Same and Different

When our kids leave the sanctuary for an age-appropriate worship experience, they go down to a classroom that is bright and welcoming and fun, lovingly set up by their worship leader, Tina. On one wall they have a circle of felt squares made of different liturgical colors: purple for Advent and Lent; white for the seasons of Christmas and Easter, as well as Transfiguration Sunday, Trinity Sunday, and Christ the King Sunday; red for Pentecost; green for the ordered Sundays of Ordinary times in between. The kids are excited to move a little sheep-shaped marker around the circle to mark the passage of time through the days and seasons of their liturgical calendar.

In "big church"-- that's what I called the main 11:00 worship in the sanctuary when I was a kid -- we follow that same calendar, but without the felt and without the sheep-shaped marker. The Worship Committee changes the paraments, and I change my stole, to match the season. We also change other things. During Advent, we "green" the sanctuary with wreaths and drapes of evergreen. This symbolizes everlasting life: green plants in spite of winter. During Advent and Lent, the hymns are generally more subdued; the purple seasons are about introspection and preparation. When Christmas finally comes, the hymns shift to bright and celebratory, appropriate to the newborn baby. Sometimes, like on Good Friday, we take away decorations to show the death Christ suffered for us. When Easter comes, the hymns are also celebratory, this time celebrating the victory Christ has won over death itself, like in "The Fight Is O'er, the Battle Won."

Throughout the year, things are always changing. Farmers and people "close to the land" know this, too. Berries in the spring, grains in the summer, apples in the fall. Astronomers know this. Orion the hunter rises in the winter months; the summer triangle, including the cross-shaped Cygnus the swan rises in the summer. For me growing up, school was always most exciting at the beginning of the year in the fall, and summer was lazy and lethargic.

Change is constant. But in all of the above cases, change is rhythmic, and the rhythms give us comfort in the face of these changes. Some changes are not rhythmic. Some changes are single events. The 9/11 attack was a single event that radically changed much in the world (do you remember seeing your loved ones off at the gate before an airline flight?). Not all changes are bad. There's a joke that everyone says they hate change, but no one ever gave back their lottery winnings.

Other change seems constant. The pace of change in technology since the early 20th century is more exponential than cyclical. My grandfather was born just after the Battle of Little Big Horn, and died after Yuri Gagarin flew in space. Now the Voyager space probe is so far away that it takes light a full day to just to get there, and it is still teaching us things about interstellar space. My dad was a payroll accountant for General Motors before the invention of spreadsheets and calculators. When I was taking a programming class at Georgia Tech, my professor was suddenly struck by the fact that when HE was a student, the Georgia Tech MAINFRAME had only 64Kb of memory. At the time he said that, I had a personal digital assistant in my pocket with ten times that, and now my phone has a capacity that is 400,000 times THAT. Transportation technology fuels a global economy that speeds ever onward chasing the perpetual exponent. Biologists have unlocked the secrets of our genes and cured previously incurable diseases. The pace of change only seems to accelerate, and these changes can be disorienting, disquieting and disrupting.

In the face of these kinds of uncomfortable changes, what are we to say, theologically? We look to God and want God to be our source of comfort. We want God to be the opposite of change. We want God to be the same yesterday, today and forever. Of course, in many ways, God IS always the same. God is always holy and righteous. God is always loving and faithful.

There is a paradoxical trap here, though. We could also say that God is always creative. By that we mean that God is always creating. God created the universe and the stars and the moon and the sun, the sky and the seas and the dry land, all the living things in creation. Then God created a garden and humans. Then, God did a new thing with the flood, and made a covenant with Noah. Then God made a covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob to make them a nation. Their descendants were in slavery in Egypt and God parted the waters to free them. Eventually, God sent empires to destroy them and send them to exile. Then God says in Isaiah to remember the great things God has done, but then says, "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." God made land appear as a way through the Red Sea before, but now God makes water appear as a way through the dirt of the desert. God is the same, always creating, always redeeming, always finding a way. BUT, God is always doing a new thing. The means of redemption is a new means. The way is a new and unexpected way.

Is that disquieting or comforting? For me it is comforting. The world (the fallen world) keeps changing. If God were entirely incapable of changing, then how would God be able to help us in the new situation? Some would say that God COULD keep things from changing, but I think an essential attribute of God is the creative aspect, the ever-creating activity of God. If "God is the same yesterday, today, and forever" is to be comforting, then it has to be that "God is ever creating new things" is comforting as well. God is so powerful that God can ALWAYS find a new way to help us and a new way to redeem us. God is so loving that God WILL always find a way to help us and redeem us.

The Psalmist in Psalm 31 expresses trust in God. Verse 5 says, "Into your hands, I commend my spirit." Jesus says this from the cross, modelling perfect trust in God. Verse 15 says, "My times are in your hand." As seasons come and go and return, and as things in our lives constantly change, we can take comfort that God is constantly loving us and find a way for us. God is constantly blessing us.

--Chas