Goodbye, Hello: Last Sunday of Ordinary Time (Ecclesiastes 3:1-15)

Introit: All of Life is Filled With Wonder - Insert

http://www.carolynshymns.com/all_of_life_is_filled_with_wonder.html

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 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.

After service today is our Thanksgiving Lunch in the Fellowship hall.

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.

Our annual congregational meeting is Sunday, December 4th, immediately following service. Please make every effort to attend.

Beginning today, you can pick up your Advent materials to take home that coincide with our Advent worship series, Close to Home. There is an Advent calendar, a daily devotional replete with poetry, hymns, art work, and devotional material. And there are coloring pages for grown-up that go with the artwork you’ll see next week. You can bring the coloring pages to worship and work on them while you listen!

You can find all this information in your weekly eblast, on Facebook, in the insert in your bulletin, and on our calendar on our website.

If you serve in any capacity on Sunday, you can find the serving calendar for the month is on the bulletin board outside the sanctuary, inside the tech booth, and in the work room in the office.

Today, we say goodbye to Ordinary Time as we prepare for the coming season of 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.

Call to Worship: For the Fruit of All Creation - 714

Litany of Faith

One: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. 

All: Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved, and though the mountains be toppled into the depths of the sea;

One: We will not fear, though the sea waters rage and foam, and though the mountains tremble at its tumult.

All: The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold. 

One: Come now and look upon the works of the LORD, what awesome things God has done on earth.

All: Be still, then, and know that God is God, exalted among the nations, exalted in the earth.

(From Psalm 46)

Pastoral Prayer

After Prayer: Give Thanks - 528

Children’s Moment

Anthem: For Everything There is a Time - ACC Choir

Sermon

Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:

2  a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to harvest;

3 a time to kill and a time to heal;
a time to break down and a time to build up;

4 a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance;

5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones together;
a time for holding close and a time for holding back;

6 a time to seek and a time to lose;
a time to keep and a time to throw away;

7 a time to tear and a time to mend;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;

8 a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.

9 What gain have the workers from their toil? 10 I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. 11 God has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, the Almighty has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; 13 moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. 14 I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it nor anything taken from it; God has done this to keep reverence for the sacred alive in us. 15 That which is, has already been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.

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

It is the last Sunday of Ordinary Time. Another year in our church calendar comes to a close today, and we begin a new one next week with Advent. 

In a way, this is our New Year’s Eve party. We’re looking back at the year just past, and we’re already getting ready for the next year. Plans have been made for the sanctuary to be transformed this week while we are eating turkey and pumpkin pie. So look around, remember what this space looks like right now. It will look very different for the next 6 months. 

And if this is our New Year’s Eve party, we should consider all the elements of our party. We have dry crackers that are begging to lathered with soft cheese. We have grape juice that tastes fermented, so we almost have wine. 

You all are dressed nicer than you might dress for a day at the house. We’ve got candles and music to set the mood. We may not be making New Year’s resolutions, but we are setting intentions, aren’t we? How much we intend to give in 2023, if we will really use the Advent devotionals sent home, perhaps how this Christmas season will be different. 

All we’re missing is our New Year’s song: “Auld Lang Syne.” 

You know how it goes, “For auld lang syne, my Jo, for auld lang syne / We’ll take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne.” 

For a song that is sung around the English-speaking world, it’s not an easy one to decipher. The language is old Scottish English and most of us probably mumble the words when it plays, singing heartily the one phrase we do know. So let’s break it down, shall we?

Jo is not a person, but a Scots word that means, “dear,” which is easy enough. But “auld lang syne” is a little trickier to translate. It literally means “old long since,” which we might think of as “the old times.” We have a phrase in English that complements “for auld lang syne,”: for old time’s sake. 

One more cup of kindness, my dear. For old time’s sake.

The poet Robert Burns is the attributed author of the song, but the first verse dates much further back than Burns. “Should auld acquaintance be forgot / and never brought to mind? / Should auld acquaintance be forgot / and auld lang syne.”

This song is so hard to date in part because what it talks about is so generic. Drinking together, remembering the old times—these themes could have been sung about 100 years ago, 300 years ago, 3000 years ago. 

Isn’t it interesting that in a time when we are looking forward to the new, we always sing this ambiguously old song? It doesn’t look forward, it looks back. It is wistful and nostalgic, but not in a way that romanticizes the longing for things past. But rather, it acknowledges that each new year, each new moment is a product of all the old ones. 

That which is, has already been; that which is to be, already is.

We have spent approximately six months in Ordinary Time—the stretch of time between Pentecost and Advent where there are no high holy days. We walk leisurely through our rituals and practices together, and we inhabit a slower pace of encountering God. Ordinary Time follows the Holy Seasons, so it is the second half of our church year, which is appropriate because it is supposed to be a time of exhalation and rest. 

The calendar of the church is like a pendulum swinging back and forth, or a pair of lungs breathing in and out. We have been letting out a long exhale since June. And we are about to take in our first gulp of fresh air. 

As we begin the new church year, our rituals and practices will intensify. We will take big inhales of Advent and Christmastide, and then Lent and Eastertide, rehearsing the key moments of Christ’s movement in the world, the very moments that define who we are as Christians. 

The Holy Seasons are familiar in that we sing the same songs each year and read the same stories, yet each time they are sung and read, they are new. For we are not who we were the last time we encountered them. The world, too, has changed. 

So as we move through familiar choreography in the coming weeks, we may find that we have changed. That the word of God falls fresh on us. We may raise a glass for old time’s sake, but we must remember that the only moment we have now is this one.

As we prepare to begin our long inhale, it may seem funny to read from the book of Ecclesiastes. Aside from the obvious seasonal poem in the first half of our reading, the second half of the text seems nihilist. Indeed, the whole of the book of Ecclesiastes seems to say that everything is meaningless. It’s a vapor, here today and gone tomorrow. 

But I think Ecclesiastes is an excellent book to conclude Ordinary Time with and I’ll tell you why by, beginning with a fun fact. 

In verse 9: the Teacher, who is the speaker in Ecclesiastes, asks, “What gain have the workers from their toil?” 

We might think of toil as honest work. The goal-oriented labor that we might now describe as a work ethic. What do you gain from an honest day’s work? That’s easy, some generations might say. A sense of pride, accomplishment, an honest wage. 

But that’s not how the word toil is used in the rest of the Hebrew Bible. Because actually, this word “toil” almost always has negative connotations. The word toil conveys ideas such as trouble, weariness, sorrow, mischief, and even oppression. And for the Teacher, toil and life are practically identical. 

So the question being asked is not so much about an honest day’s work, but rather: What gain have the workers from all this trouble? From this oppression? From life itself?

Maybe that fun fact isn’t all that fun. 

But what he’s asking changes if our understanding of toil changes. That’s crucial not only to the second, nihilist half of the text, but also the first half that we know so well. 

If he’s not asking, “What is the point of a good work ethic?” but rather, “What is the point of life that is so filled with suffering?” the stakes are different. 

It becomes less of a lecture and more of a middle of the night existential crisis.

Because truly, this question is an invitation to rethink our priorities. 

God has made everything suitable for its time, and God has put a sense of past and future in our hearts. We don’t get all the answers and reasons, if there are any, but we can feel it the passing of time. We can sense something weightier happening than just the ticking of a clock.

And the Teacher’s advice for dealing with this mysterious passing of time is to be happy. To enjoy one’s self. To eat and drink. To find pleasure in one’s toil. In life and all of its trouble. 

Because all of it is sacred. Ordinary and holy. Mundane and miraculous. Humdrum and hallowed. 

Should old acquaintance be forgot? No. We can raise a glass to the old times, for old time’s sake. 

But let us also raise a glass to the moment we’re in. Let’s find the gift of right now in who is with us today, in the food we share today, and the toil that is ours. 

This last day of Ordinary Time, this last Sunday of the church year, just like New Year’s Eve, feels momentous. It is a thin space that highlights the precipice we are always on. 

Because we are forever caught in the turn of a calendar page. That’s not unique to this day. And our call, according to the Teacher, is to create meaning right here. 

Those first lines of Ecclesiastes 3 feel fateful, don’t they? “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die.” We know those times acutely because those two times are clearly out of our hands. 

But the rest of the list is within our control to some extent, isn’t it? It is our task to discern when it is time to plant and time to harvest, time to hold close and a time to hold back, time to keep silent and time to speak. 

The turning of the seasons in church time is out of our control. It is inevitable It was set a long time ago by people who knew what they were doing. 

But what we do with that time, with the season we are entering, is up to us. And our task is to see clearly where we are now, and to find the joy right now. To eat the food we have now. To see who is here with us now. 

It is said that the word “liturgy,” the name for what we do in worship, comes from the word “leitourgia,” which roughly translates to “the work of the people.” 

So that what we do here on Sundays is our work. It is what gives meaning shape and form in our lives. 

And truly, what gain have we from this work? What pleasure do we take from it?

Engaging “the toil” in this way is how we keep life from being meaningless. It’s how we push back against futility, against doing the same thing over and over again. 

The late Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a prolific American author, wrote a multiple choice question in one of her memoirs that goes like this: 

“In the alley, there is a bright pink flower peeking out through the asphalt. Circle the one that most applies:

A. It looks like futility.

B. It looks like hope.”

So what will we do in the New Year? What will the extra oxygen from the big inhale of holy time give to our bodies and our minds? What will we discern in the coming months about auld lang syne, the old times, and what will we do with the now times? 

Amen.

After Sermon: When You Do This, Remember Me - 400

Sharing Our Resources

There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church. You can give online on our website, on Venmo, or in the offering plate as the deacons come by during our final song. Don’t forget to drop your notification survey in the plate.

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.

Receive this blessing….

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ 

And the love of God

And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit

Be with us all

Until we meet again.

Amen.

Benediction Hymn: Now Thank We All Our God - 715 v 1 & 3

Doxology

A Future With Hope: What Happens When We Return (Luke 9:10-17)

Introit: Sanctuary - Insert

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 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.

Tonight is our final Bible and Beer of the year. We’ll meet at 5 PM at John and Sondra Williams’ house. Their address is on the insert in your bulletin. You bring snacks to share, and the Piercys will bring home-brewed beer for us to sip on while we study a scripture together.

Next Sunday is our Thanksgiving Lunch after church. Be sure to sign up for your dish on the sign-up sheets at the entries. We will pass around the sign-up clip board during worship now.

You can find all this information in your weekly eblast, on Facebook, in the insert in your bulletin, and on our calendar on our website.

If you serve in any capacity on Sunday, I want to draw your attention to the various places the serving calendar for the month is posted: inside the tech booth, on the bulletin board right outside the sanctuary, and in the work room in the office.

Today is Covenant Sunday. We conclude our stewardship series today called, A Future with Hope!  You should have received your covenant cards and letters in the mail this week and will be able to hand them in during our offering or fill it out online as we’ve done in the past few years.

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: Come and Find the Quiet Center - 575

Litany

One: By the waters of Babylon, there we wept when we remembered. How could we sing God’s song in a strange land?

Many: By the waters of Babylon, there we wept when we remembered.

One: We remembered that ancient rhythm of separation and homecoming,

Many: Exile and return, going out and coming in.

One: You who are by the waters of Babylon: Come!

Many: You who remember and you who do not: Come!

One:    In Babylon and Jerusalem, in strange lands and familiar rooms, in sanctuaries and on screens, in pews or chairs, couches or recliners.

Many: We know God goes with every exile; God rejoices with every return.

(based on Psalm 137, a Psalm of exile)

Pastoral Prayer

The Lord be with you.

Join me in prayer.

Most Holy One,

In whose care we always are,

We recognize that our spiritual commitments have material implications.

We are connected not only to each other, 

But also to those who have gone before us and to those who are not here yet

through the ways we give and the stories we tell in worship.

We trust that when we offer ourselves and what is ours to give, we are participating in the very long story between humanity and You, O God.

We hope that when we give, we are offering a prayer for the world You want, for Your coming reign.

We believe that when we give, we are living as if the gospel were true—indeed, we make it true every time we open our hand.

Expand our imaginations, O God, to live in this economy of grace,

An economy that does not hoard or hide, but lives with an open hand,

Not only to give our offerings to You, but also to receive Your provision for us. 

Help us to embrace gospel logic, a logic that is free from the consumeristic, capitalistic cry for “More!” and “Mine!’ and instead, let us rest in Your community of mutuality and belonging. 

May we look forward to a future with hope, a future that we help plant and water and cultivate, even if we may not see its fruitfulness in our lifetimes, 

For we trust and practice that none of us are lost in Your long story of grace.

We pray this in the name of Christ, in whom all things hold together, 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: I’ve Got Peace Like a River - 530

Children’s Moment

Anthem: Crowded Table - Nicole Hendley & Dede Darrow

Sermon

Luke 9:10-17

On their return the apostles told Jesus all they had done. Then, taking them along, he slipped quietly into a city called Bethsaida. 11 When the crowds found out about it, they followed him, and he welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God and healed those who needed to be cured.

12 The day was drawing to a close, and the twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away, so that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside to lodge and get provisions, for we are here in a deserted place.” 13 But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.” They said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish—unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.” 14 For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” 15 They did so and had them all sit down. 16 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. 17 And all ate and were filled, and what was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.

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

We begin in the middle of a story today, which is my favorite way to read the Bible. Imagine that we have literally plopped down. As our bums hit the ground, dirt flies up. We’re a little shaken and we rub our eyes and look around, trying to orient ourselves. Where are we? When are we? Who are we? 

The disciples have gathered with Jesus to talk about their travels. They’ve just return from being sent out by Jesus. His instructions were to heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God. And that’s what they did. I don’t know how long it took for them to all tell their stories—we don’t get any details in the gospels, but I imagine each disciple had their own comprehensive travelogue. Wild stories of healing. Being run out of town for preaching the gospel. Sleeping on a rock. Hiding with some sheep. Sharing bread with strangers. Finding themselves in unfamiliar places. Who knows what they got up to? Only Jesus and them, apparently. 

But after all that was recounted, Jesus led them to Bethsaida, hometown of Peter, Andrew, and Philip. After all that traveling, Jesus led them to a place that was very familiar to some of them. A place they called home. 

And word got out as it does when Jesus is around, and a huge crowd started to congregate. So Jesus continued the mission he gave the disciples: heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God. It took all day. 

The disciples, fresh off all they had learned on their own time away, nudged Jesus to let the people eat and rest. They presented a need to Jesus. But Jesus put the need back on them and he told them, “Well, you give them something to eat.” 

Between them, they only had five loaves and two fish and not enough money to feed five thousand people, but Jesus told them to have everyone sit down in groups of fifty. And the first miracle of the story is that this crowd did. They arranged themselves in an orderly manner, something crowds are not prone to do. If we’re looking at the math, that’s one hundred sets of people, and likely more than 50 people per group considering Luke only counted the men. 

And Jesus did what we do each week and took the bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it away. And it’s important to note that Jesus is not doing a new thing by breaking and sharing bread somewhat miraculously—we’ve seen it in scripture before. In the way that God provided manna for the Israelites in the wilderness. In prophetic acts and songs. And just a little earlier in Jesus’s own Sermon on the Plain, where he says, “Blessed are you who are hungry, for you will be filled.”

And they were. They all had enough to eat. In fact, there were even leftovers.

And that’s where the story ends. It’s almost mundane if you’re not paying attention. 

But perhaps we should pay attention to what’s left unsaid. 

For one thing, the disciples returned after their mission, but what did they do? 

We can only speculate because Luke didn’t record any of their narratives. It’s up to our imagination.

What is that disciples do anyway? Like what are the nuts and bolts, the concrete specifics, the tangible, on-the-ground details.

And there are leftovers, but what does that mean? Neither Jesus nor Luke draws conclusions for us. It’s left open-ended. 

What does it mean to feed our neighbors? 

And how are we now to trust in the abundance of God not in Bethsaida, but in Azle, Texas? 

Perhaps the gift of this story is that we get to fill in the gaps. We get to take some creative license and decide what exactly we plan to do and what it looks like to care for our neighbors and how we engage with the economy of the kingdom of God. 

Which is not very helpful if we’re not sure where to start, I realize. 

But it does leave our work open-ended, porous, and adaptable. 

Today is Covenant Sunday. We have been in a short stewardship series called A Future with Hope, in which we think about what it means to disperse and gather, to gather and disperse. We have looked at our own time away from each other through the lens of exile, thanks to the prophet Jeremiah. And now we have returned, but why? Why come back? 

We don’t return to play house in a familiar place, at least that’s not what we see here in Bethsaida. The point of coming to church is not to play church. 

We return to continue the work we were doing when we were away. Because the reign of God goes in and out with us as we gather and disperse, disperse and gather. 

We get enough to eat, we share that bread, and then we go out and do the work of God. Rinse and repeat. 

Part of the work of dispersal and gathering has to do with our money. This is a missional church, at its heart and mathematically. Over 50% of our budget leaves the church and does other things for neighbors near and far. 

We gather our funds together and then we send them out to bring healing and proclaim the kingdom of God. And we also do that work here, within these walls, within a place that feels like home. 

Some of you have already filled out your Covenant Card for what you plan to give in 2023, and some of you are still thinking about it. 

I encourage you to finish the narrative of the loaves and fishes with your own creative license—what does a disciple do anyway? 

And what does it meant to feed our neighbors? 

And what does it look like to trust in the economy of abundance, of more than enough, of plenty, which is the economy of Jesus? 

Amen.

After Sermon: There Are Many Ways of Sharing - Insert

Sharing Our Resources

CALL TO OFFERING

The people gather and disperse, gather and disperse. It is the way of life with God.

As with the people, so with our money: gather and disperse, gather and disperse.

As with the people, so with our money: the more we gather, the more we can disperse.

As with the people, so with our money: the gathering is good,

but the giving, the sending out into the world, is even better!  

It’s the heart of the heart of everything!

Friends, the offering will now be gathered and sent,

all for the sake of “a future with hope.”

Final song: Pass It On

—Pass plates here

PRAYER OF DEDICATION

God of love and generosity, for the gifts you have dispersed into the world, we give you thanks: the people, the money, the hope, and the life. For all that has been gathered here from that dispersal, the people, the money, the hope, and the life, we give you thanks. Give us the strength to be separated, the courage to be commissioned, the generosity to give, and the wisdom to send ourselves and our money where you would have them go. Send your Spirit on us and in us, wherever we are, O God, and on this gathering of your gifts, for we have gathered ourselves and our offerings in the name of our Good Shepherd, the One who lives in exile with us, the One who leads us home: In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

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 and the Doxology.

Receive this blessing….

The time for sending is here, for separation, for dispersal, for exile.

It will not last forever; to return is our destiny.

We will be together again, and the question then ill be:

What did you do with your time when we were apart?

May the God who is the home of the exile,

Jesus, who was and is an exile himself,

And the Spirit, who goes with us as we love and serve,

Be with you until we meet again. 

Amen.

Benediction: Pass It On - 377 (v 1 & 3)

Doxology

A Future With Hope - Jeremiah 29:1-14

Introit: Seek Ye First - 354

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 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.

Tonight is Trunk or Treat on Sunday, October 30 at 5 PM. If you’re interested in helping, please see Becky or Nancy.

We will also have our annual All Saints service this Tuesday, November 1, at 7 pm in the Heritage Building. It will not be live-streamed. 

And putting this on your radar now: on November 6, we will have a Blessing of the Animals and Stuffed Animals. We will have a pancake breakfast service in the parking lot at 11 AM where you are invited to bring your pets for a blessing. It will be a very abbreviated service, so there will be no need for you to sit through long service wrangling your animals. If you animal does not play or pray well with others, or if they’re too big to transport, I invite you to bring a picture of them for the blessing. Children are invited to bring their favorite stuffed animal for a blessing. All creatures of our God and King are welcome.

Mark your calendars for November 13 for our final Bible and Beer of the year. We’ll meet at 5 PM at John and Sondra Williams’ house. You bring snacks to share, and the Piercys will bring home-brewed beer for us to sip on while we study a scripture together.

You can find all this information in your weekly eblast, on Facebook, in the insert in your bulletin, and on our calendar on our website.

If you serve in any capacity on Sunday, I want to draw your attention to the various places the serving calendar for the month is posted: inside the tech booth, on the bulletin board right outside the sanctuary, and in the work room in the office.

EMILY HARDEN INTERLUDE

We begin our stewardship series today called, A Future with Hope! Covenant Sunday is November 13. You should have received your covenant cards and letters in the mail this week and will be able to hand them on November 13 or online as we’ve done in the past few years.

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: For the Beauty of the Earth - 56

Litany of Faith

One: Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away! 

All: While I held my tongue, my bones withered away, because of my groaning all day long.

One: For your hand was heavy upon me day and night; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. 

All: Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and did not conceal my guilt. You forgave me the guilt of my sin. 

One: Therefore all the faithful will make their prayers to you in time of trouble. 

All: You are my hiding place; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance.

(From Psalm 32)

Pastoral Prayer

The Lord be with you. 

Join me in prayer.

Holy One of old, the one who was here before the earth was formed, and the one who will remain long after we’re gone, we wonder about You. You are a scatterer, it seems. Your people have known exile, whole lives apart from their loved ones, their home, their place of worship. You seem to lead Your people into deserts, tracing patterns in the wilderness like You trace our names on the palm of Your hand. Often, this scattering seems harsh and cold. We reach out our hands for You, for one another, and grasp at air. 

But Scattering God, I supposed just as You drive us out of our homes, You also seem to welcome us into yours. You scatter seed on all types of ground, unconcerned whether the rocks or the thorns will be hospitable to Your gift. The point, I suppose, is not our version of hospitality, but Yours. Just as You scatter, You gather. Perhaps we are the good soil, perhaps we are the thorns. But keep scattering, God. Keep gathering. May we receive Your gift and may we be found waiting, ready, and faithful, when You come to gather Your people.

We pray 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: You Are My All in All - Insert
Anthem: God’s Love is Like the Sunshine - ACC Children’s Choir

Sermon

Jeremiah 29:1-14

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 2 This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the court officials, the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the artisans, and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem. 3 The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom King Zedekiah of Judah sent to Babylon to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. It said: 4 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. 8 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to your dreams that you dream, 9 for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord.

10 For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. 12 Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. 13 When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, 14 I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

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

It’s time for another round of “Is This Is in the Bible?”

You’ll remember the rules of the game are simple: I will read an axiom, and you will give me a thumbs up if you think it’s in the Bible and a thumbs down if you think it’s not in the Bible. Now, the question is “is this exact phrase in the Bible?”—not can we find some semblance or root of it in scripture. Are we ready? 

Alright, our first axiom is: 

Everything happens for a reason. 

—Not in the Bible!

Next up: God won’t give you more than you can handle.

—I think Job would beg to differ. Not in the Bible. 

Alright, how about this one: I can do all things through Christ. 

—Yes, congratulations to everyone who was paying attention in our Philippians worship series. I know who you are now.

Okay, next axiom: Do what you love and money will follow.

—Proverbs comes very close to saying something of the sort, but alas it’s not in the Bible. 

Alright, let’s keep going: Every good and perfect gift is from above.

—That’s in the Bible! In the little epistle from James. 

God works in mysterious ways.

—That’s not the Bible, it’s Bono! Actually it’s from a 19th century hymn  written by William Cowper that Bono decided was a hit. 

As iron sharpens another, one man sharpens another.

—Yep, that’s in Proverbs!

God helps those who help themselves.

—Definitely not in the Bible. Jesus helped a lot of people who couldn’t help themselves.

Guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.

—Survey says: It’s in the Bible! Another bop from Proverbs!

Okay, how’d we do? 

Today, our text has a verse that is often found on needlepoint pillows, graduation gifts, inspirational plaques, greeting cards, and at the bottom of email signatures. Most of us know Jeremiah 29:11 from the NIV translation:  “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

Unlike some of the axioms we just reviewed, this verse is actually in the Bible—it’s just that it is gratuitously applied to contexts that it probably shouldn’t be.

Let me explain. 

The prophet Jeremiah lived in a chaotic world. It was a time of political and social upheaval. The glory days of Israel’s kings were over, and the big bad Babylonians had come knocking on Jerusalem’s doors. 

Not only did Babylon come to capture Jerusalem, they destroyed the Temple—the place of worship and community and meaning-making to the Hebrew people. And most of the Israelites were carried off into exile to Babylon—living as captives in a foreign land. 

And Jeremiah tried to warn them. He was unflinchingly honest. Babylon was coming. You need to prepare yourselves.

You would think the Israelites would appreciate the prophet Jeremiah giving them a heads up for what was coming, but surprisingly, people don’t like to hear bad news. They didn’t want to hear that destruction was coming. They didn’t want to hear about how they had wronged the vulnerable among them. They didn’t want to hear about how life was irrevocably changing. They plugged their ears and said, “No, thank you. Unsubscribe.” 

That doesn’t sound familiar at all, right?

But Jeremiah wasn’t the only prophet in town. There were others, who had easier messages to stomach. They proclaimed peace over Jerusalem, even though there was clearly no peace. 

And in the chapter directly before ours, there was a prophet, Hananiah, who told the Israelites not to worry—the exile would be short. It would just be a blip on their timeline. Things would resume as normal in no time. But of course, we know that’s not what happened. And Jeremiah knew Hananiah was wrong.

Those who were supposed to be leading—the priests, the kings, the government officials—they had not shown true leadership but had instead served their own interests. 

And to be honest, the average citizen wasn’t a whole lot better. Instead of giving their hearts and lives to the strange, set-apart ways of God, they had lived and died by the gods of Baal and Molech.

It might be easy to write off Baal and Molech as ancient gods that a primitive people worshiped long ago and are irrelevant to our experiences today. 

But Baal was the god of life and fertility, and he was always locked in combat with the god of death and sterility, which may seem like a god we might root for. Except that Baal was not the god of life in the sense of human flourishing, but rather he was the god of exceeding our mortal limits, living in defiance of the truest thing we can know—that we die. 

Baal, in big shiny letters and catchy jingles and Instagram ads and face serums and eternal productivity, proclaims that we are infinite and limitless, and that our goal is to strive for more and more, to keep growing and achieving progress forever and ever amen.

And Molech! Well, he was the god of war and child sacrifice. This seems like an easy god to refute. But the lust for power and the habit of conquest, and the willingness to give up our most beloved, our most vulnerable to the cause of plowing forward and gaining control are not that far from our Western world’s mindset. 

Baal and Molech are alive and well today; they just live under aliases.

PAUSE

You know, I don’t fault people for taking this Jeremiah 29:11 verse out of context so much because in a world of suffering, it can be comforting to think that God is out there somewhere with a master plan. That God is waiting until the right moment to pull all the strings together, orchestrating events for our personal good from a personal plan for each of our lives. 

But what we see in the context of Jeremiah is that the future is less like a plan and more like a partnership. There is a pragmatic dimension to the direction God gives to the people through Jeremiah. Those who live in Babylon can find their possibilities for life only if Babylon is a viable place to live. So seeking the welfare and peace of Babylon is not a truly altruistic endeavor. It’s a savvy move. They are helping to make the place they live a good place to live. 

In the same way, true shalom is shaped by humans acting in faith that God will meet them there—right where they are. Their future deliverance is shaped by humans acting in faith that God will meet them there—right where they will be.

So for us, perhaps how we move forward from such a devastating past few years, is we bloom where we’re planted, which is a phrase not found in the Bible if you’re keeping score. 

But perhaps our move right now is to invest in the moment that we are in, at this very moment. We can’t invest in the past, in what was lost, in what was destroyed through the flood, through COVID, through the death of beloveds in our community, through everything that has transpired since the world shut down—that moment has passed. It is no longer in our possession.

But we can seek the welfare of this moment, trusting that we are planting the seeds for what may grow a whole generation after us. This idea of 70 years in our text today is a unit of time that meant a lifetime. A whole lifetime will pass, according to Jeremiah. It’s his way of saying, “Take the long view of time. This is not a blip in your timeline. It is much weightier than that.”

There’s a sociologist, Elise Boulding, who writes of the “200 year present.” She says to think of time as the “long now.” The 200-year present, she says, began 100 years ago with the year of birth of the people who reach their hundredth birthday today. The other boundary is 100 years from now, on the hundredth birthday of the babies born today. 

She says you can also think of it this way: think of the oldest person you knew as a young child. For me, that was my great-grandma, Jessie Lee Greer McDonald. Their birth is the first boundary. And then think of the last baby you will hold in your lifetime. Hopefully that hasn’t happened for any of us yet. Their death is the second boundary.

When we think of time like that, we realize how long change takes. We often think of ourselves as living either at the beginning or the end of an era. But this 200-year-present places us right in the middle of an era. This 200-year-present is the space in which we should be thinking, planning, making judgments, evaluating, hoping, and dreaming. 

Within the range of 200 years, empires rise and fall, courageous leaders rise up, inventors improve the lives of millions, what seemed liked utter despair can turn into something more like hope.

That hope may feel slow in coming, and the story will need to be told and passed down in the span of a 200-year-present, or in the 70-year lifetime that Jeremiah describes. But it will come. 

One day…following this faithfulness in a place we would not have chosen for ourselves, God will keep that promise. Jeremiah trusted that. 

Though he had been beaten up and ostracized and imprisoned and eventually carried off to Babylon himself, he was a prophet of the God of Israel. The God who had led them out of Egypt, provided for them in the wilderness, and led them to the place of milk and honey. A God who made a way out of no way, a people out of no people. 

That trust traveled with the Israelites as they left their city and were taken into captivity. They did a lot of soul-searching in Babylon. They wrote the first five books of the Bible, cataloging the ways God had instructed them to love their neighbors, to be a covenant community whose life ethic is for the good of the other, of the many. They held on to their religious identity for dear life, yet transforming it for a different world, hoping to be better stewards of the gift God had given them.

Their heartbreak and grief led them to reexamine their identity and their story. They were utterly changed. Scarred, for sure. But they also understood that though they wished for the time of the Temple, who they were and how God was faithful to them was not trapped in the past. God was working with them in the present for the future.

During this stewardship season, we are considering how to invest in this community, in Azle Christian Church as it is. Some of you have a whole catalog of memories of this place, etched into your hearts and bodies. And some of you have just gotten here, with your strongest memories being online church, or the Heritage building, or courtyard worship. 

We are asking what it means for all of us to come together to be shaped by what has happened—all the heartbreak and grief, all the innovation and joy, all the ordinary and spectacular—and move forward in hope. To invest in a future with hope. To trust in a God who makes a way out of no way, who creates newness again and again, who defies the categories of what is possible with daily desert manna and absurd prophetic hope and a baby Messiah. 

When we invest in the community where we are, as it is, we are planting seeds of hope, we are cultivating a place where people can flourish and belong. And not in a naive way that forgets what has happened or attempts to bypass the reckoning that follows suffering, but by rooting down, watering what grows, and nurturing every little bloom, even when it blooms in unexpected places. 

As we find ourselves returning, may we also seek to build a community of return, a community of hope. One that lives as the promises of God are true, and in doing so, making them true. Amen.

After Sermon: I Have this Hope - Insert

Sharing Our Resources: Chris Piercy

There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church. You can give online on our website, on Venmo, or in the offering plate as the deacons come by during our final song. 

Invitation 

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.

Receive this blessing….

The time for sending is here, for separation, for dispersal, for exile.

It will not last forever; to return is our destiny.

We will be together again, and the question then ill be:

What did you do with your time when we were apart?

May the God who is the home of the exile,

Jesus, who was and is an exile himself,

And the Spirit, who goes with us as we love and serve,

Be with you until we meet again. 

Amen.

Benediction: Because He Lives - 562 v 1

Doxology

Let Me Tell You a Story...about a Widow (Luke 18:1-8)

I Need Thee Every Hour - 578

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 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.

Thanks to everyone who helped make the golf tournament happen yesterday! It was a beautiful morning.

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.

The Seekers’ Class invites you to game night next Wednesday in the Fellowship Hall at 6:30 pm.

Mark your calendars for Trunk or Treat on Sunday, October 30 at 5 PM. If you’re interested in helping, please see Becky or Nancy.

We will also have our annual All Saints service on Tuesday, November 1, at 7 pm in the Heritage Building.

And putting this on your radar now: on November 6, we will have a Blessing of the Animals and Stuffed Animals. We will have a pancake breakfast service in the parking lot at 11 AM where you are invited to bring your pets for a blessing. It will be a very abbreviated service, so there will be no need for you to sit through  long service wrangling your animals. If you animal does not play or pray well with others, or if they’re too big to transport, I invite you to bring a picture of them for the blessing. Children are invited to bring their favorite stuffed animal for a blessing. All creatures of our God and King are welcome.

And finally, in bittersweet news, Gini will be leaving us soon. Her last Sunday is next week, October 23. You can read her letter to the congregation in this week’s eblast. We invite you to send notes of love and gratitude to her for her extensive service to Azle Christian Church over the years. We’ll pray a prayer of blessing and send-off over her next week so make plans to attend. 

We continue our October series today called Let Me Tell You a Story: Jesus Stories from Luke. 

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.

Alleluia! Hear God’s Story - 330

Litany of Faith

One: I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where does my help come?

All: My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth.

One: The LORD will not let your foot be moved, and the One who watches over you will not fall asleep.

All: Behold, the One who keeps watch over Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

One: It is the LORD who watches over you; the LORD is your shade at your right hand.

All: The LORD shall watch over your going out and your coming in, from this time forth for evermore.

(From Psalm 121)

Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove - 248

Children’s Moment

Anthem: I Won’t Back Down

Sermon 

Luke 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ 4 For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ” 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God grant justice to the chosen ones who cry out day and night? Will God delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

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

We have to remember that Luke is a doctor, not a poet. While his account of the life of Jesus is detailed and methodical, and at times beautiful because of the stories in it, he’s no John. You know, John writes these long essays that you might find on a syllabus about theological theory. And Mark, well, he writes little poems about Jesus—short and to the point—but never with the aim to make the reader feel comfortable. And then there’s Matthew, of course. He lays out historical significance, he includes key sermons, he draws on Jewish imagination. 

But Luke, well, he doesn’t want to be disruptive, you see. At the same time, he tries to say: look here at Jesus, and also, nothing to see here, Rome. Which is why I find it comical that before Luke tells us the parable that apparently Jesus gave, he tells us what it’s about. Everyone knows if you explain a joke, it becomes less funny. It loses its punch. 

But Luke does it anyway. He says, look this parable you’re about to hear with its tenacious widow and unjust judge, it’s about prayer, okay? Don’t read into it. 

Well, I’m sorry, Luke, but I’m an English teacher at heart, and we are going to read into it today. And we may find that it’s not about prayer, or not only about prayer. 

And here’s how we’re going to do it. I’m going to tell the parable 3 ways. And then we’ll regroup afterward and discuss what we’ve learned. Sound good? Alright, let’s go.

Take 1: 

In a certain city, there was widow. She was the ripe old age of 32, having just lost her husband in a boating accident. She had been to court three times trying to get some kind of justice for what had happened to him. 

She would swear on her three children that it was the fault of the captain. Everyone knew he drank too much, and he didn’t exercise caution when the clouds rolled in. And now the whole crew is dead, except magically the captain, and there’s nothing to show for it. She’s got mouths to feed and no prospects for another marriage anytime soon, and besides, she misses her husband. 

So since she can’t get any justice the old-fashioned way, the acceptable way, the civil way, she’s got to take matters into her own hands. She is a mama bear, and a grieving, raging widow, and she is not taking no for an answer. 

So one night, she decides to roll out of the bed she shares with her children while they are sleeping, and walk down the road to where she knows the judge lives. She tiptoes down as the rest of the street settles down for the night, and she stands quietly in front of the judge’s door, gathering her nerve. 

And then she starts pounding on the door. The door swings open, and a disgruntled judge stares at her bleary-eyed, trying to place her. 

She says, “You have now heard my case three times, and you have denied me justice every time. Once on a technicality. Once because you thought I was too emotional. And the last because you were just tired of hearing from me. You asked me if I had any men in my life to take care of things. Well, obviously I don’t. And I’m here because I have kids to take care of. I lost my husband because of a reckless captain that is still taking boats out on the water. I am owed justice.” 

He mumbles something rude and slams the door in her face. 

Stunned, she stumbles home and climbs into her bed with her children and cries hot tears of bitterness. By the morning, she has resolved to repeat the night before. And so she does, every night, for three weeks. 

On the last night, she is so angry and exhausted from knocking on the door every night, that spittle flies from her mouth and she ends with these words, “I swear to God, if you do not give me justice, the justice you have the power to give and are refusing to do so, I will punch you in the face in broad daylight, and these bleeding knuckles of mine that have been pounding on your door for three weeks, will smile in satisfaction.”

And so the judge gives her justice. He charges the captain, takes him into custody, dries him out, and makes him pay recompense to all the families who lost their men at sea. 

In the end, the widow got her justice. But not without severe cost to herself and to her family. To some, she’ll be known as the tenacious widow. The one who did what it took to get justice for her family. To others, she’ll be known as the one who broke the law and threatened a judge and couldn’t take of her grievances the appropriate way. 

And to still others, it won’t matter whether or not she got justice or how she got it, they’ll just think of her as the one who kept them up with all that knocking, not caring about who she woke up or what noise ordinances she broke. 

And when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

Take 2:

In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. He had seen too much in his job. He became jaded a long time ago. He knew that religious folks weren’t always the nicest folks—in fact, it kind of seemed to be the opposite. Sometimes the religious folks were the meanest folks. And he wasn’t interested in any God that was responsible for that. 

He had gotten into law because he wanted to make a difference. It was a family business that he admired, and his altruism as a boy led him to that first day in court like a lamb to a slaughter. He had no idea what was coming. It quickly became clear that justice wasn’t blind and the law was bent toward those who already had the power to weasel out of things. 

What could he do? He had tried to stay clear-eyed and open-hearted, but society was just bad. Maybe that wasn’t kosher to say, but he didn’t see any point in the work he was doing besides collecting a paycheck. 

That’s why it was so surprising to him that night when the widow pounded on his door. As she was yelling at him, he tried to clear the sleep from his eyes and from his mind to remember who she was. 

She was in his court? Three times, she said? Well, honestly, that’s on her. If she couldn’t get the law to work in her favor, she just needed to accept her lot in life. That’s just the way things are, honey. He slammed the door and tried to put her out of his head.

But then she came back. And she kept coming back. Every night. He had just grown accustomed to waiting up for her tantrum when she finally threatened him with physical violence. And it’s not like he wanted to press charges or anything. 

It’s just, well, he didn’t want to walk around with a black eye and have to explain it was a woman who had done it. And everyone would know—she had been pounding on his door and shouting for three weeks straight. They all knew her case backwards and forwards by now. 

So he relented. He brought the captain in. He made the drunk make reparation for his actions. She got what she wanted, didn’t she? I mean, he isn’t inspired to believe in his job again, but there’s a part of him that is glad she can get on with her life instead of being hung up on this and stuck on his doorstep. 

But there was another part of him that wondered if what he did counted as the right thing. If his younger self would have been proud. Does delayed justice still count as justice? He didn’t want to know the answer to that question. 

And when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

Take 3:

In a certain city, there was a door. It had once been a tree, long ago. A mulberry tree, actually. He had once heard a carpenter tell a story about a mulberry tree being uprooted and planted in the sea with faith the size of a mustard seed. He always thought it would be nice to be planted in the sea. To feel his roots tickling the sand and fish come up to munch on the moss that grew on his trunk. 

But then he was chopped down instead of uprooted and found himself cut and sanded and shaved until he was flattened out for a house. He was the door to a house of a judge. 

He didn’t care much for human professions—he thought their whole system of deciding who was good and who was bad was nonsensical. They could learn a lot from trees, how they held roots underneath the ground and pulled each other gently down to water sources. 

How they provided shade and homes for animals with no expectation of repayment. How they moved so slowly—indiscernible to the human eye. Over one day or one year, the tree may seem inanimate. But over the course of generations? Trees flourished and laughed and gave themselves to other life forms over and over again.

That’s why he wasn’t surprised when the woman starting hitting him so angrily that night. It hurt, he admitted. But he couldn’t blame her. This was her only way, he understood. 

He breathed a sigh of relief when the judge swung him open to hear the woman’s case, but he was surprised to hear that the judge had already heard it. Three times already. And he was even more surprised when the judge slammed him shut. 

He hated being used as a divider, as a weapon. He was meant to provide shade, to lay down his life as the carpenter had said, to give himself when it was time for the good of creatures’ flourishing. 

And even though it hurt every time, he was glad the woman kept coming back. He had hoped she would. He absorbed the blood from her knuckles and considered them a sacred offering of her own. He accepted her pain and listened to the stories her blood told. Of her children. Of the time she was a child and skinned her knee after climbing a tree much like himself. Of the blood of her mother and her grandmother and her ancestors all speaking through her DNA. 

He could sense a shift in her touch that last night. He ached to be swung open and bear witness to her receiving what she asked for. He wished he could give himself over to her to ease the pain she was in, but he knew that he was a vehicle, not justice itself. He was a threshold, not the end. 

But when he heard the justice say those words the woman had been longing to hear, he didn’t feel relief like he thought he would. He felt like it was too little. Too late. Not enough. Not in time. He was glad something happened, but he was also ashamed that he was glad because he knew what could be. 

Oh, if only the humans would focus less on chopping down trees and more on sitting underneath them. If only they could consider what it was to live an existence of freely giving, trusting in each other, rather than taking and hoarding and accusing. If only.

And when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

The world inside this parable is one of futility. Nothing is as it should be. The characters don’t even fit neatly into their stereotypes. We think of widows as meek and mild because we read the Bible and know how much it talks about taking care of them, but in this story, she’s ferocious. She’s relentless. She could punch a civil servant in the face. 

And the unjust judge, which is a trope that has a whole book in the Bible about them, and loads of passages in the prophets railing against them, actually does grant her justice in the end. We’re not happy with it. Justice delayed is justice denied. Why on earth is she having to knock on his door? 

And we don’t feel great after hearing the parable because even the lines that follow about God granting justice to those who cry out and not delaying in helping his people fall flat. 

Because I think we all know what it is to cry out day and night to someone who doesn’t seem to be listening. Who doesn’t answer our prayers. Who still lets our loved ones die. Who won’t cure our cancer or save our grandpa or fix our marriage or mend our relationship with our kid or help us make ends meet on a measly $7.25/hour or make our friend change their ways or restore what we have lost or whatever we have prayed for forever and ever amen without so much as a thumbs up from God. 

In fact, this story of unsatisfactory justice might feel a lot like our prayer life sometimes. Or our relationship to the Creator of the Cosmos. Or our connection to the church. The notion that we must repeatedly bang on the doors of heaven if we are to catch God’s attention is hardly an appropriate theology of prayer, no offense, Luke. 

But I wonder if this parable is less about the outcome of prayer and more about the experiment of it. Because in this world of futility found in the parable, the widow and the judge are not acting how we would expect them to. The world is not as it should be, that’s true. I wish a lot of things were different about it. 

But the two characters both move beyond the confines of their roles. The widow pounds on a door and threatens to punch a judge in the face, that’s the actual Greek translation to “bothering me” that we see in the NRSV. 

And the judge, though he has no fear of God or respect for others, is finally moved to action. That door opens to a more suitable outcome…eventually. The arc of the moral universe does bends a little toward justice. 

As your pastor, I cannot promise that pounding on the door of justice or praying every day is going to bring you the outcome you’re hoping for. I’m not sure prayer works that way. 

But I do think that prayer changes who we are. That it moves us beyond the confines of how we understand the world to work or what we can expect from each other. 

I think some days we’re like the widow, and some days we’re like the judge. 

But perhaps prayer is the door. The conduit for something to be different. For something to change. For something to break up the monotony of meaninglessness. 

Our desire to resolve the story further is a prayer in itself. It is the doorway to a different world. 

So don’t lose heart. Don’t back down. Amen. 

O For a World - 683

Sharing Our Resources

There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church. You can give online on our website, on Venmo, or in the offering plate as the deacons come by during our final song. Don’t forget to drop your notification survey in the plate.

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 this morning comes from Tom Petty.

Receive this blessing….

May you know what’s right.

You’ve got just one life.

In a world that keeps on pushing you around,

May you stand your ground.

May you not back down.

Amen.

Take My Life - 609 v 1-3

Doxology

Let Me Tell You a Story...about a mustard seed (Luke 17:5-10)

Introit: Holy, Holy, Holy - 4

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! 

Nicole is on vacation this week, so many thanks to Anne for leading us in worship through song this morning.

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.

Thanks to everyone who came to Gospels and Groceries and filled our shelves for our Little Free Pantry!

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.

I want to draw your attention to something in your bulletin. We have put a survey for how you receive your news about Azle stuff. Please take moment at some point during the service and check all the ways that you use to keep up with life at Azle. And then you can put it in the offering plate as it goes by later in the service.

We also will be collecting a special offering for our denomination’s reconciliation ministry. That information is also inside your bulletin. The Reconciliation Ministry in the Disciples of Christ seeks to practice faithfulness with regard to the elimination of racism, which exists in all manifestations of the church, to discern the presence and nature of racism as sin, to develop strategies to eradicate it, and to work toward racial reconciliation.

And now a word from our Pandemic Response Committee.

We begin a new series today called Let Me Tell You a Story: Jesus Stories from Luke. 

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: Christians, We Have Met to Worship - 277

Litany of Faith

One: Do not fret yourself because of evildoers; do not be jealous of those who do wrong.

All: For they shall soon wither like the grass, and like the green grass fade away.

One: Put your trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and feed on its riches.

All: Take delight in the LORD, who shall give you your heart’s desire. 

One: Commit your way to the LORD, put your trust in the LORD, who will bring it to pass.

All: The LORD will make your righteousness as clear as the light and your just dealing as the noonday.

(From Psalm 37)

Pastoral Prayer

The Lord be with you.

We continue to pray for Paul Reed, who is moving Azle Manor and will be put on hospice.

Today is World Communion Sunday. It’s a day that is observed by denominations all over the world to celebrate our oneness in Christ. We’ll take communion later today and remember our siblings in Christ all around the globe, but right now, we will pray with the remembrance. 

Since it’s the first Sunday of the month, we will conclude our prayer by singing the Lord’s Prayer, which is #310 in your hymnal. It will also be on the screen.

Join me in prayer.

Most Holy One, we come in prayer seeking your promise for a peace that surpasses our understanding.

When we look at our world, we see war and heartache and hopelessness. We see violence and vitriol and terror. We lament with the world’s suffering, knowing that you weep with us. We pray that you transform our tears into signs of hope. We ask that this gift of water pour forth peace into a dry and weary world.

We pray for those who are lost and lonely; for those who are suffering, sick and scared; for the fragile and forgotten; for war-torn countries and divided lands; for children and the aged caught in conflict; for those on the margins seeking to meet you. Help us to trust that your mercies are new every morning, somehow. And from the smallest mustard seed of faith, stir in us the will to be part of your transformation in the world.

Creator God, we come in prayer seeking your vision for a more just and merciful world filled with joy. Grant us an imagination for new possibilities for relationship and restoration. Embolden us to act. Empower us to help write your story of a world where systems and structures are built to serve the smallest and most fragile among us, of a world where racism is replaced with reconciliation and repair; of a world where poverty is transformed into plenty; of a world where justice and joy reign. In our actions and our prayers, help us to be your people of justice and peace.

As the rain pours down from heaven and waters the earth, so may your Word spring forth as our source of justice and our joy. As the mountains and hills burst into song, so may we return to praise and glory to you. As all Creation bears witness to your goodness, so may we bear witness to the image of God in one another that you called very good. As the trees of the field clap their hands at your mighty acts, so may our hands clap for joy when your justice and peace reign. 

For all these things we pray in the name of our brother and redeemer Jesus, who taught us to pray…

The Lord’s Prayer - 310

I Come With Joy - 420

Sermon

Luke 17:5-10

5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

7 “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8 Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me; put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9 Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’ ”

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

This is the sermon where I compare our holy, Christian faith to a cockroach. This story is not for the faint of heart. 

Picture this. JD and I are about to make a big move from Austin, Texas to Fort Worth. I have just quit teaching. JD just got a big promotion. School’s out for the summer. I have just had a huge group of graduated students over to my house for a goodbye party. 

The morning after the shindig, I blearily walk out of my room to our pantry, grab a bag of instant oatmeal and lazily stir it into some milk. I open the microwave and right as I’m about to put the bowl in, a bug skitters out. I yelp and drop the bowl. JD runs out of the room ready to fight, but alas, the bug is gone. We shrug it off. 

The next day, a similar thing happens. I don’t know how it’s possible, but little bugs keep running out of my microwave, even though the door remains shut. I move the microwave off the counter and try to peer inside as we try to figure out if it’s all the same bug. They’re not your classic cockroach but neither are they ants or little beetles. I’ve never seen this bug before. We shrug it off. 

A week goes by of this cat and mouse, or rather human and bug game, and dread fills my heart with each encounter that this is becoming an infestation. But this dread is not a sudden a-ha moment. It’s like when you wake up in the middle of the night, caught between dream and reality, unsure if the sound you heard was part of the dream or was in the house. It’s like a gradual realization. 

I contemplate this bug and start to avoid the kitchen subconsciously as I pack boxes for our big move. 

And then two weeks after the first bug made its grand appearance I go to my coffee maker on a Saturday morning. Do you know how much I love Saturday mornings? They are times of blessed peace. I sip my coffee slowly and read a book and imagine that I’m in an English cottage working on a sleepy detective novel. It is a sacred time. It is holy. 

And as I go to pull the coffee filter compartment off my coffeemaker, my life unknowingly inches closer to becoming the scene of a horror film. Before I can even pull the compartment all the way out, tiny white bugs pour out, roll out all over the kitchen counter and onto the floor. I am screaming bloody murder. Hell’s gates have opened. Death is at my doorstep. This is the end. 

JD barrels out of the bedroom thinking, rightfully so, that I am in danger. He grabs the coffeemaker and runs out into the garage and throws it in the trash. He does the same with the microwave. We pull out the vacuum and start vacuuming up these little baby horrors that have filled our home. We open our kitchen cabinets to find more mature bugs lurking behind our dishes. JD is calling every pest company he knows to see who can be at our house 20 minutes ago. 

Hours later, after our house has been fumigated and we have recovered from the initial shock of the invasion, we debrief with the exterminator. And he tells us that what we were dealing with was a German cockroach. 

And we learned that day about this little bug. How they travel in bags. How they like warm, damp places to breed like microwaves and coffeemakers. How their eggs do not take long to hatch. And how they are impossible to get rid of once those eggs are laid without professional help. 

And he tells that our horrors are not over. That over the next week as we move our furniture and pack boxes, we will find heaps of dead German cockroaches in small spaces. We will realize how quickly our house had become occupied by this tiny, seemingly unassuming bug that had traveled with one of my students just a few weeks ago. And we did. Holy Moses, we did.

Now that everyone feels sufficiently squirmy, here we arrive at our text today.

We begin a tiny series today. Tiny like a mustard seed, Tiny like a German cockroach. It’s called Let Me Tell You a Story: Jesus Stories from Luke. Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at some stories Jesus tells and one story about Jesus. We’re joining back up with the lectionary as we make our descent from Ordinary Time and prepare to land in Holy Season.

And this one begins with a familiar metaphor: the mustard seed. This time, we’re not talking about “the kingdom of God is like…” but rather, faith the size of a mustard seed.

Let me remind you a little about what’s been going in Luke concerning matters of faith. It’s been a minute. Immediately before this text, Jesus is telling his disciples things like, “Take care not to stumble—and woe to you if your stumbling causes someone else to do the same! If someone sins against you, forgive, and even if you have to do it seven times a day…”

Given these verses, we might understand why the disciples ask for more faith. That kind of living seems like it’s gonna require something more heavy duty than what they’ve got. 

And in the gospel of Luke, this idea of “little faith” makes its appearance frequently. In the midst of a stormy sea, Jesus asks them, “Where is your faith?” And in the midst of everyday worries, Jesus says, “You of little faith!” 

So it would make sense that they would ask for more faith. 

But Jesus doesn’t seem concerned with the size or strength of faith. Actually, in classic Jesus fashion, he doesn’t respond to the disciples’ request, but rather gives them a metaphor. 

He tells them that faith as small as a mustard seed can move a mulberry tree into the sea and make it grow. 

It can uproot a tree and plant it somewhere else! 

But not just anywhere. Somewhere completely impractical and absurd: the sea!

Which is really cool, I guess, but what use do we have for a tree in the sea? 

And then he goes on to deliver what I have dubbed “The Terrible Parable.” 

Look, I’m gonna be honest. When Jesus tells this story, I don’t like it. I don’t like him. The imagery he uses grates on my 21st century ears. For all the liberating talk Jesus does, and for all the liberating trajectory we see in scripture, it would have been really great if Jesus had just said plainly at some point for everyone to hear and write down, “Slavery is bad. Stop it.”

He doesn’t, and I wish he did, and lots of really terrible things have happened because of the way slavery is handled in scripture. We know this. 

But that’s not even the whole reason that I called this “The Terrible Parable.” 

It’s the way the parable works that makes me want to pull my hair out. That gives me the creepy crawlies. That makes me feel like I’m about to unknowingly open a little coffee pot of horrors.

Jesus begins by saying to the disciples: Imagine you have enslaved people. One person, actually. And he has been out in the fields all day working for you with no pay and no freedom. It’s really hot in the Middle East, I don’t know if you knew. 

And he says like it’s normal, “Would you say come here and have some dinner? Rest your feet? Sit with me for awhile?” Jesus answers his own questions with, “Hilarious, no. You would tell him to make you dinner and serve you, and you can eat and drink later.” 

And it’s worth noting that in the ancient world, these are two different sets of duties for an enslaved person, so that this theoretical master is exploiting the person he has enslaved even further by making him work double shifts. Hardly worthless, if you ask me.

But then Jesus sprinkles the parable pixie dust and things get weird. 

And all of sudden, the roles have shifted. He tells the disciples, you who were just like the masters are now like the enslaved. You must do what you are ordered to do because it’s your duty. Don’t ask for thanks. Don’t ask for applause. This is what you ought to have done in the first place. 

I’m sorry, what? 

I’ve said before that parables are like rooms with trap doors. They don’t make sense until you fall through the trap door, most of the time by accident. 

So where’s the trap door and what happens when we fall through it?

I think we should go back to the German cockroach. I know, I’m sorry. 

It did not take an army of German cockroaches to infest my house. It did not take a family. It took one. Just one. 

And I didn’t know it was happening until it was far too late. I didn’t realize how the power had shifted in my house before I was screaming bloody murder. 

The little bug did not have to assemble hundreds of companions to move my microwave. No, he made JD do it for him. Just by being himself. Just by doing what German cockroaches do. 

I didn’t have to send JD Amazon listings for a new and improved coffeepot to get one. A German cockroach and his abundant fruitfulness did that for me. Simply by living its life. 

And as much as I hated it. And have nightmares about it still. And have been on a first name basis with our pest guy ever since, that experience changed my life. And I’ll never forget it. Unfortunately. 

So I wonder if faith the size of a mustard seed has less to do with the size and more to do with the function. Like what is faith for? What do we mean by faith anyway?

Are we talking about a magical ability to manipulate God into getting what we want? Or is faith in intellectual booster shot? Is it the antidote to anxiety? Is faith a certainty that will make us happier, holier, stronger, braver? Will it rewire our brain and heart so that doubt is impossible? Is that what we’re talking about when we say faith?

Because I just wonder if by Jesus talking about a mustard seed faith, he’s saying, you have the size of the faith you need. The kind that can already do astonishing things like rearrange the landscape. Uprooting a tree and planting it into the sea? The whole vista has changed with your small faith.

What if more faith is not necessarily better faith? What if faith is not even quantifiable? 

Perhaps the smallness is the point. You don’t need a bigger faith—you just need to lean in to your little one.

And besides, faith is not really a noun anyway, is it? I mean, yes, technically, grammatically, it is. 

But faith is what you do, not what you have. It’s an orientation to the world. It’s action. It’s engagement. 

And here’s the thing, then, with “The Terrible Parable.” The trap door, perhaps. When we are leaning in to our small faith, we simply do what faith does. We’re not looking for brownie points or gold stars. Because we’re simply being us.

There’s a reversal of power in “The Terrible Parable.” The disciples begin as masters and end up as slaves. They begin with all the power, and end with none. And that’s the point of mustard seed faith. That it’s not us that is moving the mulberry tree into the sea. It’s God, isn’t it. 

It’s not us rearranging the landscape. It’s God. 

It’s not us leveling the mountains and the valleys. It’s God. 

It’s not us casting down the mighty and lifting up the lowly. It’s God. 

It’s not us turning the kingdom upside down. It’s God.

But our faith is the conduit. It’s the vehicle. It’s the little hole in a flute that Christ’s breath moves through. 

We don’t need big, sexy faith to do great things for God. That’s not the point of faith anyway. We just need to live our small faith because that’s what we do. It’s what we ought to do. 

And in that place of humility, without us even realizing it, God is working and changing the landscape of the world. 

While we are eating and sleeping and going about our small faith lives, God is changing the backdrop of our world. 

And before we know it, our view will have changed. 

Things that once seemed impossible and impractical will be as natural as can be. 

Amen.

Let Us Break Bread Together - 425

Sharing Our Resources

There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church. You can give online on our website, on Venmo, or in the offering plate as the deacons come by during our final song. Don’t forget to drop your notification survey in the plate.

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.

Receive this blessing….

Go out in joy,

Bearing witness to the good news of the gospel,

And be led forth in peace,

Sharing the peace of Christ with all.

Amen.

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms - 560 (v 1 & 3)

Doxology