Karoline Lewis (0s): Welcome to Sermon Brainwave with me, Karoline Lewis 

Matt Skinner (6s): And me Matt Skinner 

Joy J. Moore (9s): And me Joy J Moore. 

Karoline Lewis (11s): The text for the Second Sunday of Advent, which falls on December 4th, 2022, are Isaiah chapter 11 verses one through 10. The Psalm is Psalm 72, 1 through seven, and then 18 to 19 Romans chapter 15, four through 13. And Matthew three, one through 12, our usual second Sunday of introducing us once again, Second Sunday of Advent to John the Baptist out in the wilderness proclaiming a not so popular Sermon 

Matt Skinner (53s): Over to this popular 

Karoline Lewis (55s): Well, yeah. Cause but at the end of the day though, come chapter 14, it's not gonna be so popular with certain people. 

Joy J. Moore (1m 3s): Right, 

Matt Skinner (1m 3s): Right. There's that, 

Karoline Lewis (1m 5s): Where is that? 

Joy J. Moore (1m 6s): Yeah. Yeah. So there's great expectation here, and you've just described that great expectation of what sounds like a wonderful, oh, look at this. Let's go see what's happening out here with this crazy guy out in the wilderness is going to come to some truth telling that is gonna be maybe, maybe we don't wanna follow him, we don't wanna hear what he's got to say, but it's really happening right here where John is calling out and, and you know, saying, how are you hearing this word? 

And in some ways, again, from hindsight, we know that the Gospel is going to be spread among the folks that we least expect to receive it. But it, it's happening right here at the very beginning of, of John's ministry where the Pharisees and the Sadducees are coming and saying, I need to do something different with my life. And if the leaders of the religion, if the religious litter for a living, sometimes I speak in tongues. 

Matt Skinner (2m 15s): That's right. We Pentecostal moment there for our 

Joy J. Moore (2m 24s): S at, at this particular moment, the religious leaders and the power brokers in their community are recognizing their need to change their patterns. Wow. Talk about a spirit filled moment. That would be the answer to a great Advent expectation that those who have been in power and using that power in non-productive ways would turn to offer the peace of Christ. 

And it should, it would be as shocking for us as it was for, for John, but maybe our response might be a little bit more receptive. 

Karoline Lewis (3m 8s): Well, oh, go ahead Matt. 

Matt Skinner (3m 11s): You can, I was gonna go in a slightly different direction, so if you were gonna follow that thread. Go ahead. 

Karoline Lewis (3m 16s): I have several different directions, but I'll just follow that thread. I'll follow that thread just a little bit farther. At the same time when, you know, he sees the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and then their claim of we have Abraham as our ancestor, is a really, if you're gonna go down that direction, is a really interesting response in that. Or, well, Jesus says it or John says it of them. But that again, it reminds us of this theme of a call to integrity that, that the, you might have Abraham as your ancestor, but then what does that mean for your daily life? 

What does that mean for how you walk and, and how you talk? And so, and so it's, it's again, coming back to those themes of, of the simultaneity of judgment and salvation that we get in Matthew that, that John is calling everybody to, to recognize. That's just a little thread. Go ahead Matt. And I'll come back to, 

Matt Skinner (4m 23s): Well, it gets to that whole question of salvation. What I was going to say, what I'm going to say gets to the question of salvation and how that works itself out. I think I'm drawn to this text this year in terms of how it sets us up to read Matthew as a whole, how this, this is John's Introduction of who Jesus is and what he's going to do, especially in verses 11 through 12. And it's easy to read that, and it's easy to read the whole passage to say, oh, this is about confessing sins. That's what this, that's what John's ministry is about. 

That's what this is about. And it is about confessing sins, but the question is toward what end or why is it to make people feel bad? Is it to like, make the world a better place? It looks like there's a morality test getting set up in some ways, especially with the language of bearing fruit. And, and Jesus cares deeply about bearing the right kind of fruit in this Gospel, but I'm not sure as the Gospel, by the time we get to the end of the Gospel, that it's all about morality. That there's way, there are ways in which Jesus will surprise that and upend that. 

So I think the passage is more about a division that's coming in society, right? It's about, John sees Jesus as on a mission to repair a broken society, to repair a broken world, to repair broken lives in the midst of that world. And confession is less about admitting culpability, although for a lot of us it is that, but it's also about admitting need. It's also about admitting that brokenness and of course, our role in it, but then that salvation's gonna gonna show itself what's gonna be so amazing. 

It's gonna show itself in people like the meek and the peacemakers and the poor spirit and others, and, and people of little faith who he never lets go of. You see what I mean? That, that, that it's, it's easy to read this as, you know, John's this crazy guy in the woods, or not the woods, but in the wilderness. And he appears to have been exactly that, but he's, he's not, his target is not bad people as much as it's a bad state of affairs, I guess that makes any kind of sense. 

Yeah. Now, of course, those are related in some ways and with more people, some with some people more than with others. So yeah, before we get too interested in who's the chaff and who's the wheat and all of this, these divisive binaries that really will keep coming back to us throughout Matthew, then we recognize that it's, it's this idea that before you can figure out how to fix it all, somebody's gotta come in and sort it all out and fix the stuff that's really broken and preserved the stuff that really needs preserving. 

That was a really long way of saying maybe nothing. But 

Karoline Lewis (7m 3s): No, I, I would say, and I would add to that as well, Matt, that that sense of confession, not, you know, not necessarily confessing your sins, but it's a, it's a kind, it kind of takes you back to last week of that kind of attentiveness of an awareness of, of, of where the, where that brokenness is or what kind of situation or that, that also, that need for God's intervention. And so then the location of this text becomes, I think, really important, which, which you could easily overlook. 

You're like wilderness. Oh yeah, wilderness. You know, Jesus gets tempted in the wilderness and you know, the Israelites run the wilderness, but wait, stop right there. That and the fact, and then the fact that, that John quotes Isaiah Isaiah 42nd Isaiah, which is the, which is words to people, the Israelites who are in captivity in Babylon, that, that this is a call to, this is a call to the wilderness again, in a sense where it was a place that, and stance on there talks about this, that this place of, of, he calls him away from the holy city in the temple toward the wilderness, a plagiar danger and testing, but also the place where Israel was formed, where God's provision and care was demonstrated and where the people grew ready for God's promises. 

And so, how is it that we might think of Advent like that? Is this is this new wilderness or this rew wilderness place of, of those kinds of, of awarenesses and that, that it's, that it's this place of, of rescue and, and that the wilderness, yeah, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a fun time, but it was, it was the place of rescue for Israel. 

And so that salvation becomes this liberating, this, this liberation from captivity of the, of, of some of the things that Matthew will talk about, the, the captivity of, of, as Stan Saunder says again before John's ministering the wilderness, thus calls the people to remember who they were before their kings started building cities and temples, even before they had kings at all. And so that whole background here is so rich for some of the themes that you're naming Matt, I think that could really be really important for developing that thread. 

Joy J. Moore (9m 52s): I, I agree and love it in a particularly love. The recognition that the commentary you've highlighted makes about the place and the formative reality of the place, both in exile and in, you know, post Egyptian and slavery. The wilderness wandering is a place where the faithfulness of the people is, is truly made real. 

And the difficulty of that faithfulness is made real, a different train that I would offer that will show up repeatedly throughout Matthew's Gospel. We often read Matthew and talk about Jesus as the Moses like teacher on the mountain. But another piece that's happening in, in Matthew's presentation, we catch in the second half of verse nine, where, well, it's verse nine, which is the recognition that these are the descendants of Abraham and what does it mean to Matt, you kind of mentioned this, what does this this mean to say this is who we are. 

But an assigned label, even with all of its expectations, does not define who you actually are. And there's one, there's the binary that you tell us to watch out for throughout Matthew's Gospel. There's gonna be this recognition that, you know, I'm gonna claim that I'm a child of Abraham, but there is no, none of the promise of Abraham being experienced in the communities around me. 

Which is why these religious leaders coming to saying, oh, my practices need a change. I'm using change as what repent means, not simply confession, but living a different way, changing the direction of one's actions and therefore changing the consequences of those actions. But the other thing to see in this being a child of Abraham that's specifically named here by John, is a hint that the children of Abraham are gonna be all the world. 

God is able from the stones, the, the descendants of Abraham, the ones who will receive the promise from God is going to expand. Once you begin to recognize that God is loving all of the world in, in every move that God is making. And so I, we're gonna see Abraham come up, we're gonna see this promise lineage and the promise for the descendants and how that promise is made into all the world. 

And that would be another, something to look for and maybe to thread through in your preaching over this season. 

Karoline Lewis (13m 9s): Was that a segue to Isaiah? 

Joy J. Moore (13m 12s): It was. I just, I thought I'd spoken too much to be the one that starts it. 

Matt Skinner (13m 20s): Well, we just made a great transition then 

Joy J. Moore (13m 23s): We did transition. 

Matt Skinner (13m 25s): I need this passage. I had a bad dream last night about a snake, so I'm really happy to see this. Oh no. Yeah, snake was like going after one of my kids dogs. It was just, yeah, terrible dream. So 

Joy J. Moore (13m 38s): Very much 

Matt Skinner (13m 39s): Terrible. My response was, let's just kill the snake. But with this passage, apparently there's another way forward. So this great image, right, again, not just of society transformed, but the whole natural world transformed. You know, all of the things that we've assume are written in some kind of immutable law of, of how to survive this really dangerous world gets reimagined in, in some way, shape or form, even in the animal kingdom, in the natural world, so to speak. 

So, which is beautiful, but also, again, this idea of a God who is concerned about the poor and the meek and, and the righteous, which again, language we'll see in the, in the bee attitudes and such a rich text trying to figure out, well, Cory driver talks about this a lot in a lot of his commentaries on Isaiah. Like, how are you gonna pick just one thing or just one context? 

Because the, the language lends itself to historical contexts. A kind of forward looking context toward Jesus lends itself to context in our own world and our own struggles today. It's great. Yeah. Just read it. 

Joy J. Moore (14m 55s): Yeah. The promise, the, the, the descendants of the least expected. So the stump of Jesse David was not supposed to be the selected one. The shoot that comes from the stump of j David, the branch that grows out of this roots. So there, there's your descendants, there's your promised one. And as you said, Matt Matthew Matt, is that what Matthew points out is a continuation of what Isaiah has made real. 

And that is God is concerned with redeeming all of creation and humanity. And it's, and we sometimes think of it as individual humans. And Isaiah is pointing out that the restoration that is coming is going to be cosmic, it's gonna be huge. And so this image is in fact rich and awe inspiring. 

Karoline Lewis (15m 57s): Yeah. And I think the, that point, as both of you said, is, is very important. And maybe as strange as it might sound, that discernment process is, the question could be, where do you see the cow and the bear grazing together? Where do you see the, these, these, you know, the wolf shall live with the lamb? 

Where are those glimpses of god's, you know, redemption and liberation of, of entire and salvation for the entire created order could be really hard to see, but maybe it becomes another, another activity of discernment or attentiveness for Advent. 

Joy J. Moore (16m 51s): I must be in a really interesting space because my first thought when you said that Karoline was in a zoo, And then my immediate thought after that was how poorly some of the maintenance of the zoos are. You know, just how are the, how are the animals actually cared for in some of these places where we've taken them into artificial settings? 

And, and so I'm like, okay, what's going on in your mind that you would take a wonderful place like the zoo and then recognize the worst of it? But I think that that's the glimpse is that our efforts to establish the reign of God is only a forte or a glimpse. And if I make this a transition to the Psalm, it becomes that it is God's righteousness and God's justice that is going to bring that cosmic completion of creation's, redemption, and maybe this very literal give the king your justice, oh God, which is a prayer for the king, and the commentary exposes might be what we ought to consider doing as well, praying for the zookeepers. 

Okay. That came out a little harsher than I thought because my mind was thinking, praying for the governmental leaders and zookeeper sounds kinda right for that. But I, I I wanted to, to, to keep that thread alive in terms of our task, to call on God for God's wisdom and God's grace and patience and justice and righteousness to flow from the earthly leaders who have power, influence to enable or inhibit our capacity to be a glimpse of God's good on earth right now. 

Speaker 4 (19m 10s): Okay. Romans 

Joy J. Moore (19m 12s): Mors. 

Matt Skinner (19m 15s): Yeah. This is a really unfortunate choice of why they left. The first three verses of the chapter out is beyond me, but you could add those or you could just cut off versus four through six and start with verse seven as well, which is in some ways, I think the, well, it's the coda of the, of the letter's final part. This is after, after several chapters of addressing how we are supposed to live. 

I think that this is in a letter that's written to a, a collection of house churches, comprised of Jews and Gentiles, that this is in some ways pulling it all together. This line, welcome one another. And Jenny Petes talks about how welcome is maybe too tame of a word in, in English to describe what's going on here. But this is what Christ does in Paul's view as Paul bring or Christ brings together people who were estranged, people who have all sorts of legitimate reasons not to like each other, not to spend time with each other, not to let their kids talk to their kids. 

I mean, all the types of things. And Paul sees what Christ accomplishing is this radical new unity in his own body. And so Isaiah Isaiah 11 doesn't make sense without that. Or I should say this, that's not the right way to put that. What Paul's saying here is what gives Isaiah its particular Christian sense in our churches and our congregations. This idea of a transformed world isn't complete, but begins in human reconciliation. 

So you wanna see where lions and lambs are hanging out together, where wolf and sheep are. It's in communities where people have truly embraced and lived out this new mutual welcome that Christ makes possible. 

Joy J. Moore (21m 11s): Every nation, every tongue, every tribe.