THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR A

Sunday 14 December 2025

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington R. I.

 

Isaiah 35:1-10

Psalm 146:4-9

Matthew 11:2-11

 

This dialogue between our Lord and the messengers from John the Baptist in today’s Gospel is one of the most intriguing exchanges in Scripture. It also presents some sharp problems of interpretation.

 

Earlier in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, John has testified to Jesus as the one coming after him, whose sandals he’s unworthy to carry, and who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. When Jesus comes to the River Jordan to be baptized, John tries to prevent him, protesting, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

 

But now, after King Herod has cast him into prison, John appears to be having second thoughts. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” The “one who is to come” unmistakably refers to the Messiah or Christ, the Anointed One of God.

 

Down through the centuries, interpreters have puzzled over John’s apparent doubts and questionings at this point. At one extreme, some early Church Fathers suggest that John has no doubts that Jesus is the one who is to come, and simply asks the question to give him an opportunity to answer in the affirmative. 

 

At the opposite extreme, some modern commentators suggest that Matthew draws on different oral-tradition sources about John the Baptist. These sources don’t always agree with one another. So, the source of John’s question, “Are you the one who is to come?” is unaware of and inconsistent with the separate source of the story of John’s earlier witness to Jesus at the River Jordan.

 

What we need, I think, is an interpretation that both takes John’s question seriously and respects the coherence of Matthew’s narrative. The simplest explanation that meets both criteria is that John’s imprisonment has caused a crisis of faith for both John and his disciples. If God really sent John as the Messiah’s forerunner, then why has God allowed him to be imprisoned? John probably knows that in the absence of some sort of dramatic divine intervention, he’s not going to get out of Herod’s prison alive. 

 

So, the question– “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” – can be paraphrased, “Are you going to come and free me from this prison or not?” For in John’s mind, if Jesus really is the Messiah, then his role is precisely to drive out the Romans, overthrow their client-king Herod, and liberate all in captivity. In the words of Psalm 146, “The Lord sets the prisoners free ….”

 

Some New Testament scholars speculate that John’s ideas derive from popular expectations of the Messiah as a political and military leader who will throw off the yoke of foreign oppression and rule in justice and peace like a new King David. We get a good picture of the sort of Messiah that John is expecting from his own words earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, where he describes the one coming after him who “will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” For John, the Messiah will execute divine judgment on a sinful world, vindicating the righteous and punishing the wicked.

 

Our Lord refuses to answer the question on John’s terms and instead reframes the background of expectations against which his ministry is to be understood. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” 

 

Such activities don’t meet the expectations of a political revolutionary and military conqueror. But they do fit another strand of messianic prophecy found in the Hebrew Scriptures. We have an example in today’s Old Testament reading from Isaiah: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” 

 

So, in effect, Jesus is saying, “If I don’t look to you like the one who is to come, that’s because you’re looking for the wrong things.” God’s kingdom is already breaking into history by way of the Lord’s ministry of teaching, forgiving, healing, and raising the dead in the towns and villages of Galilee. But blessed are those who do recognize its arrival and who take no offense at the one bringing it all about.

 

Having thus answered John’s messengers, Jesus turns to the crowds standing by. For them, John’s imprisonment by Herod has most likely raised misgivings about John’s ministry. How can someone truly sent by God have ended up in prison like that?  But against all such questions and doubts, Jesus affirms that John is not just a prophet but more than a prophet, the promised messenger sent to prepare the way of the Lord.

 

Then Jesus concludes with the enigmatic saying: “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” As the forerunner, John is the last and greatest of God’s prophets. He stands at the threshold of God’s kingdom but is not part of it himself. Now that Jesus has arrived on the scene, John’s work is complete. Jesus is the bearer of that towards which John could only point. Neither John’s imprisonment and imminent beheading, nor indeed our Lord’s eventual arrest, trial, and crucifixion, can impede the kingdom’s progress. On the contrary, both seeming defeats play an indispensable role in advancing God’s plan of salvation for all humanity and, indeed, for all creation.

 

The dialogue between Jesus and the messengers from John the Baptist offers us profound reassurance in our times of frustrated expectations. In moments of disappointment and loss, we’re inevitably tempted to ask where God is and why he lets such bad things happen. But our Lord’s words, “Go and tell John what you see and what you hear,” challenge us to set aside our preconceptions of what God ought to be doing. Instead, we need to look, listen, and pay attention to what God is actually doing. The challenge for us this Advent season is to discern the ways in which God is already present, active, and doing wonderful things in our midst—often in ways that we least expect. If we can learn to do that, then the joy of the Lord’s coming will be so much greater in the end.