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