Year A – December 14, 2025

Lectionary readings:
Isaiah 35:1-10
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
Psalm 146:4-9
or Canticle 15 (the Magnificat, or Song of Mary)

^{This icon type, Theotokos of the Sign, depicts the expectant Mary. Her posture is one of prayer, and while her son is still in her womb, we see him as God, arms extended in a gesture of blessing. It aligns with the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, which is given as an alternate to this week’s appointed Psalm.}

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Known as Gaudete Sunday, this third week of Advent mirrors the lighter mood of Laetere Sunday in Lent. For those of us who observe Advent as a season of expectation (more than penitence), the other nickname of “Stir Up Sunday” might be more apropos. I’m not a big fan of that name, but it comes from the collect of the day:

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen. _{(BCP, p. 212)}

This is clearly about expectation; and the theme of expectation is hard to miss in our lectionary readings.

Isaiah addresses the Judahite exiles with promises not only of return from exile, but of abundance, deserts in bloom, water for the thirsty, and healing for the blind, deaf, and lame. While Christians read eschatological hope into this passage, Isaiah seems to be encouraging his audience to actually prepare for the journey:

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 with vengeance,
with terrible recompense.
He will come and save you.”

In fact, a highway is being prepared; “no traveler, not even fools shall go astray.” Wild beasts will be kept at bay so that everyone returning home from exile will be safe. Wait…is God…making this easy? That doesn’t sound in character. Scripture is full of promises like this, though, and of praises for God who, in the words of the Psalm, “gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger.” And Scripture—like the world we live in—is full of stories of people waiting, and waiting, and hoping, and still waiting for that justice and that food.

The author of today’s epistle is speaking of the eschaton, and we might hear echoes of Isaiah’s language: “Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.” And yet he encourages his audience to wait for it patiently. That great hope is coming; it’s right outside the door…wait for it…wait for it…

James is affirming the expectation we observe in Advent, but he tempers it with the need for patience. And here we are, some 2,000 years later, still waiting expectantly. Which word do we more urgently need? The promise that our hope is arriving, or the reminder that it’s going to be a while?

It might be wise to hold both in tension.

I’m currently reading some dated and some current theological writings on hope. It’s interesting to see what theologians in the mid-20th century were saying, in light of what we have experienced in the decades since. More recently, some theologians are nuancing Christian hope as they wrestle with issues like colonization, racism, and ecological crisis. For example, Timothy Robinson (“Reimagining Christian Hope[lessness] in the Anthropocene,” Religions 2020, 11, 192) suggests that

A re-imagined notion of Christian hope will embrace hopelessness, understood as the relinquishment of false optimism…and a commitment to act without expectation of success, but with a commitment to nurturing the wisdom to live more humanly.

This quote is addressing the climate crisis, but it resonates with another theologian, Miguel A. de la Torre, whose “theology of hopelessness” encourages a similar commitment to do the work that needs to be done even when there is no chance it will amount to much. It’s not a popular theology; many US American Christians in particular are likely to think it nihilistic. But it’s pragmatic, and rooted in particular in the lived experience of many Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in America. It also speaks to the debilitating effects of constantly holding out hope only to see your hope shattered. Maybe setting hope aside can keep us focused on the work we need to do.

Might that be our modern way of strengthening our weak knees?

In today’s Gospel, after sending John the Baptist’s disciples back to him with an answer to his question (“Are you the one we’ve been waiting for? Or should we keep waiting?”) Jesus tells the crowd that John is in fact the prophesied one who would prepare the way for God’s Anointed.

But John is in prison, and will soon be executed. What way, exactly, is John preparing? Certainly not Isaiah’s highway, where even fools cannot go astray.

We often conflate prophecy with prediction. Prophecy in Scripture really is more about human beings speaking the word of God into our world (which, in the Bible, tends to come out as poetry). I suggest we think of the prophetic in Scripture as templates for interpreting the world through faith. We want to hear Isaiah’s prophecy as a prediction that everything is going to work out amazingly for us, that whatever lack we suffer is going to be fulfilled—and, for us US Americans, that tends to put us in the mindset of creature comforts. But Isaiah was talking about necessities of life: protection from predators, the provision of water to drink. We live in a time of staggering wealth inequality, and, whether we see it or not, there are people in our own communities as well as across the globe who lack basic necessities for life, or whose access to such necessities could easily be lost with an unexpected illness or job loss. So what is the prophetic word for us today?

The prophet Mary, still carrying Jesus in her womb, reminds us that it is the nature of God to turn things in our world upside-down. This is actually bad news for some; but for the majority of the world, it is good news. The mighty will be cast out of their thrones so the lowly can be lifted up instead; and while the hungry are given all the food they can eat, the rich are sent away empty.

I’m not seeing that in history, though. This may not have been a prediction, it seems. But it gives us insight into God’s perspective, God’s values, and God’s character, and invites us to learn to see our world as God does—and to act in it accordingly.

John the Baptist, the greatest human being ever (so Jesus says in today’s Gospel) doesn’t hold a candle to the least in the kingdom of God. That makes no sense, but it is deeply true.

This third Sunday of Advent, what is it we’re expecting, or hoping for? What are we out here in the wilderness to see? The wind blowing through the reeds (i.e., exactly what one would expect to see in the wilderness)? Someone dressed in soft robes (i.e., misplaced hopes, ludicrous dreams)? Or a prophet? But he’s in prison, soon to be executed. It’s time for the least in the kingdom of heaven to step up, step into the prophetic role of preparing the way, even if where it’s leading us is, at best, unclear.