Introduction
Each year we hear John the Baptist in Advent, but in lectionary Year A he shows up in back-to-back weeks. That means it’s worth paying attention both to how Matthew uses John and how we avoid stepping on next week’s text too early.
I’m drawing on a few ideas from my 2022 commentary, but I’m expanding them here by focusing on how Matthew is employing this pericope to speak directly to his audience.
Matthew’s use of John
Every Gospel writer must wrestle with John the Baptist. He is too well-known, too disruptive, too charismatically strange to ignore. And in the first century, he wasn’t simply an opening act for Jesus, he had his own following, his own disciples, and his own staying power. Early Christians likely felt the tension between the Jesus movement and the Baptist movement: two charismatic leaders, two groups of disciples, overlapping messages, and real questions about authority. Each Gospel addresses that tension in different ways, and Matthew does so with a kind of quiet intentionality.
Where Mark rushes to declare John the forerunner with explicit Malachi citations, Matthew is more patient and careful. He introduces John not with titles but with presence: “In those days John appeared…” No celestial fanfare. No cosmic announcements. Just a prophet in the wilderness who looks and sounds like Elijah but isn’t called Elijah. Not yet. Matthew lets John’s authority emerge through his actions and message, not through titles.
Only later, in 11:14 (right after next week’s text), after Jesus’ ministry is firmly established, does Matthew allow Jesus to name John as Elijah returned. This delay is not accidental. Matthew’s theological instinct is to avoid any confusion. John is important, but Jesus is incomparable. John’s authority is real, but it is derivative. John baptizes with water, but Jesus baptizes with Spirit and fire. John calls for repentance, but Jesus embodies the reign of God breaking in. John is the prophet who hands off the mantle, but Jesus is the prophet who inaugurates the kingdom.
Yet for all the careful distancing, John’s role in Matthew is still essential. He is the opening voice of Advent for this Gospel. He initiates the public proclamation of the “kingdom of heaven,” a phrase the crowds do not hear again until Jesus picks it up as his first sermon: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Matthew’s theological artistry is unmistakable: Jesus steps directly into John’s message and expands it.
As I mentioned last week, Matthew portrays Jesus as prophetic figure more than any other Gospel. True to other prophets in the scriptures, there is a handoff that occurs from one prophet to another: Moses to Joshua, Elijah to Elisha. Matthew’s use of this tactic is for the purpose of recognizing the transition of authority from John to Jesus but also to make it abundantly clear that, for Matthew, Jesus is playing the role of a prophet. And as prophet, Jesus will continue speaking the hard truths that we have just heard from John.
Two Crowds, One Wilderness: How the Prophetic Voice Really Works
So if this is John’s role, what do we do with this text?
Advent gives us a chance not simply to hear John’s words, but to see and show our congregations how the prophetic voice actually works.
We often imagine prophets as standing on hilltops blasting out universal condemnation, fire and brimstone washing evenly over all. But Matthew gives us something far more complex, and far more useful for real congregational life.
There are two crowds at the river that day.
First crowd: The ones who know they need a new beginning. People carrying burdens, shame, disappointment, desperation. People hungry for the kingdom John has the audacity to announce. For them, John’s message is not a threat but a lifeline. “Repent,” not as accusation, but as invitation.
Second crowd: The ones who show up not because they need grace but because they want to manage it. Matthew labels them as the Pharisees and Sadducees, the institutional insiders but we could say “the religious leaders.” The ones with religious authority, ancestral credentials, and clean reputations. They come “for baptism,” but not for transformation. They come because they fear losing control of the narrative.
And John knows the difference.
Prophets rarely preach a one-size-fits-all sermon. They preach with double vision: comfort for the broken and discomfort for the comfortable. Hope for the hurting and holy disruption for the powerful.
But the more pressing question isn’t who John was preaching to, it’s who Matthew was preaching to.
Matthew’s Mixed Community: Who Needs to Be Unsettled Here?
As is clear from the overall shape of the Gospel, Matthew is writing to a mixed community of Jewish and Gentile Jesus-followers. Some are lifelong members of Israel’s covenant. Some are newly grafted in. Some might not be believers at all but are still listening at the edges. It is not hard to imagine that this community had its own insiders. People who believed their lineage or their moral performance or their theological purity gave them seniority in the kingdom.
Which means the “brood of vipers” line may not be aimed out there. It may be aimed in here, inside Matthew’s own congregation.
We often assume prophetic words in Scripture were delivered as blistering attacks on villains. But sometimes they are rallying cries for the faithful, “Don’t give up, God is coming!” Other times they are internal critiques, “Don’t become the kind of community that keeps people from God.”
My belief is that Matthew seems to be doing the latter.
He is looking at his own people, people who love Jesus, people who think they already understand how the kingdom works and he is warning them: Do not presume. Do not gatekeep. Do not assume ancestry equals faithfulness. Do not turn God’s welcome into a members-only club.
John’s metaphor about stones becoming children of Abraham would have landed squarely on the ears of those who believed their religious identity exempted them from examination. Matthew preserves that line because his own community needed it. He is not trying to make his congregation feel small. He is trying to make their community big. Expansive. Permeable. Open-handed to the Gentiles now joining them. Alert to the danger of becoming insular.
In Matthew, repentance is not merely individual moral course-correction, it is communal reorientation toward a kingdom that keeps widening its embrace. And sometimes that requires calling out the insiders.
Preaching Possibilities
The Prophetic Voice Today: Who Needs What?
This is where the text becomes deeply pastoral for the preacher. Prophetic words are doing different things for different people in your pews.
Some desperately need to hear comfort: God is near. God is doing something new. Repentance is a fresh start, not an indictment.
Others may need to hear challenge: Don’t mistake tradition for faithfulness. Don’t use religious credentials to keep others out. Let repentance break open your certainties, not solidify them.
Prophetic speech (in Matthew, in John, and in the pulpit) is not meant to flatten a congregation. It is meant to discern it. To know who is crushed and who is comfortable. To know when the word must lift up and when it must unsettle.
And for Matthew, the unsettling word is necessary because the Spirit is about to fling the doors open wide. The kingdom is coming, the Messiah is drawing near, and nothing shrinks the kingdom faster than a community that polices who belongs in it.
In other words:
John’s sermon prepares the way for Jesus’ feet.
Matthew’s sermon prepares the way for Jesus’ people.
Micah Krey 
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