Heaven is beckoning

We call this 3rd Sunday of Advent Gaudete Sunday and we break out the more festive Rose vestments. The more traditional theme of this 3rd Advent Sunday is Heaven, while the more contemporary theme is joy, as in Gaudete, “Rejoice.” On the one hand, Heaven is beckoning John the Baptist. On the other hand he has little reason to rejoice.

He’s in prison on the order of Rome’s handpicked local king, Herod, who has one job: keep the Galilean locals pacified enough that Caesar doesn’t have to order an expensive surge of Roman soldiers into the area. But when we heard from John last Sunday, he was nowhere near Galilee where Herod ruled. He was down south in the desert by the Jordan River much closer to Jerusalem. And the bulk of his preaching was about personal repentance. Yeah, he talked about someone greater than himself coming. But he didn’t say who that greater person might be, nor when he might actually come. He didn’t use the M-word — Messiah — God’s Chosen king, not with the Roman garrison only 10-15 miles west in Jerusalem. So, last Sunday, we left John biding his time.

So what happened? What’s John doing in Sepphoris, Herod’s capital in Galilee, over 100 miles north of where John was last week? According to Matthew, the grown-up Jesus came to John in the desert to be baptized, and John recognized who he really was — I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me — For now this is the proper thing to do — Jesus replied. I suspect that John sensed something of what Jesus saw, the sky opening, the Holy Spirit like a dove dive-bombing on him, and a voice like thunder.

I suspect that John decided now was the time. God’s Chosen king had come. Now was the time for the winnowing fork that John had predicted last Sunday; now was the time to start separating the wheat from the chaff to be burned. It was time for John to leave the desert. And what better place to start than Sepphoris where “King” Herod had forced a divorce between his brother and his brother’s wife Herodias, so that he could marry her. This scenario might raise some eyebrows today. But under the Law of Moses, Herod’s and Herodias’s relationship was considered as incestuous, and as scandalous, as any between blood siblings. Especially with God’s Chosen king now here, now was the time to take a stand. And so John did, traveling north to Sepphoris and confronting Herod — You have no right to her — and for that John was arrested. He probably didn’t think he would be in prison for long, with Jesus right there in Galilee teaching and healing.

And yet there John has lingered, and now he’s not so sure — Are you the one or must we, and I, still wait? Matthew tells us that John had heard of what the Messiah was doing? What had Jesus been doing? Well, according to Matthew, he touched an “impure” person suffering from skin disease; but rather than become ritually impure himself, Jesus healed the person, thus blurring the comfortable lines between pure and impure. He responded to the Roman Centurion, an impure agent of oppression, but who said to Jesus — I am not worthy for you to come under my roof; but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed — to which Jesus had responded — This foreigner has more faith than any of my fellow Jews. He invited himself to the impure tax collector Matthew’s house for dinner! None of this sounds like separating wheat from chaff.

But Jesus is not picking a fight with Herod. He knows that whatever he tells John’s disciples will be overheard by Herod’s spies. So he doesn’t answer John directly. He quotes from today’s Isaiah reading about the blind and the lame being healed. But instead of keeping the impure away, this Messiah walks with them. And then Jesus turns the scandal on his cousin — And blessed is anyone who is not skandalisthe–scandalized by me. We can only imagine how John felt when he heard Jesus’s spoken word — Blessed is the one who is not scandalized by me — and also heard the unspoken word — John, Cousin, I’m not coming for you. (an insight of the late Mark Dyer, a Benedictine who became an Episcopalian, then the Bishop of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and in retirement an instructor and spiritual director at Virginia Seminary).

John stood for righteousness and justice, for goodness and truth; and Jesus honors John as the greatest of all born of women, as I believe Jesus honors those today who stand for justice and righteousness, for goodness and truth. But as we try to decide which battles for justice and righteousness to join: as followers of Jesus, God’s Chosen, we are not called to retribution. We follow a King who heals, not destroys, who is transforming the whole creation; one blind, crippled impure, poor, deaf, dead person at a time.

At least we know what John may not have fully understood in that prison, now knowing it was only a matter of time before he would kneel before the sword, with Heaven awaiting him. His cousin was walking the same road, knowing exactly where that road led. I would like to think that John came to understand what we who have the opportunity this 3rd Sunday of Advent to understand and accept; that it’s not enough for Jesus to come for me, or my people. Jesus is coming for all of us.

December 14, 2025,

3rd Sunday of Advent, Year A

The Rev. David Kendrick