![The steeple of the Memorial Church](/sites/g/files/omnuum7126/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-02/160725ChurchCalArt4.jpg?itok=rG9ZvXzh) # Sermon: Third Sunday of Advent December 17, 2025 - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) *By the Rev. Alanna Sullivan* *Associate Minister and Director of Administration* *The Memorial Church of Harvard University* *(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Dec. 14, 2025)* Will you pray with me? Gracious and loving God, many of us remain horrified by the news of the shootings, both close to home and far away. And for the violence throughout our broken and bruised world that goes seen and unseen, acknowledged and unacknowledged. Our community is in shock. Loved ones are mourning. Our hearts are shattered. At times, words can feel inadequate and cannot contain all that we are holding in this somber and fragile time. So let us hold a moment of silent prayer to uplift to your safekeeping those who are wounded, those who have died, their loved ones, and all those who are hurting this morning. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? The quintessential question of advent. On the lips of John the Baptist, no less. The one in the know, the one who was supposed to know, the one who knew Jesus. And yet, now John is in a dark prison cell, and prison can plant doubt in anyone's heart. Prior to his imprisonment, the Gospel of Matthew describes John as utterly confident in his ministry and mission of preparing the way for the Messiah. John has a moral clarity and conviction. He's not afraid to name names, calling out both the Sadducees and the Pharisees, you brood of vipers. And he proclaims a reckoning, a new day of cleansing that is fast approaching when the Messiah will come to uproot and incinerate evil. Even before he knows Jesus, John names him the Messiah. The one who is coming is more powerful than I. He will be the one to save them. And when they finally meet in person, again, John affirms that Jesus is the one they've been waiting for. But since then, John has been arrested and imprisoned as a political enemy of King Herod. John is labeled as a troublemaker, an agitator, an insurrectionist. His prophesying has disrupted the Pax Romana, the Roman Empire's concept of peace. Now, this kind of peace is not about the absence of conflict or about mutual understanding or inner calmness. In fact, it's quite the opposite. This kind of peace is the maintenance of imperial power and prosperity at any cost. This peace is achieved and sustained through conquest and exploitation. John's baptismal ministry and messianic message are an undercutting contrast to this Pax Romana, so John finds himself in prison in a vulnerable state and a liminal space. Prisons in the Roman Empire were where folks awaited trial or execution. Folks there are more likely to be non-citizens or from a lower socioeconomic status. Those with greater means usually have the option of being placed under house arrest instead. And while imprisonment is not meant to be the ultimate punishment, prison is still a very scary place where physical violence and psychological terror reign. They are filthy, overcrowded. Sanitation and sunlight are scarce. Meant to invoke fear and shame, prisons are designed to strip someone of their humanity and to be reminders of the power that the Roman occupation has over a person's life and death. And although freedom is gone, news passes freely. Those who are incarcerated are cared for by family and friends. Their needs are provided by supporters, not the state. So John remains in regular contact with his community, as he is dependent upon them for food and clothes and survival. He is kept abreast of what is happening in the outside world. It is very likely he heard stories about Jesus cleansing lepers, restoring sight to the blind and raising the dead. Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another? No longer in the wilderness, no longer baptizing in the Jordan River, no longer prophesying, John begins to question. When freedom is taken away, when there is nothing left to lose, you begin to ask questions that you might have been too afraid to ask before. Harvard Memorial Church ยท The Rev. Alanna C. Sullivan - Dec. 14, 2025 | Sunday Sermon And there are added layers of urgency and heaviness to his questions, for it is not just John's future that hangs onto Jesus' answer. He uses a plural form of the verb "to look" or "to wait". He is one of many waiting for Christ. Salvation is not a personal pursuit for him. As Angela Davis said, "One cannot be free alone. Freedom is collective." So if Jesus is not the one, the community needs to find other strategies of resistance and resilience until the Messiah will come. And I suspect that it is not prison alone that makes John ask his questions. He could have been provoked by something about Jesus himself, for Jesus is not the Messiah that he imagined. Jesus is not acting as he thought a Savior would act. Where's the fire? Where are the acts in winnowing fork? Something isn't adding up. For John, the start of the Messianic age should mean the end of how things have been. An overturning of the old world order, a separation of good and evil, a collapse of the systems and structures of oppression that surround him. But thus far, there has been nothing cataclysmic about Jesus' arrival. To John, the world remains, by and large, the same. Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? As mass shootings become a daily occurrence, as Islamophobia and anti-Jewish and antisemitism is on the rise, as ICE raids, detention centers, deportations terrorize communities and break families apart, as billionaires swallow up federal contracts and profit from policy changes that advance their interests over the common good, as trans children are denied gender-affirming care and their families are terrorized, as the lives of the marginalized and the health of this planet are under repeated assault, where is the good news? Who is the one who will save us? And do we have to keep waiting? John verbalizes our own Advent cries. And when Jesus hears John and our question, he could see it as a case of spiritual failure or faithlessness or undermining, but Jesus doesn't. Instead, he responds to his cousin's pain question with gentleness, almost relief. Writer Debbie Thomas puts it this way. It is as if Jesus says, "Okay, good. You are willing to at last let go of your preconceptions. You're ready for the saving work of disillusionment. Now you get to know me, the real me." "Go and tell John what you hear and see," Jesus tells the disciples who bring him John's questions. "Tell him that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me." In other words, Jesus says, "Go back to John and tell him your stories. Tell him my stories. Tell him what your eyes have seen and your ears have heard. Tell him only what the stories, quiet as they are, shattered as they are, scattered as they are, questionable as they are, will reveal." Why? Because Jesus is not a pronouncement. Jesus does not recount His identity as son of God or deliver a theological treatise about His beliefs. Instead, Jesus names His actions and their impact on the community. He says, "The poor have good news brought to them." The Greek reads more literally as the poor are gospelized. They don't receive the gospel. They experience it. They live it. They embody it. They become it. It is through action and community relationships that the good news arrives. Now, Jesus doesn't relieve John's tension or ours. Jesus understands that He has given sight to the blind and raised the dead in a world still full of disease and death. The kingdom doesn't overcome evil through swift retribution. Jesus turns John's attention, not to what will come to save him, but what is already happening around him, already happening around us. Salvation won't come by waiting for a tomorrow. Salvation is about how we love each other here and now, about how we keep turning to one another again and again and again, no matter how hard and how impossible that might feel at times. The kingdom comes by taking the long uphill road of loving this broken and battered world in the midst of the persistence of evil. In engaging scripture, we sometimes ask, "Who in this story do you identify with? Where are you in this story?" Well, my question this morning is somewhat different. At what stage of the story are we? More directly, what at the stage of the story are you? Are you at the stage of questioning, like John, questioning whether Jesus is the promised one who can save us from the perils and torment of this time? Or are you actively waiting in that waiting stage, waiting for someone, anyone who can save us? Or are you at the stage where you are able to see the spirit of Christ at work, even amid the darkness in spite of all the violence and oppression? Are you able to see a light shining in the darkness and the darkness not overcoming it? Can you see that glimmer of hope? Are you at the stage where the good news, where you can hear that good news, even in a time when there is so much bad news? At what point in the story do you find yourself? Questioning, waiting, seeing? Perhaps all three? And if that is the case, we are in good company, because so was John. Let us pray. God, we are questioning, waiting, and seeing this morning. You love us no matter where we find ourselves on our Advent journey. You ask us to make love known and visible in this broken world. Make us people who are gospelized. We uplift your safekeeping, all of your children who are hurting and grieving this morning, especially our siblings at Brown. Surround them with your steadfast love and everlasting mercy. Amen. See also:- [ Sunday Service ](/blog-categories/sunday-service) - [ Sunday Service ](/archive/sunday-service) - [ Sermon ](/archive/sermons) - [ Alanna C. Sullivan ](/sermon-topics/alanna-copenhaver) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)