Preparing

Matthew 3:1-12; Isaiah 11:1-10

The Fifth Sunday of Advent
December 7, 2025

The Rev. Josh Evans
St. John’s Lutheran Church
Albany, NY

In the midst of all the holiday preparations this time of year,
it’s not difficult to get lost in all the things to be done.
So, to make at least one thing easier to prepare,
might I suggest for your holiday mailings: Cards by John™.

Design #1:
A brightly colored picture of John the Baptist on the cover,
dressed in his best camel’s hair outfit,
holding a baggie of fresh locusts (just in case he gets hungry),
with the greeting: “Prepare the way of the Lord!”
And on the inside: “Merry Christmas, you brood of vipers!”

Or maybe design #2:
This one depicting John in action,
wielding a shiny new ax,
with the greeting: “He’s making a list and checking it twice…
and is going to find out if you’re bearing good fruit or not!”

Or if those don’t tickle your fancy, perhaps design #3:
A more abstract, artistic approach,
with softly flickering candles on the front…
and then on the inside, a blazing inferno:
“Wishing you a happy holiday of unquenchable fire!”

Every year on the Second/Fifth Sunday of Advent,
John the Baptist stands at the center of our holiday preparations.
There’s no getting to the “silent night, holy night”
in the “little town of Bethlehem”
without getting past John.

John’s storyline appears in all four gospels.
There’s simply no Jesus without John.
But his message feels, well, a bit harsh –
not exactly the warm fuzzies of a happy holiday.

Then there’s Isaiah’s vision from our first reading:
the “peaceable kingdom” where
wolf and lamb,
leopard and kid,
calf and lion,
nursing child and snake,
will dwell together in harmony.
It seems a far cry from John’s message…

…but we also can’t get to Isaiah’s vision
of peace and justice and hope
without John’s message of judgment and repentance.
Indeed, the ax at the root of the tree needs to cut down what is dead
in order for the new shoot to come out of its stump.

But we don’t like to talk about judgment very much.
We don’t like to hear it,
and we preachers often shy away from preaching it.
And for good reason,
since judgment has so often been misused,
especially in Christian circles,
to assert moral superiority
and to justify hatred and discrimination against entire groups of people.
And didn’t Jesus himself say something about “judge not, lest ye be judged”?

And yet, our gospel text calls us squarely and clearly
to judgment:
Every tree that doesn’t bear good fruit
will be cut down –
and thrown into the fire.

If last week’s gospel didn’t sufficiently scare you
with talk of an unknown day and hour and
“one will be taken and one will be left,”
John the Baptist gives us:
brood of vipers,
stray axes lying around,
unquenchable fire.

This is scary stuff,
perhaps more at home in The Nightmare Before Christmas.

***

It’s no secret that we live in increasingly scary,
fearful, and uncertain times –
I hardly have to list the details.

In such a polarized social and political landscape,
it feels like we’ve lost the ability to even talk with one another.
We vilify those we disagree with.
We call them names a lot worse than “brood of vipers.”
And we stubbornly dig in our heels,
refusing to even come to the table,
and inching out any shred of hope of understanding,
let alone reconciliation.

Truth be told, we’re really good at dehumanizing
and distancing ourselves from each other.
And it makes it really easy to judge a person
when we don’t even truly know them.

This isn’t to say that our differences and disagreements don’t matter –
especially when those differences and disagreements
put another’s humanity on the line.

But there is something powerful
in reclaiming the ability to listen deeply
to those who think, look, or act differently from us.
And in that listening,
we just might find that once we get to know the “other,”
it’s harder to judge them.

***

At the same time,
I would also suggest that the more you come to learn and care about,
even love, a person,
it’s also difficult not to judge them.
This, I think, is the kind of judgment John is proclaiming.

This is the kind of judgment that leads
not to moral superiority and discrimination…
but judgment that refuses to settle for apathy,
that refuses to let us keep going on with business as usual
in ways that hurt and degrade our fellow siblings.

John’s proclamation in the wilderness
is a judgment without condemnation,
a judgment rooted in love.

This is a kind of judgment that doesn’t seek to hurt or destroy
but calls it like it is and strives to foster new life.
This is a kind of judgment that leads to repentance –
a change of heart
and a new way of thinking.

This is a kind of judgment that
prepares the way of the Lord,
the way of the peaceable kingdom,
the way of the kingdom of heaven.

John the Baptist calls us to prepare the way of the Lord
and to repent of the ways that we have hurt creation and each other.

John’s judgment is not his alone either,
but it’s also the judgment of the “one who is more powerful” coming after him.
John points us to Jesus,
the Messiah for whom we wait in our Advent anticipation,
who will judge, not with vengeance and brute force,
but with “the rod of his mouth” and “the breath of his lips” –
through his word of life.

There is power to this judgment.
But it isn’t utter destruction and violence.
Nor is it exactly passive.
It is deliberate and measured.

Imagine, if you will,
a shouting match with a family member or close friend
around the holiday dinner table:
How much gets accomplished when you’re yelling at each other?
But what happens when their voice gets quieter,
slower,
more deliberate
and measured?
I suspect we’ve all been on the receiving end of that voice
and we know at that point:
They mean business.
It is no longer shouted at,
but pleading with.

This is a different kind of judgment –
a judgment that sees clearly,
that cares deeply,
that prepares us
for a Messiah who sees us, knows us, loves us,
and urges us to make room
for the new, surprising thing God is doing.

There is promise in this judgment.

And John is eager for us to receive it:
“Prepare the way of the Lord!
Make his paths straight!”

Physically straight, or ethically upright, yes.
And also a sense of immediacy:
Make his paths straight –
and straight away!

John proclaims God’s judgment:
“The kingdom of heaven has come near!”
There is proximity and urgency to this promise:
Christ is coming soon! Get ready!

The baptist’s cry calls us to a new way of life
that acts with intention and speaks deliberately –
in a spirit of wisdom and understanding,
a spirit of counsel and might,
a spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord –

– words which ought to sound familiar,
spoken over us and each beloved child of God
in our baptism,
where we also promise, together, with the entire community of faith
to strive, together, for peace and justice in all the earth.

***

There might be something after all to Cards by John™.
At the risk of adding one more thing to our holiday preparations,
maybe we could use a kind of Advent card
to prepare us for the message of our Christmas cards.

In a season culminating in the angels’ announcement of “peace on earth,”
we first need to hear John’s announcement on Jordan’s bank:
Prepare the way of the Lord!
Make his paths straight and straight away!

With a sense of urgency, John gets us ready for Jesus,
urging us to practice the way of repentance,
to clear away everything that gets in the way,
everything that hurts and destroys,
to strive for justice and pursue peace,
for the sake of all this hurting world.