A Little Singing, A Little Preaching

Sermon Reflection || Year C: First Sunday of Advent

When you think of Joy to the World, you undoubtedly think of Christmas, but the lyrics to the song are more about the second advent than the first, which makes it a great song for the first Sunday of advent.

Sermon—December 1st || Year C: First Sunday of Advent

Sermon Text

Video

Reflection

General Thoughts

I thought this sermon went over really well. I started the sermon by acknowledging how difficult of time this part of the year can be for people because of seasonal depression. It’s also a difficult time because those who have had familial trauma are often reminded of it during the time of the year when families are all getting together.

After this short introduction, I led the congregation in the first verse of “Joy to the World” by Isaac Watts. Following the first verse, I gave a short history of the song and then focused on the phrase “The Lord is Come.” I talked about the parousia of Christ and how the hope of the parousia helped the Christians stay strong during severe persecution.

The rest of the sermon went along these same lines. I’d lead the congregation in song and then comment on the passage by using texts referenced by the lyrics coupled with passages from the lectionary suggested readings.

This pattern of mixing song and sermon seemed to help keep everyone’s attention as well as emphasize the points I was making about hope, expectation, and the everlasting Presence of Jesus in our lives.

Unlike the last two weeks where I felt like I did perhaps the bare minimum in terms of delivery, I really enjoyed this sermon. Not only was the message appropriate, but I also had fun presenting it.

Creative Process

The creative process for this one actually took a few turns. As you can tell from the text post I made for this sermon, my plan was to walk through the lectionary texts and only loosely relate it back to Joy to the World. I actually wanted to sing Joy to the World straight through right before the sermon.

But the more I thought about the flow of the sermon, the more I realized it could benefit from being broken up a bit. While the lectionary texts all follow the same theme, they were just a little too disjointed to present in the way I wanted, so breaking it up helped with the flow of the sermon.

I also wanted to include the symbols from our yearly theme in the presentation. I did this by putting a small purple ribbon in the top right of each slide with a white version of the symbol in it.

So each slide had the last arrow in it from the graphic above.

Since it was Thanksgiving week, I didn’t have much time to create the slides for this sermon, but thankfully I woke up at 3:45 this morning. After a little reading, I went to Waffle House and finished my presentation with a little help from coffee, scrambled eggs, and a biscuit with gravy.

This sermon really came together without much effort on my part. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t. But once you get into that rhythm, everything just seems to come together.