struggling with infertility, or a miscarriage.
We pray for those who are like Rachel, counting the women in their family and friends who year by year and month by month get pregnant, while they wait.
We pray for those who are like Naomi, and have known the bitter sting of a child's death.
We pray for those who are like Joseph and Benjamin, and their Mom has died.
We pray for those who are like Hagar, raising a child alone.
We pray for those whose relationship with their Mom was marked by trauma, abuse, or abandonment, or she just couldn't parent them the way they needed.
We pray for those who are like Moses' mother and put a child up for adoption, trusting another family to love the child they birthed into adulthood.
We pray for those who are like Pharaoh's daughter, called to love children who are not their by birth (and thus the mother who brought that child into their life, even if it is complicated).
We pray for those who like many, are watching (or have watched) their mother age, and disappear into the long goodbye of dementia.
We pray for those who are like Mary and are pregnant for the very first time and waiting breathlessly for the miracle of their first child
We pray for those who, also like Mary, have watched their beautiful baby killed by violence and empire.
We pray for those whose children have turned away from them, painfully closing the door on relationship, leaving them holding their broken heart in their hands.
We pray for those for whom motherhood is their greatest joy and toughest struggle all rolled into one.
We pray for those who are watching their child battle substance abuse, a public legal situation, mental illness, or another situation which they can only watch unfold.
We pray for those who don’t fit into traditional family molds whether through circumstance, gender or sexuality, or co-parenting set-up.
We pray for those who like so many women before them do not wish to be a mother, are not partnered, or in so many other ways do not fit into societal expectations.
We pray for those who carry the beautiful, exhausting, maddening, heart breaking, wonderful labor of mothering even though they do not have children of their own.
We pray for those who see themselves reflected in all, or none of these stories.
This Mother's Day, wherever and whoever we are, may we walk this journey together. May we affirm that all people who find themselves somehow pulled into this day that they are loved, they are seen, and they are worthy.
And may we rest in the deep love without end of our big, wild, beautiful God who is the very best example of a parent that we know.
We ask this is 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.
Sermon
John 13:31-35
Once Judas left, Jesus said,
“Now is the Chosen One glorified
And God is glorified as well.
If God has been glorified,
God will in turn glorify the Chosen One
and will do so very soon.
My little children,
I won’t be with you much longer.
You’ll look for me,
but what I said to the Temple authorities, I say to you:
where I am going,
you cannot come.
I give you a new commandment:
love one another.
And you’re to love one another
the way I have loved you.
This is how all will know that you’re my disciples:
that you truly love one another.”
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
I have said a couple of things from this pulpit that I have been nervous to say. But none so much as what I’m about to say.
So go ahead and take a deep breath, clutch your pearls, brace yourselves.
I watch The Bachelor. I know, you’re speechless.
It’s true. I am a part of Bachelor Nation, which is what the fanbase is called. I watch all the iterations of the show: The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise. I follow a lot of Instagram accounts dedicated to dissecting these shows and following the contestants and investigating fan theories. I listen to podcasts recapping the show. I pay literal money each month to listen to the premium edition of a podcast so that I can hear their recap and opinion of the show.
And while I know that Bachelor Nation is big, I somehow felt like I was above it all for so long. Going on a show to find love? That’s dumb. I thought I was too good for it—too smart, too refined, too cultured, and right now I sound like I’m too full of myself. But truly, I was not in the world of Bachelor Nation and I couldn’t understand it from the outside.
I am relatively new to the franchise—I began watching at the start of the pandemic because as you all know, there was not much content being made. Reality shows where everyone could quarantine together were pretty much our only option for awhile.
And so began my foray into this brave new world.
If you’re not familiar with the franchise, the premise is this: You have an eligible and very attractive Bachelor or Bachelorette. And then there are 20-30 contestants vying for their shot at love. It’s cheesy. Some of the group activities are weird and uncomfortable. There’s always a villain and lots of drama—mostly scripted, I’m sure.
And then usually, not always, the show ends with an engagement or at the very least, a serious relationship. The Bachelor or Bachelorette narrows down their choice to just one lucky contestant and they ride off into the sunset together. The success of these relationships is chaotic, but made for our consumption and we eat it up.
But here’s the thing you gotta know about The Bachelor. They swear up and down that everyone is there to find love. But that’s just not true. And if you watch it thinking that’s true, then the show is wildly disappointing.
Because most of the contestants and even The Bachelors and Bachelorettes themselves don’t sign up for the show to find love. They sign up to be famous.
We’re not talking movie star famous, but influencer famous. Doing ads on Instagram, going on tours, being on Dancing with the Stars, basically being paid to live their lives for our consumption.
So if you go into the show with the framework that everybody is there to get their shot at fame, then everything starts to make sense. The petty drama, the commodification of past trauma for sound bytes, the participation in humiliating group activities and kissing multiple people on national television—all of that makes sense if the person doing it is looking to be remembered and followed.
I could talk for hours about how The Bachelor franchise is a generative and fascinating look at the human condition and state of society, but I won’t. However, if you do want that, you should join our Marco Polo group where some members of this very congregation exchange opinions about Bachelor Nation and similar shows.
I offer this vulnerable confession to you all today because this shifting of mindset is crucial for our John text. It’ll make sense, stay with me.
This charge offered by Jesus to the disciples today is sandwiched between the Last Supper and the Farewell Discourse in John. Right before Jesus starts talking about love, he is washing his disciples’ feet, he is acknowledging that he will betrayed by a close friend, he is breaking bread and pouring wine with his friends, all while anticipating the mortal danger he will find himself in in just a few hours.
This monologue on love begins his final words to his disciples and his final prayer to God, some of which we read last week.
So after Judas leaves, Jesus talks about being glorified in the immediate future, presumably by what will happen on the cross. And then he gives a new commandment to his disciples: love one another the way I have loved you. Now this is not a new commandment in that it is some revolutionary commandment that’s never been heard of in the history of humankind. Remember Jesus was Jewish through and through, and he is sharing a commandment from his sacred scriptures. Leviticus, specifically and other rabbinical teachings.
It’s a new commandment in the sense that Jesus is inviting them into a new life. According to Jesus, in this new framework for being, this is how you live:
Love one another. Like I’ve loved you. This is how people will know you are my disciples. If you love one another.
This commandments is simple enough for a toddler to memorize and appreciate. My 4 year old daughter could recite this and understand it. But it is also profound enough that most of us are repeatedly embarrassed by how poorly we understand it and put it into practice.
We’ve been talking about what it means to be in the denomination of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). We talked about liberty in belief two weeks ago, and we talked about unity last week. And this week our focus is charity, or love.
And the charge is simple: above anything else that divides or unites us, that distinguishes us or assimilates us, what matters most is our love for one another. Easy on the delivery, tricky on the execution.
It would be easier if Jesus said this is how people will know you are my disciples: if you believe x, y, and z.
Or this is how people will know you are my disciples: if you say this prayer and click your heels three times.
Unfortunately, that’s not what Jesus said.
He said we are his disciples if we love one another like he has loved us. He said that right after washing his friends’ dusty, grimy feet at the dinner table. He said that after breaking bread with the man who would break his heart. He said that after years of frustrating discussion with them about who he was and what he was doing there. He said that knowing that his life was likely coming to an end that very night.
This love is willing to give everything away for the sake of the other. Everything we hold dear and precious. Everything that makes us feel secure and successful and sane.
This love that gives everything away does not come from a place of self-denial, but rather, it is an act of fullness, of living our our life and identity fully, even when that living would ultimately lead to death or demise.
The apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians addresses their squabbling about how they’re living out their lives of faith. They’re arguing about which group is the rightest. One says, I follow Paul. The other, I follow Apollo. I’m Disciples. I’m Lutheran. I’m Baptist. I’m a universalist. I’m trinitarian. Whatever. And Paul said, “You know, quit your squabbling. Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. We are fools for the sake of Christ.”
This kind of living that Christ calls us to does not make sense in the way our world is structured. Dying to live. That sounds counterintuitive. Losing your life to find it? What does that even mean?
But if our framework is not survival, but love, the love that transcends even death, this life starts to make a little more sense.
You see, the love that Jesus embodies is grace, not sacrifice. He’s not looking for nice people, but agents of God’s love for the world revealed in Himself.
But we can’t live in such a way unless this foolish and reckless love of Christ has rooted itself in our hearts, unless it has sunk down deep into our very being.
This love does not make us might; it makes us vulnerable. It doesn’t give us certainty, but it requires trust. It does not set up borders, but spills over the margins and walls we have erected. It does not come at first sight or through cheesy group dates or as a perk to becoming famous on national television. It cannot be easily produced or consumed. It does not fit into sound bytes or promos.
It requires time, effort, discipline, transformation. Love so amazing and so divine demands my soul, my life, my all.
This idea from our unofficial motto, “in all things, charity,” doesn’t mean that we’ll get to avoid all the mess and arguments. It doesn’t mean we won’t get fired up at each other or hurt each other.
But it does mean that we will keep coming around the table. That we will keep passing the bread and wine to each other. We will keep saying, “This is Christ’s body for you and for me. This is Christ’s abundant love, enough for all of us.”
It means that we will keep giving our lives away, chipping off all the rough edges that keep us from seeing each other, from hearing each other, from seeking to know each other. It means that when we wash our hands, we’re not washing off our complicity like Pilate does before Jesus is crucified. If means that when we wash our hands, we’re remembering our baptism, the act that has planted us in this Christian community that transcends time and space. That is a means of grace and an opening for Christ’s Living Spirit to speak to us again and again.
If we go into faith, in the broad sense and in our specific iteration as Disciples of Christ, with the mindset that faith is about believing the right things and looking a certain way and having the right ministries and hymns, we’re going to be wildly disappointed and do a lot of damage.
But if we go into faith with the mindset that it’s about the love of Christ and imitating that kind of foolish, extravagant, prodigal, reckless love, then the painstaking work of sticking together and being transformed by the day-in-and-day-out interactions and work with one another is going to make a lot more sense.
Amen.
Benediction:
Please rise in body or spirit for our benediction, the final song, and the Doxology.
May God guide us in the path of discipleship,
so that, as we have been loved,
We may love others,
bringing the promise of the kingdom near
by our words and deeds. Amen.