The Second Sunday of Advent
December 5, 2010
Isaiah 11:1-10
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Over the past two years I’ve shared some personal stories from this pulpit, but one of the things that most of you probably don’t know about me is that I enjoy comedies that have very little redeeming social value. They usually don’t come in handy for anything but a good laugh, but this week I was surprised to find that the movie Talladega Nights provided some material for today’s sermon.
In case you’ve never seen Talladega Nights, it’s about a race car driver named Ricky Bobby who enjoys great success on the NASCAR circuit until a series of unfortunate events almost derail his career. At the height of his fame and fortune, Ricky Bobby sits down for dinner with his family and delivers a long and not very reverent grace in which he consistently prays to Baby Jesus. His family protests that Jesus actually grew up, but Ricky Bobby replies, “I like the Christmas Jesus best, and I’m saying grace,” before continuing his prayer with a reference to“ 8 pound, 6 ounce, tiny infant Jesus.”
And the reason this scene caught my attention is because it occurred to me that my past Advent sermons have tended to dwell on anticipating the coming of Christ at Christmas: in other words, the baby Jesus. There’s nothing wrong with that – after all, at Christmas we do celebrate the birth of Christ. In order to be human, Christ had to at some point, really be “8 pound, 6 ounce, tiny infant Jesus.” But in my past preaching, I’ve tended avoid talking about another important aspect of Jesus. The Jesus whom we also wait for during the Advent season is also one who comes with power, returning at the end of time to judge the world and to rule over it with righteousness.
This image is different from the helpless baby whose birth we celebrate at Christmas, and the
Jesus that we hear about from John the Baptist may make us just a little bit uncomfortable.
John’s description is vivid – this Jesus is going to be a judge, choosing between the good wheat and pesky weeds which will get tossed into the fire and burned. This Jesus will clear away dead trees in order to give more light and water to productive ones. This Jesus will bring about the kingdom of heaven and decide who gets to enjoy it. But most importantly, the Jesus being proclaimed by John the Baptist is someone who brings change, and maybe this is why I prefer my Advent sermons to dwell on the helpless Christmas child rather than the ruler, judge, and change-bringer.

Change is uncomfortable. Change is challenging. And no institution on earth dislikes change more than the Church, the body that Christ himself founded in order to change the world by spreading his Gospel but often finds itself seeking its own comfort by doing the same old thing.
And change also creates divisions. In the Gospel, Jesus makes choices between good and bad, useful and useless, dead and alive, but nowhere do we see the potential for division and change described as vividly as we do in our reading from Isaiah.
The image of prey and predator living together in harmony is one of the classic scenes of
Christmas. It’s called The Peaceable Kingdom, and you may have even seen sweet little cards depicting lions and lambs sleeping peacefully together. This change is certainly a good deal for the sheep, the cows, and the young goats. They’re not going to be hunted anymore. They won’t have to worry about ending up being someone’s dinner. No more chase scenes on Nat Geo or
Wild Kingdom. Parents will not have to worry about their children being bitten by poisonous snakes.
But what about the wolves, the lions, the bears, and the snakes? This doesn’t sound like such a great thing for them. They are natural predators. Hunting and killing weaker creatures is how they’re programmed. Why do they have to give up their very nature in order to live in this new world of peace? The domestic animals seem to gain all the benefit of change without having to give up anything. It doesn’t seem quite fair.
Right now it may sound like I’m complaining on behalf of lions and tigers and bears, but what’s really at issue here is that this is the attitude with which many of us often approach change. Why do I have to give up the way I’ve always done things? What about the other guy? What about that other group? Why are they benefitting at my expense? And what’s in it for me if I go along?
We start thinking about this stuff, and no wonder we spend Advent thinking mostly about the baby Jesus. Between Isaiah’s change-agent Messiah and John the Baptist’s coming King, well, that’s enough to just ruin Christmas.
But let’s think about this another way. The sheep, the cow, and the goats are changed as much as the lions and bears. For a sheep to lose its timidity is just as radical a change as it is for a lion to lose its ferocity. For a cow to trust a bear or wolf is an enormous change of nature. in this new world there is no such thing as predator and prey anymore. There are no more victors and victims, but a society in which all creatures live without fear. But it means that everyone, and everything, is going to be different from now on.
In a desert world of scarce resources, Isaiah tells us that the Messiah will usher in a new era of abundance, where the very grass will be enough to satisfy the hunger of a lion. Even scary John the Baptist, who storms out of the wilderness and calls the religious leaders a “brood of vipers,”

doesn’t tell them that all is lost for them. Instead, he tells them to repent and be baptized. He warns them that they must change, because their place in this new kingdom will not depend on their status or piety.
Instead, it would depend on how they would accept the changes they needed to make in themselves. John promises that the Messiah will bring an abundant new life to those who would accept their need to turn themselves around. So this means that everything will change, and everyone must change, in order for the Reign of God to be actualized in this world. That feels a lot less frightening to know that I’m not the only one who will have to change my nature and the way I do things. Everything and everyone will also change, for the better.
So maybe it’s not so bad to shift our focus from baby Jesus to king Jesus. Baby Jesus is the promise of the wonderful things to come, but king Jesus, Messiah Jesus, is the reality. And what is that reality? It is the peaceable kingdom, where all will have turned towards repentance and reconciliation, and all will live and thrive in a place of abundance. So yes, let’s watch for the baby who will be born in a crèche, but remember that we’re also waiting for the king.