by Barney Wells, DMin
Director, The Fred Craddock Center for Preaching Excellence
Two weeks ago, we considered four approaches to facing the problem of preaching Christmas sermons to people who have heard the same texts preached year after year. Before we make another post to the Sermon Crafting Blog, Christmas will have come and gone. Before we move on beyond Christmas, however, let’s take one more look at the topic of Christmas sermons.
During his time preaching at the Cherry Log Christian Church, Dr. Craddock would have preached some Christmas sermons himself, and at least one of them, titled “God Is with Us,” is recorded on audio and printed in The Cherry Log Sermons. The text is a familiar but less common Christmas text—Matthew 1:18-25. You will recall this is where Joseph finds out Mary is pregnant and considers what to do about it, then the angel explains the situation to him in a dream. I thought it might be helpful to see how he handled this Christmas sermon.
After reading the text, Dr. Craddock begins in a place more like the third spirit’s visit in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol than the expected story of the nativity. He takes his listeners on a tour of some graveyards: one in Connecticut, one in Wales, one in rural Georgia, and one in Matthew Chapter One. Yes, he leads us on a stroll through Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. A Christmas sermon that starts in cemetery, leads us through a couple millennia of Old Testament history, then addresses some issues of interpretation and gets into some deep theology, and finally brings us back to the idea that God Is with Us, and what that means for us. It is a powerful message, focused on the meaning of the Immanuel prophecy, speaking of God’s grace, all from a lesser-used Christmas text. I could say more, but why don’t you just listen to it. Here’s one place you can listen to it online.
Merry Christmas.