Writing my first sermon...

Christmas music, a lantern, and a pile of Bibles in my reading corner

Today I am brainstorming a sermon. The lead pastor at my church asked if I would be interested in preaching on December 28th, and I was terrified. I am honoured to have been asked, and it's cool to give that opportunity to younger people, but what wisdom could I share? Am I talking out of a book then, and being hypocritical because my relationship with God has been seriously lack-lustre for a few years? What does it meant to me to preach?
Carmen sent me the sermon packet for Advent up to Epiphany, and encouraged me to look at it, think about it, and decide if there was anything that I could share. It turns out December 28th, or "Christmas 2" is about God's beauty being revealed in the baby Jesus, and I saw opportunities in the prompts to talk about social justice, which is right up my Peace and Conflict Studies degree. After a call to Mom at work, I agreed to preach.
I know that there will be something somewhere in this sermon that only I could write, and that it will be a good spiritual exercise for me. I have already looked through 5 of my 6 Bibles for different interpretations of the 4 passages in the lectionary, and have found old passages that spoke to me over the years. I pray that this will allow me to become closer to God, and is a good growing experience for me.
I've been happy to discover in the one hour of planning I've done so far, that writing a sermon is much like writing an English Literature essay: I start with the texts, find questions that I have about them, find links between them, come up with a thesis statement, and look into their contexts. The difference is that instead of arguing a random point for marks and to make a professor think I'm smart, I'm trying to find wisdom to share with a congregation who has watched me grow up, and become a youth leader.
Mom and Carmen will definitely have to look over my drafts.