Today is a long-awaited annual tradition: our Christmas Cantata! We are thrilled to be able to come together in person this year, but this service will also be available online. This musical message of Christmas features our sanctuary choir, bell choir and even members of our band AND our former beloved Assistant Music Director Mike Jarjoura on piano. This is a do-not-miss event at our church that is sure to put you in the holiday spirit. ENJOY!

This week we come to a very hopeful invitation in the prophet Isaiah (one that is ALMOST too good to be true) and we explore it using our “Song of Waiting”, Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming, the ancient 15th century Christmas hymn. Are we able to embrace joy this Christmas, even when it seems too good to be true? Are we able to see the fragile beauty breaking forth like a rose in winter? Join us for this third week of Advent with its theme of JOY. We hope to reflect AND rejoice together as a community. This week also features a celebration of baptism for a baby in our congregation. Many reasons to celebrate!

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This week in our short Advent sermon series, we think together about a more popular, but also solemn Christmas song called “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear”. We use imagery from texts normally read during Lent and Easter: the story of Jesus raising Lazarus and the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of God bringing an entire valley of dry bones back to life. How do such images connect to this season of Advent and Christmas? How do they connect to what we light our Advent candles for this week: the theme of PEACE? How does God’s coming into our world somehow answer our weariness and longing? We will explore these things together, and hope you will join us!

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We are entering into the season of Advent; the four weeks before Christmas where we intentionally set our hearts and minds on the journey towards God entering the world as one of us; as a child born for us. Our Advent sermon series will be called “SONGS OF WAITING”. It will use our Narrative Lectionary scriptures to explore how ancient and beloved hymns of Advent and carols of Christmas teach us about one of our faith’s greatest mysteries: a God who comes to be one of us and walk among us in the flesh. The song we will combine with our scripture meditation this week is “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”, one of the church’s best known Advent hymns. It has a solemn tone and reminds us that this season is joyous, but also hard and bittersweet for so many of us. Our stories contain light and darkness and God came into the world to experience a full life of both. God knows what it is to be human.

Join in reflection with us in this beautiful season!

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This week is Christ the King Sunday! Did you know that today is the last Sunday of the Church year? Sort of like our New Year’s Eve! Each Church year begins with welcoming Advent time; where we wait for the coming of Jesus, God-With-Us, Emmanuel. This day in the church is traditionally called Christ the King Sunday because it reminds believers that, through every time and change, God is the one who is sovereign and unchanging and in control. Let us remember God’s faithfulness in all that we have been through in the last year and look to the future with hope and confidence!

We spend this Sunday meditating on Isaiah 9, a scripture that usually falls on Christmas Eve! Are we rushing into the holidays, as culture and retail stores would urge us to do? Not necessarily. We are ready for Advent waiting and the journey to the birth of the Christ Child, and yet we are centering our waiting in the hope of a God who comes to meet the deepest needs of the world in the darkest place with the promise of a helpless baby. God has not forgotten about us. God always remembers and always acts, but usually in ways that surprise and amaze us.

Join us this Sunday in this reflection.

Link to readable sermon PDF