The Path of Peace - Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent (December 7, 2025)

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 11:1–10 | Psalm 72 | Romans 15:4–13 | ​Matthew 3:1–12

“In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” (Matthew 3:1-2).
 
A lot of people are talking about peace these days… probably because it’s one of those things that so many of us are longing for, while so few know how to practice it.  
 
In the headlines, we hear all about the seemingly endless negotiations and politicking at work between nations striving for peace… but where the ‘peace process’ often looks a lot like a bunch of bullies pressuring the vulnerable until they give in to unjust demands… and powerful leaders boasting and posturing to make themselves seem great while others pay the price…  suffering and struggling to put back the pieces of their broken lives.
 
But it’s not just world-leaders who have a hard time practicing peace. It’s a problem for lots of us… in our own communities, and relationships, and even within our own hearts and minds. So many of us are searching for a path to peace… but it still seems to elude us.

And the problem just might be that we keep on searching for peace on our own terms. Imagining that we humans are the best judges of what needs to be done to put things right… either in the wider world or inside of us.
 
I mean, our commercial economy runs on this assumption, and tries to sell us this message, insisting that ‘If I only buy this new produce… or take up this special offer… or share in this once in a lifetime experience… then I’d finally be at peace.’ And yet, these products and programs which can seem so promising… still leave us longing for more. And how much of our conversations about politics… about the shape of our common life, boils down to something like ‘If they would only do this… or concede to that… then we would all be at peace.’ And yet, most of these paths that seem so obvious to us don’t seem to pan out in practice.
 
But thankfully, the second Sunday of Advent which we celebrate today calls us to look for peace elsewhere… to turn around and instead of pursuing peace on our own terms, to find it by coming face to face with the Prince of Peace Himself. 

Someone whose whole life’s work was to prepare the way for and point us towards this Prince of Peace is the man our Gospel passage this morning introduces us to: John the Baptist… a prophetic messenger sent from the Living God to call His people to repent… to turn around… seeking not only forgiveness but also a new way forward… starting over again as God’s people devoted to doing His good will. 
 
And despite being someone who was not at all afraid to rock the boat and disturb the peace of his neighbours, John’s message seems to have been pretty well received! And that may have been because John’s challenge actually rang true. Many of John’s fellow Jews were well aware that things were not exactly going well. Their people were living under the thumb of a powerful and violent Empire… whose leaders proclaimed themselves to be the great bringers of peace… but who did so primarily by silencing all opposition with the edge of a sword, or publicly displaying their ultimate power by hanging trouble makers on a cross. In other words, violence and the threat of death were the Roman tools for clearing the way for the paths of peace. Not unlike some places today.

But in addition to the dangers posed by the Romans, there were also concerns that the leaders of John’s own people were not really trustworthy either. After all, King Herod’s whole dynasty were little more than puppets of the Caesars in Rome. And the High Priests and their backers, the Sadducees, were largely preoccupied with maintaining their own positions and power as those in charge of the Temple, and were seen by many as completely compromised and corrupt.
 
And then there were more grass roots, but deeply influential movements like the Pharisees, who offered their own solutions… confidently offering their own specific interpretations of the Laws of Moses, the Commandments, spending their time disputing and despising those who didn’t go along with them, or who somehow didn’t measure up. 
 
And so, recognizing how deeply divided and broken their communities and their lives had become, crowds of God’s people from all around Judea were open to a better way forward… and they came to be baptized by John… to begin again… placing their hope in the mercy and promises of the Living God spoken of by the prophets… by responding to John’s message about turning around… repenting of their old ways, and sins… and pursuing faithfulness instead. 
 
And as we heard today, John had some harsh words for those who were not sincere in pursuing this new start, singling out large groups of both the Sadducees and the Pharisees… both the Temple elites and the popular pietists… who came to him seeking baptism… accusing them of hypocrisy, and calling them both a “brood of vipers”… a biting allusion to Genesis Chapter 3:15, where God says to the snake in the garden after the Fall:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”
 
This conflict between the descendants of the snake and the descendants of the Woman… that is, those who were devoted to the ways of darkness and sin, and those who were truly faithful to God… would go on until one offspring of Eve, the Messiah… the Chosen One, would crush the snake’s head for good… setting all things right at last… bringing about the ending of God’s enemies once and for all, and establish His peace forever. 
 
And as we heard, John himself was full of anticipation about this coming Messiah, eagerly awaiting and preparing the way for the One who would come to baptize people with the Holy Spirit, and with fire… finally burning away all that’s wrong with the world, and rescuing all those who remained true. “Even now”, John says in Matthew 3:10, “the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” 
 
And John was right… the Messiah was coming to completely sort out our world, and to burn away all of the evil at work in it… but not in the ways that John himself seems to have imagined. And so even God’s faithful messenger, dedicated to calling God’s people to repent and return to Him, would himself have to be turned around… to let go of his own ideas about what God was up to, and what the path to God’s peace actually looks like in practice. 
 
And this is a good reminder for you and I: just because we may have been faithfully trying to follow God and walk in His holy ways for some time now… it doesn’t mean that we are the ones who have all the answers… or that we already understand the whole story of what the Living God is up to. 
 
The Sadducees, the Pharisees, John the Baptist, and even Jesus’ own disciples were in need of a whole a lot of turning around… and we will too, I’m sure. 
 
And often, it can seem like our ways of seeking peace… for our world, our country, our communities, our families, and even ourselves… run completely counter to what we know of God’s ways. And in those times, we must make a choice: Will we keep going our own way, or turn around and take God’s way instead?
 
This is not just a choice we make at the start of our journey as Christians… before our baptism, or confirmation… or whenever we first decide to place our faith in Jesus. It is a choice we Christians must make every day… and maybe many times a day. The choice to pursue God’s path of peace every step of the way, all the way to the end. 
 
And Advent points us forward to the arrival of the One who is the true Prince of Peace: Jesus, God’s Son… the One who reveals God’s good ways to us, and who will return to set our world right once and for all… judging the nations with truth and righteousness… sorting through every lie and act of evil… and exposing all of the corruption that rots and erodes the life of His beloved creation. 
 
Jesus is the One spoken of in our first reading from the book of the Prophet Isaiah 11:2-5,
“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
 
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.”
 
Jesus came to baptize us with the Spirit of God and with fire… but not quite as John and others had envisioned. Not as an instrument of terror and destruction… as One bent on wreaking revenge against sinners, but rather, as One determined and devoted to refining us… purifying us… burning away all that keeps us from sharing in His holy life and the path of peace… and while we were still sinners reconciling us to God and one another… making peace for us… by shedding His own blood. 
 
Jesus turned the world’s program for seeking peace on its head… not demanding reparations or concessions from those who have been violently overthrown… but paying the price Himself for all of our world’s spiritual and moral bankruptcies. In self-giving love, Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God gave up His life at the cross… suffering and dying for us, and in our place, all to bring us God’s peace:
 
Exposing our failures… but by forgiving them. 
Challenging all our lies… by showing us the truth. 
Bringing our divisions to an end, not through violence, but by embracing us all… conquering God’s real enemies… the devil, the powers of sin, and the seemingly invincible threat of violence and death itself by innocently enduring their full force, dying and rising again for us… breaking the chains of fear and shame forever, and setting us free to move forward together. 
 
At the cross, Jesus reveals the heartbeat and the power of God’s peace as His holy love in practice. And He shows us that the only true path of peace is the commitment to letting His holy love play out in all our relationships. This path doesn’t deny that there are still those who seek to use violence and power and the fear of death to get their own way… but the cross and resurrection of Jesus reveals that these ways don’t stand a chance against the victory of God! And one day, the Risen Lord Himself will sit down and sort out all that’s been done, calling everyone to account for the course of their lives, and answering to Him for what’s been done.
 
But as we await that day, we must actively resist the impulse to look on others as enemies to dismiss or destroy… remembering that the path of peace that Jesus Himself leads us on is the path of reconciliation… bringing those who were formerly foes together into God’s one family.
 
Remember Isaiah’s vision of God’s ultimate peace project, in Chapter 11:6-10, how those who were once completely at odds with one another will one day be completely at peace:
 
“The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.”
 
And this is much more than noble poetry… this is the story of the Church… the community of those who have received the Spirit of Christ, and have been baptized into His new life.
 
In our second reading today from Romans Chapter 15, we heard the Apostle Paul speaking to a deeply divided Church, made up of both Jewish and Gentile Christians, reminding them of the unity and peace they have with God and one another through their faith in the Messiah, Jesus… overcoming almost impossible social and historical obstacles to create this brand new community dedicated to practicing Christ’s peace together, here on earth. 
 
And in Romans 15:5-7, he says to them, and to you and I today:
 
“May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”
 
With this high calling in mind: What are the ways that Jesus our Messiah is calling us to practice His peace today? What divisions are we to seek to overcome? What prejudices or preoccupations are we to set aside, and even what pains are we called to endure in order to share His holy love with those around us? Those whom God commands us to love, and whom Jesus Christ gave His own life to save?
 
This second Sunday of Advent calls us to ask these kinds of questions, and to place our hope, not in our own ability to answer them, but in Christ’s own power and peace at work in us through His Holy Spirit. So, as we await His coming again to set our world right, and establish His unending peace, in the words of St. Paul: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:4-13). Amen.