The Tectonic Hum of God

People often assume that just because I’m under 40 in the UCA, I must know what young people are like. But as I spend most of my week working in aged care, I am more likely to understand people in their 90s than those who are 19. And it’s because we are living in a time of exponential change, where the gaps between generations are growing further and further apart. Historians compare the time we’re living in to the quake of the 1500s—a time where human imagination transformed completely, with people like Leonardo Da Vinci bringing the worlds of art and science together.

Then there were the likes of Martin Luther who started a reformation, disrupting corrupt religious power, while the printing press meant Bibles were placed in the hands of lay folk for the very first time. Meanwhile, explorers like Christopher Columbus crossed oceans, expanding—and exploiting—new worlds. In other words, it was a time of seismic change: it shifted how people saw themselves, their faith, and their place in the world.

And now, the same tectonic hum is under our feet. Some of us knew what it was like to grow up without electricity, and now you FaceTime your grandkids across continents. Like our ancestors, we too are being asked to reimagine everything—faith, identity, community. And yet, some things do not change: our yearning for truth, transcendence, for the Spirit of God that breathes new life.

Because, against every headline predicting Christianity’s demise in these changing times, earlier this month an article in The Economist collating recent polls tells a different story: in the West, Gen Z is turning to church. Did you hear that? 19-28 year olds—independent young adults of their own volition—are going to church. For years, younger people were walking away from the church—for good reason. The legacy of colonisation, the pain uncovered by the Royal Commission, theologies that shame and exclude—none of it went unnoticed.

But something is shifting. Young folk are returning. It’s not a huge number, but it’s not declining, it’s not plateauing, it’s slowly increasing. Now, this is not because the church got it right, but because this generation is hungry—hungry for community, for a truth that isn’t self-made, for a purpose bigger than personal success and hedonism. Something statistics are revealing is attributed to the suffering of the pandemic and the spiritual cost of being locked down and separated from one another. And so young people are looking for truth, transcendence, for the Spirit of God that breathes new life—not just in the life of the world, but in the church.

And into this moment comes our story from Luke. Jesus, we’re told, “sets his face toward Jerusalem.” He doesn’t delay. He turns with clarity toward a city that will break him—and redeem the world. This isn’t a march of triumph to Jerusalem. It’s a walk into rejection, betrayal, suffering—the way of the cross. But he goes anyway. And already, his disciples don’t get it. When a Samaritan village refuses him, they ask to call down fire from heaven. They still think change and transformation comes through force, through fear, through firing missiles and fueling genocides. But Jesus will have none of it. He rebukes them. The way to the kingdom is not violence, not control, not dehumanisation, not an erasure of a people. Not then. Not now.

People begin to come up to him: “I will follow you wherever you go,” they say. But Jesus doesn’t sugar-coat it. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” This is not a journey of comfort. There is no stopping point. No settling. Only movement.

Another says, “First let me go and bury my father.” Reasonable. Honourable. Pastoral. But Jesus replies, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Because the kingdom of God does not wait for closure. It asks us to step into life even while our hearts are still filled with sorrow, even while we’re still holding death in our hands.

A final voice: “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” And Jesus responds: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” For Jesus knows we are always tempted to look back—to cling to what’s familiar, to what once worked, particularly in a time of change. But you can’t till new ground with your eyes on the past. You can’t be part of God’s kingdom if you’re always longing for yesterday, resenting and lamenting the present.

And yet, that’s where many of us are. Stuck in the grief of what church used to be. Stuck in our disorientation, clutching to it like it’s holy. Stuck in fear of being left behind as the tectonic hum of change rattles under our feet.

And yet, underneath these seismic shifts of our current world—the rise of technology, globalization, new ways of thinking and new ways of being—have we really changed all that much? Have we ever not been in need of Christ’s way? Because despite these changing times, the only earth-rattling event that has and ever will have the capacity to truly transform us is Christ: where truth, transcendence, and the Spirit of God is embodied.

For this Christ, full of truth, transcendence, and God’s Spirit, was on the way not to keep the status quo, not to keep things as they were, but to change the world completely: to upturn empires, to bring God’s love closer to us than our own skin, and to overturn every grave. This Christ was paving a way that comforted the disturbed and disturbed the comforted, that altered the course of history, of time and space forever. And he didn’t wait for people to come to him—he met them where they were at, speaking their language, entering their cultures and customs and religiosity, listening to their sorrows, their yearnings, and their hope of liberation in the context they found themselves in as Jew or Greek, Judean or Samaritan, female, male or eunuch, slave or owner, tax collector or prostitute.

Which paved the way for the event of the cross, the hush of the tomb, the joy of the resurrection, and the liberation of the Spirit—the only event that will ever truly change us, transform us, and save us. Not clinging to the past. Not clutching onto the culture of our church, but setting our face towards God’s Kingdom that not only is coming but has already arrived. And Jesus keeps calling us forward into this ministry—not just those who work for the church, but everyone.

And just like in our 2nd Kings reading, part of setting our faces towards Jerusalem (the way of the cross that leads to new life) means paving a way for those who are beginning to turn their faces towards this way too. Because the Kingdom of God is not just for us—it’s for everyone. And so, we are called to pass the mantle on just as the mantle was passed onto us. To let go of the idols we have made of our ecclesiology, our buildings, and the way we think ministry should look like, in order to make space and listen to those who are rising up amongst us. Because no matter how much has changed over the course of history or our present age, some things do not change: the way of truth, transcendence, and the Spirit of God that breathes new life.

And so, as the ground continues to shift beneath us, this is not a time to cling to what we’ve known. Yes, the grief of change is real. But we are called, through our tears, to set our face towards God’s Kingdom, to take up our mantle so we are ready to pass it forward. To let whatever small offering we have be the seed that grows the mustard tree, be the yeast that rises bread, be the Spirit that moves all nations to speak. To let go of all that hinders this way—even if they are good and honourable things in our culture, in our society, and in our church.

Because here’s the thing: the Church was birthed through change—not despite it. The first church was responding to the historical and cultural needs of its time. But more than this, it was responding to the wild ways of the Spirit that challenged tradition that no longer served, blew down man-made boundaries, and created new paths of speaking and being in bodies because of the resurrection. In other words, and in the words of my Church History professor, ‘if the Church doesn’t change, it’s simply not Church’.

And so, just like the first gathering of people in the upper room, we are invited to participate in God’s kingdom by listening to one another in different languages, cultures, contexts—and yes, even those from different generations—to meet those who are often missing in these pews where they’re at, no matter how foreign and uncomfortable it may make us feel. But only then will we see what was prophesied by the prophet Joel and preached by Peter: that God has poured out God’s spirit upon all flesh, that our sons and our daughters shall prophesy, and not only will the old dream dreams, but the young shall see visions. Because the kingdom of God is not some far-off goal. It’s imminent; indeed, it has already arrived. Not in the safety of nostalgia, but in the risk of the cross that promises new life, in the courage to follow even when the road is unclear, in the willingness to let go so that something new might rise, in the courage to pass the mantle onward even when clinging to it feels like safety.

Because despite the tumult and turmoil we are living through, some things do not change: our yearning for truth, transcendence, for the Spirit of God that breathes new life. It just might look and sound a little different from what we’re used to. But we are called to set our face toward Christ, no matter the cost.

And so may we take our hands off the excuses and the grief we are clinging to and place them, instead, on the plow to till the soil of what’s coming next. Not only for us, but for those who are already setting their face on the only thing that will ever truly change and transform: the kingdom of God. No ifs, no buts.