Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday September 14, 2025
Scripture Readings: Jeremiah 4:11-12,
22-28 and Luke 15:1-10
Those two scripture readings we heard this morning might feel like a bit of an
odd pairing at first, but I encourage you to hear me out!
In the next month, between now and Thanksgiving, we are going to be marking the
Season of Creation in worship – a time in the church year that is set aside for
us to remember that we are part of an inter-connected community of creation. We aren’t the creator – we are part of the
created, and we worship the Creator.
And in this Season of Creation, the desolation that Jeremiah paints for us is
very bleak. A hot wind from the desert
blows fiercely towards the people – a wind that doesn’t cleanse, but a wind
that destroys. The earth is a wasteland,
there is no light in the sky, even the birds have fled this desolation, this
desert.
At the end of a summer where we had too much rain in the spring and almost no
rain in June, July, August, September.
After a couple of years with recurring windstorms causing widespread and
prolonged power outages. After a couple
of winters with almost no snow. As
shifting weather patterns lead to worse harvests for farmers in all corners of
the world. It is impossible to deny that
our climate patterns are changing.
When I read this part of Jeremiah, my heart is filled with dread because it
feels like Jeremiah is describing a world that is creeping ever closer with
each year.
It is interesting to think that Jeremiah was prophesying long before the phrase
“climate change” had ever been coined, prophesying long before human activity had
the ability to cause irreparable damage to the earth’s climate. And yet his words ring true in our world
today.
Jeremiah was a prophet in the time when the land of Judah and the city of
Jerusalem fell to the invading Babylonian army.
This was an utter devastation to the Ancient Israelite people. This was the loss of the Promised Land, the
land that God had promised to their ancestors.
This was the loss of the temple, the literal home of God.
Did you notice that the imagery in this passage reflects back to the creation
story in the first chapter of Genesis?
It is almost as if the disaster is undoing God’s creation. The sun and the stars, the first thing that
God created are extinguished. The birds
of the sky flee away. There was no human
left. The earth has returned to the
formless void that it was before God spoke creation into being and darkness
covered the face of the deep.
But there, towards the end of the reading, Jeremiah prophesies: “For thus says the LORD: The whole land shall
be a desolation, yet I will not make a full end.” God will not allow a full end, utter
devastation to come. Just as the first creation sprang out of the formless
void, a new creation, a renewed creation is always possible.
And this is where I think that the reading from Luke ties in – the familiar
parable about the lost sheep and the shepherd who searches unrelentingly until
the sheep is found, and the parable of the lost coin and the woman who searches
unrelentingly until the coin is found.
God is a God who never gives up.
Even when it seems like giving up is the path that makes sense, God
never gives up on Creation, and God never gives up on you or me.
The story at the heart of our faith is the story of Jesus’s death and
resurrection. Our faith is a faith that
acknowledges death, but doesn’t dwell there.
Our faith is a faith that says that even when death might look like it
is the end of the story, resurrection is waiting just around the corner. Our faith is a faith that says that the story
doesn’t end with lost-ness, but continues until the celebration of being
found. Just as our breathing out is
followed by a breath in, death is always followed by new life. There is always hope, just around the corner.
And so just as God promises the people through Jeremiah that the desolate
wasteland of exile isn’t going to be the end of the story, God promises us that
the desolate wastelands of climate change aren’t the end. Renewal is possible.
But sitting back and waiting for that renewal isn’t possible. The shepherd didn’t sit back and wait for the
lost sheep to return. The woman didn’t
sit back and wait for the lost coin to fall into her lap. As we read these parables about God’s
persistence, we should also be reminded that we are called to follow the way of
Jesus, which is the way of persistently seeking return and renewal.
And so rather than throwing our hands up and saying that God will make it all
right one day, we are called to change our own ways first, ending any
destructive practices that we are engaged in, and we are also called to speak
out, to use our prophetic voices, to try and change the destructive systems
that trap us and the world.
For just as we believe in a God who has created and is creating, in the words
of the United Church New Creed, we also believe that we, as the church, are
called to take part in this work, to be co-creators of justice and of mercy and
of renewal.
If there is one thing that I hope you take away from this reading from
Jeremiah, it isn’t the picture of devastation that Jeremiah paints. We can see that all to easily when we turn
our eyes outward to look at the world.
What I hope that you take away from this is the flicker of hope at the
end of the reading – the hope that says that even when things look hopeless,
maybe especially when everything looks hopeless, God is a God of life, and is
always bringing renewal, and new life where there was none before. And may it be so. And may it be so soon. Amen.
Out of the formless void, re-creation!
Image by USDA NRCS Texas on Flickr
Used with Permission
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