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!
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 as much or as little in our prepared liturgy as your spirit is willing.
A couple of announcements before we begin:
There are visitor card 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.
Our adult Sunday School class began this morning in the Heritage! While we await guidance from the Pandemic Response Committee and the building’s unpacking, we have a Table Talk class for adults meeting at 10 AM in the Heritage. There is also a combined children’s and youth class available at the same time under the porticache.
Next Saturday is the Golf Tournament!
This Wednesday is our Cabinet Meeting at 7 on Zoom—if you are on cabinet this year or if you have been asked to be on cabinet next year, please make every effort to be there as we will be working on our 2022 budget for our respective ministries.
On Saturday, October 23, we will have a work day here at the church, beginning at 8 AM. If you can’t make it right at that time, come whenever you can! You may have noticed that we still have a lot of boxes to be unpacked and sorted, so this is the day we will be working together to get the church in working order.
On Monday, November 1 at 7 pm, we will have our annual All Saints service in the Heritage Chapel. This service is to remember those who have died and gone before us. It’s a solemn service where we light candles, pray, sing, and take communion, trusting in the promise of the communion of saints, that the Lord’s table stretches across all thresholds, including death.
Over the next few weeks, as we move toward November 7, Covenant Sunday, the culmination of our stewardship campaign as we prepare for the 2021 budget, we will examine stewardship from various liturgical lenses. Today, we will think about stewardship in conversation with scripture. Other weeks, we will see how the table and stewardship are in dialogue, how prayer and music inform our ways of thinking stewardly, and we’ll even go back to the basics in Children’s Moment to think what being a steward means.
We begin a new series today: Wishin’, Hopin’, Prayin’: Longing for God in a Chaotic World. How do we pray when our whole body aches for deliverance? How do we hope when tragedy strikes? How do we learn to want what God wants? In this worship series, we will examine moments of longing in scripture: from the earliest days of the Hebrew people to the last book in the Bible, we will glean wisdom and fortitude from the stories of our faith forebears on what it means to long for God in times like these. Today, we begin with the longing of creation.
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: God’s word is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword.
All: It pierces so deeply that it divides even soul and spirit, bone and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
One: Nothing is concealed from God; all lies bare and exposed before the eyes of the One to whom we have to give an answer.
All: Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens—Jesus, the Firstborn of God—let us hold fast to our profession of faith.
One: For we don’t have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who was tempted in every way that we are, without sin.
All: So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and favor, and find help in time of need.
(Hebrews 4:12-16)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
(From Walter Brueggeman)
There is a time to be born and a time to die.
And this is a time to be born,
So we turn to you, God of our life, God of all our years, God of our beginning.
Our times are in your hand.
Hear us as we pray:
For those of us too much into obedience,
Birth us to the freedom of the gospel.
For those of us too much into self-indulgence,
Birth us to discipleship in your ministry.
For those of us too much into cynicism,
Birth us to the innocence of the Christ child.
For those of us too much into cowardice,
Birth us to the courage to stand before principalities and powers.
For those of us too much into guilt,
Birth us into forgiveness worked in your generosity.
For those of us too much into despair,
Birth us into the promises you make to your people.
For those of us too much into control,
Birth us into the vulnerability of the cross.
For those of us too much into suffering,
Birth us into the power of Easter.
For those of us too much into fatigue,
Birth us into the energy of Pentecost.
We dare pray that you will do for us and among us and through us
what is needful for newness.
Give us the power to be receptive,
To take the newness you give,
To move from womb warmth to real life.
We make this prayer not only for ourselves, but
For our congregation at the brink of birth,
For the universal church at the edge of life,
For our community waiting for newness,
For your whole creation, with which we yearn in eager longing.
There is a time to be born, and it is now.
We sense the pangs and groans of your newness.
And so we pray together the prayer that our brother and redeemer Jesus gave to us…
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
Romans 8:18-27
18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
We begin a new series today: Wishin’, Hopin’, Prayin’. Each week, we’ll be settling into a place of longing in scripture: longing expressed through prayer, in a song, in an accusation, in a guttural collective cry. We will be entering Advent in a few months, and as more of our population gets vaccinated and as the building slowly gets unpacked, we hope for a sense of normalcy. Of course, we realize that the normal we knew is long gone. Even as the “pandemic normal” ebbs and flows, our worship has taken on different shapes as needed. And as some of you arrived during the pandemic, normal is a meaningless word because there are no memories of the before times at Azle Christian Church.
We are establishing a new normal together now: a light-footed one that is able to change direction and adapt.
But perhaps what we need is not really normalcy, but rather homeostasis: a stable equilibrium that must be maintained by interdependent processes. We’re finding our true center in this active maintenance of homeostasis at our church.
It’s almost as if we are at sea, on a boat together, floating under the moon. We won’t find perfect stillness out here on the water, but we will get our sea legs. We’ll find a tidal rhythm, adjusting the sails as the winds blow us in unforeseen directions.
I have been sailing exactly one time. One glorious day with a friend who had been sailing his whole life and did not realize how magical it all seemed to people who had grown up fishing off a dock. As we were getting ready to head out of port, he showed me and JD the whole routine for adjusting the sails, for this was an all-hands-on-deck operation, he explained. JD and I each had a job. I don’t remember the names of anything he told us, but my job was to tie the big rope around some kind of knob to secure something in place. It was important, I promise. I know that really paints the picture for you.
It was one of those perfect days: the weather had been touched by the Divine, the conversation was lovely. The rhythm of our collective sailing efforts required focus, but it was fun to be a part of something like that. We got out of the boat and swam for awhile and ended up sailing to the other side of the lake in order to grab dinner on the lakeside.
As the skies grew darker, I wondered how long it would take to sail back across the lake, and even though our friend was a skilled sailor, I worried about doing it in the dark.
Imagine my surprise when our friend told us that we would just motor back to port. I mean, of course, this boat had a motor. That makes sense to me looking back. But for the entire day, I had thought it was completely up to us and the wind to move the boat. And when the motor is on, it’s not an all-hands-on-deck situation. It just requires one person, the captain.
So as night fell, JD and I stretched out on the boat and basked in the remaining time of our perfect day, enjoying the stars and trusting in the one behind the wheel.
On one hand, this day had required all of us to be alert and ready, to tend to the job given to us, to work together as a team. We all were aware of the wind and it how it moved us along if we could set our sails to it rightly. We were conscious of the other boats on the lake, careful not to let the wind and our enthusiasm cause us to crash into their vessels. And a couple of times, we we put our anchor down to play and eat.
But at the end of the day, when our bodies did what bodies do: grow tired, and when our minds found what minds find: limitations, we laid down and let the one who knew what to do bring us back. There was a time that day when our only job was to gaze at the stars and let the low buzz of the motor move us along.
Our text today is from Romans, the densest, meatiest work of Paul, a letter to the church in Rome. Paul was writing primarily to Gentile Christians who were having conflicts with Jewish communities. Both groups thought they were the true Christ-following community, but Paul was writing to tell the Gentiles that they were not replacing the Jewish communities in faith, but rather they would learn to work and worship together. And all of this in the backdrop of living in Rome, the powerful empire ready to squash anything that might disturb the peace. There was a lot of growing pains, a lot of labor pains one might say, in this community of faith.
And because of this turmoil, it’s not clear to the Gentile Christians how Christ had changed their reality at all. Their suffering continued, including weakness in the body that required the Holy Spirit’s intercessions and prayers. The overarching question of this conflict was how hope spoke to such suffering.
Paul explains to the Roman church, “All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs,” he writes. “But these birth pangs are not only around us: they are within us. We are also feeling the birth pangs. We are yearning for full deliverance. And that is why, waiting does not diminish us any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We expand in the waiting. Of course, we cannot lay eyes on what is expanding us, but the longer we wait, the more we expand, and the more joyful our expectancy.”
Paul seems to be saying, “That longing you’re feeling? It’s pointing toward something more, something so transformational that it naturally is taking up your emotional and relational bandwidth.” The longing is evidence that there is something more to this moment. This yearning is the labor pain between the no longer and the not yet.
For the coming reign of God is not the abolition of the present reality, but its transformation. Birth speaks new life, a brand spanking new one, and also a new life to the mother. The body and life of the one in labor will be transformed at birth, because of birth.
And isn’t it interesting, that to Paul, creation’s longing is tied up with the children of God’s longing? Everybody is groaning with anticipation, even Christ’s Living Spirit, and it’s because we are all bound up in each other. The fate of the cosmos is tied to the faith of the children of God, to their ability to hope.
Because what is the response to this great longing, to these labor pains, to this groaning?
Hope.
As we worship together in this space and think about how to return our homeostasis once again, we can feel the no-longer-but-not-yet-ness of it all. The breath-holding, the lack of fullness to this return. We’re not yet hosting fellowship meals indoors, or holding babies, or singing unmasked. Whole chapters of our church life have closed in the waiting. And our longing for church life to be bursting at the seams points to a more encompassing longing—the anticipation of the reign of God, the fullest of fullness.
And this ache for more—it’s not a sign of weakness or lack of faith. This longing is sacred because it anticipates a future we cannot see. It’s a kind of prayer: one that says, “I know this is not all there is. I know things can be different.”
Hope walks hand in hand with our longing: it creates a sense of contrast between what we hope for and the present state of affairs. And it’s normal for this contrast to spark discontent and restlessness. The one who hopes hurts. The one who hopes wrestles with disappointment because they are constantly holding what is and what could be together.
But the answer to the labor pains of hope is not stoicism or being an unmovable force: it’s adjusting our sails to the changing winds, trusting that we will get to shore.
And sometimes, when something that is out of our hands moves us along, say—a pandemic, a storm, an illness, a death, the motor of a boat—hope looks like stretching out where we are and learning the constellations above.
This series on longing and prayer will take us to the end of Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time is the stretch of time on the church calendar that is relatively uneventful, though this year’s Ordinary Time has been anything but for our congregation. But the uneventfulness is the lack of High Holy Days.
But there is a wisdom to the liturgical calendar that I want to draw attention to. For about 6 months, we will be in Holy Seasons: Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Eastertide, and Pentecost. It’s eventful, it’s contemplative, it’s celebratory. It’s as if our lungs are expanding with the breath of the Holy One, inhaling, inhaling, inhaling.
And then, for about 6 months, in Ordinary Time, we exhale. Our lungs contract. We breathe out slowly, completely, our whole bodies relaxing into the motion.
And as we near the end of our exhalation, in a few weeks, we will have Covenant Sunday, when we will make a financial commitment that will help our lay leadership create a budget for 2021. We’ll gather a few weeks later to look together as a congregation at this budget, a document of hopes and dreams. For a budget is not only a fiscal document, but it is also a moral and theological document. It puts pen to paper, dollars to dreams, and says, “This is what we believe matters. Here are remnants of the hope that was sown before us, and here are our hopes now. This hope has grown tall like a sunflower, and this hope has transformed like a butterfly.”
And what this text reminds us, what our theology of stewardship tells us, is that our offering of our time, and energy, and resources, it is not just an individual commitment. Our generosity is for others. Just as the faithfulness of God’s children directly affects God’s creation, so our act of stewardship is part of a larger whole. And it’s not quite like a puzzle in that they all fit together to make a beautiful still picture, but rather it’s like a team of sailors, working together to test the wind, to determine if we throw the anchor down or adjust the sails.
And as children of God, we are also in partnership with God. If you remember from the text, everyone is groaning—even the Holy Spirit. The work of hoping is a shared endeavor. So as we work together, tying ropes around some kind of knob to secure something, may we also rest in the knowledge that it is not only our work, but also God’s. Perhaps we can lay down and gaze at the stars, listening to the low hum of the Spirit’s shared longing.
So, for the next couple of weeks, in our last stretch of Ordinary Time, let us breathe out in hope. Let all the air out. Empty out all that is in your proverbial lungs so that when we arrive at the beginning of Holy Season in just a few weeks, we are ready to take a big gulp of oxygen, letting it ignite and animate us, reviving us once again and preparing us for the days ahead.
Amen.
Sharing Our Resources
This Romans text reminds us that we are in this together—our work as stewards of God’s creation is a practice of collaboration and creativity. The church itself is a steward of the investment of its people, of justice and love in the community, and of the hearts of everyone in its spheres. This church, in addition to the work of spiritual formation and relationship building for those within the congregation, provides aid and resources to those in our broader community, and relies on your faithful sharing of your resources.
There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church: Venmo, giving online, giving box, offering plate.
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 talk to me after service or sometime this week.
Benediction:
Please rise in body or spirit for our benediction, the final song, and the Doxology.
Our benediction this morning comes from a few verses after our text, from Romans 8:
May we go out from here, convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created. May it be so. Amen.