Imagine standing before the Temple—the pride of Jerusalem, the symbol of God’s presence, the center of worship, the beating heart of a people’s identity. It was dazzling. The marble gleamed in the sun. The air shimmered with incense and song. Pilgrims came from every corner of the empire to see it and say, “Surely, God dwells here.” And then, one day, it was gone. Reduced to ash and dust under the boot of Rome. For Luke’s community, this wasn’t just a possibility in the future, it had already happened. The temple had already fallen. The unthinkable had already happened. And so, Luke’s community, still reeling from trauma, asked the same questions we ask in our own times of collapse: Where is God in this? Has God abandoned us? Can anything holy survive this destruction?
We, too, stand amid ruins. Not marble and gold, but forests and icecaps. Oceans rising. Species vanishing. Cities choking on smoke. Our “temple”—this earth, our sacred home—is burning. And like Luke’s community, we find ourselves haunted by theological angst: If God is good, if creation was called “very good,” then how can we bear witness to such devastation? Where is God in a world unraveling at human hands? We are living through our own apocalypse—not as spectators to divine wrath, but as participants in a story of consequence. We have traded dominion for domination, stewardship for consumption, and relationship for extraction. And the planet—our neighbor in God’s household—is crying out. The question before us is not whether we can rebuild what’s been lost, but whether we will remember who we are and what we’re called to be in the ruins.
When Jesus speaks of the temple’s fall in Luke 21, he isn’t giving a timetable. He’s giving courage. Apocalyptic literature—the genre of Jesus’ words here—is not about predicting the future. It’s about surviving the present. It’s not about when the end will come; it’s about how to live when the world feels like it’s ending. That’s what apocalypse means: unveiling. A pulling back of the curtain. A revelation of what’s really going on. Apocalyptic texts tell the truth that polite religion doesn’t want to face—that the powers of this world—religious, political, economic—will fall. That the structures we think are ultimate are not. That the things we’ve built—no matter how dazzling—are penultimate. In other words: everything can crumble except the love of God.
Jesus looks at the temple, this wonder of the ancient world, and says: “The days will come when not one stone will be left upon another.” The disciples can’t imagine life without it. But Jesus tells them that faith will survive what buildings cannot. And that’s a word for us. The church—the Body of Christ—is not the stone and glass of our sanctuaries. It’s not even our institutions or our programs. The church is the people who, in the face of collapse, keep loving, keep hoping, keep showing up for justice. When Luke’s congregation faced persecution and loss, Jesus’ words came alive for them: “You will be betrayed … some of you will be put to death … but by your endurance you will gain your souls.” Jesus doesn’t sugarcoat the struggle. He names it. Faithfulness will cost something. Standing for love in an unloving world will make you a target. And yet, even then—especially then—God is present.
In our time, those who have stood for creation know this truth firsthand. Ask the faith leaders who gathered at Standing Rock to defend sacred water from the fossil fuel industry. They were arrested, tear-gassed, and mocked. Ask those who chain themselves to pipelines, who march for climate justice, who challenge the machinery of greed. They know what it is to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake. And Jesus says, “This will give you an opportunity to testify.” Every crisis, every confrontation with empire, every moment when we’re told to stay silent is an opportunity to witness—to tell the truth that God’s love extends not just to souls but to soil, not just to people but to the planet itself. Eco-justice is not a side issue. It’s the gospel lived in real time. It’s the conviction that God’s salvation embraces all creation, that resurrection is for rivers as well as for people.
Luke’s readers saw the world fall apart, and yet the gospel they inherited proclaimed resurrection from ruin. That’s the pattern of divine love. Death, and then life. Collapse, and then creation. Cross, and then resurrection. So, we should not be surprised that God’s Spirit is most at work in the rubble. When the glaciers melt, when the forests burn, when the air thickens with smoke, the question is not whether God has abandoned us. It’s whether we will join God in the work of renewal. God is not the one sending hurricanes to punish us. God is the one sending people with boats and blankets. God is the one inspiring scientists and farmers, activists and children to rise up and heal the earth. God is not in the destruction. God is in the response.
Luke’s gospel is always about the already and not yet. The kingdom is already among us, Jesus says—and yet, it is still coming. That means our task is not to sit back and wait for heaven to fix it all. Our task is to embody heaven here and now. The eschatological hope of Jesus—the hope that all things will be made new—is not an excuse to give up on this world. It’s the reason to fight for it. We live in the tension of hope. Already forgiven, but not yet perfected. Already beloved, but not yet whole. Already redeemed but not yet restored. So, we plant trees even when the world feels like it’s ending. We recycle, advocate, divest, protest, and pray—not because we’re naïve, but because we’re faithful. Every small act of restoration is a signpost pointing to the kingdom that is coming.
Eschatology—the theology of “last things”—has often been twisted. Some Christians treat it like a code to crack, predicting when Jesus will return, watching wars and earthquakes like stock tickers of doom. Others dismiss it entirely, embarrassed by its drama. But the truth is, you can’t understand the gospel without it. The gospel is eschatological. It proclaims that this world, as it is, is not the last word. That injustice will not have the final say. That creation will be renewed.
When we say, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we are praying for the end of the world as it is—and the beginning of the world as it should be. And that’s precisely why eco-justice belongs at the heart of the church’s mission. Because caring for creation is not merely conservation—it’s eschatological participation. It’s saying, “We will live now as if God’s kingdom is already here.”
Jesus says, “Do not be terrified.” That’s easier said than done, especially when the headlines read like an apocalypse. But notice what Jesus tells his followers to do: Don’t run away. Don’t fall for false messiahs or quick fixes. Don’t let fear drive you. Instead, he says, “This will give you an opportunity to testify.” In other words, when the world trembles, the church tells the truth. When others despair, we practice hope. When others close their eyes, we open ours wider.
This is not passive optimism. It’s resilient discipleship. It’s the choice to live as if God’s love is more real than the powers that destroy. When Jesus says, “By your endurance you will gain your souls,” he is not talking about earning salvation through suffering. He’s talking about holding onto your identity, your soul, your essence when everything around you is falling apart. Endurance is not resignation. It’s resistance.
For Luke’s audience, the fall of the temple felt like the end of the world. But in truth, it was the end of a world—the end of an old way of imagining God’s presence as confined to one building, one nation, one people. Out of that loss came something bigger: the understanding that God dwells everywhere, in everyone, and that the whole creation is God’s temple. What if the same is true for us? What if the collapse of our modern temples—our oil economies, our endless growth, our consumer gods—is not only tragedy but also invitation? What if God is already birthing a new world out of the ashes of this one? To embrace eco-justice is to trust that God’s future is larger than our fear. It’s to live as midwives of a creation being reborn.
Our baptismal vows say we will “seek and serve Christ in all persons” and “strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.” But what if we took those vows one step further, if we heard them as a call to respect the dignity of every living thing? What if our liturgy for the earth was not just words on paper, but action in the streets, in our policies, in our daily choices? To live that way would be to bring about the very end Jesus speaks of—not the destruction of the world, but the end of the world as we’ve known it: the world of exploitation, extraction, and empire. And in its place, the kingdom of God—where all creation sings in harmony—would unfold before our eyes.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus doesn’t promise escape. He promises endurance. He doesn’t offer a way around the storm; he offers presence within it. And that’s enough. Because the God who was with the disciples in the temple’s ruins is with us now—in the flooded streets of New Orleans, in the burning forests of California, in the thawing tundra of Alaska, in every place creation groans for redemption. We are not called to save the world by ourselves. We are called to be faithful witnesses to the God who is already saving it.
So, we keep planting, praying, protesting, and praising. We keep speaking truth when the powers of this age demand silence. We keep loving this fragile, beautiful planet—not because it will last forever, but because it is God’s beloved creation, and God is not done with it yet. As we stand in the rubble—of the temple, of the planet, of our own broken systems—may we remember: the main thing, the only indispensable thing, is God, and what God is up to. Everything else can crumble to dust. But love endures. Hope endures. God endures. And by our endurance, Jesus says, we will gain our souls. Amen.
