Creating with God

“Creating with God”
Based on Jeremiah 18:1-11
First delivered September 8, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            Creating something is a process. It begins with an idea, an image, a vision. And then the idea moves into the design phase, to turn the idea into something on paper: a sketch, a blueprint, an outline. Then comes the construction phase, turning the design into something you can see, hold, manipulate. And the construction process is rarely a straightforward process. You discover that the original design doesn’t hold up. Modifications are called for. Or, you have to go back to the drawing board. The design is constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed. Finally, you have a working model. Time to tweak it until your idea has become reality, the finished product. Or, it never reaches that stage at all. The whole project gets shelved, the idea never goes beyond the dream stage. The creative process is often long, messy, and sometimes never reaches completion.

            Then sometimes the process never ends because of the quest to make a good product better. “New and improved” is the watchword for laundry detergent. Sometimes the quest to make something better backfires in a big way. When the makers of Coca-Cola came out with New Coke the backlash was astounding. It seemed people were buying New Coke for the purpose of coming up with ways to inflict their disgust of the product, creating new ways to destroy the cans. Boycotts were arranged. Graffiti sprayed over ads. Coca-Cola finally gave in, bringing back the original formula so people had an option between Old Coke and New Coke. It was a matter of time before New Coke faded away. Of course, that didn’t stop Coca-Cola from continuing to create options, like Coke Zero, or Coke blended with different fruit flavors.

            The creative process in a way never ends. There will always be new songs, new books, new poems, new paintings. New products are coming out all the time. Coaching staffs are always laboring to design new football plays. Bureaucrats are always coming up with new forms for people to fill out. It just never ends, the creative process.

            Since God is the creator, God is always engaged in the creative process. Creating is what God does. God didn’t just kick everything off at the Big Bang and now sits back to watch how evolution unfolds. God is intimately involved in the emergence of life. God is always influencing natural processes toward the direction of beauty and harmony. Each flower, tree, puppy, and mountain carry the fingerprints of God’s creativity. We read in scripture that each of us were knit together in our mothers’ wombs by God. Obviously, this does not describe physical reality. That is not a scientific statement. But it points to the belief that wherever life emerges, wherever beauty and harmony is present, God has a hand in that coming to be. God is the one who inspires the artists, the architects, the inventors, to turn ideas into reality. The creative process is how God engages with creation. And it never ends. God is always about the process of creation, of making all things new as we sometimes say.

            Because God created us in God’s image, we are creative. As God, we are always engaged in the creative process. We have the capacity not only to create things, we also create the shape of our lives and the communities we live in. By our own choices and actions we shape our character, we develop our abilities, we establish our values. By our collective choices and actions we shape the character of the communities we live in, enhance the quality of where we live, establish the values we want our community to adhere to. Of course, there are many other influences on the kind of people we become and the kind of community in which we live and work and play and worship in. But you have a lot to do with the kind of person you become. And all of us together have a lot to do with the kind of church family we have and what kind of community we live in. The process of becoming, of becoming who you are and of what community you and I live in, is an ongoing process. For as long as people are making decisions and acting on those decisions, there will be something new about you and about the community in which we live. The emergence of something new never ends. When you and I die, of course, who we become ends, at least in this world. But the community in which we live doesn’t die with us. Community life goes on and on, constantly changing, being created anew, by the decisions and actions of people. And God is always around influencing those decisions and actions.

            Because we have the capacity to create, we can cooperate with God in the creative process. We can partner with God in the process, not only in the ongoing creation of who we are as persons but also in the ongoing creation that is the communities in which we live. We know that God’s creative goal is for beauty, harmony, and wholeness. What that looks like in flesh and blood reality is where you and I come in. Through prayer, the guidance of the Spirit, living by the teachings of Jesus, you and I can work with God in making all things new. We have the privilege to join with God in bringing about new creation, heaven on earth, or, at least, a small step toward that grand project that will continue long after you and I have drawn our last breath.

            Or, we can choose not to cooperate with God. We can make poor choices, be jerks, reject God and disregard the way of Jesus. It is this choice, to cooperate with God or to reject God, that lies at the heart of this prophecy from Jeremiah we hear this morning.

            Jeremiah is told by God to make a visit to the local potter. It is there that Jeremiah gets the inspiration that God is the potter and we are like clay. But Jeremiah isn’t the only one who makes this comparison. Isaiah also calls God the potter and us as the clay. If we go back to Genesis 2, we read that God scooped up dust and shaped a man with it, breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Paul talked about how we are like clay pots that carry the light of Christ. When trying to talk about God as the creator and us as the creation, the metaphor of God as potter and us as clay works pretty well.

            God had an idea for what God wants Israel to be like, what shape this pot would take, its texture, its function, its presentation to the world. Israel would be to the world God’s chosen people, the community that would be a light to the nations, to demonstrate to all the nations of the world Who is the true God, the one who is the creator of the heavens and the earth, the chief potter of creation. But Israel had other ideas. Like we talked about last week, Israel had chosen to worship the local gods rather than remain faithful to God alone. Yes, they still read the scriptures, they still kept the religious festivals. But they also sought to appease the local gods native to the land they were living on to see if that would better assure their prosperity and perhaps even get the gods to fight for them so that they could get Assyria off their back. What Israel was doing was creating for themselves a community that was out of shape from what God had in mind. So God, through Jeremiah, gave Israel a warning through the image of a potter reshaping a pot. If Israel decides to keep doing what they are doing, then God will destroy them and start over, just as a potter will smash down the clay and start over. But, if they change their ways, make different choices, return to their singular faithfulness in God, then God will change God’s mind and instead keep working with them to bring about what God has wanted to see all along. The choice is theirs to make. Will they cooperate with God or not?

            See, this is the big difference between an actual potter working with clay and God as a potter and us as the clay. Actual clay is just dirt. It doesn’t have any ideas. It doesn’t make choices. It doesn’t shape itself. It is a simple mass with no critical thinking. Clay lays there to be worked with. It does not work on itself. Clay cannot resist the deft hand of the potter. But we have ideas, we make choices, we do shape ourselves and the communities we live in and we can resist the deft hand of God. We don’t have to go along with God’s shaping influence. We can bend to the influences of others. We can stubbornly pursue our own ambitions and designs. We get to choose if we will work with or work against God’s purposes for us and for the world. We are like clay except we have minds of our own.

            I was at a presentation on Catch Court. This is a special court in Franklin County where, when a woman is arrested for prostitution, she is given the option to go through the Catch Court program. It is an intensive program where she receives treatment to get off whatever drugs she may be on, counseling and group work to start addressing the trauma she carries, and a safe and supportive community of people who have been where she is when she enters. The presenter showed these mug shots of a repeat offender. The first shot was when she was first arrested as a teenager. In each progressive shot that stretched over a period of just a couple years you could see how the woman appeared to have aged by ten years. She looked increasingly disheveled. And worse of all, her eyes looked empty. She was dying inside. And then, after she completed the Catch court program, they show a picture of her in which she looks almost like a completely different person. What is most powerful is the spark you see in her eyes. By the choice she made to go to Catch Court, and by the actions of a team of people who loved on her and cared for her through the process, she was remade.

            I have a friend about my age who grew up in Grandview. He still gets a chuckle when he hears about how people all over the city will go to Grandview for dinner or just to hang out because he remembers what Grandview Avenue was like when he was a kid. He remembers it being a seedy place where no one would want their kids to be. But a restauranteur chose to open up a place called Spagio’s. And he committed himself to recreate downtown Grandview. Many people thought he was crazy. But he did the work. He found others who were willing to put their energy and their money to transform Grandview. And that’s what they did. It is nothing like it used to be. Grandview was remade.

            I recently read about this community in Maryland where city leaders, with the support of the community, made a decision to change their zoning ordinances to require that any new housing developments must be mixed to include housing options across all financial levels. Rather than having neighborhoods that only rich families could live in and high concentrations of section eight housing somewhere else, all the income levels were zoned to occupy the same space. And because of these political decisions, the quality of life for all the residents of this town are so much better than the regrettably common pattern across our nation, including Columbus, of housing segregated by wealth. This community made choices and acted on them to remake their community to reflect the values of diversity that they said they held.

            In all these contexts, God was active, like a potter, working to shape lives and communities toward God’s vision. Through God’s influence, a judge decided that something needed to be done that actually changed women’s lives who had been caught up in addiction and prostitution. Through God’s influence, women chose to remake their lives through Catch Court. Through God’s influence entrepreneurs took up the challenge to remake Grandview into a thriving downtown. Through God’s influence, the people and their political leaders in a community in Maryland revisioned zoning laws to remake their community to more clearly reflect their values. God’s vision of beauty, harmony, and vitality was shared by all these people, who decided to cooperate with God, whether they knew it or not, to recreate lives and communities.

            I admit, these are extreme examples of God and people collaborating to create something new. I know that none of us are in the position to pull off something similar to Catch court or the revitalization of a downtown area or change zoning laws to better reflect our values. But the truth is we can’t avoid making a difference in our lives or making a difference in the communities we live in. Creativity, making a creative difference in our lives or in our communities, is part of what it is to be human. Every decision and action you and I make makes a difference, ever so slightly, in the shape of our lives and of our community. By simply being alive and present we are influencing our life and our surroundings. It cannot be avoided.

            So, the question for all of us is this: will we collaborate with God in the shaping of our lives and communities? God has a vision for each of us and for the community in which we live. God wants to see all of us live our lives to the fullest, with zest, with beauty, and in harmony with one another and with the rest of creation. God wants to see a community that is full of life, of diversity, and harmony. I think we share God’s vision. So, will we, day by day, decide to cooperate with what God wants to do in our life and our community? Will we allow God to shape us into the kind of people God wants us to be? The decision is ours to make.