**sermon art: Peaceable Kingdom by Debbie Kingston Baker

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on December 7, 2025

[sermon begins after the Bible reading; two more Bible readings from Romans and Isaiah are at the end of the sermon]

Matthew 3:1-10 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ² “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” ³ This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

Advent includes the four Sundays before the Christmas welcome of the sweet baby Jesus. It’s a time of waiting, of anticipation and longing. We have rituals that count upwards from the first Sunday in Advent, to the second Sunday, and so on, lighting one candle, then two. Advent calendars often begin on December 1^st, daily building our anticipation for Christmas with things like pet treats or chocolate or craft beer.[1] You name it and there’s likely an advent calendar for it. German Lutherans began the tradition a couple hundred years ago with candle lighting and chalk lines. And, after World War II, paper calendars lifted people’s spirits across the globe. As our rituals lift the spirits, what in the blue blazes is John the Baptist doing here? And why is he so angry about it?

Let’s just say that John the Baptist isn’t someone you’d put on our Sunday morning greeter ministry. As Paul writes in his letter to the Roman church, we welcome one another just as Christ welcomed us. That welcome is evident walking into our church. It’s evident from the welcome to holy communion that includes everyone. Yes, even you. We regularly examine our welcome from multiple perspectives so that we are actually and authentically welcoming. If all of that is true, then what is John the Baptist doing here with his name-calling and fearmongering? What kind of welcome is this on the second Sunday in Advent?

To understand John, it helps to understand the Biblical prophet Elijah who lived about 900 years before Jesus and John. Elijah was one of two Biblical characters who avoided death by being “taken up into heaven.”[2] He railed against idolatrous prophets, malevolent kings, and neglectful leaders who failed in their religious commitments to their people.[3] Elijah’s reappearance was expected to herald God’s messiah. People were longing for him to return for just this reason. John the Baptist called the religious leaders to repentance as Elijah once did. The people swarming out to see John and be baptized by him knew enough about Elijah to be curious. They also knew enough to have their own doubts about the state of their world. John’s challenge against the powerful who regularly let them down resonated with them, too. We tend to think of him as a peculiar rando out in the desert, but his message was similar to other preachers of his time. He was very popular in part because the people were tired of the world around them. Tired of greed, power, and disadvantages baked into their daily lives. They were ready for God’s promised Messiah to come.

And who was that Messiah to be? According to the prophet Isaiah, the king will come from the line of King David whose father was Jesse. We’re busy with our Advent calendars and simultaneously putting up Christmas trees. In the Isaiah reading, the tree is a stump.[4] A stump in the Christmas tree holder would be a little more difficult to put ornaments on, wouldn’t it? From the stump, the family tree of Jesse, came the great and beloved King David. And from King David’s descendants will come the Messiah who is savior and king, who will judge the poor with righteousness, and “decide with equity for the oppressed of the earth.”

And how will we know the ideal king has arrived? Last Sunday, Isaiah celebrated the ringing of swords beaten into farm equipment which is echoed in our culture by the ringing of Jingle Bells through malls and halls.[5]

This Sunday, the king’s vision is the peaceable kingdom.

+ The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them.

+ The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

+The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.[6]

What’s your favorite part of the peaceable kingdom? Mine is that its beauty is the seeming impossibility of it.[7] The peaceable kingdom is the opposite of our experience in the world. You may know the Darwinian expression, “Survival of the fittest.” In other words, survival comes from strength and predation. We’ve spent centuries taming those survival instincts, so that we can live beyond the vision of evolutionary biologists, only to find ourselves at odds with each other in every possible humanly way.[8]

Isaiah’s poetry explores the tragedy of our human nature by showing us its opposite in the vision of the peaceable kingdom. Christians call the tragic element “sin.”[9] John the Baptist called the tragic element “chaff” that needs to burn away so the wheat can be enjoyed. Individually and collectively our tragic efforts turn us towards terrible things—war, theft, greed, hatred, bullying, dehumanization, and more. The promise of the gospel is that God has a solution for the tragic ends we have on repeat. His name is Jesus.

The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Roman church was written about 20 years after Jesus’ lived. He is talking to the fledgling Jewish and gentile Christians of the church in a way that echoes Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom. (Gentile means not Jewish.) These new Christians were struggling to be church together from their different cultural backgrounds and assumptions. Paul reminds them that harmony is centered by God’s steadfastness and encouragement according to Christ Jesus for the glory of God. God is the reference point and the guide is Jesus. Paul taps the image of Jesse’s root in his letter to the Roman church. He expands the Jewish expectation and messianic hope to include non-Jews. The ruler will rise to rule the gentiles and “in him the gentiles shall hope.”

Paul uses the word “welcome” but welcome may be too tame a translation for what he means. He’s asking more of them. To bear one another. To get along. Ultimately, he’s asking those Roman church folks to fully accept and embrace each other across lines that once seemed hard and fast. Cultural lines that no longer separate them from their siblings in Christ. Paul wrote, “For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the [Jews] on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the ancestors and that the gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.” The cultural divisions highlighted in the Roman church hold up a mirror for our culture today. For them the dividing line was Jew and non-Jew. We could write a list a mile long of the divisions plaguing us today.

The festive anticipation of Advent calendars overlays a deeper longing. As we lit the Advent wreath at the beginning of worship today, we sang a song filled with that longing. We sang for justice, for freedom, and for mercy. We sang for wisdom, for courage, and for comfort. We sang for God to be near us in sorrow, in grief, in weakness, and in fear. Our song is a prayer as we ask God to keep God’s promise to be with us. Another name for “God with us” is Emmanuel. So we sing again in longing, anticipation and hope, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”
____________________________________________________

[1] Show Me the Doors: Why There Is An Advent Calendar for Absolutely Everything. The Economist. December 2, 2025. Why there is an Advent calendar for absolutely everything

[2] Enoch is the other one.

[3] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Podcast commentary on the Bible readings for December 7, 2025. #1055: Second Sunday of Advent – December 07, 2025 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[4] Rolf Jacobson, Professor of Old Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Podcast commentary on the Bible readings for December 7, 2025. #1055: Second Sunday of Advent – December 07, 2025 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[5] Ibid.

[6] Isaiah 11:6-8

[7] Jacobson, ibid.

[8] Skinner, ibid.

[9] Jacobson, ibid.

__________________________________________________

Romans 15:5-13 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. ⁵ May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, ⁶ so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 11:1-10