Come celebrate the birth of Christ with us! We will have a Family Service featuring the Sunday school Christmas program at 4pm on Christmas Eve, followed by traditional communion services at 7pm and 10pm. We also have a service on Christmas Day at 10am. All are welcome!
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Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent – December 14, 2025
Matthew 11:2-11
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus described John the Baptist as the greatest of all the prophets. It isn’t hard to see why. While still in his mother’s womb, John famously leapt with joy at the presence of the unborn Messiah as his pregnant Aunt Mary came to visit. Even then he was preparing the way! John was a spiritual superhero, living under vows of strict asceticism, depriving himself of worldly pleasures like comfy clothes and good food, utterly devoted to his calling as the forerunner for God’s promised savior. John was asked to baptize the Messiah, and in doing so he witnessed a manifestation of the Holy Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each made themselves known as Jesus rose up from the water. There was no greater prophet that John the Baptist. Nobody else experienced some of the things he experienced. No one was as dedicated to the tasks of being a prophet as he was. And yet, there came a point in John’s life when he was confused about what God was up to in Jesus. There came a time when doubts and disappointments crept into his heart. There came a time when he wrestled with some questions. Questions like, “Is Jesus really the one?”
The John we meet in our gospel reading for today is a very different John than the one we met last week. Last week John was preaching boldly and bravely, pointing that blessed finger of his at both sin and the savior, calling people to repent, for the kingdom of heaven had come near. John lambasted Pharisees and Sadducees, calling them a brood of vipers. John was fearless and loud!
Later, John’s loud mouth and pointing finger would get him in trouble with Herod Antipas, the Jewish king who served as a puppet ruler for the Romans. Herod had his own personal sexual revolution going on which became a bit of a public scandal. Herod abandoned his first wife in order to marry his sister-in-law. Herod passed himself off as a pious Jew when it fit his purposes, but then he ignored God’s will for marriage in order to indulge his appetites. Well, John just couldn’t let that slide. He publicly rebuked Herod for his behavior, and he ended up in prison for it.
Perhaps John was expecting that his bold preaching on the sanctity of marriage and the sinfulness of adultery would earn him special protection from God. Perhaps, once he was imprisoned, he thought Jesus would put together a tactical squad to come orchestrate a jail break, or maybe that he would negotiate for a prisoner swap. After all, wasn’t the Messiah supposed to overthrow their oppressors and bring liberty to the captives?
John sat in his prison cell, waiting for something to happen. He had plenty of time to think. As weeks, and then months, went by, some troubling questions started to come into his mind. “Is Jesus the one? Was I wrong about him, because this is not at all how I expected things to go! Should I be waiting for someone else, some other Messiah, some other savior?”
John’s questions are not unfamiliar to us. They are not uncommon, even amongst the most devout and faithful Christians. We shouldn’t be surprised by this. If John the Baptist, whom Jesus called the greatest of all the prophets, experienced this season of confusion, if he asked these troubling questions, why should we expect to be spared from them?
And it seems to me that this confusion and these questions are especially common during the holidays. We are told over and over again that it’s the most wonderful time of the year, and then people get confused or troubled when things aren’t so wonderful. People watch hours and hours of Hallmark Christmas movies, where everything gets wrapped up neatly in a nice bow by the end, where every problem gets resolved by some last-minute Christmas miracle, and then people get confused and troubled when they don’t get a Christmas miracle of their own.
The truth is this is a hard time of year for many people. It is a season with so many expectations that it leaves many people disappointed and despairing. There are gifts that land flat and recipes that are a bust and plans that fall through. More seriously, there are those fault lines in family life that come under strain, threatening to break loose with conflict as emotions run high. There is the financial stress of trying to fill every wish and make everything special. There is the aching from the absence of loved ones – the spouse who is deployed, the family on the other side of the country, the kid who isn’t coming home this year. More seriously still, there are people who can’t enjoy Christmas cookies or egg nog because they are nauseous from chemo, and widows and widowers who are facing their first Christmas without their beloved.
First there is the confusion: It wasn’t supposed to be like this. And often this confusion leads to questions, questions like John’s: “Who is this Messiah again? Who is this savior? Because I don’t feel very saved right now. Where is he? Why isn’t he breaking me out of this awful situation? Is Jesus the one? Is he my savior, or should I be looking somewhere else?”
When John faced these questions, he sent for Jesus. He had a few of his friends go and ask Jesus precisely this question. And Jesus sent word back to him. Jesus responded by sending his friends back with a word of reassurance. Jesus didn’t scold John for asking the question. He didn’t say, “How dare you ask that?” Instead, through the witness of these friends Jesus pointed John back to the promises of scripture. The scriptures said that when the Messiah came, the blind would receive their sight, the lame would walk, the lepers would be cleansed, the deaf would hear, the dead would be raised, and the poor would have good news brought to them. This is what Jesus was doing! Jesus encouraged John to look beyond his circumstances to the promises of scripture. He told John to stop looking inwardly at his feelings, and instead to keep his eyes on him, even if he isn’t doing exactly what John expected. “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me,” Jesus told him. Jesus encouraged John to live by faith.
And then Jesus went on to say some wonderful things about John. In spite of his struggles, Jesus says he is strong. He is no reed shaken by the wind! Jesus calls him a prophet – and not only a prophet, but the greatest of all the prophets. In spite of his confusion, Jesus praises and blesses him.
John may have had some questions, maybe even some doubts, but John took those doubts to Jesus. He took those questions to Jesus when he reached out to him for help. This is faith, and Jesus proclaims John righteous on account of this faith.
Jesus has a proclamation and a promise for you here too. Jesus says that among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist. And yet, Jesus says, the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he! Jesus is talking about us here! He’s talking about all of us who have been made part of the kingdom of heaven through Christ’s death and resurrection. We may be the least, we may not hold a candle to John the Baptist in many ways, we may not have seen all the things John witnessed, but we have the benefit of living on the other side of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We have seen things John didn’t live to see. We have received a greater, fuller picture of Christ’s saving grace than John did during his lifetime. We have seen the vindication of Jesus as the Messiah of God and the savior of our souls. We have seen his ultimate victory over the worst captivity of all, our captivity to sin and death. We have been set free from those dark prison cells once and for all.
Some of you might still have questions. That’s okay. Some of you might not feel very saved as you face various troubles in your life. That’s okay too. If John the Baptist had those struggles, we shouldn’t expect to be spared from them.
Whatever your situation in life might be today, our Lord Jesus encourages all of us to look beyond our circumstances to the scriptures, to the promises of God we find there. Jesus encourages us to look beyond our feelings and to instead live by faith in him, putting our trust in what he has done for us. Jesus isn’t angered by those tough questions. He can take them. But he doesn’t want you to stay stuck in confusion. He doesn’t want you to stay stuck in doubt. He wants you to know the truth, the truth that he is your savior. He wants you to know the truth of his saving love, the truth that he has made you his own, the truth that he has made you part of the kingdom of heaven, bringing you into right relationship with God both today and forever.
It can still be the most wonderful time of the year, even when we are facing troubles and doubts, because when we send for Jesus, he sends word back to us that it is all true. The gospel, the good news, is true. Jesus sends his Word to reassure us that he is who he says he is. He was born to save us. He is coming again to make all things right once and for all. He has made us part of his kingdom even now, and so we are never alone, and never without hope.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent – December 7, 2025
Matthew 3:1-12
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Throughout the centuries, when John the Baptist has been depicted in Christian art, he usually has his finger out, pointing. Artists have felt free to take liberties with his clothing, interpreting for themselves just how rough or refined that camel’s hair tunic might have been. They have given him a variety of hairstyles, often with a wild, frizzy mane, making him look like he’s the lead singer of an 80’s rock band, other times giving him a goofy medieval bob and bangs cut like we see in the picture on our screen today. But in nearly every depiction of John the Baptist, across centuries and styles, there is that finger, pointing.
What we see on the screen this morning[1] is a close-up of a section of the Isenheim Altarpiece by the Reformation-era artist Mattias Grunewald. Just look at that finger, pointing. Notice how it is unnaturally elongated. Grunewald wants you to notice it. He wants you to notice it because it is John’s job to point.
Pointing is considered rude most of the time, and some of the pointing we see John doing in our gospel reading for today does feel a little offensive. John is pointing to people’s sin. He is pointing to their need for repentance.
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This was John’s message. Citing the prophet Isaiah, he called people to prepare the way of the Lord by making his paths straight, by removing every obstacle that gets in the way of receiving him. People were coming out to the wilderness from all over the region of Judea to repent. They came to confess their sin and to be washed with John’s baptism of repentance and forgiveness.
Apparently, John didn’t care much about being perceived as rude, because when both the Pharisees and the Sadducees came out to him, he pointed that finger of his right in their faces and called them a brood of vipers! He called them the offspring of snakes! In using this language, he was calling them pawns of the devil. Talk about rude!
What is interesting about the Pharisees and Sadducees is that they were theological opposites. These two groups did not get along. They were not carpooling out to the wilderness together, that’s for sure! The Sadducees were the theological liberals. They were squishy on doctrine. They were loose with their interpretation of the scriptures, not holding it as all that authoritative. They made all kinds of cultural accommodations in an attempt to curry favor with the powers that be and maintain their popularity among the elites. The Pharisees, on the other hand, were theological legalists. They were strict enforcers of religious law, adding their own extreme layers of interpretation to God’s law and then showing no mercy towards those who didn’t keep it. They were self-righteous and sanctimonious, always looking down on others who supposedly weren’t as holy as they were.
To John the Baptist the Pharisees and the Sadducees were two sides of the same coin, and so he gives them all the finger. The pointing finger, that is. They were all full of deceit and hypocrisy and wickedness, each in their own way. Though each group thought of themselves as godly, the truth was that their hearts were far from God. And as they inflicted their different versions of faithlessness on others, they had become sons of the evil one, pawns of the devil himself.
John went on to point out how both groups were relying on their relationship to Abraham as the basis for their relationship with God. He points out how they thought that their status as descendants of Abraham automatically gave them a special status with God. But that’s not how it works, John tells them. “God is able from these stones to raise up children of Abraham,” John says. “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the tree.” Your family tree is irrelevant here, John is saying. This isn’t a matter of genealogy, it is a matter of faith and its fruits, so bear fruits worthy of repentance!
I don’t mean to be rude, and I’m not going to point, but I have to ask: What is John the Baptist’s finger pointing at in your life? What does repentance look like for you? What sins need to be confessed and turned away from? What obstacles need to be cleared away in your life in preparation for the Lord’s coming? Are you a libertine? Or a legalist? Are you placing your trust in God or in something else? Perhaps in an ideology or in a family association or in a heritage or in the fact that your name is on a membership list in the church office?
John the Baptist and his finger always show up this time of year. Sometimes I get irritated at the lectionary for this. Do we really need two doses of John the Baptist every single Advent? (We get him again next week.) But I think there is wisdom in it. I think there is wisdom in being pushed to listen to John during this season because this is a time of year when the obstacles getting in the way of our Lord’s coming to us are bigger than ever. There are more distractions than ever. We are more overscheduled than ever. There are more temptations than ever to look for joy in stuff and in self-indulgence. There are temptations to eat too much and drink too much and spend too much. And all this overindulgence is given a vaguely religious gloss as just being part of the seasonal festivities. What of faith and its fruits? Where are they? How are they being cultivated?
We need John’s finger pointing at our need for repentance, especially this time of year, when there are so many distractions and so many temptations. We need John’s finger to help us avoid the hypocrisy and the faithlessness and the casual assumptions of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
But John’s finger doesn’t just point at our sin. It also points to our savior. John calls us to repent because the kingdom of heaven has come near. John is preparing the way for the coming of Christ, who will bring heaven itself to all who put their faith in him. You see, the kingdom of heaven is not just the assurance of a comfy spot inside the pearly gates after we die. It is that, but the kingdom of heaven is also a relationship we enjoy with God now as he comes to rule our hearts through the grace and mercy of his Son.
John’s finger points us to Jesus and the new baptism he brings. John tells the crowds that one who is more powerful than him is coming. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire,” John says. John is using symbolic language to describe how the baptism Jesus brings will be different from his. John’s baptism was a touch-up job, while Jesus’ baptism will bring a whole new life. Christian baptism is a baptism into the very presence of God, who purifies us from sin once and for all by joining us to Jesus and his eternal forgiveness.
John goes on to use the imagery of a farmer separating wheat from chaff. If you’ve ever been to a threshing bee you’ve seen how that beautiful, valuable, precious grain is liberated from the chaff, from the obstacles which had been separating it from the farmer. That precious grain is gathered in, while the obstacles are burned in an unquenchable fire, never to return again. This is what Jesus is coming to do, John is saying. There is a threshing bee coming, and he’s coming to gather what is precious to him. He is coming to gather you.
Notice the lamb at John’s feet in Grunewald’s painting on the screen. This lamb is clinging to a cross and shedding its blood into a chalice. That lamb is Jesus. John called Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is who is coming. This is who will usher in the kingdom of heaven. This is who John is ultimately pointing us towards.
Jesus said that John the Baptist was the greatest of all the prophets. Martin Luther once explained that John was the greatest of prophets, “not because of his austere life, not because of his phenomenal birth, but because of his blessed finger, because of his message and his office…” “No other man,” Luther writes, “had such fingers as John’s, with which he points to the Lamb of God and declares that He is the true Savior who would redeem the world from sin…For he is the ultimate of all prophets and preachers; no more comforting word and finger will ever appear than John’s word and pointer.”
Today John the Baptist certainly points us to our sin. But even more than that, he points us to our savior. Repentance includes both a turning away from sin and a turning towards our savior in faith. And so John points us to the Lamb of God, who even now is pouring himself out for us. He poured himself out for you in your baptism, and so you are not the offspring of the serpent. You are children of God! Jesus, the Lamb of God, pours himself out for you in his Holy Supper, where you take in his grace and mercy anew from that very chalice. Jesus pours himself out for us through his Word, renewing us in faith so that we would bear its fruits.
Don’t fear John’s finger. It only does it’s rude pointing so that it can then point you to the kingdom of heaven, which has come near to us even now as God clears the way, removes every obstacle, forgives every sin, and sends Jesus into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
[1] https://www.wikiart.org/en/matthias-grunewald/st-john-the-baptist-detail-from-the-annunciation-from-the-isenheim-altarpiece-1516
Midweek worship services will be held on Wednesdays at Noon and 6:00pm during the season of Advent (Dec. 3, 10, & 17). Our theme will be “Every Heart Prepare,” which will encourage us to see how various symbols of the season we encounter in our preparations point us to Christ. Soup suppers will follow. Take some time out of the hustle and bustle to gather for worship, fellowship, and a warm bowl of soup. Prepare your heart and not just your home.