The Promise of Peace - Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent Year A

The Promise of Peace

Advent 2A

December 4, 2022

Christ, Preston, MN

Matthew 3.1-12; Isaiah 11.1-10

Like many of you, I grew up going to a school that had release time for an hour once a week. For those that don’t know, it meant being excused for an hour a week to attend a nearby church for religious instruction. I don’t know if I did this because my parents wanted me to, because I wanted to, or to get out of class for an hour, but there I was. I don’t remember much about the instruction, but I do remember one session vividly. We were given a so-called “comic book,” except this one wasn’t funny. It showed people who weren’t saved burning in hell. I guess the idea was to literally scare the hell out of us (or us out of hell). I still carry the scars from that very frightening experience.

Yet, that seems to be the thrust of John the Baptist’s message in our gospel reading from Matthew today, “repent or else.” We aren’t really told why so many people are coming to hear John preach and be baptized. Maybe it was the threat, but certainly, he was an intriguing figure. The description Matthew gives made the people think of the Old Testament prophet Elijah. This is significant because people believed that Elijah’s return would herald the coming of the Messiah to set people free. Even so, John’s message doesn’t even deter the religious leaders, for whom John reserves some especially choice words: “You brood of vipers!” But for all of them John exhorts them to repentance declaring that the kingdom of heaven is near.

Now, we moderns tend to think of repentance as feeling sorry for the bad stuff that we have done and there is that sense of the word. But biblical repentance is a far richer concept. It is based on the literal meaning of repent to “change one’s mind.” Repentance means turning around, going a different way, “doing a 180,” if you will. St. John Climacus, 6th–7th century. monk, put it this way: “To repent is not to look downwards at my own shortcomings, but upwards at God’s love; it is not to look backwards with self-reproach but forward with trustfulness; it is to see not what I have failed to be, but what by the grace of Christ I might yet become.” Repentance means changing your life.

When John the Baptist proclaims that the kingdom of heaven is at hand (or coming near) with the advent of Jesus, he is inviting us to live into the way of living implied by that phrase and to do so right now. It’s true the kingdom of heaven (or kingdom of God) is a future promise, but with the advent of Jesus the promised future breaks into the present. As we pray every week in the Lord’s Prayer, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” As Martin Luther said in the Small Catechism, “we pray that it would come to us.”

The advent or coming of Jesus promises many things. One such promise is the security of peace that the prophet Isaiah imagines in ch. 11, the theme of the Advent Wreath litany we heard earlier. The vivid imagery of the one upon whom God’s Spirit rests lays out Jesus’ kingdom agenda. There will be righteous and equal treatment for the poor and marginalized who suffer at the hands of the powerful. Those who are bitter enemies will reconcile with one another. And shalom, or well-being, will be present with all.

That sounds impossible, doesn’t it? And perhaps on one level it is, at least for us mere mortals. On the other hand, we can anticipate Christ’s reign in our small corner of the kingdom. One of the themes that emerged from the Hope Slips exercise from last week was that you hope that Christ Lutheran Church will be a welcoming place for all people, one that would continue to unite to embody God’s love through Jesus Christ. We don’t need to scare the hell out of people (or people out of hell), because the promise of peace and new life is so much better. Amen

My sermons often preach a little differently than written and you can find the video here.