Sermon: Second Sunday of Advent, Matthew 3:1-12, December 4, 2022Faith Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Sermon: Second Sunday of Advent, Matthew 3:1-12, December 4, 2022

Faith Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

It wouldn’t be Advent without John the Baptist making a major appearance on center stage. He is indeed prominent in today’s gospel passage. John, the last of the great prophets, is the fulfillment, according to Matthew, of Isaiah’s own prophecy which foretold the appearance of “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight the paths of the Lord.’” That voice crying out is John. In short, John makes the way straight for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one.

While John points the way to Jesus, we do well to pause and spend some time on this wilderness river prophet, who was quite something. “Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.” Which is to say, John’s outward appearance and habits made quite the statement, provocative even by the standards of his day, but in keeping with the provocative presence of the prophets of old.

Moreover, John’s prophetic proclamations, like many of his prophetic predecessors, were quite over the top. To the Pharisees and Sadducees, the religious leaders, the spiritual elite, he had this to say – listen again and let it sink in: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?” And on his harangue at them went.

Let’s translate this into our contemporary circumstances: it’s like if Bishop Hutterer were to join us here for worship again, and a current day John the Baptist in the audience would interrupt her hospitable coming with insults. That would not go over very well among us!

On the face of it, therefore, you wouldn’t think that such a presence as that of John would attract a crowd. Rather we might assume that people would stay away from such a person. Yet crowds flocked from the cities and the whole region and went out into the wilderness to hear him preach and to be baptized by him in the wilds of the River Jordan.

It is true that there is something about human nature that is strangely attracted to figures like John the Baptist, who speak and act out of the bounds of the normal. The most outlandish of misbehaving persons get the most media attention these days. Among primates, the most extreme behavior gets you status as the alpha male. So, too, with human primates it seems. So, the crowds that John attracted are perhaps understandable from a human nature point of view.

But of course, there’s deeper stuff going on, too. Because on other levels, human beings are also attracted to truth tellers, to those who confront us with the hard things that we need to hear.

That is to say, we humans need and at some level want prophets to lay down the law. And that’s precisely what John does. Usually, we want provocative prophets to speak truth to people other than ourselves. But we also need and sometimes even want to hear hard truths pointed directly at us. Something deep inside cries out for the truth about our plight.

Here’s the hard truth that John spoke to the Pharisees and Sadducees: “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor.’” That is to say, John was stating the truth that the religious elite could not claim their religious and ancestral heritage as an entitlement that gets them off the hook from bearing fruit worthy of repentance.

That was the hard truth that the religious leaders needed to hear. What hard truths do you and I and all of us together need to hear in these latter days? Consider that question a seed planted for your reflections later today and in the coming week….

But here’s the point and a good word for today: it’s precisely the proclamation of the hard word of the truth of God’s law that prepares the way for the one coming, Jesus, whose sandals John was not even worthy to untie or carry.

It’s the hard word, the bad news, that makes the paths straight to receive the word of promise, the good news. In short, John is bad cop to prepare the way for Jesus, the good cop.

Or to put it in the language of Lutheran theology: it’s law and gospel. We need to hear the bad news of the claims of God’s law on us before we can apprehend and fully appreciate the good news of the gospel of salvation, of forgiveness, mercy, grace.

So, given the central importance of prophetic truth tellers like John, here’s another invitation to reflection: take a moment to consider who in your life or what circumstances in your life played the role of John the Baptist in communicating to you the hard word that opened you to receiving the good news of God in Christ. Take a few moments to reflect. It may be a person. It may be a set of circumstances of life that caused you to hit rock bottom that opened doors to your healing and restoration. I pray that later today and in coming days you can name the John the Baptists in your life.

For there are lots of John the Baptists out there – and/or circumstances in life that have the same effect of hitting over the head to wake us out of our stupors and thus to open us up for good news.

The fruit of these knocks upside our heads is faith, trust in and greater openness to really receiving the good news of the promised coming one who will baptize us with the Holy Spirit and with fire – as on the Day of Pentecost recorded in the book of Acts. The fruit of our being awakened by words of judgment is trust in and openness to the coming one, Christ, who uses his winnowing fork to clear the threshing floor, separating out the wheat from the chaff of our lives.

That’s good news! Don’t think of such winnowing as some going to heaven and others going to hell, where some get saved and others burn. Rather, think of it in terms of our own spiritual cleansing, that Christ our loving judge – our good cop – comes to take away the chaff, the bad stuff of our lives, to leave only the good stuff, the kernels of wheat that feed us and the world!

Our Holy Baptism is one such expression of Christ’s coming to us personally to wash us, thus, separating the good fruit of wheat out from the chaff of our original sin. Our Baptism by water, word and Spirit is a splash of cold water that wakes us up, raises us up as children of God! It’s a flood of water that puts out the fires of hellish judgment.

The preaching of the word can also have that John the Baptist effect in our lives to wake us up to prepare us for Christ’s coming, a coming that itself is conveyed to us in the sacred word. Or as Paul summarizes in today’s reading: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.” (Romans 15:4)

All of this, baptism and the proclamation of the word, serves to point us to and connect us with the events of Christ’s coming, namely, his death and resurrection, the final fruit and ultimate outcome and purpose of his having come to us

John the Baptist’s own preaching words recorded by Matthew seem to hint at or foreshadow Jesus’ death and resurrection. Listen again to John as told by Matthew: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” Well, there was a tree that was cut down that became the cross of Christ, the tree of life that bore good fruit of salvation for all!

Moreover, God did indeed raise up children to Abraham when the stone was rolled away from the tomb when God raised Jesus from the dead making it possible for us all to become holy children of Abraham, adopted into that family, the family of God.

This is the set of realities, conveyed in preaching and baptism, that then makes it possible for us to bear fruit worthy of repentance, namely, the fruit of our loving service of neighbors in need.

Christ being raised from the dead tills the soil for the coming of the fulfillment of the prophetic promise contained in today’s first reading from Isaiah: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of its roots.” And the fruit of this shoot from the stump of Jesse (Kind David’s father) is a new dominion where “the wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and lion will feed together, and a little child [the Christ child] shall lead them… They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (cf. Isaiah 11:6-9)

Christ being raised from the dead likewise paves the way for the fulfillment also of Paul’s instruction to the folk at the church in Rome: “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you." (Romans 15:5-7)

Harmony. Welcome. Natural enemies and foes reconciled. No more hurting or destruction. These are the good fruits that come of Christ having come into our lives, gospel good news that arrives on the heels of our having been purged by the preaching of the law.

And when we bear such fruit of harmony and welcome and reconciliation in our loving service of all our neighbors, we all will know that the dominion of heaven has come near. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.