Reflection for Sunday, 16 November 2025
Luke 21:5–19 — “The Stones That Will Not Stand”
(with a word on this week’s vandalism at Ballarat’s Anglican Cathedral)
Every year, as we move toward the deep-blue hush of Advent, the lectionary hands us a reading designed not to soothe but to wake us. Luke 21 does not arrive politely. It comes like a cold southerly across Saint Dunstan's House in Mount Egerton — bracing, unsettling, and utterly determined to get our attention.
Jesus stands before the Temple, the pride of a nation, the very anchor of religious identity, and declares that not one stone will remain upon another. It is a jolt. We prefer our temples — literal and figurative — to stand firm. Yet the Gospel refuses to sugar-coat reality: even our most cherished structures are fragile.
And this week, we have seen that fragility up close. (link to article in the Ballarat Courier)
In Ballarat, an act of vandalism struck the Anglican Cathedral — fire set to the lectern, the main altar, and the sedilia. Sacred places, lovingly tended over generations, damaged in a few terrible moments. It is the sort of thing that makes the faithful shake their heads and ask, “Why?” It bruises the heart because church buildings are not just architecture; they are repositories of memory, devotion, and community. They hold baptisms and farewells, laughter and lament, thousands of whispered prayers in the half-light.
So when the Gospel tells us the stones will fall, we instinctively resist — but we also understand.
Jesus is not glorifying destruction; he is revealing truth. The world is not as solid as we pretend. Even the holiest spaces can be wounded. Our lives, too, can be shaken — by illness, betrayal, upheaval, or the quiet loneliness that comes without warning. But Jesus refuses to leave us in fear.
“Do not be terrified.”
“By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
These words land differently when the cathedral smells of smoke.
Endurance is not passive. It is the steady choice to hope. It is the community that gathers to clean, restore, rebuild. It is the quiet army of volunteers who refuse to let darkness have the last word. It is the congregation turning up on Sunday morning, sitting among the scars, and singing anyway.
Advent is close now — a season of waiting that is anything but sentimental. It is for real people in a real world with real wounds. And it begins exactly where today’s Gospel meets us: in places where the stones have shifted, and where we long for something unshakeable.
The Incarnation will soon place before us a Child — vulnerable, fragile, but radiant with God’s promise. That Child is not threatened by our world’s brokenness; He enters it deliberately. To stand with us. To steady us. To remind us that hope is not naïve — it is defiant.
This week, as the cathedral community regroups, let us carry this Gospel close: our security lies not in stone or wood, but in the God who dwells with us even in ashes. As Advent approaches, may we clear the debris in our own hearts — fear, pride, weariness — and prepare a room for the One who comes quietly, relentlessly, lovingly.
In that humble space, endurance becomes courage.
Courage becomes joy.
And the promise of Advent — God will come — becomes our anchor once more.
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