2nd Sunday of Advent
Texts: Matthew 3:1-12 (and 11:12);
Isa 11:1-10; Rom 15:4-13
YouTube: https://youtu.be/E_LQv6GeeY8
Sermon Take-Home Notes
PREPARING THE WAY OF THE LORD AND THE GRAMMAR OF VIOLENCE
We began this morning (in the Call to Worship) by saying that this day is a day of preparation. We all recognize that some things take more work to prepare for than others. We might ask, How do you prepare for events that are so new to you that it makes it difficult to be fully prepared? For example: having your first baby. Now, of course, I’m becoming refreshed on this as a first-time grandparent and seeing again, as it was forty years with our own first child, how dependent that newborn baby is on you for all their needs. It’s hard to prepare for what it’s like, isn’t it? Until you’re going through it? Advent includes remembrance of that kind of preparation. Mary and Joseph are getting ready for their first child. And such preparation is even made more difficult by their situation of living in severe poverty and under imperial oppression.
But Advent also includes a preparation far more challenging than something so new: How does one prepare for something that’s never happened before in human history? How do you prepare for that? In today’s Gospel Reading, that’s what John the Baptist has been tasked with doing when ‘preparing the way of the Lord’: he is preparing for something that has never before happened in human history. How does one go about doing that?
If we read the story correctly, we come to see that John, in fact, had some problems in completing his mission of preparing the way of the Lord. It didn’t all go smoothly. He knows the one who comes after him will be quite different: He prophesies that, while he baptizes merely with water, the one he’s preparing for will baptize with the Spirit and Fire. But does he understand that difference? His reference to fire sounds like our conventional human understanding of God’s judgment: the wheat, the good stuff, is gathered into the barn; and the chaff, the bad stuff, will be burned with unquenchable fire. I submit to you, that because he is preparing for something, someone, who has never appeared before in human history, he cannot really understand — not, at least, until it all takes place. He cannot understand that God’s judgment is actually about mercy and love.
Two thousand years later, I’m not sure we quite understand it still. Many Christians hear the words of John the Baptist about judgment and assume it is the judgment Jesus came to bring. Jesus is merely the fulcrum on what that judgment turns. Haven’t many generation of Christians come to see God’s judgment as this: Believe in Jesus and you will be gathered into the ‘barn’ of heaven. Fail to believe in Jesus and you will suffer the unquenchable fire of hell. I submit to you that those kinds of views of God’s judgment couldn’t be further from the truth. They miss the history-changing nature of the One for whom John came to prepare the way.
For forty years I’ve been tasked with preaching on these words, and I’ve struggled to understand what they mean. Spirit and Fire? Especially that second one, Fire. What does it mean to baptize with Spirit and fire? This week I finally heard something that makes complete sense to me. It was on an Advent podcast1 — actually by the same person from whom I borrowed the sermon two weeks ago,2 Diana Butler Bass. And she said “Spirit and Fire” mean “Wisdom and Apocalypse.”
I understand this to mean something like this:
Spirit = Wisdom = God teaching us the right way to be human.
Fire = Apocalypse = the revelation of human violence as our violence (that is, not as God’s violence!), and that we can never end our violence unless we choose to suffer it rather than return it. To continue to choose violence as the only way to stop violence is our age-old failed way of being human.
Together, in Jesus Christ, Spirit and Fire mean that God came to teach us how to live in peace without any violence — as Isaiah had glimpsed even centuries before by painting a vision of a world in peace. Or, even when violence continues to arise — and this is what was truly brand new — to choose to suffer the violence rather than return it. This is what had never before been taught as the way of being human. This is what Jesus came to teach us. ‘Turn the other cheek,’ ‘love your enemies’ — this is what was new. We believe so firmly in needing violence to stop the violence, that we never could have prepared for its opposite to appear in human history: someone who brought God’s reign into the world precisely by suffering our violence on the cross. Two thousand years later, we’re still struggling to understand.
There is a verse in Matthew’s Gospel (and Matthew’s alone) which I believe makes this all crystal clear — if you clear up the translation problem. It’s a verse that comes right after next week’s Gospel. (You’ll have a guest preacher then, so I’m giving you a sneak preview.) Next week’s Gospel is the story of John the Baptist being confused. He’s in prison and sends his disciples to ask Jesus, ‘Are you really the One?’ Because this is so new, even to John, he doesn’t understand.
I spoke of a translation problem. Here’s that verse, Matthew 11:12 in the NIV translation: Jesus says, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.” Or, in translation we generally favor and use in worship, NRSV—updated edition: Jesus says, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and violent people take it by force.” This new updated edition even has a footnote that says it could be translated as has been coming violently — as inflicting violence rather that suffering it. So what gives here? You can translate it in opposite ways: as inflicting violence or as suffering violence. The reason for such confusion is that the verb for “violence”3 is in the very rare middle voice. All you grammarians have to remember that the middle voice is somewhere between active and passive voice. The active in this case is to inflict violence and the passive suffering violence. Can we find a middle somewhere between those two? (Historically, we might add that translators haven’t found a middle. They’ve simply translated this verb either in the active [e.g., NIV] or passive [e.g., NRSV].4)
Well, I do have a proposal to read it as in the middle voice, as somewhere between active and passive, by reading it in the context of the rest of Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus does teach us the middle way between inflicting and suffering violence! Where Jesus teaches us things like to ‘turn the other cheek’ to violence and to ‘love our enemies.’ And then he even shows us what this looks like on the cross. In other words, the middle voice means to choose to suffer violence rather than return it. The choosing is the active part, and the passive part is to suffer the violence.5
Let me end by considering the opposite of God’s reign in the world, a revelation of our human violence, which is also one of those rare events which happened for the first time in human history only 80 years ago: the testing of the first atom bomb. How do you prepare for that? The designers of the bomb where even worried that it might cause a chain reaction in the atmosphere and end up incinerating the entire world. It didn’t, but it was still history-changing. Robert Oppenheimer, the person in charge of the project is said to have quoted Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, as he witnessed the first blast: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” He later explained that he remembered this line from the Bhagavad Gita as he watched the explosion, a sentiment shared by many present who felt history had irrevocably changed.
Siblings in Christ, during the Advent season we prepare for the opposite kind of history-changing event: the coming of the One who says, “Now I am become Life, the healer of worlds.” He came to teach us the Wisdom, in the Holy Spirit, of God’s reign, where the only way to ultimately end the human love-affair with violence is to choose to suffer the violence and never return it.
We have evidence that in the first several centuries of the Christian movement, disciples of Jesus understood this. Thousands of early Christians chose to suffer the violence of empire rather than return it. But when the Emperor Constantine made the brilliant choice of making Christianity into the imperial religion — ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ — “Christendom” was born, a movement that largely reverted back to the human love-affair with violence. Back to believing that there’s no other way to stop violence than with violence. We once again became like John the Baptist, not really understanding the history-changing core of Jesus’ Wisdom. We again began viewing the Fire without the Spirit, seeing it as God’s retribution instead of as the revelation of our violence as our violence.
By God’s good grace, just as we invented a world destroying weapon 80 years ago, God sent a Hindu man, Mahatma Gandhi, who quoted Jesus, and really took him seriously, and showed us once again the Wisdom of God’s reign. In the face of so much death in our world, let us prepare for the Advent into our lives of the One who brings Life. Let us join together in becoming healers of our world-on-fire with our violence. In the power of the Holy Spirit, let our Advent be preparation for a renewed living into the Wisdom of God’s reign, a reign of love and mercy. With the fire of our human reigns all around us, we light a candle of hope in the face of the darkness. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, December 7, 2025
YouTube: https://youtu.be/E_LQv6GeeY8
Sermon Take-Home Notes
Notes
1. Diana Butler Bass, with Tripp Fuller, for the series “Advent Against Empire: The Beginning of a New World,” Episode 2, on Matthew’s Gospel, titled “The Genealogy of Revolution.” It was live streamed on December 3, 2025 and posted on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/live/5oJeFqrFViQ. At the 1:20:00 mark of the episode Tripp Fuller sets up Butler Bass’s presentation as structured by “Wisdom and Apocalypse,” which Butler Bass then links to John the Baptist’s prophecy about Jesus as baptizing with Spirit and Fire.
2. Her “Sunday Musings” for November 23, 2025 can be accessed online at: https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/christ-the-no-kings-Sunday. My sermon using her musings can be found at: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/reign-of-christ-c-sermon-2025/
3. The Greek verb is biazomai, to inflict violence, to use force, to dominate.
4. I’ve checked dozens of commentaries on Matthew 11:12 and have yet to find the proposal for translating the middle voice of biazomai that I’m about to propose.
5. While I’ve never found this specific proposal for translating Matthew 11:12 anywhere else, the idea does not come out of thin air. Following Gandhi’s application of Jesus’ Wisdom on nonviolence, many peace activists have named this strategic response to violence as “Jesus’ Third Way.” Human beings have thought there to be only two ways of responding to violence, Fight or Flight (or suffering it if you cannot escape). Jesus, in teaching things like ‘turn the other cheek,’ established a Third Way: to stand against the violence with a steadfast commitment to nonviolence and love — which is to say, to strategically suffer the violence with intention. It occurred to me that the middle voice of biazomai might point to Jesus’ Third Way — his Middle Way between actively inflicting violence or passively suffering it, the middle between fight or flight. See, for example, Walter Wink’s Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa: Jesus’ Third Way (New Society Publishers, 1987) and Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way (Fortress Press, 2003).
