Year A: Advent 3 | Isaiah 35:1-10; Matthew 11:2-11
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
December 14, 2025
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page (available for three weeks after the date of streaming).
“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” – Matthew 11:2[1]
We’ve talked before about how we as Modern American Christians misunderstand the concept of prophecy. Because of that, we’re often confused about what exactly to do with Advent, which is inherently a season of prophetic preparation. We focus our attention on one fulfillment of a few particular statements to celebrate a singular event. And while that is in no way a bad thing, in doing so we often forget to heed the prophet’s actual message.
Because of that, it’s important to remind ourselves that ancient prophecy, particularly in its Biblical form, isn’t about predicting the future. There is no Nostradamus associated with the Bible. Neither Moses nor Isaiah nor Jesus were fortune-tellers—in fact, Jesus plainly says we’re wasting our time and energy when trying to decipher particular dates for how we hope prophecies might be fulfilled.[2] Part of that is because the future is up to God, but a bigger aspect is that prophecy as a category has never been about prognosticating any particular event.[3]
Ancient prophecy is about patterns—patterns that remain relevant throughout history. Something triggers a prophet to recognize a repeating form of human behavior. They then use creative imagery, often drawn from their immediate surroundings, to describe how we as a species continue to behave under certain circumstances. Sometimes that message may bring encouragement to continue a good work, as in today’s Isaiah reading. Sometimes it’s more of a challenge—even an outright warning—helping us see that we’ve started down certain destructive paths, thereby allowing us to repent (aka “turn around”) and minimize or avoid the dire consequences we bring upon ourselves should we continue.
Understanding all that doesn’t mean there haven’t been or won’t be fulfillments of particular prophecies or that we’re free to ignore or laugh off where others have seen certain prophecies at work in the past. Those incidents, too, offer us light on both human behavior and the patterns the prophets revealed. However, no matter how much we may celebrate what’s already happened, we need to remain aware that the message is ongoing: God continues to speak to us through these[4] prophets in our own time.
So as part of our focus on Resurrection this year, we going to need to step beyond the limitations of our frequent obsession with how certain things already have been fulfilled so we can more fully attend to how the words from prophets like Isaiah can speak to us in the present. What patterns is the prophet calling to our attention? Are we experiencing similar structures in our own time? When we are, how can we apply the prophet’s message to guide our path toward greater life?
Before that, however, we need to take a look at our Gospel reading.
Matthew presents us with a scene of John the Baptist in prison. Way back in chapter 3, which we read last Sunday, John had pointed to Jesus as someone who “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”[5] Interestingly, neither Matthew, Mark, or Luke record him pointing to Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”[6]—that’s only found in the Gospel of John, where we never actually see the two interact. Mark doesn’t record them speaking to one another either, even at Jesus’ baptism. And in Matthew and Luke, apart from a brief exchange about John feeling inadequate immediately before the baptism itself, today’s passage is the only time we hear John the Baptist communicate with Jesus.
Recognizing that can help us a bit with John’s question, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”[7] John has been looking for—maybe even trying to predict—aspects of God’s renewal during his own day, but, like many both then and now, he may have been overly intent on the vengeance motifs within Hebrew prophecy, like the verses immediately preceding[8] our Isaiah passage.[9] John appears to have been expecting God’s intervention to rise like a firestorm sweeping across the land, reducing evil and rebellion to ash while the inferno somehow leaves the healthy grain unsinged.
Jesus, however, is not living up to expectations. There hasn’t been a world-shaking governmental overthrow. Celestial armies aren’t yet annihilating any human ones. The Kingdom of Heaven may be at hand,[10] but it certainly isn’t making much of an entrance.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus regularly focuses on the more constructive aspects of Hebrew prophecy. In Luke, as he begins his public work, he reads from a different portion of Isaiah,[11] emphasizing the healing aspects of the ancient vision while ending his reading just before any mention of vengeance. In today’s Gospel, he responds to John’s message with a near quote of Isaiah 35:5-6 while making no reference to the immediately preceding lines in verse 4 regarding God’s “terrible recompense.”
It can be hard to recognize prophesy when you’re experiencing it, so notice also that Jesus doesn’t particularly tell John’s disciples what’s going on so much as point out the realities they’ve already been observing. At least some of these people appear to have been hanging out with Jesus for two chapters, during which, following Matthew’s timeline, they would have been present for the healing of the hemorrhaging woman, the raising of a dead girl, two blind men receiving sight, and the restoration of voice to someone an entity had silenced, among other events.[12] They likely heard as Jesus commissioned his own Apostles to heal the ill and serve the oppressed throughout Judea,[13] continuing to listen as he warned the Twelve about the same challenges and violence John had already faced.[14]
Jesus sends them back to John without much of a message but rather with an emphasis on sharing their own experiences—what they’ve seen and heard while traveling with Jesus. It may not be the ones they’ve been anticipating, but prophecy is fulfilling itself in their day. What they and John do with that revelation is up to them. And us as well.
Living in the desert, we know some of the dramatic shifts Isaiah describes taking place in nature as God’s restoration begins. Our resident backyard toads buried themselves months ago. Skeletal ocotillos reach to the cold sky like thickets of thorny bones. The turpentine bushes are fluffy with seed, and the cacti shouldn’t expect to make anymore preparations for the dry season ahead. The vultures and hummingbirds alike have fled south while the crows and ravens have returned from the mountains. Only the bravest—or most fool-hardy—desert marigolds still attempt to smile back at an aloof sun as the entire valley settles into its winter shades of brown.
But after that first clap of thunder next June, the whole place will burst to life with leaves and flowers and birds and bugs and even amphibians. The plants become so lush and colorful you almost forget how barren and forsaken everything appeared just a few weeks earlier.
According to Isaiah, that transformation is an example of Advent, the nature around us resurrecting itself from the blowing dust and dry debris of prior years to the most biodiverse desert landscape anywhere on the planet. The land restores its own glory as it anticipates the arrival of our generous, life-giving Cosmic King.
Switching to the human realm, Isaiah describes what it looks like for us to echo the natural world’s example: “Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God….He will come and save you.’”[15] And as God once again sets foot in the realm, what happens but even greater renewal? “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and [even] the poor” proclaim good news.[16]
Hearing the prophet’s message, now is the time for us to act. In Advent, we aren’t just preparing for a baby to be born. We’re making ready for a whole new Creation! There’s no point in bunkering down waiting for a retribution only God can enact. Our job is to prepare not only ourselves but the world around us to celebrate and welcome the coming restoration. As children of Resurrection, whose home lies in God’s Celestial Realm, we need not cower or fear. We have not only the power but the authority to live boldly, serving and caring for those around us. Our Father—and therefore our own nature—is Life itself and Light itself. What can Death and Darkness do that God cannot correct?
We as the Church have rested long enough. It’s time to follow the desert’s example, awakening to joy and beauty as we prepare for God’s Reign. Why not dazzle the children of darkness and fear with our light, love, and joy when we can rise and live into the prophets’ words of redemption so fully that even our Christian siblings begin to ask,
“Aren’t we the ones who are to come? Why do we keep waiting for others?”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.
[2] Matthew 24:36 | Mark 13:32 | Luke 21:8
[3] It actually cheapens prophecy when we treat it in such a limited fashion.
[4] And other
[5] Matthew 3:11
[6] John 1:29
[7] Matthew 11:2
[8] And bleeding into
[9] Technically, our old Hebrew manuscripts lack Isaiah 35:1-2 along with the second half of the preceding verse.
[10] Matthew 3:2, 4:17, 10:7
[11] Luke 4:18-19, reading from Isaiah 61:1-2
[12] Matthew 9:18-35
[13] Matthew 10:5-15
[14] Matthew 10:16-40
[15] Isaiah 35:3-4
[16] Matthew 11:5 | The last verb’s structure is mediopassive, suggesting not that good news is brought to the poor (which would be passive voice) but that the poor are proclaiming such news among, to, and for themselves!