September 16th, 2007 – God changing God’s Mind

The music at both worship services felt energetic and exuberant; a joyful sound. For second service David, Kelly, Kim and I led the African American setting with the performance of a few familiar hymns.

The sermon reminded me about what draws me to worship. Pastor Mark tackled the First Reading from Exodus 32:14:

And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring his people.

This is a tough verse on a couple of scores. First off, that God plans to bring disaster to his people is difficult to square with our conception of a loving God. And when we reconcile ourselves to that difficulty we come to concept of an all-powerful, all-knowing God changing God’s mind.

Pastor Mark admitted he did not feel any more comfortable giving his sermon on this text than we might have in listening to what he had to preach. Yet he had the courage to continue and had faith that this was important for us to hear. It felt like Pastor Mark was compelled to move beyond his level of comfort to preach from some deep inspiration.

And that was and is important. Discomfort at what we don’t understand provides an opportunity to place the creative energy of the community to work on a solution. Pastor Mark offered the solution that God has the ability and has chosen to be self-limiting. God does this for relational reasons, to allow free will.

Another moving piece of worship was how Pastor Mark during Children's Time stressed the lost sheep in the Gospel reading. He looked around the sanctuary for a lost sheep and finally "found" a stuffed toy lamb that, when pressed, sang Jesus Loves Me. The congregation sang the song together and there was something special in that moment that drew us all together.

In Adult Education Al Miller guided us through a community Bible Study of the Gospel reading Luke 15:1-10 about the shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to find the one and the woman who searches for one coin lost out of the ten. It was a tough choice between this and the Men's Group led by Paul meeting that also met between services.

Al stressed the community aspect of the Adult Education hour. I was reminded of how much Creator is opening not only to itself but to the larger community. There are programs like Backpack Buddies, Habitat for Humanity, OFB Work Days, joint worship with Holy Family Episcopal, Red Cross Blood Drives, supporting a refugee family, walks/biking to support research for diseases, taking a major part in the Installation of Bishop Brauer-Rieke among a number of other projects where the congregation volunteer their support with their time and talents. Several years ago many expressed the desire for the church to be more involved in community and now we have seen a great flowering from that seed.

In the afternoon there was a choir rehearsal for our Bishop's Installation that happens next week. As usual, Kelly used our time to good advantage and quickly identified and corrected the troublesome passages. It demonstrated a dedication and faithfulness that there were singers who will participate on Saturday from Albany and Newport who attended the rehearsal.

Seeing individuals in the Synod in worship on Saturday for the Bishop will be another community building event. It looks like Creator will be well represented.