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This page provides sermons for Advent (the 4 Sundays leading up to Christmas) and Christmas (Including Christmas1/New Years, the Sunday after Christmas which often has a New Years flavor). These sermons are based on scriptures from Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary. Feel free to extract ideas, outlines, or the entire sermons.
Simply browse the sermon synopses below and when you want to access a sermon just click on its title link. This takes you to a Google Docs of the sermon notes. You can use your browser to print the file, or to download it to your computer in various formats (such as Word, RTF, or PDF). If you are using Word 2007 or later, downloading the sermon notes file in the Word format works fine. If you are still using Word 2003 and having trouble, try downloading the sermon into RTF. You can open it in Word 2003.
At the end of each sermon notes file is a way to access the Presentation file (converted from the original PowerPoint file), the audio recording file of most sermons dated after 10/9/06, and any other associated files for that sermon.
Advent scriptures focus on much more than Jesus' birth. Several are Old Testament prophesies pointing to the First Advent (the coming of Jesus 2000 years ago). Others point to the Second Advent (the future coming of Christ). To learn more about how these fit into the Revised Common Lectionary calendar, just click on Lectionary Basics and Lectionary Preaching.
To see how these sermons fit into the 3 year lectionary cycle, just click on Complete Sermon List and browse down the first column until you see C01. This is the first sermon suggested for Year C. You can also access the sermon notes from the Complete Sermon List.
I'm confident that you will find something here you can use. Let me know how it goes.
Blessings,
Tim
Advent 1 (12/2/012): Giving Thanks
1 Thessalonians 3.9-13. Paul gives thanks for the Thessalonian church, and prays for their well being and growth.
Thesis: Part of authentic Christian community is for its members to gather and give public thanks to God – in good and bad times.
Advent 1 falls pretty close after Thanksgiving, when people are just beginning to shift into the Christmas mindset. Many years on the first Sunday of Advent we had a worship service with a lot of time set aside for people to give thanks and praise to the Lord. On such Sunday’s I’d provide a short sermon lead-in that included some appropriate scripture and then share my personal thanks/praise to God for this past year. Then open the floor for a time for the congregation to share their their thanks and praise, mixed with communion and a bit of music. This is one of those sermons.
Advent 2 (12/9/012): God's Promise is Good
Luke 1.68-79. Zechariah's prophesy.
Thesis: We can trust this God's love and destination for us – and not be disheartened by apparent instances to contrary.
This sermon has a novel, inductive framework which leads to one of those ahah endings. It begins with a few personal stories about being uncomfortable in some situations, along with one story of a friend of mine going to Denmark and being surprised to immediately fell "at home." With this background the sermon looks at some parallels to God in Christ coming to what must have been a very uncomfortable place for a person who had otherwise experienced nothing but holiness and joy. It finishes by explaining how Christmas offers us a way to find our own true home, one where we are finally "at home."
Here's an additional link to a Web Published version of God's Promise is Good.
Advent 3 (12/16/012): Dealing with Doubts
Luke 3.7-18. John the Baptist prepares the way for Jesus by telling people to repent and change the way they live.
Thesis: God gives us enough of his word and his signs for us to trust him in everything downstream.
The scripture provides the opportunity to remind the congregation of the arc of John the Baptist's life. Particularly how he was so sure of his theology and message... until he was in Herod's prison. Then he appears to have doubts. The sermon uses reminds the congregation of the arc of John the Baptist's life to help us know how to deal with our doubts when the storms are hitting us from all sides. Late in the sermon I change directions a bit and re-analyze John the Baptist's prison situation as not so much a matter of his personal doubts as something else. You will have to read the sermon for this.
Advent 4 (12/23/012): Too Good to be True
John 14.12. I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father.
Thesis: The incarnation of God in Christ continues with his incarnation in the “Body of Christ,” the church.
This sermon uses many scriptures, but none of them really fit Year A Advent 4. Regardless, I'm posting it here because it is such a strong sermon on the incarnation of Jesus 2000 years ago... and also in his reincarnation in the body of Christ every since.
A few times each year someone asks me about some Old Testament story where picture of God is very harsh. For example, where God orders the destruction of an entire people group. Or where God himself destroys a group, like Sodom. I don’t like these stories, I wish they weren’t in the Bible; but they are. This sermon is about how to think about these things. As it progresses the sermon unpacks the implications of the incarnation of Jesus in his incarnation in the body of Christ, and how this fulfills the John scripture. This sermon is a strong invitation for people who self-identify themselves as Christians to actually take up their assignment in the body of Christ.
Advent 4 (12/23/012): Christmas is Doctrinal and Historical
John 1.1-4, Luke 1 & 2
Thesis: Christmas is frankly doctrinal and boldly historical, and because of this Christians are solidly material, richly relational, profoundly mystical, and free to be emotional.
This is an adaptation of a Timothy Keller's superb sermon: The Purpose of Christmas. Sooner or later the material in this message needs preached in every authentically Christian church. At the beginning of the sermon is an opportunity to use a video clip to tell the Christmas story, but you can also simply tell it or have it read by 2-3 readers. Also, there is a set of object lessons that threads through the sermon to connect to the 4 points: material, relational, mystical, and emotional.
Christmas 1 or New Years (12/30/012): Now Is the Time
Ecclesiastes 3.1-13
Thesis: Maybe this is not the year to over-focus on long-term goals; perhaps this is a year to enjoy the processes of God.
Many New Years sermons direct attention to setting goals for the upcoming year. This sermon takes the opposite approach, suggesting that we focus our attention more on process than on goals. By process, I mean the ways of living an authentic Christian life that include worship, participation in a small group, serving some under-resourced people, and doing some life with unchurched friends.
Christmas 1 or New Years (12/30/012): The Preacher’s Message
Ecclesiastes.
Thesis: God never promises all the answers to life’s frustrations; instead he offers himself even/especially in the middle of life’s complexities.
This book appears very infrequently in the lectionary. This sermon makes use of a lot of scriptures from the prologue, through the interior writing, and moves to a grand conclusion:
At times in every life, it will seem meaningless – frustrating.
We will never completely figure Life out. Maybe not even in the next life.
God never promises us all the answers; what he promises is himself. Even in the complexities of life we hold onto the promise, “I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.”
This is what enables Christians to live with confidence and courage.
Christmas 1 or New Years (12/30/012): It's God's Initiative; History Is Going Somewhere
Rev 21.1-4 John's prophesy of a coming New Jerusalem. The sermon also uses 1 Peter 3.13-16.
Thesis: God’s primary mission in human history is to redeem people into a Kingdom community suitable to live with him forever.
This sermon is also part of a distributed series: the 10 Big Ideas of Christian Faith series. It is a good fit in the lectionary for all three years. It is a particularly strong one to lead off the year.
Okay, that's it for Advent, Christmas and New Years sermon material for this year. I hope you will consider subscribing to my email and/or RSS feeds of sermons for the upcoming seasons of Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and so on. You can subscribe at IsbellOnline News.
Blessings,
Tim
Please disregard, this is an experiment. Test link to the Web Publishing page.
