Second Sunday of Advent: December 7, 2025 | The Rev. McKenzi Roberson
The words of judgement in Matthew are quite striking. I can see it so clearly, the feet of the judge firmly planted on the ground, the axe in their hand sharp and glinting in the sun, ready to swing the moment they notice the lack of good fruit. And when I hear of the fire I think of the Epiphany bonfires my grad school would throw, where people would bring their Christmas trees to Golden Gardens and burn them in the fire rings. Those trees would burn, the flames reaching fifteen feet high. It was a fearsome thing, Lord knows I wasn’t going to be the one to start those fires. And to imagine a fire like that but unquenchable? I couldn’t tell you if I start sweating from the anxiety or the imagined heat.
“Repent,” John the Baptist cries, “for the Kingdom of heaven has come near.” Repent, turn around, change your life, turn your back on what you were once doing and start on a new path. That is hard work. C.S. Lewis has this bit in The Great Divorce where he writes, “A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.” Using the metaphor again, but in Mere Christianity, he states, “When I have started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start over again, the faster I shall get on.”
As a person who is terrible at math, I can tell you with a great deal of experience that it does not feel good to find the mistake and begin again. It’s frustrating and embarrassing and often fills me with despair. Sometimes there’s part of me who wants to carry on, knowing that there has been a mistake, because it costs too much to admit it. Perhaps if I carry on and act like everything is fine, people won’t notice my mistake. Maybe I can find a way to argue that my wrong answer is actually the right answer.
As Christians, God calls us to a certain way of life. We are given specific values like justice and mercy, and we are expected to live into them. Perhaps even more so than in Lewis’s time, our culture attempts to seduce us into thinking that our values are flexible things we can shape to look any which way if only we can paint them just so.
But God’s judgement will not be swayed by pretty words. The axe is at the root, ready to send the tree to burn. And the sooner we can admit we are no longer bearing good fruit and start over again, the faster we shall get on.
Okay, that’s a lot, it’s a little more Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God than I usually go. Are you still with me?
The fire is dramatic, it catches our attention, spurs us to action. But the fire is not the whole story.
“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Yes, being made ready for the kingdom of heaven involves fire, but we do not go through that fire alone. Because I was too old before somebody explained this to me, let me tell you how the chaff that gets burned in unquenchable fire is the inedible husk that surrounds the edible grain.
It is these protective shells that God cracks open and burns away. I wonder how often that’s what the sin in our lives amounts to, ways to protect our most vulnerable selves. Our anger and our selfishness and our vanity can all serve as attempts to shield ourselves from the voices that say we aren’t good enough, we don’t measure up, nobody loves us.
But when we allow God’s fire to burn away our shell, we are not left unprotected. We are baptized with fire and the Holy Spirit. God is with us every step of the way. There is real pain in repentance, but there is also real joy as we experience the presence of God in a new or deeper way through that work.
God does not force us to submit this work. As an old friend of mine used to say, “You’re allowed to be wrong.” God gives us the agency to reject all that God has to offer. God gives us the freedom to be unrepentant. Hiding from the risk and hiding from the pain, choosing cursing and death instead of blessing and life has always been an option. But it is an option that will have consequences. We don’t have to get it right immediately or all the time, but it is a choice we have to make. And sometimes it is a choice that involves admitting we were wrong and starting over so that we can get on.
All of this begs the question, to what are we getting on towards? It can be easy to get a little myopic in a conversation like this, so we have to be intentional about remembering the scale of things. Working towards and being assured of our own salvation is great, but that’s not the whole story. The whole story is God’s redeeming work in the world. The whole story is Jesus being born and living and dying and defeating death and one day bringing the salvation of all creation to completion.
In short, we are getting on towards the kingdom of heaven. We hear from Isaiah one way that kingdom will look. “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid.” The kingdom of heaven will be a place where we don’t have to be afraid for our lives. It will be a place where hunger does not lead to violence. It will be a place where fear does not lead to venom. It will be a place led by wisdom and righteousness.
The thing is, we're responsible for our own actions, but God's judgement isn't just for us. The axe of God's judgement also lays at the root of the systems and institutions perpetuating injustice. The powers of racism and homophobia and systemic poverty and exploitation will all face God's judgement, too. And God's word is full of spoilers about how that judgement will fall.
All of this might seem like a lot, both the judgement and the hope. Paul understands that. His letter to the Romans is Paul pulling out all of the stops. He’s telling the whole story of salvation history and explaining how lives must change with the coming of Jesus. In our reading this morning he is nearing the end of his argument, beginning to conclude his case.
And in addressing people who might also be feeling overwhelmed by all Paul is demanding of them, he writes, “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The wolf shall lie down with the lamb, we shall live in harmony with one another, by the grace of the God of steadfastness and encouragement. The Holy Spirit who comes to us with fire in our baptism is the same Holy Spirit who will encourage us when we are lost and tired and afraid to begin again. God will not give up on us. God has given us the bible and each other and Jesus himself as means of encouragement along the way. We have this incredible faith, and we have this incredible community, and we have this incredible opportunity to live as if we are already in the kingdom of heaven.
We strive to act in particular ways because that is what it means to claim our identity as God's beloved children, and we know that even if it all seems fruitless now, the kingdom of heaven will come and that’s a future worth living for.
So, in light of all this, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.