ruins

 

Reflections on Nehemiah 8.1-3, 5-6, 8-10 and Luke 4.14-21

Imagine, for a moment, that the Luftwaffe had won the battle of Britain, and that Germany and her allies went on to win the Second World War. While Paris is taken as a jewel in the crown of the German empire, Hitler has London’s key landmarks—the Houses of Parliament, St Paul’s Cathedral—destroyed, in part pure spite, in part sending a clear message to Britain’s allies. Key docks, bridges and roads that survived the bombing raids are also demolished. George VI, his Queen, and the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret are taken to Germany; they will all die in exile. Most of the aristocracy are taken with them, their lands given to Nazi sympathisers; along with the Government, most of whom are executed; and the civil service, some of whom are assimilated into the Nazi administration. At first the Germans put the recently abdicated Edward VIII back on the throne, but in 1950 he attempts to reassert independence, and he and his American wife are hanged from gallows erected in front of the ruins of Buckingham Palace. In schools, the teaching of British history and the work of British playwrights, poets, philosophers and composers is banned. Most of the population attempt to carry on, but with no central organisation or help from allies, rebuilding after the war is almost impossible.

Then in 2015 an expanding Russia defeats the German empire. Having no interest in the once great but now long ruined islands off Europe’s coast, the Russians allow the exiled British ruling class to return home. Some chose not to—their home is on the continent now—but others return, in three organised waves. Not without resistance from those who had never left, they start to rebuild roads and bridges that have not existed for over seventy years, along with the most iconic buildings. Today, in 2025, some milestones have been reached, but really all that has been accomplished is the foundations on which the real rebuilding might have a chance of lasting. The question is, what stories will give this population a sense of common purpose? What stories will help them make sense of what has happened and nurture perennial hope for what could be? Fortunately, many key works, since lost in Britain, were smuggled out to Germany at the great banishment. There, in secret, leaders in exile have created a British library, a national curriculum.

If you can imagine that you can begin to imagine what it was like for the people whose stories we read in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, returning to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon.

We know that there are places in the world where this scenario is not hypothetical, cities in ruins that must either be abandoned for ever or rebuilt, reborn really. But that is not our experience. Nonetheless, in our lifetimes, we have witnessed cultural upheaval. After the War, we repurposed our coming together for peacetime rebuilding; but alongside that we became more open in questioning and even challenging the status quo. We saw the rise of the teenager in the Fifties, the sexual revolution in the Sixties, the rise of third wave feminism in the Seventies. All this undermined a patriarchal society, and its matriarchal mirror. From the Eighties we saw political backing for individualism, a rapid shift from an economy built on manufacture to one built on services, the funnelling of money upwards into the hands of a few—which we don’t question because we believe that we are one lucky break away from joining that elite club ourselves. We have seen several waves of immigration from our former colonies, bringing, among others, Muslims, Pentecostals, and Roman Catholics (of whom we have always been suspicious). We have seen advances in technology, including the birth of the Digital Age; each one giving rise to as many new problems as it solves old ones, including causing cancers and other illnesses, and an undermining and accelerated rejection of institutions that once brought and held us together.

For many, it feels like our cities lie in ruins, and this sense of loss is felt by the old and the young alike. Some lament their own eroded positions of authority in society. Some are simply disoriented by the onslaught of change, from every direction all at once; while others are dismayed that all this change has not made any difference at all: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same).

The biographer Luke records an occasion when Jesus was invited to bring meaning to the scripture set for that sabbath in the synagogue of his hometown, Nazareth. The text was an excerpt from the prophet Isaiah, a passage that spoke words of hope to those who would one day return from exile in Babylon and rebuild cities that, by then, would have lain in ruins for several generations. (Luke quotes the preceding verses.) There is a sense of playful appropriateness that Jesus, who was a builder and the son of a builder, should bring the interpretation for this particular passage in his own context, some six hundred years after it was written.

Jesus begins his exposition of Isaiah’s text saying, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ We might also translate Luke’s text as, ‘This ancient holy text [Isaiah] is made complete in the present day [Jesus’ time—and, indeed, our own] by your hearing and understanding, as you listen and obey.’

For those who make up the Christian faith community, within the wider local community, our sense of who—and whose—we are, and what we are called to be in the world—light shining in darkness, for example—is found and perennially renewed as we hear and respond to these holy texts. As we wrestle with them and seek, through all the background noise of our lives, both internal and external, to discern the Holy Spirit drawing alongside us and leading us into all truth in knowing how to embody these texts in our context.

We need to rediscover the scriptures, refamiliarize ourselves with the Bible, this great library that records the stories of our ancestors in faith, and that has spoken to men, women and children across the whole world through all the rising and falling fortunes of cities and nations over more than four millennia. That gives voice to every emotion in every season of life.

Which parts of the Bible do you find most life-giving?

Which parts of the Bible do you find hardest to understand?