A Tree Known by Its Fruit: Advent, Interpretation, and the Language of the Heart
The Gospel reading for this Advent season plunges us into a moment of high tension and profound theological conflict. In Matthew 11 and 12, people are trying to figure Jesus out. The two chapters build to a crescendo when Jesus heals a blind and mute man, an act of liberating compassion that should be unambiguously good. The crowd wonders, “Is this not the Son of David?”—a title freighted with messianic hope. But the religious authorities, the Pharisees, respond with a corrosive interpretation: “It is only by Beelzebul, the ruler of demons, that this fellow casts out the demons” (Matthew 12:24).
Their words are not a simple mistake; they are a deliberate, strategic inversion of reality. They see liberation and name it possession. They witness healing and call it sorcery. They look upon embodied wholeness and declare it demonic.
It is in this charged context that Jesus speaks the words of our text: a discourse on trees, fruit, and the ultimate source of our words.
“Either make the tree good and its fruit good or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure. I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; for by your words, you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew 12:33-37, NRSV)
Jesus’s metaphor is stark and agricultural: a tree’s nature is revealed by its fruit. The internal reality—the health of the root, the nature of the sap—determines the external product. He applies this directly to the human condition: the heart is the tree, and our words are its fruit. The Pharisees’ slander is not a linguistic slip; it is the inevitable harvest of a heart that has chosen fear over love, control over grace, and rigid orthodoxy over liberating truth.
The word for “careless” in verse 36 is ἀργός (argοs), meaning “inactive” or “not working the ground.” These are words that spill out un-cultivated, un-considered. But the Pharisees’ words were not thoughtless; they were a calculated “spin.” This reveals a deeper truth: the most dangerous “idle words” often flow from a heart that has been diligently cultivating the wrong crop—tilling the soil of suspicion, watering the seeds of supremacy. This poisonous fruit is not accidental; it is the yield of a carefully tended, but spiritually diseased, inner life.
Advent and the Interpretive Heart
This is where this text becomes a piercing Advent mirror. Advent is a season of watching, waiting, and preparing for the coming of Christ. But how we watch, what we wait for, and who we prepare to meet depends entirely on the condition of our hearts. The Pharisees were, in their own way, watching for the Messiah. But their hearts were so conditioned by a theology of power, purity, and political deliverance that when the true Messiah stood before them—healing, embracing outcasts, and redefining the law through love—they could only interpret him as a threat.
We do not have Jesus in the flesh before our eyes, but we do have the Scripture, the tradition, and the ongoing work of the Spirit in the world. And what we “see” in them is a reflection of our own hearts. The text becomes a mirror (James 1:23). If our hearts are attuned to Christ’s heart—a heart of expansive love, radical welcome, and a passion for justice—then we will interpret the world and the Word through that lens. We will see the Divine’s hand at work in the breaking down of barriers and the affirmation of the marginalized.
But if our hearts are captive to society’s fears and bigotries, or the will for power and control, then we will interpret the same data through a lens of fear. We will see danger where the Divine is creating diversity, and sin where the Divine is nurturing authenticity.
The Words Spoken Over Us and the Word We Speak
This is not an abstract theological exercise. For my trans siblings and me, this teaching of Jesus is a matter of spiritual life and death. We live in a world where words have power. We are constantly being “interpreted” by others, often by those whose hearts, like the Pharisees, are conditioned by fear.
The same religious spirit that looked at Jesus’s healing and saw Beelzebul looks at a trans person’s journey toward wholeness—a journey of profound self-understanding, integrity, and alignment of the inner self with the outer presentation—and calls it “demonic,” “deceptive,” or “a rebellion against God’s creation.” These are not argos words. They are words that come from a heart that has treasured a narrow, static, and ultimately fragile understanding of creation. The fruit of this heart is a theology that wounds, excludes, and condemns. It is a fruit that Jesus, in this very chapter, identifies as being in danger of committing the sin against the Holy Spirit—the sin of calling good evil, and light darkness.
But Advent invites us to a different hope. It invites us to trust that the final judgment on our lives does not rest in the words of the Pharisees, but in the Word made Flesh. The one who said, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” is the same one whose heart overflowed with a love that embraced eunuchs (Isaiah 56:3-5), and who recognized and legitimized a category of people ‘born eunuchs’ (Matthew 19:12)—those whose innate identity placed them outside the normative gender structures. Jesus’ heart is a treasure of grace, and the fruit of his lips is a word of ultimate affirmation: that we are all fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14), and that our calling is to live abundantly in the truth of who the Divine created us to be (John 10:10).
Speaking Ourselves into Being: An Advent Practice
So what is our Advent practice in light of this text? It is a dual discipline of cultivation and proclamation.
First, we must, with the Divine’s help, tend the soil of our own hearts. We must guard against the invasive weeds of bitterness and rage that the world’s argos words can plant within us. We must consciously cultivate the good treasure: meditating on scriptures of liberation and inclusion, seeking community that affirms the image of the Divine in all people, and resting in the love of a One who transcends all human categories.
Second, we are called to speak. In the face of words that condemn, we speak words of our divinely-given truth. Claiming our name is not a careless act; it is one of the most deliberate, holy, and cultivated statements a person can make. It is a word that comes from the abundance of a heart that has wrestled with the Divine and humanity and has prevailed (Genesis 32:28). For a trans person to say, “This is who I am,” is to bear the good fruit of a heart committed to integrity. It is to refuse the corrupt tree of a false, assigned identity and to become a good tree, planted by streams of living water, finally yielding the authentic fruit of a life lived in alignment with the Divine’s deep calling.
This Advent, as we wait for the coming of the Christ, we wait for the one who justifies us by our words—by our “Yes” to our created truth, by our testimony to our journey, by our refusal to let the language of Beelzebul define the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We prepare him room by clearing out the thorns of false interpretation and making space for the flourishing of every good tree. We watch for the day when every idle, weaponized word will be called to account, and when the true Word will speak our name, and it will be a name of love, of belonging, and of home.
Prayer:
Holy One of the waiting heart, you see the truth of our inmost being. This Advent, cultivate in us a heart like yours, so that our eyes may see your liberating work in the world and our mouths may speak words of grace and affirmation. When we are interpreted by the fears of others, root us in the certainty of your love. Give us the courage to speak our truth, bearing the good fruit of authentic lives, as we await the fullness of your coming reign. Amen.
Petra Aleah Strand is a retired Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) clergyperson who served congregations in New York and New Jersey for over twenty-five years. A lifelong student of theology, she holds a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary (NYC), where she received the Hitchcock Award and continued postgraduate studies in church history, with a focus on patristics. She is also a professed sister in the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans, having made her lifetime vows in 2001.
Petra is a transgender woman, wife, and mother of two adult daughters. She and her wife, Karen Booth, recently relocated to Portugal, where they are beginning their new life in Europe.
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