Matthew 3:1–12 • December 7, 2025 • Max & Garrison

This sermon was offered to St. Paul Lutheran Church in Garrison, ND & Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Max, ND on Sunday, December 7, 2025. In addition to worshiping together and celebrating the sacrament of Holy Communion, we also installed two synod-authorized ministers to serve these fantastic congregations on the North Dakota prairie!

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.

First, thank you for welcoming me into your congregations today. It is good—truly good—to be with the people of God in Max and in Garrison. Today, we celebrate not only the season of Advent but the installation of two synod-authorized ministers who will serve among you. God has been at work in and through this place for generations. God is at work here now. And God will continue to work through these communities of faith long after any one of us is gone. Thanks be to God.

As your bishop, I have the joy of worshiping in a different congregation almost every week of the year. And every place I go—large or small, city or country—I see the same thing: faithful people offering the gifts God has already given them—your hands, your voices, your time, your generosity. The ministry of Our Savior’s and St. Paul’s is possible because of you.

And the ministry of our church is possible because of you across the nearly 160 congregations of the Western North Dakota Synod.

Ministry is possible because of you in congregations and ministries across the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

And ministry is possible because of you in global relationships that we have like Lutheran World Relief and the Lutheran World Federation, organizations that connect us together with nearly 100 million Lutheran Christians around the world.

All because of you. Or, maybe I should say, because of what God is doing through you.

And, you and I do not do any of this alone. We never have. We never will.

Every year on this second Sunday in Advent, John the Baptist steps out of the wilderness and into our lives again. And every year, he reminds us that following Jesus isn’t a passive hobby. It is a way of life that calls for honesty—deep honesty about ourselves, our world, and the gap between what is and what God longs for.

And let’s be honest: the world of 2025 feels different than it did last year or ten years ago or during our grandparents’ time in this world.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but it feels like the anxieties we carry are heavier today. Division and suspicion of our neighbors are louder.

Rural places feel the strain of change—economic pressures, declining populations, uncertain futures.

Churches everywhere are navigating new realities.

People are tired.

Into that world—our world, in December 2025—John’s voice comes to us yet again: Repent.

Not “feel bad.”

Not “beat yourself up.”

Not “prove you’re worthy.”

To “repent” is a word that literally means to turn.

To face a new direction.

To see differently.

To change because God is already changing us.

Repentance is not shame-based.
Repentance is possibility-based.
Repentance is a holy invitation to say, “Lord, reshape me. Make me new. Turn me again toward your kingdom.”

I think most of you already know this from my story, but in case you don’t. I didn’t grow up Lutheran. And I certainly didn’t grow up imagining I would one day wear a bishop’s cross and preach in places like Max and Garrison.

My early adult life was music and travel, late nights and smoky bars. I had big dreams and even bigger hair.

I believed in God because my mother told me I should. But I had not yet met a community that helped me understand what “repentance” really meant. Repentance for me was something that I was never going to actually be able to accomplish.

When I eventually wandered into an ELCA congregation, what surprised me most wasn’t the liturgy or the preaching. It was the welcome. The freedom to ask questions. The patient teaching. The grace. The laughter.

The sense that faith could be an honest journey of ups and downs.

And when a community welcomes you as you are, you find yourself…turning. Changing.

Repenting in the truest sense. Becoming a different person than you were before.

What I began to learn is that repentance is less about guilt and more about growth.

Less about shame and more about transformation.

Less about looking backward and more about God turning us forward.

Advent remains one of my favorite seasons—not because of the lights or the music or the countdown to Christmas, but because Advent refuses to let us settle for the world as it is.

Advent tells the truth.
Advent names the hunger in us.
Advent invites us to imagine a world shaped not by fear, but by hope.
Not by scarcity, but by promise.
Not by anger, but by the peace of Christ.

And in this moment—a moment that can feel polarized, anxious, or complicated by many of us—Advent, in fact, might be the most countercultural thing the church does.

John the Baptist shows up every year on the second Sunday of Advent because we need him.

We need the reminder that God’s people are always being reshaped and reoriented, and renewed.

Sisters and brothers, it is good—so good—to be with you today. Thank you for your ministry. Thank you for your partnership. Thank you for the ways you embody the gospel on these prairies.

The kingdom of heaven has come near.
Christ is drawing close.
God is turning this world toward hope.

So let us turn too.

Repent.
Prepare the way of the Lord.

And give thanks—always—in the eternal truth that God meets us in our turning with unconditional mercy, grace, and peace. Thanks be to God. Amen.