The Second Sunday in Advent, 12/7/2025

Sermon on Matthew 3:1-12, by Paul Bieber

Matthew 3:1-12 Revised Standard Version

¹ In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ² “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” ³ For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said,

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:

Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight.”

⁴ Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair, and a leather girdle around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵ Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan, ⁶ and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

⁷ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸ Bear fruit that befits repentance, ⁹ and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. ¹⁰ Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

¹¹ “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. ¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

also

Isaiah 11:1-10

Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Romans 15:4-13

 

A FRUITFUL ADVENT

Grace, peace, and much joy to you, people of God.

He was a popular figure, to say the least. The Elijah-like John the Baptist appears in the Advent wilderness calling for repentance. “Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan.” All of these hear the proclamation of the kingdom at hand and the call to prepare the way of the mightier one coming after John with winnowing fork and unquenchable fire.

But when the Pharisees and Sadducees appear among the crowds coming for the baptism of repentance, John really ratchets up his prophetic proclamation. He is not courting popularity when he speaks to them: You children of poisonous snakes dare not presume upon Abraham as your ancestor. Preparing the way of the Lord is not a matter of presuming that your heritage or credentials will suffice, but of lives that bear the “fruit that befits repentance.”

What kind of fruit is that? What kind of lives are those? Repentance, metanoia, is a change of mind so profound that it amounts to a deep reorientation of my whole perspective on life, of the way I relate to God, to my whole world. The fruit of such a turning is God’s wheat, to be threshed and gathered into God’s place of safekeeping. That which is threshed out, the chaff of our lives, is to be burned away.

John’s proclamation speaks to all three of the horizons of Advent. He is the Forerunner of the mightier one, Jesus Christ. The one whose ancestor David, Jesse’s son, cleared the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite to be the site of the Jerusalem temple will take up his winnowing fork, but not yet. The gathering and burning will come at the close of the age. We, with the whole world groaning in travail, still await that final Advent.

We associate John most with the first Advent. The next verse of Matthew’s Gospel tells how Jesus came to John for a baptism of repentance he did not need—because Jesus is the sinless Son of God who takes human flesh from the Virgin Mary to save us. Righteousness is already the belt around his waist and faithfulness the belt around his loins. Matthew’s Gospel has already declared him Emmanuel, God with us, although we will not hear that proclamation in the Liturgy until we come to celebrate the fulfillment of the first Advent’s expectation in the Nativity of our Lord.

But it is on the third—or, chronologically, second—horizon of Advent that John the Baptist’s proclamation speaks to us with immediate prophetic force. Advent is broadly about preparing for the judgment at the close of this age and the consummation of the peaceable kingdom that Isaiah prophesies. Advent is liturgically about preparing for a celebration of Christmas that will be more fruitful than frustrating, because it will be—we hope—more oriented toward God’s act in Christ and less on what I desire and how I can get others to fulfill my desires.

But there’s a third Advent that comes between the coming of the Babe of Bethlehem and the coming of the Son of Man in glory. Today. The kingdom is at hand today. Jesus Christ is God with us today. The axe is laid at the root of fruitless trees today. Even “the wrath to come” is glowering just over the horizon today. Because it’s not only Pharisees and Sadducees who presume. Not in our case upon lineal descent from Abraham. But maybe upon ecclesiastical descent from Martin Luther. Or upon my credentials as a duly baptized and confirmed Christian. Or that my life, while certainly not perfect, is certainly better than a lot of the people I see around me. Who warned them to flee from the wrath to come?

Such a warning would be as fruitless as the presumption, anyway. Since the aim of God’s wrath is the establishment of the kingdom, you can’t really flee from it; you can only repent. The context of God’s wrath is his faithful and gracious love. When his love is confronted by forces that resist his holy will, it takes the form of wrath. John the Baptist’s message is a prophecy of the divine wrath and the means of deliverance from it, by means of the mightier one whose way he prepares. Christ’s coming—on all three Advent horizons—means both grace and judgment. Everything depends on our response to him. Will we receive or reject him? Will we repent—profoundly reorient our perspective so that we see his love standing alongside and above his wrath? Or will we insist on seeing him as the enemy and so despise his love?

That is precisely the attitude John is warning us against. Not Pharisees and Sadducees of long ago, nor the great revival-like crowds that came out to hear him, but us. It is in this third Advent that we will or will not bear fruit worthy of repentance. An Advent life is not presumption, but perseverance—steadfast, patient endurance. Because we do not repent once and then await the kingdom that continues to be at hand from the Incarnation to the Parousia.

In a sense, the whole world is living an Advent life. Everyone is holding on while waiting for something or someone. A fruitful Advent life, though, is one characterized by repentance, the daily change of perspective away from myself and to God, and by what St. Paul calls steadfastness, hypomonē, endurance. This is a willingness to await whatever God sends next, amidst my all-too-human ambivalence—to await, to persevere, to hold out, to endure to the end—the faithful expression today of our hope in God’s promise.

We cannot persevere in our own strength, but God’s power is made perfect in weakness. Our repentance and faithful endurance are the consequence of God’s saving action in Jesus Christ. It is implied by the Baptist’s announcement of the kingdom drawn near—in the person of Jesus. The kingdom does not come through our trying to be better people; no, the kingdom draws near because this is God’s holy will; because it draws near, we must repent, change our lives. We prepare the way of the Lord not by relying on our own strength, background, or credentials, but by turning to him and persevering, that is, turning to him again and again, daily.

It is in the wilderness that the voice cries, calls us to prepare, to repent, to turn. Repentance brings hope to the dry and seemingly barren desert areas of our lives. St. Paul’s prayer for the Romans is a prayer for us, too: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope.”

Our hope is in the One whom John proclaims, the One on whom the Spirit will descend and rest when he goes out to John for baptism, the One who will in turn baptize with the Spirit and fire, so that we who are baptized into him “may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit,” the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the Spirit of joy in God’s presence. The life in the Spirit for which we pray at the baptismal font is the new life of repentance and endurance, a life of faith like Abraham’s, trusting the God whose way the Baptist is calling us to prepare, the God who can raise up children to Abraham even from such as us.

God is a God of promise, a God of history and of the future. As Christ and the kingdom draw near over all three horizons of Advent, we trust God’s promise, and he gives us his free gift of righteousness, freeing us to live that new life of hope and joy and peace in believing. Making our way through Advent toward the celebration of the coming of the Prince of Peace, we are strangers and pilgrims in this world, not trusting in the chaff of its striving for some perfect holiday or our own self-made perfectibility, but rooted where the water of Baptism and the gifts of the Spirit bear fruit in our Advent lives.

The God of promise, who sent Jesus among us as one of us, has promised us a future of hope. That’s what the joy and peace of Christmas look forward to: the peaceable kingdom, the gathering of all God’s children from every nation, the fruitfulness that is the gift of the God of promise; Jesus, the Prince of Peace; and the Spirit who brings joy and peace and hope even to the barren wilderness places of our lives. That desert will rejoice and blossom, for the kingdom is at hand.

The God who sent the Forerunner to prepare, the God who sent Christ to baptize us with the Holy Spirit, the fire of love—this God beckons us to turn our lives toward his fruitful promise this Advent, and so to prepare for the One who is coming.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

—

The Rev. Dr. Paul Bieber

San Diego, California, USA

E-Mail: paul.bieber@sbcglobal.net