Sermon for Advent 3, 14th Dec 2025

Welcome sisters and brothers and JOY be with you. Take my lips O God and speak through them, take our minds O God and think through them, take our hearts O God and love through them this day. <Amen>

We are a people of expectations. When we go to bed at night we expect the sun to rise in the morning. We expect others to stop at red traffic lights. We have expectations for what is appropriate behaviour. Our days are full of expectations. They offer some predictability and order to our world and to our lives.

However, there are other expectations, and these affect us more profoundly than the day to day expectations. Sometimes they are expectations of coming JOY and other times they are expectations of dread. Either way they have the power to imprison us.

Expectations of JOY create a framework for how we think the world and life SHOULD be. They are often the ideals and dreams that carry us forward. They, in some way, describe our world vision and what we want.

There are also expectations of dread, the things of life that we fear and want to avoid. Whenever we speak about wanting to simply get through the next day, the week, a particular aspect of our life there is an underlying expectation of dread.

The thing about expectations is that they pull us out of the present moment into a future we do not yet have, except as it exists in our head. Often, we allow those expectations to shape our attitudes, our beliefs, and the way we relate to others. Those expectations even shape our image of who God is, where God can show up, and how God SHOULD act

If God does not meet our expectations we are often too quick to question God rather than ourselves. We trust our expectations of what God should be doing more than we trust what God is actually doing.

We are with John the Baptister again this week and he was a man of expectations. Last week’s gospel showed John to be a voice crying out in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” He expects a new kingdom and a new ruler. He expects wrath, fire, axes. He expects one who is more powerful. John’s expectations have given him the confidence and ability to turn his back on the religious establishment, to go the desert, and to seek God in the wild and untamed places of life.

Today, the gospel (Matthew 11:2-11) offers a very different picture of John. Today he is a prisoner with a question, “Are you the one, or are we to wait for another?”

So what happened? How did John get from pointing to Jesus as the one who will baptise with fire and the Holy Spirit to this position where he is, clearly, not so sure? How did he go from being a prophet with all the answers to a prisoner with questions?

Well, you all know that The Baptiser criticised King Herod for taking his brother’s wife and that got him arrested, bound, and imprisoned. That’s the historical answer but Holy Scripture always invites to see and listen more deeply, to discern the spiritual meaning.Herod may have put John in jail but John’s own expectations have imprisoned him.

Herod’s jail, the historical bricks and mortar, is an external symbol of the inner prison in which John now waits. It is the interior prison of disappointment and disillusion. He is confined by his own un-met expectations. He has heard about all that the Christ, the Messiah, is doing but where is the axe, the fire, the winnowing fork? Where is the wrath ?

So John sends a message, “Are you the one or are we to wait for another?” It’s as if John is saying, “You, you’re the one? Isn’t there someone else? Perhaps someone who better fits my expectations?”

John has been incarcerated by his own expectations of who the Messiah is and how the Messiah should act. His vision of the kingdom is too small, his expectation of the Messiah too narrow.

That is the danger of holding our expectations too tightly. Whether they are expectations of joy or expectations of dread … our own expectations often lock us up, blind us to the one who is coming, to the one who is more powerful.

We imprison ourselves with a view of God, the kingdom, the world, our own lives that is too small, too narrow. We try to confine God’s work and life to OUR expectations <PAUSE> … BUT that is not who God is or how God acts.

Many people thought God would make their lives easy and instead He calls them and us to live more deeply.

Many people wanted God to eliminate their suffering and instead discovered God standing with them and us in the midst of pain.

Many people expected God would make their group number one but He called them and us to identify with the least, the last, the lost.

Many people wanted God to make them strong but He called them and us to discover His strength in our weakness.

Many people hoped God would destroy their enemies but he commanded them and us to love them.

Many people wanted to be the leaders but God told them and us to be servants. <PAUSE>

Every time one of our expectations is unmet we can let prison walls incarcerate us. The way has been prepared and we must decide, will we break out, will we escape or simply remain held in by the walls?

This is a call for a “Jail Break”!

This is a call to grasp the JOY of the loving, forgiving, redeeming Christ WHO IS and not get held in a prison of disappointment and pain wondering about why Christ isn’t what WE THINK He should be! <PAUSE>
“Are you the one or are we to wait for another?

Just answer the question Jesus!

Jesus did not do that for John and He does not do that for us. A simple yes or no answer will not release us from our jails.

We will escape only when we let go of our expectations.

We will escape when we open our minds and hearts to bigger kingdom.

We will escape when we trust God more than our ideas about God.

The Season of Advent is the season of jailbreaks. It is the season of escaping our expectations of God and embracing the JOY of Jesus Christ our Saviour - who was, who is and who is to come. <PAUSE>

So let us close by thinking about where we might have imprisoned ourselves with expectations of hope or dread? In what ways do we live that only serve to rebuild our prison walls? How might we have isolated ourselves from the love, healing, and life God offers through Jesus Christ?

The door of our cells are locked … but only from the inside.

Let us join “the jailbreak”.

Let us open the door and flee the confines of our expectations. A new world awaits us and oh, what a JOY that is.

What JOY will we see and hear? 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. That would be us because Christ is always coming to, and welcoming, former inmates.

I runga e te Ingoa o te Atua, te Matua, te Tama me te Wairua Tapu. <AMINE>