Focus | RISE UP!

Reading Notes

NRSV texts, artwork and Revised Common Lectionary Prayers for this service are available at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library.
Leccionario en Español, Leccionario Común Revisado: Consulta Sobre Textos Comunes.
Lectionnaire en français, Le Lectionnaire Œcuménique Révisé

Calendar Notes

The color today is green.
Colors next Sunday (February 11 — Transfiguration) are white and gold.
Beginning Ash Wednesday (February 14), the color is purple.

For your Planning Team

In week five of a six-week series, we’re starting to move toward series wrap. While mid-series is about sustaining energy and advancing development, the movement toward series wrap involves picking up the energy once again so the series starts its closure with a rising tide of expectation and excitement. So it may seem we’d want to deploy a lot of high energy songs, upbeat prayers, and a strong, moving sermon today.

Except for one thing.

That’s not where the Scriptures are going this week.

This week’s text, and the theme we’ve drawn from it, do call for an increase in energy, but not primarily kinetic energy. Instead, this week we are challenged to increase what I might call our “contemplative” energy. This is about focus, about “getting into the zone."

We can listen for God’s voice, get on the move, and develop confidence in God being one who truly answers us. But these processes, whether foregrounded or running in the background of our lives, may not be enough in themselves to lead us or sustain us on “this tedious journey.” We have to stay focused on where we’re heading if we’re going to get there. And we need to stay focused on the one who gives us the power to get there.

So the first response to this week’s sermon is a sung affirmation of faith to strengthen our focus, collectively, on the redemptive presence, work, and power of our God.

After that, we move straight into confession, pardon, peace, and the offering, where we also begin to kick up the kinetic energy in song, continuing through the Great Thanksgiving and into the sending.