Advent 2: Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow!

This week we continue to celebrate Advent alongside the launching of our Negro Spirituals Royalties Project (more info here). We will center both our Sunday morning and Tuesday midweek worship around four spirituals:
1. Mary Had a Baby 
2. Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow
3. Children, Go Where I Send Thee
4. Go, Tell It on the Mountain
(music video links embedded)
For more information and study, please check out this Advent devotional.

This Sunday, we reflect on the Angels' message to the Shepherds as told in Luke's Gospel (2:8-20). It is a message of joy, hope, and promise. The text of the spiritual this Sunday focuses our attention on the urgency of this message and the promise of liberation and release. It mentions the burdens, weeping, and fear that people down the millennia have become all too familiar with, and promises that the star that points the way toward Jesus also points the way toward release from these burdens. 

Are you tired? Do you have it in you to make one more journey? Rise up, shepherd, and follow!

Oh, there's a star in the East on Christmas morn
Rise up, shepherd, and follow
It will lead you to the place where the saviour's born
Rise up shepherd, and follow

Leave your ewes and leave your rams
Rise up shepherd, and follow
Leave your sheep and leave your lambs
Rise up, shepherd, and follow

Now, if you take good heed to the angel's word
Rise up, shepherd, and follow
You'll forget your flock, forget your herd
Rise up, shepherd, and follow

In a cradle of straw is a babe asleep
Rise up, shepherd, and follow
Born that man no more will weep
Rise up, shepherd, and follow

Leave your burdens, lay them down
Rise up, shepherd, and follow
For you that child will wear a crown
Rise up, shepherd, and follow

There's a light in the sky shining crystal clear
Rise up, rise up
Move on, move on
There's a megaphone singing to my fear
Rise up, 'cause he's born, he's born
Rise and go, you're being released
Rise up, rise up
Move on, move on
Born this morning is the prince of peace (born this morning is the prince of peace)
 

Join me this Sunday to listen, learn, and follow the star together. I look forward to every service with you all. 

Peace,

Amy

Advent Study: we also invite you to join our Seminarian Thomas' Advent study, "A Song to Sing" on Tuesday evenings on Zoom (after midweek worship), and on Sundays after worship in the Parlor. See more here.

If you'd like to read or listen to previous sermons, or subscribe to our podcast, please click here.
If you'd like to watch previous worship services, please visit our YouTube page.

Image credit: "Host of Angels", by Mike Moyers