December 14 2025 Advent 3
Isaiah 35.1-10 The Song of Mary (Luke 1.47–55) James 5.7-10 Matthew 11.2-11
What were you looking for? Did you find it.? Did it meet your expectations? These are the sorts of questions Jesus is asking the crowd. And JTB asked a similar thing, turned the other way. Are you the one we should be looking for. Are you the one we have been waiting for. And Jesus’ response? Look at the evidence. Let the evidence speak for itself.
So how does that help us today.
Today is traditionally called ‘Gaudette Sunday’ or ‘Rejoice’ Sunday, but we really do not use the word rejoice much in our common language, so how does that fact affect the way we look at today. Isaiah gives us a hint when he tells us “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom”, but there is not a lot of ‘rejoice’ in our Gospel passage.
We are already up to chapter 11 in Matthew and the last time we saw JTB was at Jesus’ baptism. JTB is now in prison for speaking out against Herod, and now he is starting to question if he has banked on the wrong promise and the wrong person. Because as far as he can see, if Jesus is the Messiah he has not changed anything. Jesus has achieved a lot, he has travelled and healed, and preached and shared food and done many things, but John’s expectation of a changed world, bringing fairness and justice to human institutions, overthrowing Herod as ruler, just hasn’t happened. Jesus was supposed to complete the work begun by John, wielding the axe, bringing fire, renewing the world. And John is starting to question when this will start.
And maybe Jesus, in his response to John’s messengers, is affirming John’s doubt, because John’s preconceptions of what he is expecting the Messiah to be and do need to be ‘blown out of the water’. Jesus tells the messengers – tell him what you are seeing, tell him to let the evidence speak for who I am, let go of your preconceptions, open yourself to get to know me, the real me, not the person you think I should be.
And after the messengers have left, Jesus turns to the crowd and asks them a similar question. Who did you come out to see. What were you expecting. Someone in royal attire, well they sit on thrones. Let the evidence speak for itself, see me, see me for who I am, not for who you think I should be.
And maybe that message is still relevant for us today. Who do we see God as. What are we expecting God to do. Do we live with a God who has ‘magic fingers’ and can change the weather to suit our plans, who can point and heal illness because we ‘want’ it healed, who can change our life trajectory to suit ‘our’ plans, rather than us living the life God has planned for us.
Sometimes we need to hear these words from Jesus – look at what is happening, let the evidence speak for itself, accept me as I am, not as you want me to be. See God in the person next door, in the community, in nature, look and see and stop waiting for God to show up in the way we want God to.
God is alive in our community, God is alive in our lives, but sometimes we don’t see it because we are expecting God to be something God is not. Sometimes we expect God to do things God is not planning to do, and then we ‘give up’ on God. When God doesn’t meet our expectations, we think God has rejected us, we think we have it wrong, we blame God for life not turning out how we want it to. But, we have forgotten that God is in control, not us. We have forgotten to look and see and let the evidence of all God is doing speak for itself. We need to be willing, ready, and open, to seeing God as God is, not as we want God to be.
JTB was the messenger who proclaimed Jesus’ coming, he ‘prepared’ the community, the world, for Jesus’ ministry, yet even he had doubts. Doubts are ok, doubts are understandable, in fact doubts are important because they keep us looking, they keep prompting us to ‘look and see’. But even when we have doubts, we need to be ready to ‘let the evidence’ proclaim who and what God is for us, for the world. We need to keep searching, be open to seeing the reality of a loving God who will always be there, always partner with us on our life journey, but that journey may not go in the direction we are expecting.