Magnify the Lord With Me

Sermon Reflection || Year C: Fourth Sunday of Advent

Sermon—December 22nd || Year C: Fourth Sunday of Advent

Sermon Text

Video

Reflection

Today was my second Sunday attempting a new sermon format. Instead of a typical longer monologue, I’ve started engaging the conversation in light discussion just prior to communion. I thought it flowed together well this past Sunday, and we had good participation from the congregation.

After communion and a couple more songs, I delivered the “application” part of the sermon based on the same gospel text we studied together. In my mind, it went well, and I believe the message was well received. I didn’t change much from my original plans, so there isn’t much to comment where that is concerned.

Oh! I will add that at the start of service I offered a prayer of lament instead of a typical prayer. Someone commented on it afterwards saying they’ve always wanted to offer that kind of prayer. I had the idea to do it after doing some study in Advent and meditating on the seasonal depression may experience this time of year.

Creative Process

This week’s sermon came from a prompt in Reginald Fuller’s book Preaching the Lectionary. Specifically, it was Fuller’s acknowledgment of the threefold blessing of Mary in Luke 1 that got me thinking. After drawing in some themes from Meister Eckhart and Dorothy Day, I had my main theme: if we are to be blessed with Mary, how can we emulate the responsibility she had?

So much of the creative process had to do with connecting these themes together using common passages.

As I was preparing this sermon, my mind kept going back to the idea of John leaping in Elizabeth’s womb. This provided me with another angle to address the same basic idea but from a different perspective: do we have eyes to see and ears to hear the presence of Christ in the places we least expect?

Are we ready to leap for joy when we encounter the Divine in someone else? Or are we too self-centered to notice such a blessing?

The most creative thing I did in this sermon, as I left it in the video above, is to combine the reading of Luke 1 with our a cappella version of Magnificat that is popular among the Churches of Christ. I hope you’ll give that part a listen.