Azle Church

September 25, 2022

Sunday Morning Worship

Study Hall: Roll Call (Colossians 4:2-18)

Azle Church

September 25, 2022

Sunday Morning Worship

Introit: O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go - 540

Call to Worship

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

This morning, we will sing songs of worship, pray together, hear from scripture and one another, as we move toward the pinnacle of our service: the table of our Lord, where we will take the bread and drink the cup in remembrance of our most Gracious Host, Jesus. The purpose of our time together each Sunday is to bring our hearts closer to the heart of God, so I invite you to participate in as much or as little in our prepared liturgy as your spirit is willing.

We welcome all sounds and smells from the youngest to the oldest among us. The Kids Corner is in the back for anyone who needs to move around and play to worship God this morning. There is also a nursery available. We know that the energy and spirit of children can be different than adults and we consider that reality a gift.

There are information cards in the pew in front of you—if you are a guest, or if you have moved and have not updated your info with the church, please fill it out and drop it in the offering plate when it goes by later in worship.

For those watching online or for those who would like to follow along, our liturgy for every service is posted on our website before the service begins.

We invite you to Sunday School at 10 AM every week. There’s classes that meet in the Seekers room and the Parlor. There is also a combined children and youth class that meets in the MUB. Godly Play meets behind the sanctuary for our younger elementary students.

If you’re looking for a way to connect with God throughout the week, we invite you to subscribe to our podcast, wherever you find your podcasts. Each month, we will be offering a lectio divina episode. It’s less than 10 minutes—you’ll hear from multiple voices in the congregation. It’s a guided scripture and prayer practice that is accessible even to the novice podcast listener.

This Wednesday is our final Gospels and Groceries of the year on Wednesday, September 28. We’ll invite you to bring food for the Little Free Pantry and have your hymn choices ready for our hymn sing.

This Saturday is our Cabinet Retreat, from 9-12 here at the church. If you are on the cabinet, you should have received an email from me already. It is a potluck, so be sure to bring your favorite breakfast item to share, even if that item is just orange juice.

Also, don’t forget the golf tournament is just a few weeks away—October 15. If you have not yet signed up to volunteer, make sure you check with Rick Seeds this week.

To keep up with all the life we live together here at Azle Christian Church, make sure you follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Make sure you’re downloaded the Realm app to stay up to date!

We continue our back-to-school worship series this morning: Study Hall: A Series on the Letter to the Colossians.

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.

Call to Worship: Gather Us In - 284

Litany of Faith

One: Hallelujah! Give praise, you servants of the LORD; praise the name of the LORD.

All: Let the name of the LORD be blessed, from this time forth for evermore.

One: From the rising of the sun to its going down let the name of the LORD be praised.

All: High above all nations is the LORD, whose glory is above the heavens.

One: Who is like the LORD our God, who sits enthroned on high but stoops to behold the heavens and the earth?

All: The LORD takes up the weak out of the dust and lifts up the poor from the ashes.

(From Psalm 113)

Pastoral Prayer

The Lord be with you.

We hold in prayer Paul Reed, who is in the hospital. We also continue to hold in prayer our brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona. And we hold in prayer the women and people in Iran undergoing violent oppression.

Join me in prayer.

Holy God, you have knit us together in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of Christ our Lord. This communion and fellowship that we celebrate each week at the table in indeed a mystery, an enigma, a poem. And yet we acknowledge that our connection to one another in Christ is the truest thing we know. Give us grace to follow all those who have gone before us in faithfulness, that we may come to those joys that you have prepared for those who love you.

You have surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses. They are witnesses whose life and death tell us of the glory to be found in a life spent with God, and they also bear witness to that glory in us. May we be encouraged by their example and may we persevere in running the race that is set before us, until at last we come to our eternal joy, through Jesus Christ, the pioneer and perfector of our faith, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Grant us, most gracious God, during our lives that we may be supported by the fellowship of the church universal. We confess that we don’t know where the edges of that church universal are, where it stops, if it stops. We know that all of creation, all people of the world is held in your heart, and we trust that there are yet mysteries of your love that we do not know, that we may never know. And so we entrust those who share our surname as a church, Christian. And we entrust those who go by a different name, acknowledging that their experience with you is distinct and holy, too. Help us to abide in love and prayer, knowing ourselves to be surrounded by the communion of saints and their witness and mercy.

May their light bring warmth and illumination for our own journeys. May their whispers of wisdom help us hunger for a deeper wholeness found in you. May their stories thread into ours, even in ways unseen to us, so that we may be faithful, too.

We ask this in the name of our brother and redeemer Jesus, who taught us to pray…

Our Father, who art in heaven

Hallowed be Thy name

Thy Kingdom come

Thy will be done

On earth as it is in heaven

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors

And lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from evil

For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever.

Amen.

After Prayer: Spirit of the Living God - 259

Children’s Moment

Sermon

Colossians 4:2-18

2 Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving. 3 At the same time, pray for us as well, that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison, 4 so that I may reveal it clearly, as I should.

5 Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. 6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.

7 Tychicus will tell you all the news about me; he is a beloved brother, a faithful minister, and a fellow servant in the Lord. 8 I have sent him to you for this very purpose, so that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts; 9 he is coming with Onesimus, the faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. They will tell you about everything here.

10 Aristarchus my fellow prisoner greets you, as does Mark the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you have received instructions; if he comes to you, welcome him. 11 And Jesus who is called Justus greets you. These are the only ones of the circumcision among my coworkers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me. 12 Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, greets you. He is always striving in his prayers on your behalf, so that you may stand mature and fully assured in everything that God wills. 13 For I testify for him that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis. 14 Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you. 15 Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters in Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. 16 And when this letter has been read among you, have it read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and see that you read also the letter from Laodicea. 17 And say to Archippus, “See that you complete the task that you have received in the Lord.”

18 I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.

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

If you had to explain to someone how to pray, where you would you begin? Would you first begin with what a prayer is? Would you start with how you pray? Would you open up your Bible looking for clues? Or perhaps a poem? A song? A piece of theology?

Mother Teresa said that prayer is this: “I look at Christ and Christ looks at me.”

Marjorie Suchocki, a Disciples of Christ theologian, says that “Prayer changes the way the world is, and therefore changes what the world can be. Prayer opens the world to its own transformation.”

Max Lucado, an author many of you have been learning from, said that “Prayer is the window that God has placed in the walls of our world. Leave it shut and the world is a cold, dark house. But throw back the curtains and see God’s light.”

Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation said that “Prayer is climbing up into the heart of God.”

Anne Lamott said “Here are the two best prayers I know: Help me, help me, help me, and thank you, thank you, thank you.”

I, myself, have tried all sorts of prayers. I’m a dabbler. I am, in a way, a professional pray-er.

I’ve done the list prayers, working meticulously through the laundry list of people as I lay in my bed at night.

Throughout my teenage years, I kept a prayer journal. My attic is full of boxes of prayer journals from that time—I’m afraid to go through them. I use to try to think of an original name for God every single day. For years. I got very creative—outrageous things like “the chocolate in my milk.” These days, Most Holy One does the job.

I use prayer beads a lot right now. I got these in Hungary at a 1000-year-old church that I’ll tell you about sometime. It has St. Christopher on it, who is the patron saint of travelers. I don’t pray to Christopher, but I do appreciate his companionship. I like to use prayer beads especially when I’m feeling anxious, gripping one bead at a time and repeat a breath prayer: “Lord, have mercy on me” or “Christ within me” or sometimes just “Dear God, help.”

I write prayers and borrow prayers and share prayers during our pastoral prayer moment. Sometimes I use old, trusty sources like the Book of Common Prayer. Other times, I will borrow from an author or a theologian I follow on Instagram.

Many of you lead prayers with the children or from the table—ones you’ve written beforehand, ones you pray extemporaneously, or ones you’ve borrowed from people who said things just right.

There’s the silent prayers that float around after we take communion each week, an energy that somehow comes from the little wafer and sip of juice and a pinch of remembrance.

We have a prayer group that has met religiously throughout the years at Azle on Wednesday morning. They bring breakfast and brew coffee and catch up on all the goings on, and then they pray. In the words of one of the members, “You can’t pray on an empty stomach!”

Then there’s the reply-all prayer. Someone sends out an email or a group text: so-and-so is in the hospital. And quickly, the responses roll in: prayers abound, sending love to their family, oh mercy they’re in my prayers, prayer hands emoji, heart emoji.

If you’ve been to an ordination service, you know that an essential moment of the service is the laying on of hands. I was ordained in November 2020, so we couldn’t have a big gathering for this service. So many of you and others from all over sent in prayers written on hand cut-outs. Some of them have very eloquent prayers written on them. Others have a Bible verse. Some handprints are colored or painted or hand-stitched. One just says, “You go girl,” which is a prayer I now repeat a lot. And they were all taped on a prayer shawl that was draped over me during the laying on of hands, prayers transcending time and space and the ethers of the internet.

But prayer is not just words, right?

At the end of Sunday School each week, our parlor class does a centering prayer. Centering prayer is a time of sitting in silence expecting nothing, but only making one’s self available to God. Our goal is not enlightenment or holiness or an answer; our goal is simply God. We sit still for five minutes, and I play a meditative song to help ease the comfort level, and then we say amen and disperse.

Of course, Christianity does not own prayer.

We have all seen footage of Jewish men rocking back and forth at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, saying words, yes, but their body movement is also a part of that prayer. The act of putting a slip of paper into the wall is part of that prayer.

There is a branch of Islam called the Sufi Dervishes of the Mevlevi order, and they pray through a practice called sufi whirling. They spin around and around and around in white frocks listening for God.

Devotees of the Hindu religion pray through meditation, mantras, and yoga.

Mary Oliver said in a poem, “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields…” which I imagine is how some of you pray, feeling closest to God out in the garden, or on the lake, or with your cows.

It seems that prayer is a lot more multi-faceted than we might think.

Our text today begins with its own line on prayer: “Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving.” I don’t know what it means to devote one’s self to prayer, but I imagine that all the ways I’ve described must count.

I wish there were a way to know the prayers of all those the end of this letter to the Colossians mentions. I wish there were a way to know all of the people mentioned in this letter. This is the longest list of greetings of all the epistles in scripture. We know some of them from other Pauline letters: Onesimus, Luke, Epaphras. We have little tidbits of their stories. But the others are just names listed that we skim over in our reading, looking for the meat of the text.

Except, they are the meat.

Here’s what I mean.

We may not know everyone on this list. But I’m not sure that matters all that much. Because what this long list tells us is this group of people, all doing ministry differently, yet together, shaped Paul and his students. They shaped the church in Colossians.

They have shaped many Christians throughout history, including us, simply by being church. They worked hard, they opened the doors of their homes, they circulated the gospel, they wanted to finish well, they practiced interdependence.

We may not know all the details of their work, but the legacy of their faithfulness, of their own devotion to prayer and one another, has continued to ripple thousands of years later.

They are in a very real way, our faith ancestors.

And just like the Colossians had Tychichus and Onesimus and Aristarchus and Mark and Jesus who is now called Justus, and Ephaphras and Demas, and Nympha, so we, too, have people who are known only to us and to this community.

We pass down the names and stories of the ones whose memory spurs us on, but there are also some who are forgotten except for a stray membership roll from the 1930s. But even if we do not recognize the names on these rolls, even if we do not have records and memories of all those who have passed through these doors in the nearly 140 years of this church, they still shaped the lives of those we do know, of those who inherited the faith, of the spirit of Azle Christian Church. They, too, are our faith ancestors.

Indeed, there are even people who are not connected to ACC in any way that have shaped your faith. People who go to a different church or no church at all. People who live nearby and people who live far away. People who are still alive and people who have joined the cloud of witnesses. They, too, are our faith ancestors.

They are our ancestors just as much “the wandering Aramean who was our ancestor,” which is the first line of the story story the Hebrew people used to recite before giving their offering in worship. Because offering a litany of those who have gone before us as an act of remembrance and worship is a practice that precedes us and our Christian faith by thousands of years.

And this is also true: we are not only a descendant of the Christian faith. We ourselves are also ancestors.

We are not just inheritors of the past, but we are also creating a future. How will we be faithful right now? How will we devote ourselves to prayer and thanksgiving here today? How will we be good ancestors?

Marjorie Suchocki, the Disciples of Christ theologian I mentioned earlier says that “Prayer creates a channel in the world through which God can unleash God’s will toward well-being. Prayer puts you in the way of the channel, and you will become a part of God’s rolling waters.”

Essentially, through prayer, the one who prays, the pray-er, becomes the prayer itself. By putting ourselves in the way of the rolling waters of God.

We can trust that we don’t have to be famous or do big shiny things for God to help create the future. We just have to step into the mystery that is Christ, every day, every moment, together.

Because this is also true:

We see in this last bit of Colossians that the life of faith is collaborative. It’s a group project, if there ever was one. And it’s a long project, an ongoing experiment.

And we all are giving ourselves to this experiment in our own way, in our diverse gifts, in our distinct way of showing up. We are doing our small things with great love, as Mother Teresa urged us.

And our prayer lives, however different they may be from one person to the next, from one season to the next, reveal the beautiful tapestry of faith, how we are all interwoven together, even in ways that remain hidden to us now.

By committing to this community of faith, to Christ himself, we have essentially devoted our lives to being present to God, to listening for God, to living our lives in front of the Most Holy One, in the presence of the chocolate to our milk.

And this is also true:

In this great experiment that is the Church, in this beautiful, holy, messy endeavor, we are all doing the work of meaning-making together. We are deciding for ourselves, and for our descendants in the faith what faith is here and now. We are working hard, opening our doors, circulating the gospel, thinking about finishing well, and practicing interdependence.

Because in a life devoted to prayer, we are in conversation not only with God, but also with one another.

There’s an old saying: God doesn’t need the church, but God knows we do.

By finding the traces of ourselves in this litany of names and by imagining how we could make similar lists, we are claiming a tradition that does not care for institutions, but it does care about communities in their specificity. It cares about people in the particular.

Which is less conclusive and tidy than we might like, but what is a prayer anyway? It’s climbing into God’s heart. It’s opening a window. It’s looking at Christ and letting Christ look back at us through each other. And it’s so much more vibrant and freeing that way.

So may we be like Tychichus and Onesimus and Aristarchus and Mark and Jesus who is now called Justus, and Ephaphras and Demas, and Nympha. Even if we are only ever known to one another and to God.

Amen.

After Sermon: Come, Let Us Join with Faithful Souls - Insert

Sharing Our Resources

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 with 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 for this series is from Colossians 3, and it’s our last week for it. Receive this blessing:

May the word of Christ live in us richly.

And whatever we do,

Whether in speech or in action,

May we do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus,

Giving thanks to God.

Amen.

Benediction: Weave - 495

Doxology

Azle Church

August 28, 2022

Sunday Morning Worship

Study Hall: First Day (Colossians 1:1-23)

Azle Church

August 28, 2022

Sunday Morning Worship

Introit: God, Whose Giving Knows No Ending - 606

Welcome/Call to Worship

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

For those watching online or for those who would like to follow along, our liturgy for every service is posted on our website before the service begins.

The Seekers Sunday School class invites you to game night this Wednesday at 6:30 pm.

Sting Fling is just around the corner! On Saturday, September 10, we’ll host a booth to tell people about Azle Christian Church and what it means to us. If you’d like to volunteer for a two-hour shift, you can find a sign-up sheet at the entry tables, and I’ll be in the back with one. You can also use the sign-up in your blast.

Rick: Golf Tournament

To keep up with all the life we live together here at Azle Christian Church, make sure you follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Subscribe to our weekly e-blast and monthly newsletter on our website.

We begin a new worship series this morning: Study Hall: A Back to School Sermon Series. We’ll be learning and working together through the book of Colossians. This morning, we cover the First Day essentials.

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.

Call to Worship: God of Grace and God of Glory - 464

Litany of Faith

One: I, Wisdom, dwell with prudence; I have found knowledge and discretion.

All: I was formed in ancient times, at the beginning, before the earth was.

One: I was there when God established the heavens, when God marked out the horizon on the deep sea;

All: I was there when God thickened the clouds above, when God secured the fountains of the deep.

One: Now children, listen to me: Happy are those who keep to my ways!

All: Happy are those who listen to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorposts.

(From Proverbs 8)

Pastoral Prayer

The Lord be with you.

Join me in prayer.

O Holy Maker of this great green earth,

Great source of all the energy of creation;

Wonderful God of fruitful orchards

And chirping choruses in the night,

We gather in your presence

To celebrate your gifts of life and community.

We come to pray and sing and celebrate,

To share our burdens and our joys.

We come because you have called us to be your people,

One small part of the Body of Christ.

You bless us with community;

You guide us into close relationships;

You tend to our wounds, you speak to us through our broken bodies;

Your mercy knows no end.

God, we give you praise and thanks,

For all the richness in this world you’ve made,

And for making room for us here in your family of faith.

Reveal yourself to us in the prayers

And the stories

And the songs we share,

For we gather in your name.

And so we pray the prayer together that Jesus, our brother and redeemer, gave us to hold onto:

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.

As the Deer - Insert

Children’s Moment

Anthem: ACC Choir

Sermon

Colossians 1:1-23

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

2 To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

3 In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel 6 that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. 7 This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, 8 and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

9 For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to God, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from God’s glorious power, so that you may have all endurance and patience, joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, 16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to God’s self all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

21 And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before God, 23 provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a minister of this gospel.

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

We begin a new series today: Study Hall. Today is our First Day, so in true First Day fashion, let us take an overview of the subject, shall we?

Let’s begin with the text we’ll be using.

The letter to the Colossians is traditionally attributed to the apostle Paul when he was in prison, but scholarship tells us that it was likely a student of Paul’s who wrote it. It was customary and a sign of respect to write in the same vein as a teacher, and Colossians is likely the closest in theology and tone to Paul’s actual writing as these pseudo-Paul letters get.

And let us remember, us Biblical literature students, that Colossians is an epistle. It’s a letter from a person to a church, to a couple of churches actually. It’s not a theological treatise, it’s not a history report nor is it a prescription for Christian living. It’s somebody’s mail, just one small part of an ongoing correspondence between two parties in a time and culture and language very different than our own, which means we have questions whose answers are lost to time. There are holes and gaps in the story that we will never be able to fill.

The letter to the Colossians is an ancient text that contains a lot of puzzle pieces that may seem incomprehensible to us at times. Except it’s not puzzle pieces from the same puzzle. We have a corner piece, and then a button, and perhaps a scatter jack, and an acorn. Alongside these curious findings, there is a piece of paper with a poem scrawled on it, and a picture of someone you don’t know with no name on the back. There’s a ticket stub in a foreign language and a key and a marble.

Our assignment during this series is not to try to make all of these things make perfect and complete sense. It’s not to prescribe whatever is being said to the Colossian church to our church.

It’s simply to roll the marble around in our hands. To read the poem out loud to each other. To spin the button between our fingers. To pass the acorn around, each of us having a look at it. It’s not that we don’t know anything about the letter to the Colossians. It’s simply that we don’t know everything. And so we politely open someone else’s mail, holding our own context in our hearts, and read with some imagination.

Because ancient texts were not always ancient. That may seem obvious, but it’s worth remembering. This letter to the community in Colossae was once a piece of contemporary correspondence to a particular community in a particular place and time.

So let’s consider what we know of our subject.

Colossae was a town in what is now modern-day Turkey. It was a cosmopolitan city where diverse cultural and religious elements mingled. It was part of the mighty Roman empire, where Pax Romana ruled. The concept of peace will become important throughout this letter, so let us remember what Pax Romana meant.

It meant that people lived without constant warfare. If you lived in the Roman Empire, you did not live under the threat of sudden attack and pillaging. You were protected from that instability, and you were reminded of this peace everywhere: on the gates to the cities, in your temples, in the victory parades that accompanied imperial worship, and on the coins you used to pay at the market.

These coins are an interesting piece of history because on one side, there was Pax, the goddess of peace. And on the other side, there was weapons. So that we always remember that this peace was achieved by the blood of the sword.

This peace was good for some. But it was also bad for others, and a marker of this peace was how it divided. It made the wealthy even wealthier and it made the peasants, the vast majority of the population, hopeless and impoverished.

The concept of peace seems trifling in a way because who threatens an empire known for its peace by proclaiming peace? But we will see over the next few weeks that peace is not trifling. Not at all.

The Roman empire was an empire. It ruled supreme. And empires maintain their sovereignty by not only by establishing a monopoly of markets and political structures and military might, but also by monopolizing the imagination of its subjects.

Imperial mythology is strong and seductive. Putting all one’s hope in a person, in a party, in a policy—it’s not something that just originated in the last few years or the last 200 years.

Trusting in the story empire tells about itself, which always posits the empire as the hero and the protagonist—this is not something that is unique to America or the Western world.

Worshiping military might or the economic system of empire—these are things that have been around for a long time.

And it’s easy to get sucked in because like I said before, the mythology is everywhere. On the money, on the city structures, in places of worship. It was a compelling and relatively peaceful way to live.

But there were other compelling ways of life available to the Colossians. The writer of this letter will speak about false teachers proposing different religious rules and esoteric knowledge available only to those in that particular strain of religious groups.

Being the ones who are right, who can talk the loudest or the longest, the ones who have access to God because they have removed themselves from participation in the world, that also was an attractive option in the marketplace of meaning.

Maybe you were fed up with the worship of the state because you saw how it abused its citizens and created and perpetuated oppression. Instead of living into the larger-than-life story of Rome, you could live the life of an ascete—like a monk philosopher, charmed by a group that might have had its own Netflix cult documentary about it if it existed today.

Even as the faithful Colossian church followed the lead of Judaism in resisting the emperor cult by observing alternative feasts and festivals, questions about how to live in this world together, spurred by the stories of Christ plagued them.

Should they free their slaves?

Should they be selling their goods to imperial high priests?

Should they give back the farms that became theirs because peasant owners could not pay their debts?

What does it mean for them to use their wealth for the pride of the city and the empire now that they no longer honored the emperor?

These are some of our learning objectives during this series.

The letter begins how most letters begin: with greetings and salutations. The writer applauds the church for their faith, for the way it has born fruit that feeds not only their life but even beyond their city limits. Sh or he subtly hints at the issue of these false teachers by praying for wisdom and knowledge and understanding, a nice little wink wink at these deceitful philosophies the letter will get at. There’s talk of kingdom and the world and powers of darkness. In this intro, we see some of these big questions the letter will address start to bubble up.

But our writer will not present a detailed argument for why Jesus is the best. They won’t give a syllabus of assigned reading or lead an impassioned debate about why Christianity is right and everyone else is wrong.

No, instead they quote poetry. A move I admire.

Just as Jesus would answer legal questions with stories and parables, which I’m sure was maddening, the writer to the Colossians answers real life issues with a poem. And even in translation, this poem cuts to our heart.

Christ is the image of the invisible God.

Christ was the firstborn of all creation.

For him, in him, through him, everything was created. Everything you can see and everything you can’t.

Christ is before all things.

In Christ, all things hold together.

He is the head of the church, he is the beginning.

The fullness of God dwelt in him. God was pleased to work through Christ to reconcile all creation to God’s self.

Some of this poem may sound familiar to you—to something we all said together earlier this morning. Our litany of faith is from Proverbs 8, where Lady Wisdom, known as Sophia in tradition, was with God in the beginning.

So that this poem is subtly drawing on ancient stories, and playing with beautiful philosophy with the flick of a verse. It’s playing on a whole repertoire of narrative and belief that is underlying the church.

Take it from this former English teacher, poetry can bring down kingdoms, y’all.

This poem, much like Jesus’ parables, is not a sidestep of the big questions. It’s not an evasion of the hard issues.

And I don’t think this is a simple “Jesus is the answer to your problems” response either.

Because I don’t think Jesus is the answer. Is that bad to say?

Perhaps, by alighting our imaginations with this poem, our writer is reminding us of Christ’s function not as a piece of the cosmos, but as the very fabric of it.

Christ precedes and creates the very world we live in. Christ is the medium of life, the milieu of meaning.

So that with everything the Colossians have going on, Christ is a field of exploration. Christ is not the door to Narnia, Christ is Narnia, so to speak.

Jesus is not the answer, no. Jesus is the question.

Jesus cannot be an object of conquest or the warrior king. He laid his life down. He said no to violence as a path to peace.

He is not a body of knowledge or the best and final explanation.

Christ is the open-ended question that we live into, every day, individually and with others, within a worldly kingdom, and somehow transcending it.

He provokes and pokes, he startles and offends, he lifts our awareness to something we didn’t notice, he speaks what we could not put into words.

And I wonder what it means for us that Christ is an open-ended question.

For we, too, live in a competitive marketplace of meaning and relevance. Empire worship is real in our context, but it’s certainly not the only offering of meaning. The worship of youthfulness, the obsession with positive thinking and progress, the allegiance to the status quo, the markets, the politicians, the ideologies, the intersecting pieces of oppressive structures in racism, classism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, etc.—these are all marked on our money and in our structures, and in our celebrations.

Is Christ just another piece of this world that we live in?

Or is he the animating force of all that is? Is his love the current, the breath, the beating heart of what it means to live with one another?

And how does that change how we live together in community? How do we engage the world at large and also in front of our faces day in and day out?

I don’t have the answer.

I only have the question.

Amen.

In Remembrance of Me - 403

Table Meditation

I invite you to prepare your elements for when we take them together in just a moment.

My family and I spent the first 2.5 weeks of August in Hungary, my spouse’s country of origin. It was Annie’s first time to set foot in a place that runs in her blood. It had been 4 years since JD was last there, 7 for me.

It’s funny when you arrive at a place you know. I kept wondering when we were actually in Hungary. Was it when we entered Hungarian air space? Or when our plane landed? Was it when we emerged into fresh air as we left the airport?

Or was it when drove into JD’s hometown and our eyes filled with familiar sights? Or was it in the embrace of his mother? Was it when we woke up to roosters crowing and young Hungarian mothers chiding their children to the bus stop?

Our first breakfast in Hungary was oatmeal for me and JD, a nutella sandwich for Annie. We sipped our first of a hundred espressos bleary-eyed as Annie tittered away her observations of everything she could see.

But as the first week wore on, we started eating. A lot. We ate pan-fried peppers, tomatoes, and onions so limp that they were practically noodles, dripping with butter and salt, yearning to be layered onto dry crumbly bread. We slurped cold fruit soup that blended cream and berries so magnificently that we thought we had ascended to the third heaven.

We ate pizza slice after pizza slice because you know that the closer you get to Italy, the better the pizza is. And we realized with every lick and lap of raspberry chocolate fagyi, or a scoop of nutella cookie fagyi, or a precariously layered cone filled with scoops of pistachio, sour cherry, and blackberry walnut fagyi, that being a Hungarian means being made up of at least 10% ice cream.

We celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary in Hungary, and as we stuffed our bellies to their breaking point with mountain food consisting of wild mushroom soup, duck confit and dreamily creamy potatoes, we inexplicably said yes, we would like to see a dessert menu. JD transcended and floated above his bodily form as he ate the famous Hungarian chestnut pudding buried under a mountain of hand-whipped cream, and I became a convert to a new religion led by the one and only nutella-filled crepe sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar and washed down with another espresso.

That was the moment that I thought, “Ah, yes. We have finally arrived in Hungary.”

I joke that I dream about the food at a little place called Rossita’s and I lament that I can never get my chicken paprikash to taste like my sister-in-laws not because my god is my belly as we hear in one of Paul’s letters, but because food is an identity maker, a home locator.

My daughter was ingesting her identity one ice cream scoop at a time. JD was reacquainting himself with his identity as he ate his mother’s cooking and visited his favorite spots. I participated in the lifelong practice of learning who my husband and daughter are with every bowl of soup I cradled.

In a similar way, when we come to this table, we are returning home. We are remembering who we are. We are smelling it and tasting it and slurping it. We are ingesting our identity in Christ with every nibble of the bread and every sip of the juice. We are closing our eyes and looking forward to the day when we say, “Ah, yes. We have finally arrived.”

Words of Institution:

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. 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.

Join in me prayer.

Gracious Host, we give thanks that part of our worship each week is to remember that we are bodies. That you had a body. That our bodies are conduits for knowing you. Bless this bread and wine as we take it together. Amen.

Sharing Our Resources

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 with 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 for this series is from Colossians 3:

May the word of Christ live in us richly.

And whatever we do,

Whether in speech or in action,

May we do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus,

Giving thanks to God.

Amen.

Pass it On - 477 (v. 1&3)

Doxology

Azle Church

August 21, 2022

Sunday Morning Worship

One Thing to Tell You: The Kingdom of God is Like...

Azle Church

August 21, 2022

Sunday Morning Worship

Welcome/Call to Worship

Good morning! I’m Pastor Ashley. To those here in the sanctuary and those joining us online: we are so glad you’re here! I sure am glad to be back here with you all after a few weeks of vacation with my family. Thank you to everyone who stepped in to fill the gaps while I was gone.

For those watching online or for those who would like to follow along, our liturgy for every service is posted on our website before the service begins.

Immediately following service, there will be a kitchen meeting for all those who serve in the church kitchen.

Just a reminder that this Wednesday is Cabinet Meeting at 7 pm on Zoom.

This Saturday is Food Hub! You can arrive at 8:30 to help get the bags filled and ready for distribution.

The Seekers Sunday School class invites you to game night on August 31 at 6:30 pm.

Sting Fling is just around the corner! On Saturday, September 10, we’ll host a booth to tell people about Azle Christian Church and what it means to us. If you’d like to volunteer for a two-hour shift, you can find a sign-up sheet on ___, sign-up genius, 2-hour shifts, hand out church lady fans and water bottles, man the Leave a Prayer, Take a Blessing station

We conclude our worship series this morning—a tiny late summer series called One Thing to Tell You. Today, we will do a lectio divina practice together, focusing on the question, “What is the one thing God wants to tell me?”

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: Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless God’s holy name.

All: Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all the benefits of the LORD,

One: Who forgives all your sins and heals all your infirmities;

All: Who redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with mercy and loving-kindness;

One: Who satisfies you with good things, and your youth is renewed like an eagle’s.

All: The LORD is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness.

(From Psalm 103)

Pastoral Prayer

The Lord be with you.

Join me in prayer:

O Divine One, your name of Yahweh is more like a gasp for air than it is a moniker. Your self-title of “I am who I am” is more of a movement than it is an identifier. Scriptures says you are like a refiner’s fire or a cleaner’s soap. And it seems like if you could tell us who You are rather than what You are like, we could feel a bit more secure. If we could put some bones to You or look You straight in the eye, we might be able to relax.

But it seems as though we can’t look at You except for peripherally, and we can’t know You except for through metaphor. Even You—creator and energizer of the cosmos, we only know You through descriptions wrought by our ancestors in faith when they said you were “like a monarch, and a shepherd, and also a Lamb, and a parent, and a mother hen, but also a tabernacle, and a person, and a presence.”

Our language seems to be at once too much and not enough to describe You. And we can only get at You sideways, so to speak. We can only hover around like a moth to a flame when attempting to describe You, O Indescribable God, because You haunt us like a call in the middle of the night that we’re not quite sure we heard but we can’t get any sleep until we find out.

We’d like for you to sit still, but You are always on the move. You are Shepherd-Monarch-Parent God. But sometimes You are a Lamb-Servant-Baby God. And sometimes You are dead, while also being the God of the living, and no wonder Your Yahweh name is like a breath because sometimes it’s more like a gasp of exasperation.

Or perhaps, it is like getting to the end of our strength, our understanding, our grip, the far edges of our knowability, and it is like a gasp of surrender. That we have come to the end of ourselves. John of the Cross called you Nada for this reason—not that You are nil, but that You begin where everything we know and understand ends.

So Moving, Gasp of a God, help us language-oriented beings know You and be known by You as we enter this time of worship today. May our collective resolution be that we welcome the ways You come to us peripherally, the ways You reveal Yourself at a slant. May we heed this great call of discipleship, “to come and see.”

And so Holy One, we pray softly the prayer together that Jesus, our brother and redeemer, gave us to hold onto:

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

Read A Kid’s Book about God.

Ask kids and grownups to ask a question about God.

Pinky promise to keep talking about God and asking questions.

Okay, repeat after me:

“I pinky promise…to keep talking about God…and asking questions.”

As we prepare for our reading together—hearing from many voices, we are going to end in prayer in a different way. We are going to pray by singing and asking God to open our heart to God’s voice. And Nicole will lead us in song.

Sermon: Lectio Divina

Introduction: What is the one thing God is telling you?

This morning, we are doing something a little different for a sermon. We will be engaging in a contemplative practice similar to a lectio divina practice. We’ve done it together once before, but if you weren’t here or you don’t remember, no worries. I’ll explain how it goes.

Lectio Divina is a practice of reading scripture not for learning something practical or theological, but rather to allow the Living Spirit of Christ to speak to us through a word, a phrase, a pause. It lets the text be the text as it speaks to our own hearts.

We will begin by taking a moment of silence to invite the Holy Spirit into our encounter with the text. Then we will read the scripture in 3 different translations from different voices, pausing in between each one to sing in response to the word. For our fourth and final reading, we will do a responsive reading together and then conclude with song. Nicole, do you want to explain the music portion?

The scripture and its various translations are an insert in your bulletin. For our readings, you can follow along or close your eyes. To begin, we will take a moment of silence to invite the Spirit into our reading. Open your heart to what God might be saying to you today through the reading of this text. I will begin our first reading afterward, which is on the back of your bulletin.

Matthew 13:31-35; 44:50 (NRSVUE)—Me

31 He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

33 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

34 Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. 35 This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet:

“I will open my mouth to speak in parables;
I will proclaim what has been hidden since the foundation.”

44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

47 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; 48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. 49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

“Patient Kingdom” chorus

Matthew 13:31-35; 44-50 (CEB)—Jason

31 He told another parable to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and planted in his field. 32 It’s the smallest of all seeds. But when it’s grown, it’s the largest of all vegetable plants. It becomes a tree so that the birds in the sky come and nest in its branches.”

33 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast, which a woman took and hid in a bushel of wheat flour until the yeast had worked its way through all the dough.”

34 Jesus said all these things to the crowds in parables, and he spoke to them only in parables. 35 This was to fulfill what the prophet spoke:

I’ll speak in parables;
I’ll declare what has been hidden since the beginning of the world.

44 “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure that somebody hid in a field, which someone else found and covered up. Full of joy, the finder sold everything and bought that field.

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. 46 When he found one very precious pearl, he went and sold all that he owned and bought it.

47 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that people threw into the lake and gathered all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, they pulled it to the shore, where they sat down and put the good fish together into containers. But the bad fish they threw away. 49 That’s the way it will be at the end of the present age. The angels will go out and separate the evil people from the righteous people, 50 and will throw the evil ones into a burning furnace. People there will be weeping and grinding their teeth.

Patient Kingdom” chorus

Matthew 13:32-35; 44-50 (MSG)—Rose

31-32 Another story. “God’s kingdom is like an acorn that a farmer plants. It is quite small as seeds go, but in the course of years it grows into a huge oak tree, and eagles build nests in it.”

33 Another story. “God’s kingdom is like yeast that a woman works into the dough for dozens of loaves of barley bread—and waits while the dough rises.”

34-35 All Jesus did that day was tell stories—a long storytelling afternoon. His storytelling fulfilled the prophecy:

I will open my mouth and tell stories;
I will bring out into the open
things hidden since the world’s first day.

44 “God’s kingdom is like a treasure hidden in a field for years and then accidentally found by a trespasser. The finder is ecstatic—what a find!—and proceeds to sell everything he owns to raise money and buy that field.

45-46 “Or, God’s kingdom is like a jewel merchant on the hunt for exquisite pearls. Finding one that is flawless, he immediately sells everything and buys it.

47-50 “Or, God’s kingdom is like a fishnet cast into the sea, catching all kinds of fish. When it is full, it is hauled onto the beach. The good fish are picked out and put in a tub; those unfit to eat are thrown away. That’s how it will be when the curtain comes down on history. The angels will come and cull the bad fish and throw them in the garbage. There will be a lot of desperate complaining, but it won’t do any good.”

“Patient Kingdom” chorus

Congregational reading

“Patient Kingdom” chorus

Sharing Our Resources

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 with me after service or sometime this week.

Benediction:

Please rise in body or spirit for our benediction, the final song, and the Doxology.

May the peace of Christ go with you

Wherever he may send you

May he guide you through the wilderness

And protect you from the storm

May He bring you home rejoicing

At the wonders he has shown you.

May he bring you home rejoicing

Once again into our doors.

Amen.

Azle Church

August 14, 2022

Sunday Morning Worship

One Thing to Tell You: Find Us Faithful (Hebrews 11 - 12:3)

Azle Church

August 14, 2022

Sunday Morning Worship

Seek Ye First - 354

Seek ye first the kingdom of God

and God’s righteousness.

And all these things shall be added unto you.

Hallelu, Hallelujah!

Ask and it shall be given unto you;

Seek, and ye shall find.

Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

Hallelu, Hallelujah!

Welcome/Call to Worship: Dan Robinson

Good morning! To those here in the sanctuary and those joining us online: we are so glad you’re here!

For those watching online or for those who would like to follow along, our liturgy for every service is posted on our website before the service begins.

Pastor Ashley is on vacation and will be back with us August 21.

This morning, we are excited to welcome our guest preacher, Sally Gary.

We continue our worship series this morning: One Thing to Tell You.

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.

Blessed Assurance - 543

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

O what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.

This is my story, this is my song,

praising my Savior all the day long;

this is my story, this is my song,

praising my Savior all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight,

visions of rapture now burst on my sight;

angels descending bring from above

echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

This is my story, this is my song,

praising my Savior all the day long;

this is my story, this is my song,

praising my Savior all the day long.

Perfect submission, all is at rest;

I in my Savior am happy and blest,

watching and waiting, looking above,

filled with his goodness, lost in his love.

This is my story, this is my song,

praising my Savior all the day long;

this is my story, this is my song,

praising my Savior all the day long.

Litany of Faith

One: Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine; preserve what your right hand has planted.

All: Let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one you have made so strong for yourself.

One: And so will we never turn away from you; give us life, that we may call upon your name.

All: Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.

(From Psalm 80)

Back to School Blessing - Lisa Sears

God of All Learning - Insert

God of all learning, God of all knowing,

We ask you to guide these children we love.

Bless every step of changing and growing.

Be with them daily as they’re in school.

Bless all the students, young ones and old ones —

Walking or riding, traveling by bus.

May they remember that you go with them,

And that they all are precious to us.

We as a church will always support them;

May we provide the tools that they need.

May we make sure they're safe, loved and healthy,

So that they all may thrive and succeed.

Bless all who learn and bless those who guide them,

Bless those who teach and counsel and care.

May they remember you walk beside them.

Through all their school days, you, Lord, are there.

Children’s Moment - Dan Robinson

Songs to Hold in Our Hearts - Nicole Hendley, Havynn, & Rose

Sally’s Bio and Introduction: Dan Robinson

Sally Gary is founder and director of CenterPeace, a 501(c)(3) non-profit ministry dedicated to creating space for conversation about faith and sexuality. CenterPeace hosts workshops and retreats for church leaders and their congregations to better understand and welcome the LGBTQ+ community. CenterPeace also hosts retreats for parents of LGBTQ+ individuals and spiritual formation retreats for LGBTQ+ Christians.

Sally holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communication from Abilene Christian University and a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from Texas Tech University School of Law. A former high school speech and debate coach, trial lawyer and communication professor at Abilene Christian University, Sally is a teacher at heart.

Sally currently resides in Dallas, Texas, with her wife, Karen, and their four year old miniature dapple dachshund, Rudy. Please welcome Sally.

Scripture & Sermon - Sally Gary

Hebrews 11 - 12:2

11 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. 3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

4 By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain’s. Through this he received approval as righteous, God himself giving approval to his gifts; he died, but through his faith he still speaks. 5 By faith Enoch was taken so that he did not experience death, and “he was not found, because God had taken him.” For it was attested before he was taken away that “he had pleased God.” 6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would approach God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. 7 By faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household; by this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with faith.

8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 By faith, with Sarah’s involvement, he received power of procreation, even though he was too old, because he considered him faithful who had promised. 12 Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”

13 All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, 14 for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

17 By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, 18 of whom he had been told, “It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.” 19 He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead—and, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. 20 By faith Isaac invoked blessings for the future on Jacob and Esau. 21 By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, “bowing in worship over the top of his staff.” 22 By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave instructions about his burial.

23 By faith Moses was hidden by his parents for three months after his birth, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. 24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, 25 choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward. 27 By faith he left Egypt, unafraid of the king’s anger, for he persevered as though he saw him who is invisible. 28 By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.

29 By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. 30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. 31 By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.

32 And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35 Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. 36 Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned to death; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented— 38 of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground. 39 Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40 since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.

12 Therefore, 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, 2 looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary in your souls or lose heart.

Find Us Faithful - Insert

We're pilgrims on the journey

Of the narrow road

And those who've gone before us line the way

Cheering on the faithful, encouraging the weary

Their lives a stirring testament to God's sustaining grace

Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses

Let us run the race not only for the prize

But as those who've gone before us

Let us leave to those behind us

The heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives