The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 19), September 14, 2025

The God Who Seeks, Suffers, and Stays

 This week’s lectionary readings draw us into the heart of a God: one who grieves, seeks, and rejoices over restored relationship. A God who is both dynamic, and emotionally invested.

In Jeremiah 4, we encounter a God in anguish. The prophet speaks of coming destruction, the earth returning to “waste and void”—a reversal of creation itself. This is not a detached proclamation of judgment; it is a divine lament. “My people are foolish,” God says, “they do not know me.” This is not the voice of an angry ruler exacting punishment, but of a heartbroken lover lamenting the loss of intimacy. In relational theology, divine judgment is not retribution, but the natural consequence of a broken world and a ruptured relationship. The consequence of a choice to be distanced from the One who gives life. Psalm 14 echoes this theme of separation. “There is no one who does good,” it declares. God looks from heaven, searching for understanding, for connection and instead finds alienation. But still, there is hope! The psalmist writes “O that deliverance would come from Zion!” reflecting the tension in God’s longing for relationship: divine fidelity contrasted with human faithlessness and forgetfulness and yet, God does not abandon the search. God keeps seeking.

This longing is powerfully dramatised in Exodus 32:7–14, where God, angered by Israel’s idolatry, considers wiping out the people and starting over. Here we read of Moses plea for mercy and God listens and relents. Here, relational theology offers one of its clearest insights: God can change. God’s mind is not fixed in some eternal plan, but open to relational persuasion. As John Cobb writes, “God’s power is the power of love, and love does not control; it influences.” The passage in Exodus also show that Moses influences God by reminding God of past promises and shared commitments. In relational theology, prayer is not just formality—it matters. It can shape the future, even the heart of God.

This theme of divine mercy is echoed in 1 Timothy 1:12–17, where Paul reflects on his own past as a persecutor. He does not praise God for irresistible grace, but for patient mercy. “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost,” he writes. Paul’s transformation was not coerced; it was a response to an experience of the overflowing love and faithfulness of Christ. Equally God did not discard Paul despite his failings. Instead, God entered into relationship and trusted him with a new calling. Love was the instrument of redemption.

Finally, in Luke 15:1–10, we are given perhaps the clearest image of God’s relational nature in two parables told by Jesus. A shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to find the one that is lost and a woman who searches relentlessly for a single coin. These parables are not logical, they are about love that refuses to give up and let go. God values each relationship so deeply that restoration becomes a cause for heavenly celebration. “There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” God does not just accept the lost once they return—God searches, waits, hopes and rejoices.

In each of these passages, we see a God who is not static or unfeeling, but vulnerable and deeply involved. These passages all point us to God’s ability to feel, to care, to grieve, and to rejoice. God is not the unmoved mover of classical theism, but the most moved among us. Human sin does not trigger a distant and impersonal wrath – it wounds a relationship.

Equally divine grace is not mechanical but God’s ongoing initiative to restore what has been broken. In God, we find not only our hope, but our challenge and calling: to seek, to forgive, and to restore as we have been sought, forgiven, and restored.

Reference: John Cobb and David Ray Griffin. Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition. Westminster Press, 1976.

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Doral Hayes is the Principal Officer for Ecumenical Development and Relations at Churches Together in England and a Licensed Lay Minister in the Oxford Diocese of the Church of England. Doral holds a MA in Contemporary Christian Theology from Newman University, Birmingham and is currently undertaking doctoral research in ecumenical theology at the University of Roehampton, London. Doral is a contributor to Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God, edited by Jeff Wells, Thomas Jay Oord, et. al as well as a number of other publications. She lives in Buckinghamshire, England with her husband, two teenage children and a crazy whippet.