Less is More: Focused Hope (Luke 21:25-36)

Welcome

Good morning and happy new year! I’m Pastor Ashley Dargai. To those here in the chapel and those joining us online: we are so glad you’re here! 

I say happy new year because we turn the calendar page today as a church, moving into a new liturgical year with this first Sunday of Advent. 

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. For our young ones, there is an Advent coloring page and crayons for children to participate in worship as well as a designated area in the back for families of little ones who need to move around with a box of quiet toys and crafts for children and their grownups to pull from. We believe that every age offers a unique perspective of the image of God, and we know that the energy and spirit of children can be different than adults and we consider that reality a gift.

A couple of announcements before we begin:

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. 

There are Advent Home Kits available for pick-up today and they’ll be in the office after that. If you need a kit delivered to your house, please contact us on FB or call the church office. There are lots of opportunities to observe Advent with us. A calendar is set out at the entry tables, available online, and in your Advent kits.

This Saturday afternoon, December 4, ACC will have a booth at Azle’s Christmas on Main Street. Sign-ups for shifts at the booth are available at the entry table and online. They are 2-hour shifts, and we’re handing out Christmas ornaments. This is a great way to tell people about ACC, so I hope you sign up!

Next Sunday, December 5, immediately following worship, we will have our annual congregational meeting to approve the budget and other decisions proposed by the Board. The meeting will be in-person and on Zoom, so please join us for this important day. The Zoom information is in your eblast and on Facebook. 

On December 6, the annual DWM Christmas Party will take place in the Fellowship Hall at 6 PM. 

And on Wednesday, December 15 at 7 pm in the sanctuary, we will have a special Advent service dedicated to joy, our Joy as Resistance service. Joy is a spiritual practice—it is a call for us to boldly trust in the grace all around us. So during this service, we will engage in whimsy and delight, singing the most joyful carols and using all of our senses to say yes to the grace of Christ. We invite you to join us! There will be transportation available for those who cannot drive in the dark, so if you will need a ride, please contact us and let us know.

Order forms for poinsettias will be available in the church office beginning on Wednesday. You can purchase a poinsettia for the church sanctuary or you can do a virtual poinsettia, which means your donation goes to the general church budget. Poinsettia are traditionally purchased in memory of a loved one. They’re $10, and you can drop by the church office or call or email secretary@azlechristianchurch.org to order them remotely.

Finally, we have a new administrative assistant, Macie, who begins this week. I know everyone will give her a warm welcome. 

To keep up with all the life we live together here at Azle Christian Church, make sure you follow us on Facebook and subscribe to our weekly e-blast and monthly newsletter. To sign up for the eblast and newsletter, go to our website, azlechristianchurch.org, and subscribe. There is also a live calendar on our website where you can see what we have going on each month. You can also find us on Instagram and TikTok, both at @azlechristianchurch.

We begin a new series today: Less Is More. And we begin Advent the way we always begin a new liturgical year: with the apocalypse. Happy Advent! :) 

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.

Hanging of Greens reading (Becky)

With what shall we come to God’s house this first Sunday of Advent? With branches of cedar and holly, evergreens and a pine tree, wreaths and garland. In the tradition of hanging greens and listening to the words of prophets, let us make our hearts and this space a place of preparation for the One who comes to give us second birth. 

This morning, we celebrate the first Sunday of Advent with the final act of the Hanging of the Greens: lighting the Christmas tree. With the Christmas tree, we remember God’s everlasting promise to the poor and needy. The prophet Isaiah spoke of God’s making of the wilderness a place of blessing where water and plants, even pine trees, would manifest God’s loving action to save and provide. 

Here in this place, we prepare for the coming of the Lord. Here we will remember his Advent, his birth in Bethlehem, weak and helpless as an infant. And here we rekindle our prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus” as we await his coming as the bright and morning star. 

Litany of Faith

One: The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

All: In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he will do what is right and just in the land.

One: In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. 

All: And this is the name by which he will be called: "The LORD is our righteousness."

(Jeremiah 33:14-16)

Pastoral Prayer

The Lord be with you.

Join me in prayer.

Most Holy One, as we turn the page on a new church calendar year, we are again surprised that the new year begins in darkness. Long, dark days as the genesis of a new beginning seems paradoxical in this season of light. But though this is indeed a season of twinkly Christmas lights, candle-illuminated faces, and cozy hearth fires, we are reminded that You are found in darkness, too. It is, after all, Your most creative space—generating something out of nothing, life out of the depth, a world out of the waters, a baby out of a womb, a promise out of the twilight. We find you in both darkness and light. 

And if Advent is where light and darkness meet, then this first Sunday of Advent is like a holy kiss at dusk. In this dusk, we move from what we think and what we believe to unveiling what we hold dear, what we cherish. As we move softly into that manger space, make us ready to behold the carnal and the beautiful, the traumatic and the tender, enfolded in the revelation of Your own self as a baby. We ask for your help to let our rational, enlightened minds that You gave us, rest while we take in the beauty of your arrival with our gaze, the softening of our shoulders, the release of our breath, the swelling of our hearts. 

At least, this is what we hope for, we pray for, today. 

We ask it in the name of the one for which we wait, Jesus, who gave us this prayer…

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: Focused Hope

Luke 21:25-36

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. 

We begin a new series today: Less Is More. In a season of bustle that screams of doorbusters, supply chain issues, and packed calendars, we are coming back to the bones of what Advent is for: things like hope, peace, joy, and love, all as we go through the rhythm of preparing for Christ’s arrival again. 

Advent begins our new church year. Ordinary Time is a time of exhalation and rest. But Holy Season is the season where we breathe in the Divine, filling our lungs with the Spirit of the Living Christ, making every cell in our body jump in jubilation and hope. Advent gives us a nice runway—it prepares us for what it means for Christ to come into the world and turn it upside down. Just as John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus, so Advent is our way of clearing the paths in our own hearts, sweeping away the brush, wiping the sleep from our eyes, and opening the curtains. 

And though Advent is a beginning, it always starts at the end. We always begin the new church year talking about the end of the world. And we always begin the retelling of Jesus’ birth story with his teaching before he was crucified. 

I know we’re ready to bust out the egg nog and jingle bells and just have a nice time, but Jesus is the buzzkill relative who corners you to talk about ozone layers and somehow ropes you into a justice-oriented protest before you can finish your pie. Perhaps you have this relative in your family. Perhaps you are this relative. 

We’ll get to sweet baby Jesus soon enough, but for now, we have to deal with apocalyptic Jesus. We have to hear him out before we move on to the farm animals and swaddling clothes.

We are at the final straw in the testimony of Luke about Jesus. Jesus has been talking about some really controversial things with his disciples in others’ earshot. The Very Religious People, the VRPs we’ll call them, tend to be the subject of his ire: those that would confuse loyalties to God and loyalties to state, those for whom religious details are more important than caring for the poor and vulnerable, those who would maintain the status quo at any cost, those who would oppress in the name of God. 

Now we want to be careful when talking about run-ins with the VRPs in the gospels. The VRPs for Jesus happen to be Jewish. Anti-semitism is never okay, generalizations about other religions is never okay, only listening to critics of those religions is never okay. Jesus was Jewish when he was born, and he was Jewish when he died. Jesus was not a Christian. The first people of the church were not considered Christians until later. They thought of themselves as an off-shoot of Judaism. 

Often the gospels are used as weapons against Jewish people now and Jewish people then. Martin Luther, our Protestant Church founder, read the New Testament in the 1500s and mistakenly equated the criticisms in the gospels with the legalism and exploitation he saw in the medieval Catholic Church, which has contributed to a lot of anti-semitic and anti-Jewish sentiment over the centuries. The issues of the Medieval church are not the same as the issues Jesus is talking about here. Let the reader understand. It is irresponsible for us as readers to conflate the two. 

And also, what we can see as 21st century readers of the gospels is that the criticism Jesus has for the VRPs in his world can be translated in way into our Western Christian context. Very Religious Christians are also known to confuse loyalties to God and loyalties to state, they care more about religious details than caring for the poor and vulnerable, they maintain the status quo at any cost, they oppress in the name of God. I’m sure we don’t know anyone like that. I’m sure we have never been someone like that.

But I go to great lengths to draw a distinction between Jewish people and the VRPs Jesus is addressing because as Christians, we came to over half of our scripture very late into the game compared to our Jewish siblings. We can only understand Jesus by having profound respect and humility toward our Jewish siblings and their practice of faith, including evaluating our own assumptions about who Jesus is talking to and what he’s talking about. There are VRPs in a lot of faiths, especially ones that proclaim to know something about the beginning of the world and the end of it. And Luke has some choice words for the VRPs that we do not want to apply generally to everyone from that time or that faith.

And so we arrive at the end, according to Jesus. There will be signs, he says. Pay attention to them. Keep watch. Stay awake. The whole cosmic order will tremble: terrors on land and sea as foretold by the prophets, whom Jesus points out earlier, were ignored or killed for saying stuff like this. And we know he will meet a similar fate. 

But Jesus is not telling his disciples about the end in order to call them to arms or prepare a bunker. He’s not giving them a 3-step prayer to heaven to escape from the world on fire. 

His instruction is to watch. To pay attention. To bear witness.  

And with this call to witness, Jesus adjusts focus like a camera zooming in and out to find a subject. 

He points outside our world to the stars and moon. He points to the sea and the roaring waves. He points to the clouds in the sky. He zeroes in on a fig tree. It’s as if he’s trying to bring his point into view by adjusting a camera lens so that we can see clearly.

There’s this thing in photography called aperture. It’s the opening of a camera through which the light travels. It limits the amount of light that can reach an image so that we can see the image clearly without over saturation or overexposure. The lens narrows and widens as the light changes. 

Think about how our eyes work: as we move between bright and dark environments, the iris in our eyes either expands or shrinks, controlling the size of our pupils. Our eyes do that to filter the light coming in. 

The bigger the aperture, the more the light can get in. But the interesting thing is that the aperture gets bigger in darker environments. So that when it is darkest, the aperture is widest, to make way for the maximum amount of light to get in. Eyes wide open. 

And in order to get the subject of the photo in view, you have to blur the background. Not everything in a photo can be the subject. So for example, if you’re taking a group photo, and you have a really nice tree that you’d like to get in the frame, you have to choose what is the subject: the group or the tree. One will be clearer than the other. 

And Jesus in this text is looking at a very big picture, trying to pull things into focus for us to pay attention to, so that we understand the subject. Do you see the signs of the moon? Do you see the roaring of the waves? Do you see the fig tree sprouting in late summer? Now do you see what I’m talking about, he asks? It’s okay if you’re still scratching your head. 

Advent is like the movement between darkness and light and the way the aperture has to move in and out. Our vision has to adjust as we move into this new year, pulling things in and out of focus in order to get the subject in view. The subject being, of course, Christ. 

We have to readjust from grown-up Jesus that we’ve been walking with all through Ordinary Time to infant Jesus, to new beginnings. Our way of seeing literally has to change in order get a good picture of what Jesus coming into the world means. 

Our vision of the world has already changed in so many ways. The pandemic is not going away anytime soon, and it has already caused all kinds of apocalypses—remembering that apocalypse means “revelation”—so that things have been revealed of which we had no idea or had pretended could remain hidden. Things being seen that we wish we could unsee. Things being realized—about the church, about others, about ourselves—that have laid bare truths that we can now never forget.

There’s been too much roaring of seas, fear and foreboding, and the shaking of our every foundation. Can we even handle the truth of Christmas this year? 

But maybe that’s why we need the first Sunday of Advent. To let the waves wash over us in a way, to let the darkness roll us up like a little baby, to let the shaking jostle us into attention. Advent is about waiting, sure. But this year, it’s about watching. 

And this text from Luke begins our Advent journey by reminding us that the cosmic order is disrupted by the coming of Jesus. A chain of transformative events was launched at the announcement of the coming of God-incarnate, and its strangeness and peculiarity, can only be proclaimed with frightening apocalyptic imagery. The mountains crash into the sea, the valleys rise up in the rumbling of the spheres, the sun and moon will send signs. I don’t know how to make this any clearer, Jesus seems to be saying. Everything—everything—will be different. Don’t you see?

And so, we open our lens wide in the darkness to let light in. The paradox of light and darkness is that they aren’t contrasts or equated with good and evil, but rather they’re friends, companions, partners in the work of God’s revelation. 

And what we see today in this zooming in and out of focus is the subject of Advent, the promise of Advent, of Emmanuel, God-with-us. That just as in the beginning, so it will be in the end: God-with-us. 

God is here, has been, and always will be. And the powers that appear to be in control are not the powers that control who we are and how we choose to be in the world. 

And this call to pay attention, to watch, is a call to bear witness because our witness matters to God’s activity in the world, the power of the Son of Man, the Truest Human. 

And as his mother will sing later on in Advent, the power of Christ will never be coercive or manipulative. It will seek out the lost and liberate the bound. It will regard the lowly and lift up the overlooked. It will believe in salvation for everyone. This is the hope for which we wait.

And so we echo Mother Mary’s words to the announcement of Jesus’ arrival: Let it be as you have said. May it be so. 

We see it. We’re watching. We are expecting it to happen.

Amen. 

Table Meditation

As we prepare to take communion together, I invite you to prepare your elements now. If you’re here, that means you are opening your little communion cups. If you’re at home, that means you’re getting your elements ready to go. We will take them together during the Words of Institution. 

Ask Isabelle: Can you tell me of a meal you shared with other people that was really meaningful for you? 

Advent is about preparation, but when we come to the table, we find that the table is already prepared for us. Barton Stone, one of the founders of our denomination, wrote this about the Table: “Here you see that the feast was absolutely prepared, and offered freely. Those who were invited, had no hand in preparing the provisions. All were ready furnished, before the guests were invited—before they heard of it; consequently could have had no hand in it. They were bidden, and were only to come and receive what was so freely given, and prepared for them.”

Sometimes, we tend to think of the table of Christ as a potluck, where we bring our best dishes and sort out crockpots after dinner, but that’s not the table of Christ!

Like Old Bart said, we’ve got no part in the preparation. We bring nothing but ourselves and find a seat with our name on it, a plate overflowing with food we did not prepare, a cup of abundance that we did not pour. The candles have already been lit, the napkins are folded, the playlist is set, and our host is waiting for us patiently. 

This particular table and our practice of coming to each week is a symbol of the real table of Christ. We do our best to communicate the welcome that emanates from it, to share that broken and empty are actually okay, and that somehow, everyone God has ever loved is around this table in a mysterious, mystical way. 

And so today, we prepare the table symbolically to represent what it already looks like. We’ve got a lot of plates. Some extra candles for ambience. Plenty of cups. We’ve got a memory that represents the cloud of witnesses, brought to this table by God’s eternal memory.

And we keep watch, staying alert to how Christ calls each of us to this table, how God-with-us will appear, for if we know anything about Advent, it’s that Christ appears in unlikely places. In the bread, in the cup, in a baby in a manger.

Words of Institution (Isabelle)

It is with this hope that we tell the story each week that on the night he was betrayed, Jesus broke the bread and said, “This is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 

And then he took the cup also and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins. Drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” All are welcome at the Table of Christ.

Prayer

Most Generous and Gracious Host of this Table, we ask for you to bless this bread and cup as symbols of Your presence and transformative work in the world, in Your church, in each of us. May it prepare the way for this Advent season, for you to come again here. In Christ’s name we ask it, amen.

Stewardship Moment

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.

For our benediction this morning, repeat after  me:

May we keep watch for the hope that is coming and is indeed already here in Christ. 

Amen.

Wishin', Hopin', Prayin' - Praying Without Words (Exodus 1:18-24; 2:23-25)

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. 

We welcome all sounds and smells from the youngest to the oldest and everyone in between. For our young ones, there is a customized Children’s Bulletin and crayons for children to participate in worship as well as a designated area in the back for families of little ones who need to move around with a box of quiet crafts and manipulatives for children and their grownups to pull from. We believe that every age offers a unique perspective of the image of God. We know that the energy and spirit of children can be different than adults and we consider that reality a gift.

A couple of announcements before we begin:

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. 

Advent begins next week! We’ll begin our new series: Less Is More: A Simple Advent Journey. There will be Advent Home Kits available for pick-up at worship next week and they’ll be in the office after that. If you need a kit delivered to your house, please comment on this livestream or contact the church office and we will get it to you. There are lots of ways to observe Advent with us. A calendar is set out at the entry tables, available online, and in your Advent kits. 

On December 4, ACC will have a booth at Azle’s Christmas on Main Street. Sign-ups for shifts at the booth will be available starting this week—online and a physical sign-up sheet. 

On Sunday, December 5, immediately following worship, we will have our annual congregational meeting to approve the budget and other decisions proposed by the Board. The meeting will be in-person and on Zoom, so please join us for this important day.

On December 6, the annual DWM Christmas Party will take place in the Fellowship Hall at 6 PM. 

To keep with all the life we live together here at Azle Christian Church, make sure you follow us on Facebook and subscribe to our weekly e-blast and monthly newsletter. To sign up for the eblast and newsletter, go to our website, azlechristianchurch.org, and subscribe. There is also a live calendar on our website where you can see what we have going on each month.

In addition to Facebook, you can also find us on Instagram and TikTok, both at @azlechristianchurch.

We are nearing the end of our series: Wishin’, Hopin’, Prayin’: Longing for God in a Chaotic World. Today, we go to Egypt together.

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: You are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope.

All: There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all.

One: God gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers. 

All: God’s purpose was to equip God’s people for the work of serving and building up the body of Christ.

One: The whole body grows from Christ, as it is joined and held together by all the supporting ligaments. 

All: The body makes itself grow in that it builds itself up with love as each one does its part.

(Ephesians 4:4-6, 11-12, 16)

Pastoral Prayer

The Lord be with you.

(From Calling on God: Inclusive Prayers for Three Years of Sundays)

O holy Mystery, Ruler of all this complex creation,

We gather to give ourselves to you in thanks and celebration.

We come from many places,

Filled with hopes and fears,

Hungry for a quiet spot

Where we can share our load.

We know this is a place where we connect with you.

A place of Sabbath rest,

A place where love and understanding,

Healing and forgiveness

Flow like quiet streams beneath a piercing sun.

Help us follow where you lead us,

For we would be your people,

One small part of the body of the risen Christ,

Gathered here to sing and pray and celebrate

In the name of our Savior, Jesus.

We pray for wisdom and compassion

To let your love flow through us,

Bringing life and hope to those in pain and need.

We worry,

And we reach out for help,

And we regret that there is not enough time to do more.

We ache for the pain we see

In places where seems to be no healing. 

Injustice where there should be justice, 

Suffering where there should be peace,

Hate where there should be empathy,

Indifference where there should be love.

What can we do to help?

O God of love and hope,

Hear now our prayers for those in need,

And for ourselves, for we are needy too.

And in our hour of need, 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: Praying Without Words

Exodus 1:8-14; 2:23-25

1:8 Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13 The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

2:23 After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. 24 God heard their groaning, and God remembered the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 25 God looked upon the Israelites, and God knew.

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

In our youth and children’s class, we’ve been looking at foundational stories of scripture. And we just concluded studies on promise and exodus: God’s promise to Abraham to make his descendants as numerous as the stars, and God’s act of deliverance for the Hebrew people out of Egypt. These are stories that some of us have seen illustrated on felt boards or in sandboxes, in Veggie Tale movies or Bible cue cards. Perhaps you recognized our anthem from the critically acclaimed retelling of the Exodus story: The Prince of Egypt. 

We know these stories well—perhaps better than we know most stories in Scripture. They have action and drama, the voice of God, fantastical events and miracles. They make for great stories. It’s no wonder they were told over and over again at campfires and holy days for the Jewish people throughout scripture and even today. They are identity-shaping narratives, origin stories of a long-suffering, resilient people who have endured exile, systemic violence, ethnic cleansing, and even now are targeted for hate crimes. Just a few weeks ago, a synagogue in Austin, Texas was set on fire. These stories tell of an enduring promise, an enduring blessing that is stronger than any trauma, any tragedy, any work to eliminate or subdue them. 

But these are not only stories about a people. They are also stories about God. The God of the Bible cannot be fully known apart from this exodus narrative. We’ve read a few prophet narratives over the past few months, and they all point back to this time. Remember, remember, how God heard us, how God delivered us, how God led us, how God shaped us. Remember, remember the liberation, the manna, the fire, the desert, the Red Sea. Remember, remember how we were called, how we were protected, how we were freed.

As Christians, who consider the Hebrew scriptures as part of our sacred text, we can’t know God fully without the exodus story. We can’t understand the memory of genocide evoked in Herod’s call to kill all the male infants in Jesus’ time and place without the story of it first being done in Egypt. We can’t understand how deliverance is different than conquest in the gospels without the witness of the Hebrew people walking out Egypt rather than toppling the Empire. We can’t fully understand the weeping of Jesus at Lazarus’ tomb, moved by the anguish of his people, without knowing that the anguish and crying out of God’s people always mobilizes the Holy One’s own self into saving acts. 

This story may have begun for you on a felt board or on a Veggie Tale video or in children’s class, but it doesn’t stop there. It’s a story for the young because it requires so much divine imagination, and children are experts at that. But that is the planting of a seed. And we water it as we retell the story over and over again as we grow. We expand the details: the violence, the imperialism, the unfettered greed. And the seed germinates. 

And we keep telling the story so that like a plant hungry for the sun, we may stretch toward God even more, even closer, as we continue to learn not only about our faith forebears and the wisdom practiced by our Jewish brothers and sisters, but also the origin of our Messiah. The one who heard this story over and over and was so profoundly shaped by his Jewish faith that some people confused him with Moses. 

So let’s consider the actual portion of the text we read together today. 

We are focused on the outcry of the Hebrew people. We’ve been in a series about hope and prayer, examining the longings recorded in the witness of scripture, and we’re ending the series on a longing not articulated by beautiful speeches or elaborate storytelling, but by a prayer without words to no one. 

If you remember, the Hebrew people had come to Egypt because of Joseph. They came in a famine and were taken care of thanks to Joseph’s in with the palace. And they grew and multiplied in their new home. But the old pharaoh died and the new one was fearful of the booming population of this strange people who worshiped but one God. So he enslaved them in order to subdue them. 

His fear is interesting because he wasn’t afraid that they might rise up against him and overthrow the government. His fear was that they would escape. That they would leave. And he would lose the forced labor practice that was an essential part of his great state building program. With his brutalizing public policy, Pharaoh’s building program was a corporate, systemic operation that had at its disposal enormous technical capacity, relying on imperial ideological authority. So he made it policy that these people were his property, they were means of production for his ego and greed. 

But even as Pharaoh was ruthless in his oppression, the Hebrew people continued to grow and grow. So he worked them harder. They kept expanding. It’s almost as if the narrative is suggesting something about the power of Abraham’s blessing, the promise to be as numerous as the stars in the sky, might be stronger than empire’s crushing weight. That the undertow of this blessing can quietly carry destructive and death-dealing power out to sea, the Red Sea perhaps. 

And then Pharaoh died. And a new, equally ruthless one came into power, and the second half of our text says, “The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out.” 

It was a collective, guttural cry to no one in particular. God doesn’t even enter the story until the cry reaches the ears of the Divine. And with four verbs—God heard, remembered, looked, and knew—we see the Holy One mobilize into the most miraculous deliverance of all time. We don’t read that part of the story today, but we know it’s coming. And it began with a prayer, expressed through an outcry, addressed to whoever was listening.

I don’t know if you’ve accumulated plants over the pandemic like me, but I’ve got quite the menagerie in my kitchen. Some are needy and require my concern regularly, putting out a pitiful yellow leaf to get attention. Some like to be in the sun, and others don’t. Surprisingly, one of the plants has thrived in a dark corner. It’s a moody one, I suppose. I have an ivy that was repotted and rehabilitated by Scottie in February 2020, and I brought it home with me shortly after. It has grown long and has strong opinions about its care, but it has served as a marker of the length of the pandemic for me. We’ve been in this thing for this ivy long. This many leaves long. I have saved it from Annie’s leaf pilfering, a nosy dog, and a tumble to the floor. It’s spent time in a couple rooms in my house, but likes the window sill best, where it can wrap it’s tendril around other plants, as if to say, “Hello, my friend. We’re here together again. What beautiful sunlight we have today.”

The plants in my office also want my attention. I’ve been battling a gnat invasion in my office over the past few weeks. They were obsessed with a dying plant on my filing cabinet, so I removed the plant, but they have hovered still around my bamboo plant. This plant has grown quite tall since I first brought it with me on my first day working at Azle in August 2019, and it’s since tripled in size. I’ve repotted it once and will probably need to do it again soon. It’s been the easiest plant to care for to date. The bamboo in my office can go a few weeks without water, which I only know by accident. 

But now it is the focus of gnats, and that has caused me lots of consternation. I’ve swatted gnats compulsively while on Zoom calls. I’ve inhaled one. They’re everywhere. 

And I’ve been thinking about this text all week. Even though the portion we read does not mention the coming plagues, I can’t help but think that this gnat invasion is a portent. If you recall, gnats were one of the actual plagues. I’m not very superstitious, but I am dramatic, and I love a solid omen. 

Of course, I don’t think these gnats are a message from God. At least not a message so direct that it has one interpretation. 

But perhaps it is an opportunity to reflect, to pause. Mary Oliver wrote, “Attention is the beginning of devotion,” and I like to think that paying attention to stuff like this is a form of devotion to the Divine.

So I wonder what this small-scale plague of gnats could have to say to me. 

What might it be asking me to let go? 

How might my hands soften from a seizure of control? 

How might my heart resist a hardening borne out of fear? 

What is seeking to be delivered and liberated in the name of God in my life?

This of course puts me in the role of Pharaoh in the structure of our story. 

And our focus is on the guttural cry, the outpouring of grief and rage from the Hebrew people to no one. 

But isn’t interesting that in this story we know so well, that we’ve seen in every cartoon form imaginable, that the gnats come after the cry? That the dismissal of the suffering does not make the suffering go away. It’s the ear that does not listen to the grief that brings more of it in their lives. So that the suffering invades private spaces, sacred spaces, it touches every part of life, and echoes throughout Pharaoh’s empire, impacting generations to come. 

And I wonder that if the God of the Bible cannot be fully known without the exodus story, then the story of our lives, the one we tell in our Christian spaces, cannot be fully realized without listening to the cry, without emitting the cry ourselves. 

It is wearisome to grieve. Whether we are talking about us as individuals or as a collective people—whether we are talking about our private mourning for things in our own lives or we are talking about injustice prevailing again and again. It is exhausting to give ourselves over to that which wounds us. 

But it is far more devastating to ignore it. 

However frightening it may seem to give ear to anguish, to give voice to suffering, it is far more catastrophic to dismiss it. 

It is perhaps, even sinful, to do as Pharaoh did and pile on more work, more labor, and more activity in order to silence the cry. 

Because that cry from the Hebrew people, though it seemed like it was evaporating into the air, that it was useless, was heard by God. God heard, God remembered, God looked, and God knew. 

And the Holy One was mobilized into a powerful act of deliverance and formation of a people. 

A people that our Messiah came from. Our Messiah whom we will welcome again in the next few weeks during Advent. 

A Messiah who will be born with a cry on his lips, his first prayer, moments after being delivered.

So that it seems that deliverance is correlated with expressions of our most honest pain. 

But the silencing, the dismissing, the ignoring of our pain, of others’ pain, leads to gnats. Or something like that. 

Amen.  

Stewardship Moment

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.

Wishin’, Hopin’, Prayin’ - Hope for a People (1 Samuel 8:1-9)

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. 

We welcome all sounds and smells from the youngest to the oldest and everyone in between. For our young ones, there is a customized Children’s Bulletin and crayons for children to participate in worship as well as a designated area in the back for families of little ones who need to move around with a box of quiet crafts and manipulatives for children and their grownups to pull from. We believe that every age offers a unique perspective of the image of God. We know that the energy and spirit of children can be different than adults and we consider that reality a gift.

A couple of announcements before we begin:

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. 

If you are missing Sunday School while we await the final unpacking of the boxes and updated guidance from the Pandemic Response Committee, 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 meeting in the parlor. 

Last week was Covenant Sunday, but if you have not filled out your financial covenant card, there is still time! The cards can be found on the entry table, and you can drop them for 2022 in the plate. They are also available our website.

Thanks to everyone who came to the work day yesterday! If you haven’t checked out the Fellowship Hall yet this morning, I encourage you to stop by and ooh and ahh over the work done. 

This afternoon at 5 pm, we will gather at John and Sondra Williams’ house on their back porch for our first meeting of Bible and Beer. We’ll drink beer, look at a scripture together, and enjoy each other’s company. If you need the address, it is sitting on the entry tables so you can write it down or snap a picture. Because it is an outdoor event, please note the cooler weather as the sun sets and dress warmly! 

And on December 4, ACC will have a booth at Azle’s Christmas on Main Street. Sign-ups for shifts at the booth will be available starting this week. 

To keep with all the life we live together here at Azle Christian Church, make sure you follow us on Facebook and subscribe to our weekly e-blast and monthly newsletter. To sign up for the eblast and newsletter, go to our website, azlechristianchurch.org, and subscribe. There is also a live calendar on our website where you can see what we have going on each month.

In addition to Facebook, you can also find us on Instagram and TikTok, both at @azlechristianchurch.

We are nearing the end of our series: Wishin’, Hopin’, Prayin’: Longing for God in a Chaotic World. Today, we travel way back in time to before Israel was even a kingdom and consider their origin story.

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.

Pastoral Prayer

The Lord be with you.

Most Holy One, God of the healed, Creator on the move, what else is there to say except thank you? Are any words adequate to address You on this cool morning in this warm place before the table You have set before us? Thank You, thank You, thank You. 

The sun rises and plays peek-a-boo in the clouds, delighting in giving light to the world, the dew kisses the grass affectionately each morning, and the birds hug the air as they take their first flight of the day. Each part of creation exists in a state of gratefulness to the One who made them, to the One whose breath gave them existence, to the One who sustains their life. May we even know half of what it is for our hearts to beat the rhythm of “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” a beat ingrained into the music of the spheres.

We confess, O God, that we do not say thank you enough. But God, we ask for that which is in us that may return in gratefulness to be cultivated, so that our mustard seed “thank you” will one day overtake the garden of our life like a kudzu plant, whispering, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” as it grows and expands. 

You, Holy One on the move, may we catch You on your way, may we be bold enough to address You and humble enough to ask for mercy, and may we always come back saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

And now we pray together the prayer that our brother and redeemer Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father…”

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

1 Samuel 8:1-9

 When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. 2 The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beer-sheba. 3 Yet his sons did not follow in his ways, but turned aside after gain; they took bribes and perverted justice.

4 Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5 and said to him, “You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.” 6 But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” Samuel prayed to the Lord, 7 and the Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8 Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. 9 Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

We have been in a series called Wishin’, Hopin’, Prayin’ in which we have been looking at the longings, hopes, and prayers in scripture—what did our faith forebears hope for? How do their prayers inform ours today? What do we do with longing unfulfilled? And today, we’re looking at Israel’s longing for a king. It comes early in the Hebrew Bible and is followed by lots of prophets saying, “Maybe this was not a good idea.” 

Our story begins today at the end of Samuel’s life. The priest has grown old, the text tell us. We read his birth story a few months ago: how his mother Hannah had earnestly prayed for a child, a son, and when she had Samuel, she brought him back to the priest Eli to be raised and dedicated to God’s work. And here we are at the end: he has done a good job. Later on in 1 Samuel, he will address Israel for the last time and no one will have a complaint against him.

But right now, there is a complaint and it has to do with his two sons: Joel and Abijah. They are not great. They are corrupt men: they profiteer, take bribes, and pervert justice—actions that strike to the heart of the covenant relationship Israel has with God. It’d be one thing if Samuel and his sons had another job—but they were judges. Where will justice come from if the judges appointed to ensure justice in the land are instead perverting it for their own gain? 

At this point in Israel’s history, the nation is a loose federation of tribes, governed by judges. This is no longer the small band of people in the desert: the Israelites have grown and expanded and have real, honest-to-God nation problems. We already know their leaders do not inspire confidence. But they are also experiencing military threats from the Philistines—you know the nation where Goliath comes from. They are feeling the heat. No wonder they’re asking for a king. The people will say later on this chapter that they want a king so they he can “fight their battles”—the threat of conquest and domination looms large in their collective imagination. 

And to add to the physical and political insecurity of their existence, they had a lot of land and property to consider. They had more than just the packs on their backs now—they had vested economic and political interests that needed to be protected. They just want to “be like the other nations,” the ones they’re rubbing up against in friendship and in conflict. 

But you see, Samuel’s concern is that this request for a king is not only a sociopolitical request. This is Israel we’re talking about. This is a people whose very identity is based on the fact that they are not like other nations. They are to be set-apart, God’s people, distinct from the world around them. How can Israel maintain its unique connection to God in covenant if they become like other nations? How can Israel have an earthly king without undermining the sovereignty of God?

This covenant relationship did not appear out of nowhere. It came as a response to oppression and suffering. This covenant was created precisely outside of vested interest power arrangements. It’s important to remember that the Israelites did not overthrow the Egyptians—they were delivered from them. The Israelites did not take over Pharaoh’s palace—they wandered the desert and worshiped God under the stars, in a collapsible tent. 

So this desire for a king represents a significant shift in Israel: away from distinctive community and toward conformity with the patterns of other people. In this case, they are shifting from a delivered desert people to a nation with a head of state and centralized military and economic power. As they move from a decentralized, shared rule of judges to a monarchy, what’s at stake is not a mere governmental detail of who is in charge—it’s the very identity and particularity of Israel. 

And if we were to keep reading this chapter, we would see that Israel wants a king to fight their battles for them. But Samuel is quick to say: he will not fight your battles for you, you will fight his battles for him. Because what kings do is take. They take your sons and turn them into cogs in the military machine. They take your daughters and turn them into feeders of the product lines. They take your land—the fields, the vineyards, the olive groves—and use them up in service to the kingdom. They will take your servants, your livestock, and your flocks, and dub them the kingdom’s property. All that is yours—even your very life—will be yours no longer. 

So, no, a king will not fight your battles. You will fight his. A king will not lead you, he will rule over you. A king will not facilitate abundance and common interest, he will take what he wants and hisinterest will reign supreme. 

But like a comical Monty Python movie, the people ignore Samuel’s warning and say, “A king! We want a king!”

So according to our text, God rubs God’s temples and sight, “Just give them a king. It’s not you, it’s me.”

This conflict between whether or not a king is the right decision is an undercurrent of 1 and 2 Samuel. Even as King David is anointed and blessed, Samuel’s voice in the background serves as a warning to the people. This is not the deliverance you think it is, he whispers. 

I’ll save you the trouble of reading the rest of the Hebrew Bible this morning to see how the kingdom thing works out: in the very long line of kings, including when Israel and Judah split into two nations, there are only two unproblematic ones. Only two good kings. And our most famous ones, David and Solomon, are not it. Hezekiah and Josiah—those are the only palatable kings. 

In the book of Judges, the book that immediately precedes 1 Samuel, the story ends with the lines, “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” And let me tell you, that theme will extend to the era of kings, but this time—it’s not just the regular folk. The very wealthy and powerful people do what is right in their own eyes, with little accountability, in the name of God. 

And while 1 Samuel is written from the perspective of real time—that whoever penned the story is writing as if in his study at the end of each day—we know that this part of scripture was written during the Babylonian exile. The Israelites were living in Babylon—their beloved Jerusalem destroyed and their loved ones killed, the survivors carried off as captives of big, bad Babylon. They were forced to live as slaves to another nation, separated from the people and spaces that anchored their identity. 

And so they wrote down their history as an act of self-preservation. They told their stories quietly at the dinner table. They obsessively scanned the timeline to see what had gone wrong. How could this happen to them? Ah, don’t you remember old Samuel warning us? One man may have said. And another would respond, “Yes, but then God anointed King David! So I think it was fine!” And then another would chime in, “Well, look how his reign turned out. Murders, assaults, family drama. God anointed? That seems generous.” That response was probably a wise woman. 

We see this conflicted storytelling throughout 1 and 2 Samuel. This struggle to preserve their identity, their dignity, their hope for their people. 

But even without this context of authorship and timelines, I bet we could have guessed the king stuff was a mixed bag at best. Of course, we have millennia of hindsight, but we’re also people who live under the rule of an imperfect government. To be clear—Americans are not a continuation of ancient Israel. We are not special in the way ancient Israel was special. Our separation of church and state is very different than the theological government we see constructed in 1 Samuel. Different cultures, different continent, different millennia. 

But no matter where we fall on the political spectrum here in the U.S., we do wrestle with how to best mix our theological and sociopolitical desires. Because the way we draw on our faith, our covenants, and our experience in church community does inform how we live in the rest of the world, doesn’t it? I hope so. Our bone-deep beliefs of justice, of liberation, of peace—those are not things we simply like on social media, but they are ways of living and being in the world that we inherit through our practices in church, through our individual meeting with the Divine, through our encounters with scripture and faith tradition. Our best hopes as citizens of a nation in this world are in part formed by our identity as Christians. 

And whether we like it or not, we live inside governing structures. We adhere to laws and pay our taxes and go to the voting booth with our convictions. And as people of faith, we try to figure out how to merge our theological desires about community and flourishing with what is written on a ballot. We advocate for imperfect leaders, we act as a thorn in the side of some of them in hopes they will change their minds, we talk to our friends and family, we pray.

Because on one hand, our actions in the political sphere are powerful ways to love our neighbor. To make their lives better in tangible, measurable ways. And on the other hand, as much as we just want our government to function dang it, we also know that it is woefully inefficient. We are always in conflict about how to best merge our highest hopes as Christians with our scaled expectations as citizens of this world. We are doing our best.

And all the while, we keep gathering around this table. We keep serving each other the bread, trusting that something that is broken will somehow make us whole. And we keep pouring the cup, trusting that something that is messy will somehow make us clean. And we keep remembering Jesus together, a man who came from a nation that wandered in the wilderness under no king, and who was ultimately murdered by the state. And we trust that this person whose name we now carry will somehow help us learn how to live in a world where we look forward to a kingdom, the reign of God, while also having no idea how that can be a good idea given the current state of affairs.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that this interaction between our faith and politics, the way they are threaded so delicately, is fraught. And what we see here in 1 Samuel is that it has always been fraught.

The Israelites had a lot of valid reasons to be scared, to be concerned, to be frustrated. They had a strong military power breathing down their necks. Their leaders-elect, Joel and Abijah, were not trustworthy. They had grown in number as a nation and had very real issues they needed to take care of. 

And the testimony we have from a reflection of that time, from 1 and 2 Samuel, is conflicted—is a king a good idea? It’s not clear. 

And it’s not clear how to engage our own faith and our sociopolitical decisions in a way that maintains our integrity and prioritizes our faith commitments. 

Unfortunately, scripture is not a guidebook. It’s a witness to the world God wants. 

It testifies to the hopes and fears of a people, of persons. 

And echoing through this messy time in Israel’s history is that millennia later, we know we are not alone in our hand-wringing, in our desire to want what God wants and bring more of what God wants in this world.

I mentioned that the line of kings that will come after this moment is not encouraging. But the leaders are not the only important people in the long story of Israel. 

For every bad leader, there was a prophet or two, committed to hearing from God about how Israel could love their neighbor better and more faithfully. There were voices in the wilderness and in the town square calling the people to account, not letting them forget their covenant. There were average people gathering around tables telling the story again of their distinctiveness, of the way they were called to be different than those around them. 

And that witness is still true today. May we have ears to hear. 

Amen.

Stewardship Moment

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:

May the peace of Christ go with you wherever He may send you

May He guide you through the wilderness, protect you through the storm

May He bring you home rejoicing at the wonders He has shown you

May He bring you home rejoicing once again through our doors

Amen.

Wishin’, Hopin’, Prayin’ - Wishing for a Miracle (John 11:17-37)

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 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. 

If you are missing Sunday School while we await the final unpacking of the boxes and updated guidance from the Pandemic Response Committee, 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 meeting in the parlor. 

Today is Covenant Sunday. During our offering, you will be able to drop your covenant cards for 2022 in the plate. You can also fill it out online on our website.  

Next Saturday, November 13, we will another church work day to get the church back in working order. Beginning at 8, but come when you can! 

And next week on November 14 at 5 pm, we will gather at John and Sondra Williams’ house on their back porch for our first meeting of Bible and Beer, where we will mull over scriptures together as we drink home-brewed beer. Bring a snack to share, and we’ll provide the beverages—both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. 

To keep with all the life we live together here at Azle Christian Church, make sure you follow us on Facebook and subscribe to our weekly e-blast and monthly newsletter. To sign up for the eblast and newsletter, go to our website, azlechristianchurch.org, and subscribe. 

In addition to Facebook, you can also find us on Instagram and TikTok, both at @azlechristianchurch.

Now, a word from our Pandemic Response Committee: 

The Pandemic Response Committee has advised the lifting of all safety restrictions *with the exception of masks.* Masks are still required at all times indoors. 

Activities that have been suspended may resume at the consensus of each group. Worship will continue to be live streamed each week. Wednesday meetings will continue on Zoom for the time being. Thank you.

We continues series today: Wishin’, Hopin’, Prayin’: Longing for God in a Chaotic World. Today, we join Mary and Martha with our questions for Jesus.

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: Christ came and announced the Good News of peace to you who were far away and to those who were near.

All: For through Christ, we all have access in one Spirit to our God.

One: This means that you are strangers and aliens no longer. No, you are included in God’s holy people and are members of the household of God, which is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus as the capstone.

All: In Christ, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in our God.

One: In Christ you are being built into this temple

All: To become a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

(Ephesians 2:17-22)

Pastoral Prayer

The Lord be with you. 

Since it is the first Sunday of the month, we will conclude our prayer today by singing the Lord’s Prayer. 

Join me in prayer.

Miracle-Maker, Great Healer, Astonishing God, we’ve got some questions. We admit that You have done great things, mighty things, miraculous things. We need only consider the Red Sea parting, the migration pattern of the monarch, and the birth of the cosmos to stand in awe of what You can do. 

But we also wonder about the things You didn’t do. For every healed person in our lives, there are ten who died. For every incredible miracle, there are a slough of tragedies, disappointments, and letdowns. What good is hope when it goes unfulfilled? What good is prayer when it goes unanswered all the time? 

We stand at our own personal tombs with Mary and Martha, greeting your late arrival with questions. Where have You been? If you’d only been here. If only you’d intervened. 

Who says we can’t hold the Great Holy One to account when our whole lives are based on promises, on covenants, on an understanding that You are supposed to be here with us? 

Answer us, O God. Speak to the tenderness behind our despair, the soft places behind our anger. Hear us out, weep with us a little, stand before our tombs with us. See what we have endured waiting for You. 

And as we are at the edge of hope that anything can be done, surprise us with a miracle again. Give us Your vision to see clearly not just the miracle we were hoping for, but also the miracle before us now. 

It is with this plea that we sing together the prayer Jesus gave to us…

Sing Lord’s prayer (CH 310)

Sermon

John 11:17-37

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

We are doing something this morning we shouldn’t be doing. 

We’re hopping into the middle of a story and isolating a portion of it rather than reading it as a whole together. Normally, we try to read stories in their entirety so we get all the context: the characters, the conflict, the geographical information, the time stamps, the feel of the particular gospel. Matthew is talking to Jewish people specifically. Mark is in a hurry. Luke needs you to know every single detail and cheats off of Mark a lot. And John? Well, he’s a different bird. Some gospels begin with a story or a reference to the Hebrew Bible to set the scene. John starts with a poem about the beginning of existence, no big deal.

And reading stories in their entirety is important because we need as much help as we can get when approaching the strange stories of our sacred text. It’s a story written by and for people in a different millennium, in a different religion, in a different culture, on a different continent. Imagine trying to explain pagers to kids today. Not just what they are, but why we needed them, who still uses them, why they became mostly obsolete, the technology, everything, and this explanation is all because there is a story that mentions someone losing their pager. And then multiple the complexity of that task that by 200. 

But we’re ignoring that wisdom this morning. I won’t tell if you won’t.

You know the story we’re in today. The miraculous resurrection of Lazarus. We don’t have to agree on the fact or embellishment of this story, we just have to nod that a miracle has happened according to John. 

But considering this story is known as the resurrection of Lazarus, that his death is the main conflict of the story, the time given to the actual act of resurrecting is minuscule. What’s given the most time, instead, is Jesus’s conversations with Mary and Martha. What’s given the most narrative space is not the miracle, but the grief. 

Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, are dear friends of Jesus. We didn’t read it, but earlier in the text, Mary is referenced as the one who anointed Jesus’ feet with perfume. She’s a legend. 

And while traveling, Jesus gets word that Lazarus is sick and decides not to rush over but to hang out where he is for a couple of days. And by the time he visits the family, Lazarus has been dead for 4 days. Four is the magic number culturally to tell us that Lazarus is dead dead. Make no mistake about it—he’s very dead.

And when Jesus finally moseys on over to the family house, he has some explaining to do. Martha comes to him first: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Mary will say the exact same thing in a few minutes, which makes me think that these sisters had been having conversations over the past few days about the absence of Jesus. 

They don’t make requests of Jesus, which I find interesting. They just present him with the facts: Lazarus died. We told you he was sick. You didn’t come. If you had, maybe Lazarus wouldn’t have died. You can hear their anguish in this haunting hypothetical.

Jesus responds, “something something resurrection” that Martha doesn’t quite understand, and that we don’t need to focus on right this minute. What is isolated in this exchange between Jesus and the sisters is they were both hoping for a healing from the Great Healer. The Miracle Worker. What’s the use of having a wonder-working friend if they leave you wondering where they are when you need them most? This seems to be the sentiment of the crowd at the end of our reading, too. No use in having special God powers if you can’t use them on your friends! 

As Jesus listens to Mary, he is surrounded by the cries of the mourners around him. Wailing echoes in the halls of the home, and he seems to be overcome with what has happened. So he asks Mary, the Anointing Prophetess herself, “Where is he? Where have you laid him?” And they go together the tomb and Jesus begins to weep. 

We know how the story ends, a part we didn’t read together today. Lazarus, come out! And stinky, formerly dead Lazarus stumbles out in burial rags with life in his eyes. We know where this story is going.

So I wonder why Jesus was weeping. Was he weeping for his friend? For himself who would taste death, too, soon and very soon? Was he weeping because of the reality of death in general and what it does to our lives? Who can discern the ways of God?

Rabbi Ariel Burger, a devoted student of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, tells a story of his son’s friend, Mason. His son and Mason went to Poland on a school trip and while they were there, they visited Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp. And during their stay in the country, Mason disappears for a day and doesn’t return for dinner. The next morning, Burger’s son asks Mason where he was, and Mason tells him this story, “My grandparents were Jews in Poland when the Nazis invaded. They were married and three weeks later, they were detained at Auschwitz. The men and women were separated, and at the end of each day, my grandpa would sneak a potato or a piece of bread over the fence to my grandma. 

Well, one day, my grandma was not at the fence. She had been transferred to work on a rabbit farm in the women’s camp, where the Nazis did cruel experiments on the rabbits. The rabbits were supplied by a local Polish rabbit farmer who quickly realized that his rabbits were treated more humanely than the prisoners, so he began to sneak in food to the prisoners whenever he could. 

And while working on the farm, Mason’s grandma got a cut on her arm that became infected. It wasn’t life-threatening as long as one had antibiotics. But the Nazis were not going to provide any kind of medical care to the ones they imprisoned, and it seemed like she was going to die from this infection. So the rabbit farmer, realizing her condition, cut his arm, touched his wound to hers to get the infection, and the next day, went to talk to the Nazi officers. 

He said, “I’m your best rabbit farmer. If I die from this infection, you will lose the work you have done.” So they gave him antibiotics, and the rabbit farmer shared them with Mason’s grandma, who recovered. He saved her life.

While in Poland, Mason found out that this rabbit farmer was still alive, and on the day he disappeared from the group, he was visiting this farmer. He went to say to the man, “Thank you for my life.”

What does it mean for someone to touch their wound to another’s? To share in the wound of someone we could so easily ignore?

We are collectively experiencing complicated grief—a kind of loss that has not had appropriate venues for mourning. Even in our normal times, what our culture deems as appropriate timelines and expressions of grief is anemic, but these two past years have been catastrophically bad. 

So many people have died and we have not been able to have funerals or bring casseroles or visit hospital rooms. So many things have been lost and we have tried to grapple with it over Zoom and FB Live, doing the best we can, but knowing it’s not the same as weeping together in the same room. Our grief is quite backlogged. It’ll take us awhile to work through it, and it comes spilling out in weird ways. In desire for control, in accusations like Mary and Martha’s, in demands for a normal that will never be again, in constant activity, in emotional paralysis. We want some healing, we want a miracle, but we’re so tired of waiting.  

But even with Lazarus alive again in later verses, it’s interesting to note that he will never be alive again without the touch of death. He was dead for days. His resurrection does not erase the experience of death for him or for his sisters. It is resurrection, after all, not preservation of what was. It was a miracle, not a recovery. 

Perhaps, in John, the miracle is in the camaraderie, in the in-it-togetherness, in the fact that if we’re going to weep, we’re going to be surrounded by people weeping with us. 

That the one who was there at the creation of the cosmos, as John tells us, is right there at the end, too, saying, “You’re right. It’s not fair. Death has wrought havoc and has marked you in a way that you will never be the same. And also. I am here with you, too.”

We all have our haunting hypotheticals, our if-onlys: if only they had not gotten sick, if only we had gotten there sooner, if only I had locked the door, if only I had said goodbye. 

And Jesus takes them all, and says, “I know, I know.” And that is a miracle. 

Amen.

Communion

Stewardship Moment

Rick will come up and talk about Covenant Sunday. 

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:

As we go out from this place, 

May we trust that our questions bring us closer to miracles,

Our what-ifs closer to faith,

Our hope closer to resurrection.

And may we experience the radical and vulnerable presence of Christ in all of it.

Amen.

Wishin', Hopin', Prayin' - Prayers of the Saints (Revelation 5)

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. 

If you are missing Sunday School while we await the final unpacking of the boxes and updated guidance from the Pandemic Response Committee, 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 meeting in the Narthex. 

Tomorrow night, 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. 

Tuesday at 6:30 is Disciples’ Men Ministry. 

Next week is Covenant Sunday on November 7. You will be receiving covenant cards in the mail and you can also fill one out online on our website. We have a special  stewardship video for this season you can watch on our website. Next week during our offering, we will collect the covenant cards to plan for our 2022 budget.  

And then two weeks from today on November 14 at 5 pm, we will gather at John and Sondra Williams’ house on their back porch for our first meeting of Bible and Beer, where we will mull over scriptures together as we drink home-brewed beer. Bring a snack to share, and we’ll provide the beverages—both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. 

We continues series today: Wishin’, Hopin’, Prayin’: Longing for God in a Chaotic World. Today, we dive into the spooky writings of the book of Revelation.

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: We are saved by God’s grace, through faith. 

All: This salvation is God’s gift. 

One: It’s not something we possessed. It’s not something we did that we can be proud of. 

All: Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. 

One: God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives.

All: We are saved by God’s grace, through faith.

(From Ephesians 2:8-10)

Pastoral Prayer 

The Lord be with you.

Tomorrow, we will have our All Saints service, and there will be time during the service to light a candle in prayer and to mention your beloveds by name, but as we worship together this morning, we also will remember the collective cloud of witnesses.  We will begin the prayer in a moment of silence, calling to our mind the faces and names of those we have lost, and then I will begin our prayer. As always, we will end it with the Lord’s Prayer.

Join me in prayer now.

Silence.

We give you thanks, O God, for all the saints who ever worshiped you

Whether in brush arbors or cathedrals,

Weathered wooden churches or crumbling cement meeting houses

Where your name was lifted and adored.

We give you thanks, O God, for hands lifted in praise:
Manicured hands and hands stained with grease or soil,
Strong hands and those gnarled with age
Holy hands
Used as wave offerings across the world.

We thank you, God, for hardworking saints;
Whether hard-hatted or steel-booted,
Head ragged or aproned,
Blue-collared or three-piece-suited
They left their mark on the earth for you, for us, for our children to come.

Thank you, God, for the tremendous foundation laid by those who have gone before us.
Bless the memories of your saints, God.
May we learn how to walk wisely from their examples of faith, dedication, worship, and love.

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.

Children’s Moment

It’s Halloween, so I’ve got my costume on. I’m an angel! Raise your hand if you have your costume planned for trick-or-treating tonight!

I say this is a costume because in our story today, there is a mighty angel. We often think angels in the Bible having wings like mine or looking like babies with wings or maybe glowing a bit. But angels were actually thought to be much spookier. They didn’t really look like people and they had lots of eyes. Which feels rights for Halloween. 

And since today is Halloween, that means tomorrow is All Saints Day. And on All Saints, we remember the people have died and we celebrate that in Christ, we are still connected to them. Not quite like a ghost or an angel, but through what we call “the communion of saints.” We believe that the love of Christ that we celebrate during communion every single week keeps us connected to everyone we’ve lost, whether it’s our family member or someone we’ve never even met. 

I’m gonna read a story about this connection in a book called The Invisible String.

Let’s pray: Dear God, thank you for the connection we have with people we love, no matter where we are. Help us remember that we are all always in your heart. In Jesus name, we pray, amen. 

Sermon

Our scripture for today is from Revelation 5. It is best to read Revelation as one entity, from beginning to end, in one sitting. Maybe one church service we’ll do that, but not today. But this text is unlike most texts we read together so I want to say a few things before we read it. 

First, it is an apocalyptic text, which means it’s dramatic with its symbolic imagery, and it’s from a book that has been wildly misinterpreted by many. We don’t read a lot of apocalyptic literature together. Advent always begins with an apocalyptic text from a gospel, but otherwise, we mostly stay clear of books like Daniel or Ezekiel or Revelation in part because our strain of Protestantism doesn’t like to tread much into the radical duality of the apocalyptic. It feels dangerous and spooky. But on a day like today, perhaps, a little spooky is what we need. Halloween feels like a good day for goosebumps. 

Second, Revelation is not only apocalyptic literature, but it’s also a letter, and it’s not a letter to us. Just like 1 Corinthians is not a letter to us, but a letter from the apostle Paul to the church in Corinth, Revelation is a letter to Christians in Rome from what has been traditionally attributed to John. Of course, 1 Corinthians does still mediate the word of God to us, but not in the way it did to the original readers. And so with Revelation—it’s not for us, but as Christians, we can experience God through this mysterious text. And I take comfort in the fact that those Roman Christians probably didn’t find Revelation to be any more coherent than we will. However, they were a lot more open to the wily genre of the apocalyptic. They didn’t need a one-for-one literalism or a decoder ring—they knew that God could be experienced just as readily in the form of a seven-eyed Lamb dripping with blood or a bowl filled with the prayers of dead people as in a quaint story about Jesus feeding people on a hillside.

Third, John follows in the tradition of the biblical prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah. Culturally, we tend to think of prophecy as predicting the future, a supernatural gift of the occult. But that’s not how prophecy functions in the Bible. Prophecy is about interpreting one’s present in light of the movement of God. So for example, the events of history can be interpreted with this-worldly explanations. The wind that drove back the marshy waters of the Red Sea could be seen as a lucky break for the Israelites in the form of extreme weather. But it was the prophet Moses who interpreted the event as the mighty act of God that delivered Israel from Egypt and made them into God’s people. 

And likewise, here, the images we will read together are not meant to predict the future but rather to provoke, to invoke, to evoke, to vocare is the Latin root, which means to call out to the unsettled in our hearts, in our culture, in our church. The images do not lay things plain nearly as often as they stirs things up. And all apocalyptic literature operates from a framework of duality, of a black or white, yes or no, this or that view of the world. Obviously, we know that there are many shades of gray in the world and in our lives, and it’s that knowledge that helps us lament the polarization of our culture. Rarely are things clear-cut. However, the drama of the duality is not meant to be a documentary-esque commentary on our lives, but instead to plunge us into a magical, often terrifying world—think Alice in Wonderland—to see our world with renewed imagination. The apocalyptic gives our imagination new vocabulary.

Okay, caveats made . The text is on the back of your bulletin if you’d like to follow along.

Revelation 5

Then I saw in the right hand of the one seated on the throne a scroll written on the inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals; 2 and I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” 3 And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. 4 And I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. 5 Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

6 Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7 He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne. 8 When he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 They sing a new song:

“You are worthy to take the scroll

    and to open its seals,

for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God

    saints from every tribe and language and people and nation;

10 you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God,

    and they will reign on earth.”

11 Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12 singing with full voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might

and honor and glory and blessing!”

13 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing,

“To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb

be blessing and honor and glory and might

forever and ever!”

14 And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” And the elders fell down and worshiped.

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. 

I grew up in a world obsessed with the end times. Very soon, maybe this very minute, Jesus would come collect his people and the world would have a few Christian-less years left and then burn up into oblivion. Who cares about the earth because Christians would be riding first-class in the Jesus-mobile. But as a kid not yet given the gift of skepticism, I worried that Jesus would come back while I slept and my parents would disappear in the middle of the night and I’d be left behind. I was afraid to go to sleep lest I wake to find that I was in fact not a real Christian and now left to fend for myself until the end of the world. It was an effective narrative for scaring some into the ranks of “true Christians.”

But the fire and brimstone urgency and the call to trust in Jesus because the world was coming to an end, unintentionally gave way to a lack of urgency in the tangible ways the world was actually ending. 

The rapid extinction of species, the filling of oceans with trash and oil, the warming of the climate, the melting ice caps, the starving polar bears, the unchecked deterioration of hope in progress along lines of race, gender, sexuality, and disability. Those problems rode in the backseat of the message of Jesus. Sometimes they didn’t even get to ride in the backseat— they had to ride in the trunk or the trailer or the car behind it and sometimes they even had to catch a bus on their own tab.

But what we know clearly today, what our world leaders are discussing right now, is that our world is warming at an alarming rate, and those at the bottom of our economic ladder suffer the most and quickest. And I don’t know about you, but some days it feels a little silly to be singing about hope. You know, these days, I still stay up at night thinking about the world ending but in a different way now, and I know I’m not alone. 

John Green, a popular writer and devout Episcopalian, shares my generation’s despair about climate change, and he wrote in his most recent book, “Part of our fears about the world ending must stem from the strange reality that for each of us our world will end, and soon.” He jokes maybe it’s just our narcissism as a species, and maybe he’s right. 

But in our valid angst about the world ending, we are also confronting the reality that the world has always been ending. We die, our beloveds die, our home gets sold to the highest bidder, our traditions fade away, a pandemic steals precious time away from us. The world as we know it is always ending faster than we can keep up. 

And compounding our anxiety about mortality is our American culture. Our particular brand of modernity is always telling us that infinity is around the corner, it’s at the bottom of our inbox or the stack of self-help books or the recesses of our Roth IRA account. It whispers the spells of “Productivity, efficiency, progress, the gospel of good better best.” We’re offered elixirs and potions that promise us we can be young forever, successful forever, agents of our perfectibility and stability. 

So it’s even harder to deal with catastrophic ending head-on, be it climate change or death, because we’re always being sold the idea that we will never die, that there is more than enough for everyone’s greed, even as the collateral damage of that narrative piles higher and higher every day.

The prophetic voices of scripture were speaking to people living in the Iron Age who were used to burying beloveds far more frequently than we do, so perhaps they still offer us something of real value. And so apocalyptic literature like the one we read today gives us a way to come at a few of these tender things sideways, if you will. We can look at some things peripherally before we face them head-on. As if we were scooting into the conversation.

So let’s step into this apocalyptic vision now. Don’t worry, we’ll go together and we won’t stay long. 

There are a few mystical creatures in our text today. Our mighty angel probably did not have dainty wings like the ones I wore earlier. There are undescribed creatures, so it’s up to your imagination what they are. But most affronting is the Lamb with seven eyes and seven horns, dripping with blood as if it had been slaughtered. It’s like a horror movie. 

And the Lamb enters the story because the mighty angel is looking around because the one on the throne with a scroll in his hand is wondering if there is someone worthy to open it. This is a question that’s been asked in scripture before: Is there anyone worthy? In this case, no, there isn’t. John weeps at this fact. 

We won’t get into what the scroll says because that’s outside of our purview this morning, but it’s end of the world stuff for a people in crisis. Not just anybody can read it. 

No one is worthy, that is, until the Lamb enters. 

But the Alice in Wonderland twist is that it’s not a Lamb that we are looking for. Because the elders have said, “Behold, the Lion of Judah! The Conqueror!” So when we turn our heads with John in this vision, looking for the King of the Pridelands, the mighty predator of the plains, we are shocked to see instead, a lowly prey who looks as if it’s been hunted by our expected predator. And this is the one who is worthy to open the scroll. 

Which feels in contradiction to how we sometimes think about the end of the world. Right? It’s certainly different than the end times theology I grew up with. We might have assumed that in the case of which comes first, the lion or the lamb? The lamb would come first. Love would be a provisional strategy of the earthly Jesus to accomplish God’s purposes. But eventually, when everyone had had their chance and love had not worked, the transcendent, eschatological violence of the Lion would replace it and take care of God’s business.

But that’s not what the vision implies. The Lamb does not accomplish God’s purposes by killing others, but by being killed by them. This goes against all respectable virtues and understandings of how the world works.

And if John had any question about what he was seeing, this image of the slain Lamb is affirmed by 4 creatures, 24 elders who are holding in their hands bowls of incense which are the prayers of the saints so they’ve got the backing of every single person who has died, and then more creatures and more elders and more angels that numbered myriads and myriads and thousands and thousands singing, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered. To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and power, etc.” 

We want to be careful not to attempt to solve this vision like a puzzle, but our minds are meant to be puzzled, to search for God in the fog of it.

And just as the original receivers of Revelation could encounter God in the jarring and mysterious language of the apocalyptic, so can we. 

Tomorrow we will celebrate All Saints Day together. We will light candles, and take communion with a special eye on the aspect of the table that extends across the threshold of death. We will use rituals and ceremony to remember the ones we can’t forget anyway. We will proclaim our faith that death, what feels like the ultimate separation, what feels like a fearsome Lion waiting to pounce, is actually, somehow, a revealer of life and love. 

That something as affronting and absurd as a slain Lamb is somehow a harbinger of hope. 

I loved Jenna’s sermon last week—there were all these nuggets of beauty, and if you missed it, I encourage you to go back and listen on the podcast, but one thing she said was that in the beginning, when it was just the Trinity, we were made in love, for love, by love, with love. Love was the beginning of us all. 

And here, eons later, on an earth that groans with warning signs and last ditch efforts to save itself, even here, in our moments of despair whether they be our own end, the end of our loved ones, or the end of our world, well, there is love still. We are in fact bookended by love. It hems us in in front and from behind. It tucks us in tightly the way I tuck my own daughter in at night. It is as sealed as the scroll the one on the throne holds and is opened up to us all by the only one worthy of it.  

The prayers of the saints waft over us, reminding us of the absurdity of this love, of a love that transcends death, that knows no ending, whose resilience is paradoxically predicated on our own fragility. Our own delicate tethers to one another and to life. This love is strong because it is so very tender. It knows no end because it has truly known ending. It is not scared of what we are scared of because it has already faced the scariest thing of all.

May we catch a whiff of the prayers of the saints, the saints we will remember tomorrow, that tell us that the end looks like love. Amen.

Sharing Our Resources

This past week, Scottie, our church historian, found quite a few documents and ledgers. And she found this ledger from 1946, a time when Azle Christian Church was in dire financial straits. And the note reads: *Read note*

No matter what life has looked like here at Azle in its long history, the focus of this church has always been outward in the name of Jesus. That is a legacy that we continue to live into no matter the state of our building or the state of our public health. During this pandemic, emails have flown back and forth about how much to donate to Southwest Good Samaritan because they’re in need, too, and who is going to construct a ramp for so-and-so, and how many grocery bags should we pick up for Food Hub or the Little Pantry. 

We believe that stewardship is a spiritual practice that relinquishes us from Pharaoh’s economy, from an economy that says we must hoard and hide and store up for ourselves. Stewardship allows us to affirm again and again that it is not our money, it’s God’s money. We do this as a church whether we are mailing eggs to an orphanage or buying a refrigerator for our friends at the border or giving a gas card to a transient neighbor. And we do this individually when we give our offerings in worship.

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 comes from the book of Hebrews:

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,

Let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,

And let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,

Looking to Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith. 

Amen.