Igniting Our God-Given Creativity:

Creative Crafts

When we began our summer worship talking about creativity a few weeks ago, we started with the astonishing creativity of God in imagining and speaking into existence all the weird and wonderful parts of the world around us. And then further, we named that we ourselves who are made in God’s own image carry within us the spark of this divine creativity as we too imagine and create. What an amazing thing to think about.

And so a big part of what we’re doing this summer is celebrating the God-given creativity that’s built into each of us – whether we think of ourselves as creative people or not. And today we recognize the creativity that comes out in our work. We titled this service “Creative Crafts,” but that was mostly just for the sake of the fun alliteration. We meant crafts in the broadest sense. Not just kits from Michaels with popsicle sticks and felt – though those are certainly honourable crafts too. But crafts also in the sense of skilled labour. There is a craft to almost all of the work that we do. An element of know-how that must be learned and practiced and taught to others. And then plenty of creativity in figuring out how best to do the task to meet the particular needs of the moment.

When I was 16, I got a summer job with Holtz Construction, a framing company owned by one of my Sunday School teachers growing up. It was definitely a compassion-hire. I needed to start earning some money as I got towards the end of highschool, and he was willing to give me a shot. It was, as they say, a learning experience. I worked mostly in the shop, making really basic pre-fab component parts that got bundled and shipped off to worksites. In the end, I probably spent more time fixing mistakes than producing the right things. One time I tried to follow the blueprint design on a more complicated component, but clearly didn’t understand the directions. I built a ridiculous mess of layered boards that I sheepishly hid under a pile of scrap. Of course it didn’t take long before a couple other guys in the shop found it and howled with laughter at what I’d made. It was a tough summer of work, and while I did learn a few things about carpentry I learned as much about creative use of profanity and how funny it is to staple someone’s tool belt to the framing table while they’re in the bathroom. I felt like a constant screw-up, and wasn’t much interested in working in trades again. It wasn’t until years later that I realized I actually did enjoy building things and wished I had learned more basic skills.

There is something profoundly therapeutic about making something with your own hands. Getting lost in a project – imagining and designing it, gathering and preparing materials, fastening things together, solving the little problems that pop up, making it both functional and pleasing. As creatures in God’s own image, I do think that we are made to be builders. Constructing and shaping and fashioning things in new ways as an expression of divine creativity.

Which is why I think today’s reading from Exodus is such a neat passage. Where else do we hear scripture celebrate this kind of skilled labour?? “Bezalel and Oholiab and every skillful one to whom the Lord had given skill and understanding to know how to do any work in the construction of the sanctuary shall work in accordance with all that the Lord has commanded” (Ex 36:1). And it goes on to describe metalworks, stone cutting, wood carving, weaving, fibre art and more. All in the service of building the tabernacle – a tent of meeting for the people in the wilderness, a sanctuary to house the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets of stone with the commandments of God that Moses had just received on the mountain. God calls out a rich array of skills and talents, and puts them to work as a celebration of God’s own presence with the people.

I really like this reminder of divine creativity that God calls out through skilled labour. Just as God created the earth and the heavens and all the wonderful things we find within them, so also we are encouraged to bring our gifts in creative ways to make and shape things. As we learn skills and practice them, we stretch the muscles of God’s image in us. We express God’s amazing creativity as we work, always ready to share our talents with others in love.

And this is true whether our work involves a hands-on trade, a white-collar office job or anything in between. Some of us build things with our hands, but others of us build things with words or relationships or meetings or computer code. Whatever it is that we do, we are exploring the gifts of our creator in ever new and creative ways.

There was a time when skilled crafts and vocations were mainly passed down through families. Parents taught their children the secrets of the family business, whether that was farming, smithing, weaving, tanning, printing, woodworking or whatever it might be. And in an economy of cottage industries, there was plenty of room for creative variation and personal touches. You learned the craft from start to finish, and a practiced eye could see the distinctive imprint of the maker on a finished product. No two pieces exactly alike.

Things tend to work a little differently these days. Industrial and technological revolutions have changed how most kinds of production happens. Now things are mass produced on factory floors, with the explicit goal of uniformity. Every product exactly alike. A worker learns just their one small component of the process and does it over and over and over again. It may be harder to see the creative process in this kind of labour. Harder to feel the spark of the divine when you’re just a cog in a much larger system.

And we know that in our globalized economy, this mass production too often happens at the expense of workers who are paid little and subjected to poor working conditions. All driven by our insatiable hunger for cheap consumer goods. So we have to be a little careful as we celebrate the image of divine creativity expressed in our work. For many people around the world, work is a toxic, dangerous and demoralizing necessity of life. Those of us who have been able to find our work meaningful, fulfilling and life-giving are still caught up in systems that benefit from the unjust labour of others. How do we respond to this reality, especially if we affirm the spark of God’s creative life that exists in each person?

But even if our experience of work has on the whole been a positive experience, how many of us actually see our work, our labour, our vocation – the skills of whatever kind that we’ve learned through life – as an expression of divine creativity and the image of God in us? I’m going to guess that’s not the way we usually think about it. It’s not the way I’ve always thought about it. Most of the time work is just work. As Pam’s Dad likes to say, there’s a reason they have to pay you to do it! Of course, we also do lots of things that we don’t get paid for. We work to help others, to care for our families, to keep our households running and bring beauty to our lives. We work because we enjoy something and want to see it done.

And we do lots of work that doesn’t seem quite as glamorous as building the home of God in the wilderness, as the craftspeople in Exodus were doing. Maybe we can see the spark of divine creativity in the builder who designs or constructs a beautiful new building. But what if you’re just the one sweeping up the jobsite at the end of day? Can pushing a broom also be an expression of the image of God’s creativity in us?

There is a great book by Barbara Brown Taylor called An Altar in the World, all about meeting God in really earthy and hands-on ways. She reminds us that spirituality is closely connected with our bodies and the world around us. And one of the activities that she talks about is daily chores. Here’s how she puts it:

“If all life is holy, then anything that sustains life has its holy dimensions too. The difference between washing windows and resting in God can be a simple decision: choose the work, and it becomes your spiritual practice. Spraying vinegar and water on the panes, you baptize the glass. Rubbing away the grime, ye repent ye of your sins. Polishing the glass, you let in the light. No task is too menial to serve as a path” (An Altar in the World, 151-152).

This is an inspiring way to think about housekeeping, or whatever other tasks we find ourselves doing over and over through our lives. As we do this work with our hands, routine and ordinary and menial as it may be, the task becomes a pathway to God. The work connects us with our creator and shoots a spark into that creative image of God that resides within each of us. We can wash windows, or we can baptize panes. We can rub grime or we can repent and be washed. We can polish glass or we can clear the way for the light to shine in and around us.

Maybe it’s a little like the Exodus passage about the builders in the wilderness. What if every time we took up the tools of our trade, it was to build a tabernacle – a place where the holy dwells and we experience the presence of God? How would that change the way we see and experience our work? What if we saw our clocking in every day as a response to God’s invitation to bring what we have and make something holy?

There is another inspiring part of this Exodus story about the builders. God’s call to the people when Moses returns with the stone tablets is for both materials and workers. Both resources and time. And so an offering is taken up for things like gold, silver, bronze, coloured yarns and linens, animal skins and leather, special wood, oil, spices and gemstones. And as Exodus describes it, the people’s hearts were stirred and many people with willing spirits came with all sorts of contributions. You have to think it would have been tough to rustle all this up out of people lately on the run from years of slavery and now wandering with what worldly possessions they could carry in the wilderness. What would the people have actually had, and what would they be willing to part with under those circumstances?

But amazingly, they do have materials – mostly personal items, special possessions, probably family heirlooms prioritized as they left Egypt. And they offer them for use in this project alongside their labour in spinning and weaving and cutting and carving. Every morning these freewill offerings kept coming. In fact, after a while the tradesfolk doing the work came to Moses and said: the people are bringing more than enough for the work we’ve been called to do! Tell them not to bring anything more – we can’t use it all! This is the dream for any fundraising project, or any church spending plan. What if in November, instead of highlighting the remaining funding gap and requesting continued generosity, our congregational Finance chair came up and said: please hold up on the contributions – we’ve got more than we need! Find other ways to exercise your generosity for a while.

What was the secret to this abundance of offered goods and talents? I wonder if it was because the work had taken on another level of meaning. It wasn’t just stuff the people were gathering or labour they were investing. They weren’t sharing from their own limited store of time and materials. They were sharing out of God’s abundant gifts. They had more than enough because their God was more than enough. And divine creativity doesn’t run out. The more you use it, the more you have. When our work becomes a place to meet God, a place where the image of God in us can come alive and stretch its creative gifts, all sorts of things are possible.

This all sounds pretty good. And I hope we might each have moments where we recognize the spark of divine creativity in our daily activities, whether scrubbing the toilet or writing reports. But often we’ll have trouble making the connection. Often work will just feel like work and we’ll do our best to get it done. I do think it’s something we can get better at. As Barbara Brown Taylor describes, we can practice shifting our perspective and letting ordinary tasks become a pathway to God.

But sometimes we also need to stop, let go and take a break. We also need to learn how to rest. The image of God in us can teach this too. The image of a Creator who also took time to rest and enjoy. If we go back to the first few verses of Exodus 35, where Moses proclaims God’s call to gather materials and build the tabernacle, the very first thing he says is a reminder of the sabbath commandment. “Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy sabbath of solemn rest to the Lord.” Maybe this is another reason why the building process goes so well – it starts with space to rest.

As I think about all of these things, I also wonder how this sounds to the many in our congregation who are retired. Who are finished working in the way we usually use that word. I hear from some of our seniors that retirement is busier than working life ever was! But for many, retirement also becomes an opportunity to do things you never had time for earlier. An opportunity to learn new skills or to hone old crafts, a chance to let creativity flow where time and responsibilities once kept it contained. How wonderful to celebrate these new possibilities, and continue to see God at work in us at all stages of life. But as we age we also slow down and our worlds becomes smaller. And without so much work or activity to give meaning and purpose, we have to learn all over again what life is about. But the image of God in us does not fade or disappear. We continue at every stage of life to be wonderful and unique creations responding with our own kinds of joyful creativity to our maker’s touch.

In the end, I think that life itself is a kind of craft. A kind of creative skill that we learn and practice and develop day by day as we live out our particular callings. A canvas that we fill in unique and beautiful ways – even through our daily labour. Every job, every activity, every moment that comes along is a chance to live out the astonishing creativity that formed us and dwells within us. A chance to add our time and talents to building the tabernacle in the wilderness where we meet God and recognize the holy in our midst.

So, here’s to the builders and the bricklayers, the jewellers and the goldsmiths, the grocery clerks and the garbage collectors. Here’s to the office workers and the number crunchers, the landscapers and the lawn mowers, the teachers and the managers. Here’s to the dishwashers and the floor sweepers, the meal makers and the child-care providers, the nurses and the caregivers. Here’s to the quilters and the puzzlers, the volunteers and the rocking chair sitters. Here’s to the invitation of God to take what we’ve been given and share it with the world. To fan the spark of divine creativity in each of us and see what God might do.

Amen.