Last Sunday in Trinity
READING:
Joel 2:23–end

Out of the Ashes

There are times when the world feels stripped bare .  When  everything solid crumbles, when the soil of our lives lies scorched and dry. In today’s reading, Israel stands in such a place.

The locusts have eaten everything green. Fields are silent, granaries empty, and the people hollowed out by loss. Joel does not speak from comfort but from the ashes – from ecological collapse, economic ruin, and communal despair.

And yet, into that bleakness, Joel dares to speak of rain:

“Be glad and rejoice, for God has poured down for you abundant rain… The threshing floors shall be full of grain, and the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.”

This is not sentimental optimism but defiant hope. Joel’s “early and later rain” speaks not only of crops but of divine grace –  God’s love that restores balance, justice that renews the soil, and compassion that revives what has been desolated. In our age of climate breakdown, conflict, and exhaustion, Joel’s words fall like cool water on cracked earth.

Rain After the Locust

“I will repay you for the years the locust has eaten.”

What an extraordinary promise — not to erase the past but to redeem it. God does not undo history but transforms it, showing that loss and renewal belong to the same sacred rhythm. The years the locusts have eaten are not wasted; they become soil from which compassion and courage can grow.

This is restorative justice – not punishment and reward, but the Spirit moving through human hearts to rebuild what greed and carelessness have destroyed. It is seen in farmers healing the land, nations facing colonial wounds, and communities daring to plant trees among the ruins.

The rain falls not as reward but as grace –  as God’s living love poured out upon all creation.

Stories from the Ashes

History echoes Joel’s vision.

In Coventry, after the cathedral was destroyed by bombs, the people refused revenge. They built a new cathedral beside the ruins, leaving the old walls open to the sky and carving “Father Forgive” into the stone. Out of destruction rose reconciliation.

In Aberfan, when a coal tip buried a school and generations of grief beneath black slag, the nation’s heart broke open. Out of that tragedy came reform, remembrance, and a new reverence for community care.

In Hiroshima, where shadows were seared into walls, survivors became prophets of peace, declaring that human life must never again be sacrificed to power.

And today, in Gaza, amid unimaginable ruin, people plant gardens among the rubble to feed their families, teach their children, tend wounds, and insist on the dignity of life. Out of the rubble, seeds of peace still push through.

These are not triumphalist stories. They do not pretend pain is erased. They are stories of resurrection with scars — the quiet truth that even out of devastation, something sacred can begin again.

Spirit on All Flesh

Joel’s vision widens. The rain on the land becomes Spirit poured out upon all flesh — the breath of God moving through every kind of person:

“Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
your young men shall see visions.
Even on male and female slaves, I will pour out my Spirit.”

This is one of the most radical declarations in Scripture. The Spirit is not confined to temples or hierarchies. It flows through women and men, old and young, powerful and powerless. It dissolves barriers of gender, age, and status — a democracy of the sacred: God in every body, breath in every being.

Joel’s Spirit animates movements for justice and dignity — climate campaigners, young people marching for equality, elders dreaming of a healed world. It is the Spirit that refuses despair the final word.

Apocalypse and Awakening

Then comes the darkness –  sun dimmed, moon turned to blood. Ancient imagery may sound terrifying, but apocalypse means revelation. The world trembles because truth is being uncovered. Systems built on domination and exclusion cannot last forever. Something new is being born, and birth always comes with pain.

Apocalypse is not the end but an unveiling — a revealing of corruption, cruelty, and all that must die so that love can live. When the familiar falls away, we are called not to panic but to wake up. Out of the ashes of old certainties, we may yet glimpse God’s new creation.

Out of the Ashes –  in Story and in Life

Michael Morpurgo’s Out of the Ashes book for youngsters tells of Becky Morley, a young girl whose family farm is destroyed by the foot-and-mouth outbreak. Her diary moves from innocence to heartbreak — livestock lost, hope extinguished. Yet through her writing, through truth-telling, she keeps a fragile thread of faith alive.

Her story mirrors Joel’s: devastation met by small, persistent acts of courage. The human spirit, like the land, can regenerate. Compassion and community are the rain that falls after the locusts.

We know such stories too –  the fire at Grenfell, where grief became a cry for justice; the floods that devastate villages yet draw neighbours together; the loneliness of breakdown that becomes a doorway to empathy and healing.

Out of the ashes, life still finds a way.

Seeds of Hope

Joel’s prophecy ends with a promise:

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Hope here is not escape from the world but renewal within it — a turning of hearts, a healing of communities, a rediscovery of our connectedness with one another, with the earth, and with the divine pulse of life itself.

To live out of the ashes is to say: the story is not over. The rains will come again.

Perhaps we are called to become the rain — to be bearers of renewal, tending the soil of justice, and listening for the Spirit speaking through unexpected voices.

Creation can be restored, not through domination but through cooperation with the rhythms of the earth.
Communities can be renewed, not through exclusion but through shared imagination.
The Spirit still breathes in every voice, every age, every scarred and holy body.
This is the gospel, the Good News of God’s love,  according to Joel:

that divine love and grace is not limited to a few people, or situations but overflows for all;
that what has been lost can be renewed;
that from the ashes, life and hope , and joy will rise again
and all people and the earth shall feel the rain.

Photo Credit: Mohammed Ibrahim (Unsplash.com)