Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Third Sunday of Advent 2025

We spend our lives going on journeys. Short journeys, long journeys, literal, metaphorical. We journey through life, alone, with others. We make functional journeys – to work, to school, to church. We look back over the journeys we've had, and we look ahead to ones we hope for, or even fear. Our paths are many and varied; sometimes we follow a well-trodden one, other times we are required to forge a path for ourselves.

Remembering journeys I have taken in the past, two come to mind. One in a remote part of Provence, in the south of France, on the way to sing in a concert with my university chapel choir, in a small church atop a high hill. The journey was very wind-y, as we went around sharp, hairpin bends in the road to get to the top. The bus driver had no qualms about taking these hairpins at speed, presumably because he knew the route well. At least, I hoped so. For the rest of us, it was a terrifying experience. People screamed, laughed, prayed. I think I actually fell asleep to remove myself from the terror. Another journey in my memory was much more serene – travelling along the west coast of Norway by coach. Each time we encountered a fjord in our path, of which there were many, the coach would cross on a ferry, making the journey incredibly picturesque. It took 10 hours, and I had wondered if it would drag. But my enduring memory is of awe and delight at the extraordinary landscape.

On both of these journeys, though I personally had not travelled the paths we were taking, we didn't need to fight through undergrowth or wade through waters – the routes had been prepared for us. The prophecy of Isaiah we've heard today depicts just this kind of prepared pathway – a journey in which all obstacles have been removed; there is no trial or tribulation, but ease, beauty, and harmony. No fear, as when we bombed up that Provençal hill, but awe and delight, like traversing the fjords of Norway. It is a prophecy full of hope and freedom and joy.

However, we are not quite there yet. In the Gospel reading, we encounter a question from John the Baptist, brought by his followers to Jesus. It is a simple question, but heavy with meaning, because John has been preparing a path which has cost him dearly. In the wilderness, he has been crying out, preaching repentance, holding up a mirror to the hypocrisies of religious authorities. He has forged this path entirely himself, and has paid the price with his freedom, now imprisoned in the dungeons of Herod Antipas. His journey does not seem to bear any resemblance to the picture Isaiah paints, of a land of hope and joy where the blind see and the deaf hear.

The feeling behind John’s question is hard to interpret. Did he ask it with hope? “Are you the one?” Or with doubt? “Are you the one?” Or with desperation, as he suffered the horror of imprisonment. One thing is clear: John knew what he was called to – preparing the way of the Lord. The prophecy sung over him as a baby by his father had shaped his life: "You, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins." This has been John's mission, forging a path along which someone else greater than he would come after.

We are just a little over halfway through Advent now, right in the midst of a journey in which the church emphasises the judgement of God which is to come, and the need for repentance and to get one's house in order for the coming of the Lord. The readings in our services over the last couple of weeks have often been challenging, sometimes a bit frightening. We have heard the kind of message which John the Baptist was preaching. It's not easy to hear. But then, Advent is not an easy journey. A mirror is held up to us, to reflect back to us our own lives, our own choices and actions. The path which has been forged for us is one which we are obliged to take; simply to put one foot in front of the other, in time with the days we are given.

Advent is a time of darkness – literally, for those of us living in the Northern hemisphere. The gathering gloom gathers ever more, as we journey towards the winter equinox. It may feel like this is a time and space where God is hard to perceive or that we can only understand where God isn’t. In Christian thought, this is known as apophatic theology, a way of thinking which attempts to speak only in terms of what God is not. It leans into the mystery of God, the otherness, the unknowable characteristics, God's utter holiness. St Augustine wrote, "If you understand, it is not God." Advent is like the space between a question and an answer, dark and unknown.

We journey in darkness, not knowing what is beyond each step we take, like John, languishing in his prison cell. We listen for the words of the prophets, for the voices which tell of what is to come. We ask the question which John asked – Are you the one? – and we wait.

The response Jesus sends back is, characteristically, not a straight answer. Instead, he asks John to interpret the signs – the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dead are raised. And so, John – and we – can look back to Isaiah's prophecy with recognition and with hope, and we can be confident that the path of freedom and joy which Isaiah describes is indeed to come, and is already here.

With this joy in mind, the church marks this third Sunday in Advent as Gaudete Sunday – ‘Rejoice’ Sunday. Just for a day in the midst of the Advent darkness, we look to the joy of Isaiah’s prophecy and the hope to come, and we give thanks for what God has done and will do.

These days of Advent are dark; we acknowledge the judgement to come and the need for repentance, and we follow the path, reflectively and heedfully. And, as we take a moment to rejoice, in the far distance we can hear the sound of labour pains, of a baby crying, of the promise of the incarnation of God on earth. We keep following the path which John prepared, with confidence that the signs of Christ's kingdom will soon bring light into the darkness.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.