Stones and Kingdoms

This is the text of a sermon preached at St Bartholomew’s, Warleggan and St Neot, Cornwall on Sunday 16th November 2025The readings were, Malachi 4^1-2a 2 Thessalonians 3^6-13 Luke 21^5-19

Earlier in the year when my wife, Hilary, and I were on holiday in Hampshire we visited Winchester Cathedral. We’d never been there before and we were struck by how beautiful and how holy it was. Like many of our cathedrals it has a number of lovely chapels and tombs of bishops and dignitaries, including Jane Austen, from centuries past. There is the site of the shrine of St Swithun, a former bishop of Winchester who is responsible for the shocking weather of the summer most years. It has wonderful stained glass and marvellous statues, some ancient and some modern, including an inspiring sculpture in the crypt by Antony Gormley. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to this wonderful cathedral. It is large and ancient and speaks of the faith of the builders and the permanence of the religion which it represents.

A bit like the temple in Jerusalem which so impressed Jesus’ disciples.

Jesus though has something for them, and us, to think about,

All these things you are staring at now – the time will come when not a single stone will be left on another; everything will be destroyed.

The permanence of the temple and all that it represents is illusory. Not a single stone will be left upon another. A time will come when the temple is no more. If even the magnificent temple cannot survive what else can fall? What can we depend on? What is reliable?

The answer Jesus gives can hardly have been very encouraging to the disciples.

Wars, revolutions, nation taking up arms against nation, earthquakes, plagues, famines. There will be terrifying events and signs from heaven.

But, says Jesus, these events are not to be taken as signs of the end. We’ve already heard that the end will come at a time nobody expects.

The time, though, is near at hand. Before the end Jesus warns that his followers will be arrested and persecuted. They will called on to justify themselves before kings and governors because of their faith in Jesus.

Their resolve must be not to have prepared a defence but rather to wait until the time and trust that Jesus will give them an eloquence and wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to resist or contradict.

Some will even be put to death but he urges them to persevere even in the face of betrayal by relations and friends and that perseverance will win them their lives.

What are we to make of all this? How can any of this be relevant to us today?

The first readers of Luke’s gospel will have understood that everything Luke records Jesus as saying here has already happened.

The temple has been destroyed and Jerusalem razed by the Romans. Christians are already being routinely persecuted for their faith – Peter had been imprisoned, James was beheaded and Stephen stoned to death.

The temple that had seemed so secure and enduring is now rubble, the security that Jerusalem had known has now gone, the things that had once appeared certainties now seem transient. There is no peace, no guarantee of anything. Everything is unpredictable.

And what is so different in our own time?

Nothing. There are wars in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, Syria. There are natural disasters in Jamaica, Cuba and the Philippines. The world is facing a climate crisis which is already starting to affect many developing nations, and even the developed nations are seeing changes in their climate. There is persecution of Christians in many parts of the world.

Jesus is describing our world as surely as he describes his own. The things that he says must happen fall into a category that we might describe as inevitable.

This, says Jesus, is what we always have to deal with.

It’s tempting to imagine that these words of Jesus are a prophecy, a prediction about what will happen in the future, in the time after his resurrection.

But, as we read these words they do not feel so much like something about what will happen in the future as what we see happening in the world around us.

And that surely is true in whatever time we live.

Jesus is simply describing the world as it is – and always has been, and doubtless always will be.

Jesus is telling his disciples – and us – that such events may be unpredictable but they are also inevitable,

And when you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be terrified, for this is something that must happen first, but the end will not come at once.’ Then he said to them, ‘Nation will fight against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes and plagues and famines in various places; there will be terrifying events and great signs from heaven.

All of this may not appear very encouraging. Perhaps hardly at all the sort of message we expect to hear from Jesus, but he has more to say following these words which are not in our gospel reading today,

they will see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand erect, hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand.’

So with you when you see these things happening: know that the kingdom of God is near. In truth I tell you, before this generation has passed away all will have taken place. Sky and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

We cannot be immune to the effects of these events in our world, but Jesus wants us to understand where we should look for all that is permanent, dependable and trustworthy, because that is not to be found in the world, not even in our great cathedrals, or castles, or kingdoms or empires.

Jesus wants us to look to the kingdom of God to find hope, security and eternity.

The world will never change – it is the way it has always been, and always will be. But Jesus offers us something different, something which can be relied upon.

And that something is the kingdom of God which Jesus’ coming has inaugurated. The events that follow this in Luke’s gospel – the passion, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus are what make the difference.

Remember how in John’s gospel Jesus says,

Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

The world offers only impermanence, uncertainty, pain and suffering. Human lea byders cannot be relied upon. Human enterprise is transient and unenduring.

Jesus, though, offers something profoundly different. He opens for us the way into the kingdom of God. It is only in this kingdom that we can find the hope that the world can never offer.

The warnings that Jesus gives in today’s gospel reading are intended to remind us to be aware that the world cannot offer us anything lasting or enduring – only God, and his kingdom are eternal. Stones crumble and are thrown down but only the word of God endures to eternity.