It’s easy to despair when the certainties we took for granted feel increasingly fragile: standards of living, democracy, peace while the planet is still groaning under industrial hubris. But what if the crumbling isn’t the end of the story?
This Sunday we’re wrestling with two biblical texts that refuse to let us choose between naive optimism and cynical resignation. Isaiah’s vision emerges from post-war rubble, just a short way from modern-day Gaza. The prophet speaks with defiant hope: God is already pregnant with new possibilities
Luke shows us Jesus’ disciples overwhelmed by the magnificent temple; those impossibly massive stones, the ultimate symbol of permanence. But Jesus sees what they cannot: grandeur built on exploitation carries the seeds of its own collapse. Wars, famines, mass migration? These aren’t signs that God has abandoned the world but birth pangs of the new creation breaking into the old order.
History proves the pattern. “We thought this would last forever”—the Roman Empire, the British Empire, Nazi Germany, Apartheid. The moments come, over and again. Isaiah and Luke call us to recognise these moments and join the movement for lasting change, or as Desmond Tutu would say, “Come, join the winning side”.
But here’s the challenge: the new creation requires abandoning the old ways. Genuine reconciliation demands that we dismantle the old structures, and address the legacies of the past. Something genuinely new, might call for a complete break with the past, and that may be hard for the church to hear. Might we have beautiful structures, and dearly loved traditions that undermine and obstruct the new thing which God is doing? The church exists not to be preserved but to be spent, fuel for the Spirit’s work in the world.
Notice how radically material Isaiah’s vision is. Not souls escaping to heaven but dirt-under-the-fingernails redemption: houses people actually inhabit, vineyards whose fruit goes to those who planted them. The exploitation of labour ends, the accumulation of wealth is undermined.
The wolf and lamb feeding together isn’t sentiment. It is revolutionary. It proclaims the abolition of violent and predatory systems, whether it’s Grenfell Tower’s deadly cost-cutting; unaccountable ‘leadership’ or obscene wealth while people starve.
It may seem that we live among the ruins, but in truth God is already building that new kingdom. Why not pick up some justice seeking, loving grace and join that work. Patient, Persistent. Hopeful. Faith-filled.