Let us pray: O God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable to you and may they be to your glory. Amen

Good old Jeremiah is running true to form. More condemnation, more desolation. You can only read so much of Jeremiah at one time without beginning to feel lost in despair. The people have messed up, Jeremiah reports. God is angry and is expressing that anger with thinly veiled threats of retribution. Surely this isn’t the God we know. Surely this is not the God of grace and forgiveness that is assured by our faith. Yet it all seems to be the case, except for one little portion of a verse in today’s reading. It’s almost laughable, coming as it does. It occurred to me that it might have been a last minute redeeming comment from Jeremiah himself, when he really could not believe all the things he had been asked to report on behalf of God. Here’s how one earthy paraphrase puts it: .

"What fools my people are! They have no idea who I am. A company of half-wits, dopes and donkeys all! Experts at evil but klutzes at good." I looked at the earth - it was back to pre-Genesis chaos and emptiness. I looked at the skies, and not a star to be seen. I looked at the mountains - they were trembling like aspen leaves, And all the hills rocking back and forth in the wind. I looked - what's this! Not a man or woman in sight, and not a bird to be seen in the skies. I looked - this can't be! Every garden and orchard shrivelled up. All the towns were ghost towns. And all this because of God, because of the blazing anger of God. Yes, this is God's Word on the matter: "The whole country will be laid waste - still it won't be the end of the world. The earth will mourn and the skies lament because I've given my word and won't take it back. I've decided and won't change my mind."

Did you hear it? You might even miss it... Here is the verse again: “The whole country will be laid waste - still it won’t be the end of the world.” Did you catch it? Still it won’t be the end of the world. In that short phrase lies all the hope, all the promise, all the grace and forgiveness that we expect from God. It is as if it is lost among all the other verses that promise devastation and that tell of God’s blazing anger - to use the phrase of the passage i just read.

I think the creators of the lectionary knew there needed to be an antidote to the invective of Jeremiah. They chose to place the first letter from Paul to Timothy and a passage containing two parables from Luke’s gospel beside this one from Jeremiah. Paul’s story is one that turns bad news into good, a story of which Paul chooses to remind Timothy in his letter. Paul had persecuted the followers of Jesus in his earlier life, but then through his Damascus Road experience he turned the zeal with which he once condemned the Christian way, into a positive force for the spreading of the Christian church all around the countries of the Mediterranean. This letter is both reminder of his dismal past, and encouragement to a fellow evangelist to rely on the grace of God which turned Paul around. Like the reading from Jeremiah which turns on a single phrase, Paul’s life was turned on a critical experience.

Jesus chooses to make the point, as he so often does, by telling stories. He tells of God’s extravagant grace by telling parables about lost sheep and lost coins. These aren’t just simple stories. The parables never are - layered as they are with meaning upon meaning.

The passage in Jeremiah is extravagant with desolation, telling a story of complete devastation, and as extravagant as it is, so are the parables of Jesus extravagant, but in a completely opposite sense. The shepherd risks destruction of his whole flock but one, to find that one lost sheep. The woman is willing to spend the money she had in a party to celebrate the discovery of the coin she lost.

This is how it is with God - pinpoint care and compassion, risking all for one, and celebrating extravagantly when that one is found. Even in a passage replete with destruction, whether it is God, or Jeremiah who won’t let people believe it about God, we have that tiny, redeeming phrase. God won’t let the demolition be complete.

I’ve been thinking about transformation a lot lately. Many would say that transformation is the key objective in any faith community, that we gather to seek transformation and celebrate transformation - for ourselves, for others and for the world. I attended the World Religions Conference sponsored by the Ahmadiyya Muslim community a week ago, happily discovering in the process that my apprehension about the event was transformed into appreciation. If I was to describe in a single word the point made by all the speakers, regardless of the faith expression they were representing, that word would be transformation - transformation experienced by the presence of faith in one’s life, and transformation expected by the following of the goodness offered by whatever religious or faith expression was being presented. And yet, I am also captured by the idea that people, for the most part, are forever the people they are - personalities, interests, talents - tend to stay with us throughout our lives. I guess Paul might say that in one sense he was the same person before and after the Damascus Road experience - the only difference being that his zeal as a persecutor of the followers of Jesus had been transformed into zeal as a promoter of the Christian faith.

Ultimately, it’s not the answer that is important to me - and like most things I believe the answer lies somewhere between two extremes. Yes, I believe that transformation is possible - whether it be transformation that channels who we already are in new directions or transformation that really changes who we are. What is important to me is the journey of transformation - both as a seeker and as a mentor - one looking for transformation for myself and one who is called to make ready the path for others to find it.

The amazingly popular hymn, which we will sing in a few moments, is an example. It is a hymn which many would claim as vital to their own faith journey. It tells of the faith journey of John Newton who had a Damascus road type of transformation himself as he captained a slave trading ship on a trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Newton realised that the work he was doing was evil, prompting him to renounce it and tell the story in song with his hymn, with reference to the “lost and found” parables in Luke’s gospel.

Lost and found - cared for individually by God - and extravagantly celebrated by God. This is God’s news - this is good news - for us God’s people. Amen.