CHILDREN – 2nd Sunday of Advent B

OBJECTS: None

It’s week number two: the second week of Advent and you may have noticed that we’ve lit another candle. Two candles lit and two more to go! Christmas is drawing closer and closer and before you know it we’ll be celebrating Jesus’ birth.

The Gospel reading is a special one, because it’s a prologue. Have you heard that word before––prologue?

A prologue is a part of a story that comes at the very beginning––and it has a special job. Its job it to get you ready––to tell you what you need to know to understand the rest of the story.

And today we hear the prologue to the Gospel of Mark––its very first verses.

In it we meet John the Baptist––who was a very important figure in the Bible.

John was a preacher who helped many people to have their sins forgiven by baptizing them in the River Jordan. Later in his life he would even baptize Jesus.

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SOURCE: Sermon Writer

OBJECT: Letters, stamps, email

When you want to send someone a message, how do you do it? You can write a letter and send it by mail. Perhaps you are familiar with the computer and send email messages. You can also use the telephone or just use your voice if the person is nearby.

We have lots of ways to send messages now, but earlier it was difficult to get a message to someone. Letters were hand carried or sent by boat and it took months before the letter was delivered.

In America, about one hundred and fifty years ago, mail was carried by the Pony Express. Riders left from Missouri and rode horses, day and night, as fast as they could ride, to California – about two thousand miles away. It was like a relay race where horses were changed every ten miles and riders took turns, each riding a hundred miles or so. The riders were often young, skinny boys, some as young as eleven. It took about ten days for mail carried by Pony Express to arrive. It was a difficult, but exciting journey.

Before Jesus was born, the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was written about by the prophet, Isaiah. This is what was written: “Behold, I send my messenger… who will prepare your way before you” (1:2).

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OBJECT: A megaphone. (You can roll up a big piece of poster board and use it to make your announcement.)

(Raise the megaphone. Use a loud voice) I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT. I AM SENDING A MESSENGER. This is a megaphone. In the past, a megaphone was used when someone needed to make a special announcement. Today, we have microphones, so we don’t need the megaphone any more.

They didn’t have microphones or megaphones at the time of the Old Testament, but they did write special messages. Here are the words of one message: “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you; the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord!’” (Paraphrase of Malachi 3:1; Isaiah 40:3) That Old Testament message was talking about a man by the name of John.

John is better known to us as John the Baptist, or John the Baptizer. He must have been an interesting person. He didn’t live in the city. He lived out in the desert, or wilderness. He didn’t eat hamburgers and French fries; he ate locusts and honey. He didn’t wear a suit, or even jeans and a tea shirt; he wore clothes made out of camel’s skin and he had a leather belt around his waist. John talked to people near a river or stream and he baptized people who came to visit him.

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SOURCE: Sermon Writer