Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent, 16 December 2025 Gaudete Sunday
The Reverend Dr Tony Surman
Texts: Isaiah 35:1-10
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
John the Baptist is a bit of an enigma. The more we reflect on him—on his appearances in the New Testament—the more mysterious he becomes. And this morning’s passage, from the heart of Matthew’s Gospel, only deepens that mystery. Here we find John, of all people, sounding uncertain about Jesus’ identity. Is Jesus really the Christ? The anointed king?
That’s not the John we meet earlier in the Gospels: the John who recognises Jesus’ superiority—“I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?”(Matt 3:14) —or the John who proclaims Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”(John 1:29)
But by Matthew 11, that certainty has evaporated. John is imprisoned, isolated, and racked with doubts. Something has happened between point A and point B. And Scripture gives us some clues.
We hear earlier in Matthew that John the Baptist was arrested just as Jesus’ time in the wilderness ended. News of John’s imprisonment is what causes Jesus to withdraw to Galilee and make his home in Capernaum rather than Nazareth. Later we learn the reason for John’s arrest: his fearless denunciation of Herod’s unlawful marriage. As we heard last week, John never minced words. He told the truth to power—whatever the cost. And, really, his arrest was inevitable.
But while he sat through those long, uncomfortable, hungry days in custody, John held on to hope (the first of our Advent Candles). Hope that God would redeem him and his people.
And yet—even the strongest, most resolute people are changed by isolation and deprivation. Months, perhaps years earlier, John had known with certainty that Jesus was someone utterly unique. Now, physically diminished and psychologically battered, he’s no longer so sure.
And who can blame him? Every day in prison reminded him of the sheer scale of state power, of the depth of injustice built into the world around him. And when word reached him that Jesus was wandering the countryside teaching, healing, but also dining with sinners, he must have wondered:
Is this really what God’s Messiah is meant to do?
John had predicted that the Messiah would be a ferocious figure, a judge with a winnowing fork in his hands, but Jesus didn’t fit that mould in a straight-forward way. Instead, there is kindness of speech, compassion for the lost, tenderness for the downtrodden. Admirable traits, yes—but were they enough to topple tyranny and deliver God’s people? Where was the army of liberation? Why this movement of waifs and strays?
With questions like these turning over in his mind, John sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him plainly: Are you the Messiah?
And Jesus’ response—while not as direct as they might have wished—is an unmistakable yes. He points to the signs: the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor receive good news.
These are the marks of the Messiah.
Yet this Messiahship isn’t quite what people expected. Yes, Jesus’ actions fit Isaiah’s vision: “the eyes of the blind opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped…” But many, John included, likely expected the healings to follow the revolution—not precede it. Isaiah had spoken of God coming “with vengeance, with terrible recompense.” Jesus simply didn’t fit that mould.
And perhaps because Jesus knows this—knows how paradoxical his mission appears—he isn’t at all diminished in his view of John for having doubts.
In fact, after John’s disciples leave, Jesus turns to the crowd and affirms John in a series of probing, rhetorical questions. Why did they go out into the wilderness to hear him? To listen to a reed shaking in the wind—someone shallow, blown about by every fashionable idea? Certainly not. John was no hollow man.
Did they go to see someone dressed in soft clothes? Hardly—those belong in royal palaces.
No, they went to see a prophet. And not just any prophet, but the prophet—the one who would prepare the way for the Messiah.
Having raised John to this extraordinary height, Jesus then gives a curious verdict:
“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.”
At first hearing, this sounds like a demolition. Does it mean that, for all his courage and faithfulness, John is excluded from the Kingdom?
A better reading—one entirely consistent with Jesus’ ministry and made explicit in Paul’s—emphasises that salvation comes by faith, not merit. Many who enter the Kingdom will be far less accomplished than John, far less sanctified than John. Yet through faith, they enter.
And the only thing required for John to enter is that same faith in Jesus as Messiah. At the moment Jesus makes his statement, John’s disciples are still on their way back with the good news. John, presumably, is still full of doubt about Jesus, but when his disciples arrive, can we really imagine him resisting the reality that Jesus is the Messiah?
Surely he receives it with joy (our Advent Candle this Sunday).
And we can only imagine that it restores his hope and peace—those two candles already burning on our Advent wreath. Undoubtedly it fills his dreary cell with light and allows him to face his cruel fate strengthened by the knowledge that God is at work in Jesus, his Messiah, reconciling, redeeming, and sanctifying.
Through Jesus, a highway is indeed being opened in the desert. A Holy Way, as Isaiah foretold. A way on which no traveller—not even fools—shall go astray.
And that is why we are here today. Joyfully—if imperfectly—placing our feet on that same way. Trusting in Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.
Tony Surman