Changing God's Mind
Rev. Dr. Michael Stotts
Exodus 32:1-14
Matthew 22:1-14
Did you catch that in our Old Testament reading? God? had a change of mind? That's fascinating don''t you think? That God's mind could be changed by a mere mortal! That fact, that God had a change of mind, was also a crucial Old Testament truth, here, for the early development of the Jewish people and their faith. If you think about, for God to have a change of mind, indicated to the Jewish people that God is one with whom you could have a relationship, and that God is as living God! After all, isn't growth in thinking as well as in physical ways a sign that one is alive? A deity who was rigid and merely prescribed a static set of beliefs, and had a mindset that was unchangeable would not be one with whom you could have any sort of loving relationship. So-- if God can't have a change of mind, what a rigid world this planet would be! In the case of this Exodus incident with the golden calf-- a rigid God would simply have destroyed most of the people for their disloyalty and idolatry--because they'd so deserted God in favor of the golden calf--a god of their own making. And with the people destroyed much of what then followed in Biblical history would've been turned on it's head. Thank goodness, God had a changed of mind!
So you see, yes God is dependable, is always there for us, unto eternity, but for us as human beings, it's vitally important--for several reasons-- for us to know that God's mind is changeable!
First of all, if the Lord were instead always stubborn in direction and decision, then what would be the point of our prayers? At many places in the Bible, like here with Moses, or people begging Jesus for help, we see instances of people who wore God down, and convinced the Lord to treat them differently than first intended. Yes, and the fact that God's mind could be changed tells us, indeed, that our prayers make a difference, too! Just as the pleadings of a child, make a parent sometimes change their decisions or intentions.
It may surprise you to learn that early in my ministry, when I shared the Pastoral Prayer in worship, I used to avoid mentioning individual petitions for healing for different individuals--my reasoning being that of course God already knew who was sick and needed our care, and that with so much need in the world, it was presumptuous of us, I thought to ask for help for little ole me, let alone to tell God who needed help. But it didn't take me long, when asked to pray at someone's bedside who was sick and in the hospital, or on a number of occasions where Peggy and I were helped by prayer, it didn't take me long to learn and be convinced that prayer very much made a difference. I firmly believe, Peggy, for example, would not be alive today, were it not for her own faith and love, and especially the prayers of many. Yes, so it wasn't more than a few months into my ministry before petitions made their way regularly into my Pastoral prayers.
Unceasing Prayer does make a difference, because we know that God's mind is changeable--and that gives us hope, too, for whatever needed alteration we need to pray in our life situations--yours and mine.
And then God's ability to make a change in direction and decision, also very much says something to us about God's mercy, does it not? There are those who think that probably God was too merciful toward his people there in the wilderness--for how many times did they stray? Yet God gave them several second chances --over and over, God had mercy--even though the people clearly did not deserve it! And in the one instance we heard this morning, God was ready to do away with the whole lot, till Moses changed God's mind, and thus revealed . . God's mercy.
And If God can have a change of mind about, and have mercy toward a people who were so stubborn and disobediently sinful, what an important lesson God teaches us here about how human beings are to be treated in God's world. God had abundant mercy, and indeed expects us to do the same. Didn't Jesus echo the same teaching with his words and actions, over and over? In fact he told us to forgive others not once or twice, but as many as 70 times 7 times! In his parable we heard today, while the king may have seemed unforgiving in the end it was only after having given the people of the kingdom several chances to respond to the wedding banquet invitation for his son's wedding, only to then see one who did respond, show up wearing inappropriate wedding garments--apparently thinking his own garments were better than those the king had generously supplied. So the punishment of that self-centered guest, inappropriately attired, was brought on not by any unforgiving nature of the king, but by the ungrateful guest's own vanity. Jesus was trying to tell us, you see, that God is forgiving indeed--giving us many chances to get it right. And so it follows, does it not, that God expects us to be merciful as well?!
Instead, however, how quick to judge we are, too often in our world. If our leaders aren't perfect, if someone betrays us, or hurts us, if someone doesn't agree with us--we quickly form judgments about them, and then that colors the way we treat and see and hear them from then on. Instead God showed us how important it can be to have mercy instead of judgment for one another. To try to understand the reasons behind the actions of others, and to therefore see them as just mortal human beings, not as an "enemy" or "disliked one." After all there isn't a one of us who's perfect, and God knows that. So if we do go astray--if we do wrong, and admit the error of our ways, God will forgive---God will have a change of mind, and give us another chance. And so should we--with others.
Too often instead, we, in our culture clamor for what we call justice. But God would often say, instead of justice we need to deal with each other merci-fully. Of course that's hard if we perceive we've been wronged. But if we seek only justice, born of judgment, then very often we cut off the possibility of ever reconciling--healing our relationship with others--and we only pile on hurt upon hurt, on those we've judged, and add just that much more hurt to our too often troubled world.
I'm reminded of an incident my wife's family told us about one year when we went for our yearly visit to the Cleveland area where Peggy grew up. We were staying with Peggy's sister Ellen and her family as we often do, and they told us, with some amusement, the story of an incident that Ellen's father in law had gotten into earlier that year. I say amusement because it was very like Ellen's father-law, Mike Petche, in that Mike always had a bit of a temper, though with most people he was a very loving man most of the time. This particular time it seemed that on the boundary line between his house and their neighbors, there was a certain bush. Now Mike and his neighbor used to get along very well, until one day, one of them--and I forget which one now, started to trim this bush. Well right away this led to a disagreement as to just whose bush this really was, and so the argument escalated until finally they just got mad at each other and Mike stomped off, determined never to speak to his neighbor again. And unfortunately having a temper, he didn't leave it at that. Instead he waited until he knew his neighbor wasn't around, and went out and cut down the bush. And so it was that the two never spoke to each other again, right up to the time Mike died just a few years ago.
Well as I say, we all smiled at the time of the incident when Peg's sister, Ellen told the story, for it was much like Mike to do such foolish things because of his some-times bad temper -- but it was sad, too, for his temper only made things worse of course, for him and others like his neighbor. For now, in this case, neither of them had that bush which they had both seemed to value so much--they had both lost --not to mention losing their friendship--all because they'd drawn too hard a line in their relationship with another human being.
Yes, and too often we can be like that as well. So often we as humans judge one another on the basis of what we think someone deserves. Our whole economy, let alone our court system, in fact is built on the faulty premise that somehow we earn what we deserve. But God teaches us another standard, called mercy--based on grace--God's forgiving love, that we could never earn. But thank God, the Lord gives it to us anyway. Even as Christ died on the cross, God's mercy prevailed. Human beings had hung God's son on a cross--yet he was given back to us. Yes, for God's grace -- mercy-- we can thank the Lord. For it means, even though God may be angry with us for so often going a stray, God can and does often have a change of mind if we ask forgiveness, and gives us another chance--mercy--with our sins forgiven. And God expects us to be forgiving--merciful-- as well.
And then there's one more reason why it's important to know God can have a change of mind. And that is because it tells us . . . that this world that God has made is changeable, and therefore, what we do in this life can make a difference. The decisions we make, the actions we take, can change things--both for our world, and our own destiny. Those who would in-stead have a rigid view of predestination--that God decides early on what our lives are destined for, would instead I think tend to make us believe we were almost like puppets of God.
But I firmly believe it's clear that God loves us enough to enable us to decide within certain boundaries, how we would go about doing the Lord's will. It's true that we make it hard on ourselves if we try to stray too far from the Lord, but that's left up to us. And the fact that God can have a change of mind tells us, that as circumstances develop, and we make our decisions, God can change, too, in plans for us, so as to be able to lead us safely into the future--often in spite of ourselves. So how our lives turn out is not carved in stone. We're not predestined, but rather have a partnership with God--God gives us each special gifts, but we then have the freedom to decide how to use them.
And don't you see how freeing that is? Very often, we come to believe we're stuck in whatever situation we find ourselves in life, yet God tells us that change is always possible--especially if it enables us to come closer to the Lord and to God's will for us. How foolish we are to think our lives can't change.
When Peggy and I lived in the Pittsburgh Area years ago, and I was the editor of our denominations newspaper there, one day I covered a story at the Blvd of the Allies fire station in that city, on one of the Saturdays that the local authorities had sponsored a Guns for gifts exchange. At the fire station, I saw the hundreds of firearms--from handguns, to rifles to sawed off shotguns and more turned in during that exchange. On one of the days, four hundred guns of one type or another were turned in, in just one hour. And as I looked at the collection, spread out nearly covering the garage floor of the fire station, and thought about the fact that there were undoubtedly many times more guns than that still in the possession of the people and young people of the city, I though, "How sad!" What great lengths we go to, to protect ourselves, when instead, says Jesus, we should be spending the same amount of money and energy on building community--cities where all are treated equally, and people work together, like brothers and sisters. An impossible dream, you say? Well maybe not. That guns for gifts program itself was a sign of people getting together to improve their community and do something about the violence in that city in cooperative loving ways--turning their focus from guns to giving. Such a new way is what Jesus called for from all of us. To be not protective and defensive, and selfish, but to work together to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to share good news with the poor and recovery of sight to the blind.
Well you see? Thank goodness for change. And especially thank good-ness God can have a change of mind, because change, leads to God's many possibilities for new life in each of our lives over and over. And very often it is indeed a change of mind that makes us more open to others, and thereby leads to peace. What if we were to change today, from our protective fear that's driving the present economic crisis, to a trust in God's changeablity, that hears our prayers and knows what we need far better than any economic gurus. When did we stop trusting that God would provide? And that God would hear us when we were in need, or penitent. When did we stop thinking that God would have mercy, for us--as we ought to for others. And when did we stop thinking that things could change for the better in this, the world God made? God's mind can be changed, for our God is a living God, always with us, saving us even when we haven't deserved it. If only we'll have faith and seek new life in God--not be afraid to change, ourselves. So thank you, Moses, for changing God's mind --and bringing us therefore in many ways a far greater understanding of how wondrous is our merciful , new life giving, dependable but ever -changing and therefore new-life giving God. Amen.