A sermon preached by Adedayo Olomodosi at St. Jude’s Church, on Sunday, December 7, 2025, the Second Sunday of Advent. Year A - ISAIAH 11:1-10; PSALM 72:1-7, 18-19; ROMANS 15:4-13; MATTHEW 3:1-12
Growing up, my younger siblings and I enjoyed watching the cartoon Rescue Heroes. The cartoon followed a team of first responders who would take their team's super jet to any emergency or disaster you could imagine. With names like Billy Blazes, Wendy Waters, Rocky Canyon, and Jake Justice the characters were always the right person for the situation. There was one episode where there was a forest fire and to the amazement of my 9 year old self, it was the two firefighters Billy Blazes and Wendy Waters who were the rightful stars of that episode. Aside from the cool animation and educational content of the show, we were always excited to see who would get to be the Rescue Hero that would bring inspiration and direction to save the day.
The readings from Isaiah and Matthew paint for us two pictures of a hero, the prophesied Messiah. The word Messiah itself is a title of Hebrew origin that means “anointed one”, in particular one who was identified by God to accomplish something specific. However, the concept of the Messiah is a significant and fascinating development over nearly 500 years of 6th Century BCE to 1st Century CE Jewish thought and eschatology. Through this development, the word messiah came to mean many different things to various groups of people. The messiah would be an ideal king who would restore Israel and the royal lineage of David. Or the messiah would be one who would atone for the people's sins thus reconciling them to God. Or the messiah would be a prophet or a warrior. What is at the root of the messianic concept was that the people were trying to identify who or what will save them in both their mortal and spiritual lives. Ultimately they were trying to find who would be their hero?
When our readings are contrasted against each other, they look as if they are describing two very different people.The poetic language in Isaiah speaks of a Messiah who will bring peace, healing, and righteousness. This Messiah would make the world right. The imagery of wolves living with lambs, children playing with and leading wild animals, and lions and oxen eating straw together point to a world where there is no animosity between creatures and all things live in peaceful harmony. This messiah will restore what is broken, rule the world with equity, and bring forth a radical peace.
Meanwhile, the Messiah that John the Baptist proclaims sounds fierce, exacting, and a tad ominous. John the Baptist’s prophetic message to the people of Judea and to us today is to examine our lives, acknowledge where we’ve messed up, and live as changed people. Alongside his call to repentance, John was baptising those who came to hear him speak and confess their sins. John’s baptism was an act that symbolized his message of repentance as one's sins would be metaphorically cleansed from them as the waters of the Jordan River rushed over their bodies. But John knew this wasn’t enough. He tells the people that the prophesied messiah will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. With a winnowing fork and unquenchable fire, this messiah comes ready to judge our lives and hold us accountable.
Which messiah is the one that we want? Which messiah do we need? The Messiah in Isaiah is one that we can easily settle with and gladfully wait for their arrival. The second one, that one could take all the time they need to get here. However, as followers of Christ we identify and proclaim that Jesus is the Messiah. This means that the prophetic proclamations of Isaiah and John the Baptist are about the same person. Jesus is both the restorer and the chastizer, he is both the one who judges with righteousness and equity and also the one who judges and cleanses with an unquenchable fire. The idea of the messiah comes out of a peoples hope for a world and life better than what they had. In Jesus we have both the fulfillment and the expectation of that hope.
Unlike the children's show my siblings and I would watch, life is not always so clear about what we need to do or who we need to help us get out of difficult situations. There’s no cleverly and aptly named hero who will show up with the specific tools, knowledge, or words that will fix our lives or our world. If it was that easy, we wouldn’t need Jesus. The Messiah we have has come and is coming to comfort us through difficult and challenging times. He cleanses our repentant hearts with a neverending merciful love that burns like the hottest of fires. He gives us a bright hope to hold on to as we go through our darkest nights.
The messiah who we have waited for has come. We meet Jesus in the breaking of the bread and sharing of the wine and we see him in acts of love and service to one another. The messiah who we wait for is coming and we prepare the way for his kingdom to flourish and transform our society and hearts. We confess our sins and are thankful for God’s mercy as he transforms and reorients our lives towards him. We wait for this Messiah with eagerness and expectation that is shown through the Holy Spirit driven work we do with our lives. The work we do in meeting the needs of our community, responding to the crises of food insecurity and poverty, or providing programs and gatherings that strengthen the relationships we have with one another are how we wait for the coming Messiah and prepare the way for a world where lions, wolves, sheep, oxen, and children will live in peace and harmony. In her commentary on this morning's passage in Matthew, The Rev. Liddy Barlow describes this coming Jesus as one who is:
“[...] coming with fire, not to consume or destroy but so that our sins might be utterly incinerated, not merely flushed downstream. Jesus is coming with a winnowing fork, like a farmer separating good grain from husky chaff. He will keep what’s best in us, and he will toss our regrets and our missteps, our petty faults and our horrifying evil, into a place from which they can never return. Jesus is coming with an ax, ensuring that what is wrong will never grow again. [...] Jesus is coming to offer the new beginning that seemed impossible, the utter transformation we yearn for, the fresh start that even John’s baptism in the Jordan could never produce.”[1]
I urge all of us, the people of God, to place our hope, trust, and courage in Christ whose entrance into our world shattered darkness with light and whose coming again will forever transform our lives and our world.
Amen.
[1] https://www.christiancentury.org/lectionary/december-7-advent-2a-matthew-3-1-12
