John the Baptist, pointing, autism and thoughts on Advent.

14^th December 2025 Advent 3

Readings Isaiah 35.1-10 Matthew 11.2-11

 

This week our Advent gospel is focused once again on the figure of John the Baptist. John called people back to listen to God’s word, because he was the herald the one chosen by God to point towards the one who is far greater than even, the God’s chosen Messiah.  In fact, Christian art very often depicts John the Baptist pointing towards Jesus.

 

The ability to point is very significant, children learn to do it about the age of one and it is often lost as a developmental milestone because they often learn to walk at about the same time.  In pointing a child wants to draw you attention towards something beyond their own existence. Interestingly children with a severe level of autism rarely point, probably because they find it hard to perceive anything as separate to themselves.  In pointing people towards Jesus, John the Baptist points towards one who is greater than even him.

 

This week John is a very disconsolate figure; locked up in prison he has doubts; he is not at all sure whether Jesus was God’s chosen messiah or not.  So, he sends this rather intriguing message “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”   

 

Jesus does not directly answer the question?  He sends a message back to John, saying, “Tell him what you see and hear”.  The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.  This is a make your own mind up kind of answer using a sort of checklist that refers him back to the ancient prophesies in Isaiah. 

 

 

 

 John’s question “Are you the one, or should we wait around for someone else” is a question for us all to ask ourselves.    John is asking his question because he has ended up locked up by a tyrannical leader and he somewhere he just doesn’t want to be, surely this isn’t what Isaiah prophesied! 

 

Finding light in desperate situations is a challenge.  Very often we can’t control circumstances, but we can have some control over how we face them.  This perspective from the mother of a disabled child speaking about how she describes the effect of disability on a family struck a chord, I hope it does with you too.  

 

Emily Perl Kingsley it is entitled A Trip to Holland: 

“I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this... 

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans... 

“After several months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, ‘Welcome to Holland!’ ‘Holland?’ you say. ‘What do you mean, Holland? I signed up for Italy. I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.’ 

“But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place full of pestilence, famine, and disease. It’s just a different place.

“…It’s just a different place. It’s slower- paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around. You begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. And Holland even has Rembrandts. 

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, … you will say, ‘Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.’ 

“And the pain of that experience will never, ever, ever, go away. The loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to go to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.” 

 

Are you the one, or should be wait for someone else?

How often do we find ourselves thinking are we are supposed to be here or is there somewhere else? Jesus words to John invite him to keep faith with his vision despite his own desperate situation.  We too are called to recognise and nurture signs of God’s activity, here where we are because that is where God will come to us; in the messiness of where we are, rather than somewhere we think we deserve to be.

 

 

 “Are you the one or should we wait for someone else”.  Advent draws us back to basics and invite us to look for and discern signs of God’s transforming love in our own communities and to rejoice because that is where God is active and that is where he will be born in us.