Error While Running Pyspark in an Azure Function (Error: Java gateway process exited before sending its port number)

Question

I'm running into the following error when testing out my Azure Function:

Error: Java gateway process exited before sending its port number.

This occurs when attempting to execute the following line of code:

spark = SparkSession.builder.master('local[*]').appName("GetHighWatermark").getOrCreate()

Any ideas as to why this may be happening and what the solution to it may be? Thanks.