Welcome/Call to Worship
Good morning! And happy birthday to the church! It’s Pentecost!
I’m Pastor Ashley. 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.
For those watching online or for those who would like to follow along, our liturgy for every service is posted on our website before the service begins.
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 combined children and youth class that meets in the parlor. Godly Play meets behind the sanctuary for our younger elementary students.
This afternoon at 2 pm, there will be a dedication for a bench at Hoover Elementary 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.
A Dream Fulfilled, our campaign to finish paying off the debt on our building culminates today, when you will be able to turn in your pledge cards during our offering. You should have received a physical card and letter in the mail this past week, and you can also fill out a card online on our website. You’re invited to enjoy cookie fellowship in the Fellowship Hall as the elders tally how much we’ve pledged and our timeline for paying off the loan.
Next Sunday, is our Trinity Sunday Brunch. We will have an abbreviated communion service here in the sanctuary at 11 AM, and then move into the Fellowship Hall for a potluck brunch. We invite you to bring your favorite breakfast food to share as we celebrate community.
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 conclude our worship series We Call Ourselves Disciples this morning with a celebration of the church. We will have a time when we light our handheld candles later on in the service, so make sure you have one. If you don’t, raise your hand and a deacon will you bring one.
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: Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. For the Spirit that God has given you does not enslave you or trap you in fear;
All: Instead, through the Spirit, God has adopted you as children, and by that Spirit we cry out, “Abba!”
One: God’s Spirit joins with our spirit to declare that we are God’s children.
All: And if we are children, we are heirs as well: heirs of God and coheirs with Christ,
One: Sharing in Christ’s suffering
All: And sharing in Christ’s glory.
(Romans 8:14-17)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
Our prayer today can be found in your hymnal, #246. It is also on the screens. I will read a line, and then we will sing the bolded line to the tune that we sang just a moment ago. Nicole and Gini, can you remind us how it goes?
After we finish this prayer together, I will conclude us and then we will sing the Lord’s Prayer since it is the first Sunday of the month. It’s #310 in your hymnals and will also be on the screen.
Join me in prayer.
From out of our silent depths into visible corporate acts,
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
Gathering the fragments of our church into a living icon of the redeeming, reconciling, prophetic Christ,
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
Bonding together the dissenter, the affirmer and the questor,
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
Radiating the power and the light of our rainbow-hued people,
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
Revealing your presence in and among each perceived or self-defined minority, wounded, lonely, or angry,
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
Gathering the fragments of our church into dynamic communities of faith engaged in prophetic, redemptive, and reconciling ministries of love,
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
O Holy Spirit, come to us, and among us;
Come as the wind, and cleanse us;
Come as the fire, and burn;
Come as the dew, and refresh.
Convict, convert, and consecrate many hearts and lives to our great good and your greater glory.
It is with this earnest plea, that we sing together the prayer of Jesus…
(Sing the Lord’s Prayer - CH 310)
Sermon
Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Pentecost. More like Pente-chaos, am I right?
Conventional wisdom for preachers when writing a sermon is to say one thing. Don’t try to lay out a 5-point plan or get bogged down in all the things the text has to say. Just say one thing and say it well.
Well, how am I supposed to do that with this text?
You’d think it be easy to preach Acts 2. It’s one of the few texts we preach every single year, no matter what year it is. Even with Christmas and Easter texts, also stories we preach every year, we at least get some variety with the different gospels. But Acts 2 never changes.
In a way, I know exactly what to preach. But in a much more real sense, I have no idea what to preach.
Come along for the ride to find the one thing for today.
The text begins “They were all together in one place.” This is great. We’re concluding our series today on what it means to be a Disciples of Christ church. And today, the theme is “ecclesia,” the New Testament word for church. It literally means “a gathering of those summoned.”
So they were all together in one place for Pentecost, which was also known as the Festival of Weeks, a Jewish agricultural festival celebrated after the beginning of the grain harvest 50 days after Passover. Passover celebrated the exodus from Egypt, and the Festival of Weeks celebrated the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai. It was a day of renewal to the covenant God had made with Israel. Many had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for this festival, which explains why they are all gathered.
And today is the perfect day to talk about ecclesia, for it’s the church’s birthday. But this is a terrible birthday party. First of all, it’s very early in the morning. If my kid went to someone’s birthday party and everyone’s head caught fire and there were accusations about drunkenness, I would not let her go to that person’s house ever again.
So maybe that’s not our one thing.
Okay, so what about the fire angle: if you look around the sanctuary, you’ll see a common symbol. Fire. Pentecost is about fire. The Holy Spirit blows through closed doors and lights little flames above everyone’s heads.
So following this train of thought, though the news outlets we consume may differ, I think we can all agree that the world is on fire. A big ol’ smelly, toxic dumpster fire. Rats the size of German Shepherds scuttling about. Unpredictable sparks and booms. And the dumpster’s on wheels and it seems to barreling toward us no matter which direction we run. I’m getting bogged down here.
The world is on fire, divided tongues like fire rest on each person. There’s something here, right? The fire is begging us to pay attention. The Holy Spirit does not come like a dove this time or a gentle whisper. No, she’s got a match and a mischievous grin.
So what do the flames mean? Well, our text says that it meant the Holy Spirit filled the people and caused them to speak out in their diverse set of languages. And that’s very cool and all, but that happened at Babel, so that would be kind of played out. What’s significant is that everyone was speaking their own language and they were understood. Miraculously. What does that say about what God values?
So if we think about the world being on fire, we might consider our call to pay attention as Christians. What do these various fires have to tell us? What does the fact that the climate is literally warming at a dangerous rate tell us about what God values? About what we have done and left undone?
Or consider the continued and ongoing epidemic of gun violence and mass shootings? What does this fire and the firearms they come from tell us about what God values? About what we have done and left undone?
Or the war in Ukraine? The famine in Yemen? The cartel violence in Venezuela? The marker of 1 Million American deaths due to COVID? The children in detention camps along our border? There’s little fires everywhere, saying, “Pay attention, pay attention!”
But while this fire thing is a thing, I’m not sure it’s our one thing. At least not today.
So let’s keep moving through the text. This is a text of diversity. That fits with our church theme. Let’s explore that.
They are in Jerusalem. There should be a glow and an angel chorus any time the word “Jerusalem” is read in church. It’s always important. It has been a multi-ethnic city for more than three thousand years. It was multi-ethnic when David conquered it. It was multi-ethnic after he conquered it. It was multi-ethnic when the Babylonians captured it, and then when the Persians took it from the Babylonians.
It was multi-ethnic when Jesus walked the streets, and it’s multi-ethnic in this text when the church is born in the fires of Pentecost. “There were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem…Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors form Rome, both Jews and converts, Cretans and Arabs…”
This actually kind of goes with the fire thing. In the same way a flame burns at different strengths and intensities, and even different colors depending on what kind of fire it is, we are fueled by the Holy Spirit and we burn differently. So maybe the one thing is that we’re supposed to be diverse because we have always been diverse. We are made up of people from every nation under the heavens. The Holy Spirit does not transcend our differences, she is within our differences.
We are one body, one group of people altogether in one place, but we are not the same. And the Holy Spirit allows us to not only speak but be heard and understood. And accordingly, we ask, “What does this mean?”
So diversity. That’s a good one thing. But I still don’t think it’s our one thing.
What about the new wine? A crowd has gathered around this room of disciples and is watching the chaos unfold. Fire, a riot of voices, confusion and knocked down goblets and broken plates everywhere. And understandably, they sneer and say, “Those people must be filled with new wine!”
And I love that Peter gets up immediately, and says, “No, no—it’s only 9 AM. That can’t be it.” Like there is a time for everything under heaven, including wine, but 9 AM ain’t it.
But it is the time for a prophetic word. He goes on to quote the prophet Joel: young and old, women and men—they will prophesy and dream dreams and see visions, The Spirit will be poured on all of them in the last days, which Peter changes from the original text. “The last days” is apocalyptic language which means right now, it is imminent. Peter looks around and thinks, “I’ve read about this.”
But I don’t think the wine comment should be dismissed so quickly.
Because we’ve heard Jesus talk about new wine before. That’s a very interesting thing that the sneering people have said. Right, they don’t say, “they’re drunk on wine,” but that they’re drunk on “new wine,” which is kind of right. It’s an astute observation, actually.
And what does Jesus say about new wine? Can new wine go into old wineskins? No, and why is that? Because the old wine skins will burst. The new wine will be wasted. New wine has to be poured into new wineskins. The container that held a symbol of promise and love and abundance must change, must be made new, in order to hold new wine.
And is that not what is happening here? Peter says it’s not the proper time for drinking wine. But maybe he’s wrong. Or maybe he doesn’t see it. Because what is happening is new. New wine is being poured. And the container for this newness is changing.
Jesus’ ministry began with wine at the wedding of Cana, and the church begins now with new wine. The proper time for new wine, for prophetic imagination is not a time you can find on a clock or on a calendar because it’s now. An eternal now. It’s always right now.
I think we’re getting closer to our one thing here. Because let’s not forget, our theme is ecclesia, church. Not the church building, not a 501 3c, but the dynamic entity of the summoned gathering.
I wonder if the trouble I’m having to find the one thing is perhaps the one thing. Follow me here.
There’s a lot going on in this text. There’s a lot of good words here. A couple of sermons, at least, which is good because I’m gonna be preaching this text every year.
But it’s not even the abundance of things to see in this text—it’s that this text is chaotic. And it’s not a slow rollout of the wild. It’s suddenly chaotic. And people are asking, “What in the world is going on?”
And I don’t know about you, but that feels like the most relevant experience right now. Relentless chaos. Constant destabilization of what we’ve known and trusted in.
But if we look a little closer at the blur before us, shapes start to form. The gathering. The fire. The diversity. The new wine. The familiar scripture.
And the paradox of the history of the church is that while everything has changed since the time of Jesus, nothing has changed. The church has always been trying to learn to live in this world and to respond to the Spirit’s movement.
If we just keep reading the story of the early church in Acts, we’ll see the trend is “something something Holy Spirit, people are bewildered. But somehow the gospel of Jesus Christ gets spread throughout the region.”
No one seems to know what they’re supposed to be doing. There’s patterns, to be sure, but just like we read a couple of weeks ago about Paul’s visit to Philippi, our best laid plans and routines are constantly disrupted by the Spirit of God. We are redirected and rerouted. What we expect to find and what we actually find are often different.
But the key here is they keep showing up. They keep gathering together for their religious observances. They keep letting the Holy Spirit do her thing and then asking the very wise question of discernment: “What does it mean?”
They keep returning to the scriptures together and interpreting them anew in light of recent events. They keep working together to figure out what’s next.
And our call as the church is to keep being the ecclesia—the gathering of the summoned. To keep gathering and interpreting the summons we have received in Jesus. We make this commitment in our baptism. We keep it each time we come to the table.
And we are reminded on the church’s birthday, that sometimes our call is to let our heads catch on fire from time to time.
To look closer at what we think is chaos and disruption in order to see where the Spirit is moving. To attune our ears to the diverse experience of humanity and seek to understand even if it is not our native tongue. Pride Month is a great month for that. How does the Spirit move in a form that seems foreign to us?Sometimes the most faithful thing we can say is, “I do not understand you at all, but I’m listening.”
We make way for new wineskins to receive the new wine that is being poured out. To allow the container of what we think of as church to change and grow and evolve. To not dwell on what was church and not worry about what will be church but focus on the eternal now. What is the church today? June 5, 2022, 11:30 AM in Azle, Texas.
We are all gathered together in one place. We’ve made our move. And now it’s the Holy Spirit’s turn.
In just a few moments, the deacons will come up and light their candle from our new Christ candle, which is a birthday gift to the church. And then they will light the first row’s candle, and then we invite you to pass on the flame as we sing together. The words will be on the screen.
Sharing Our Resources
We have been talking about A Dream Fulfilled, our debt reduction campaign for a couple of weeks. We hope to pay off our building loan by 2024 in order to free up those funds for more ministry work at Azle. The building has already provided a space for some many ministries and we look forward to how it will be used for the good of the community and the glory of God moving forward.
As we pass the plates for our offering, you may also put in your pledge card. If you filled it out online already, we have collected that data.
There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church. You can give online on our website, on Venmo, or in the offering plate as the deacons come by during our final song.
Invitation
We are pleased as punch to welcome Linda and Harold Williams to the Azle Christian Church family. They have been among us for some time, but they are making it official today and joining as members. What a great day for the church! Linda and Harold, will you stand please?
I invite all of you to turn to #341 in your chalice hymnals for our affirmation of new members. The affirmation will also be on the screen for us to read together.
Join me in this welcome:
Reaffirming our own faith in Jesus the Christ,
We gladly welcome you into this community of faith,
Enfolding you with our love
And committing ourselves to your care.
In the power of God’s Spirit
Let us mutually encourage each other to trust God and strengthen one another to serve others,
That Christ’s church may in all things stand faithful.
Linda and Harold, we welcome you with joy in the common life of this church.
We promise you our friendship and prayers
As we share the hopes and labors of the church of Jesus Christ.
By the power of the Holy Spirit
May we continue to grow together in God’s knowledge and love
And be witnesses of our risen Savior.
Welcome, and amen.
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 with me after service or sometime this week.
Benediction:
Just a reminder that you are invited to our Cookie Fellowship immediately following service in the Fellowship Hall where we will tally our pledges and enjoy each other’s company.
Please rise in body or spirit for our benediction, the final song, and the Doxology.
Our benediction today is from Teresa of Avila:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
Amen.