A sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent
December 7, 2026, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR
Readings: Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
John the Baptist appears today in the wilderness, yelling from the bank of a muddy river. He is a difficult personality, and yet folks flock to him, repenting and confessing their sins as they are baptized in the river Jordan. John proclaims that there is one coming after who will finish the work; John is getting us ready for Jesus. Repentance must happen before the Savior can come into our hearts. But it seems, at least in John’s eyes, that not everybody there is interested in repentance. The religious elite, the people who have it all figured out, who look down their righteous noses at others, who see themselves as divinely better than all the rest–they are there, too. Matthew says they have come to be baptized like all the other people. John calls them a brood of vipers. I wonder today: Have you ever met that brood?
There was a fellow named George Wallace. A longtime Alabama politician and governor, he nearly swept the south in 1968 as one of the most successful independent candidates for President of the United States. Do you remember him? “Segretation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” He’s especially remembered for that line. George is a viper.
The vipers flock to the shore of the Jordan, along with those from Jerusalem and the whole Judean countryside yearning for a new start. John the Baptist tells them to bear fruit worthy of repentance. To show in your life that you are turning around–after all, repentance literally means just that, to turn around. To be changed. To be converted. To follow Christ.
John calls the vipers out, and I can almost hear sneers in the crowd. Listen closely between the lines, and maybe you will, too. “John,” I can hear them say, “Do you really think these people can possibly repent? Why even waste your time on them? Zebras can’t change their stripes. Can vipers change their skin?”
I didn’t know much about George Wallace. Most Americans today, if they know who he is, likely know that catchphrase about segregation now, tomorrow, forever. He is a figure synonymous with White supremacy. They may also remember him standing in front of the schoolhouse door, a parallel to our own desegregation crisis in Little Rock and around the state–a crisis, for what it’s worth, that has lasting impacts in our community of Hot Springs today. Mr. Wallace: Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourself that you are better than others because of race, or class, or national origin, or wealth, or because of anything in this world. Those things don’t make you better than a pile of rocks. The ax is lying at the foot of the tree. You’ve made your den; you have your brood; we don’t want any part of you.
We tend to approach our world in such a black-and-white, dichotomous way. There is good and there is bad. I’m good, and those unlike me are bad. And the two shall never meet. The good are capable of redemption, of repentance, of resurrection. The bad, though, so often in our minds, are stuck there, in their badness. Forever bad. Most of us do not believe that true repentance is possible. Most of us think that true forgiveness is a fairy tale. We don’t say that in church; we have to believe in it here. But our lives say another thing. We’re stuck in our group. We don’t think there’s any hope for that brood of vipers on Jordan’s bank; no hope for George Wallace. Viper now, viper tomorrow, viper forever.
But the gospel doesn’t see it that way. Jesus doesn’t put us into two groups, the irredeemable and the already redeemed. Jesus says, come unto me, all you who labor and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. And my–the heaviest burden of all is a heart in need of repentance. The heaviest burden of all is a heart that desires forgiveness but can’t find it and worries that there is no hope. And that heaviest burden so often takes us to the shores of muddy rivers, in ear shot of a crazy man. We’ve gone out for the pretext of checking everything out, sure. But maybe that heavy burden of sin is what really took us out there.
There is much to repent of. The Advent season is a perfect time for that: the call has gone forth. George Wallace isn’t on his own. We must repent, John the Baptist exhorts us today. In big ways and small ways, we have fallen short and missed the mark; we have been prideful and puffed up; we have failed to love God with our whole heart and our neighbor as ourselves; we have sinned. We live in a world–we have made a world where some people are more valuable than others, where some suffering is justified, where grace and love are not given out to all, where we, like George at the University of Alabama, have stood in the way of others’ flourishing. That’s just the truth. The call is to repent, to turn around, to go to Jesus, to follow his call, to love like he loves, to see everyone through his eyes.
For what it’s worth, George Wallace, that old viper, did repent. He didn’t just change his skin; vipers do that after all. George was transformed. That’s what repentance does: It makes us new. Wallace was shot in 1972, and the assassination attempt seemed to wake him up; he was converted. Toward the end of his life Wallace apologized to two Black students he had tried to bar from the University of Alabama. One of those students, James Hood, later spent hours interviewing Wallace. Hood believed Wallace when he apologized; he believed him to be sincere. He revealed Wallace was haunted by the country’s lack of forgiveness. Most people just couldn’t accept that repentance could be real, that a viper could change. Once a viper, always a viper. Sinner now, sinner tomorrow, sinner forever.
My friends: Repentance is real. Forgiveness is real. It has no bounds. The limits we place on others are ours; but through God all things are possible, even the conversion of vipers. The ax of the Holy Spirit is able to cut away and purge all that stands in the way of loving God and our neighbor, of living in the power of the Holy Spirit. There is nothing that is beyond the reach of grace, nothing beyond the healing power of the blood, nothing beyond God’s love outpouring into the world. Just ask George. For with God, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the promise is clear, and it’s for all, for George, for you and for me: Mercy now, mercy tomorrow, mercy forever and forevermore.
Storied Grace 