This Sunday is a favorite of each church year, bringing together people from our Contemporary Band, our Sanctuary Choir, our music staff and other special guests. This year’s cantata comes from the vision of COA Director of Music, Diana Martin. It is called “Good News” A Cantata of American Music including Early American, Appalachian, Spiritual and Gospel. The music IS the sermon this Sunday! It is meant to serve as a finale to our short Advent sermon series focused on the African American spirituals and their lessons for us in going deeper this Advent with the story of God’s Incarnation. Enjoy this special presentation!

What is the song in your heart this Advent season? How does it make your heart feel? Does it make you want to sing and shout or curl up and hide? What message is good enough that you would want to tell the whole world? This week, we explore Mary’s Magnificat (her song of response to being pregnant with God’s own Son, celebrating how His presence in the world would overturn the status quo and bring liberation for those most in need), and we lay it alongside the African American spiritual “Go Tell it on the Mountain”. Both of these songs came from people who thirsted for justice and revolution. Maybe Christmas was never as sentimental as we thought. What else could it be about? Maybe this good news can be Good News for us too this Advent, such that we will never be the same.

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This week is our short Advent series, we continue exploring themes of the season through the lens of the African American spirituals, and we focus on the song “Rise Up Shepherd and Follow”. This song, like all of the spirituals, has a double meaning of breaking out of slavery and into freedom, but it also challenges us to leave things behind on the journey to that freedom. What do we leave behind when we truly welcome Jesus into the world? How can the world change if we too are not willing to change? This season is not just one of comfort and joy, but also transformation! Join us in the journey!

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This week we begin a new and brief sermon series for the season of Advent: 

Songs for a New World: Advent Reflections on the Spirituals

Did you know that our Presbyterian hymnal has thirty-five songs that are African American spirituals? This music, for most of us, may not come from our background and culture, but it shares so much in common with the Biblical people of God who also had experienced the horrors of slavery and violence were longing for a Savior. In this season of waiting and anticipation, what might these songs have to teach us as we seek to connect with Jesus in a new way during this Advent and Christmas? 

We begin with a non-Christmas song: “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”, but it connects well with the themes of Advent scriptures urging us to stay awake and prepare ourselves because the world is about to be changed. This world is not our true home, and God is at work bringing something new for the restoration and healing of us all. Just like many of our Christmas songs (in scripture and in popular culture), the spirituals are not just sweet songs of some faraway dream. Rather, they are prophetic words of hope about what God is doing right now for the cause of human freedom and how we are called to be agents of that hope.

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This is the very last Sunday in the church liturgical year, and it is called Christ the King Sunday. This may seem like a strange and antiquated idea for us since the last time we had a king was in 1776, and probably many of us are thinking about what is going on in our own democracy during midterm elections. A king?? What use do we have for a king? Well, the thing is that, even with all the chaos and violence and division in our world, this Sunday reminds us that it is all under the rule of Jesus. We are not the ones in charge of it all. Even Presidents or earthly kings like Charles are not in charge of all of it. It is not up to us to save the world. Everything we see and everything we are afraid of is under control of the reign of Christ.

And furthermore, He is a different kind of ruler than any ruler in our world, so much so that we may not recognize His power at first. This is the last week of our series on What Disciples Do, and this last week reminds us that one thing we must do is to give our ultimate allegiance to Christ over and above all the other powers that be competing for our attention and loyalty. This week leads into Advent season, where we meditate on a ruler who chose to come into this world as a vulnerable baby, and that sets the tone for the rest of His reign. Are our hearts open to this kind of upside down power?

Link to readable sermon PDF