Over the last month I’ve been leading a small group, teaching members of our congregation what I know about preaching in preparation for UCG’s first lay preaching festival. This Wednesday you are invited to come hear 10 wonderful new preachers each deliver a ten-minute sermon. If you like one good sermon, imagine how much you will enjoy 10 back-to-back! 7-9:30 this Wednesday here in our sanctuary.

While I’ve enjoyed leading that group, I was surprised and dismayed when more than one member said they had no idea that the sermon each week had anything to do with the scripture we read right before it. They had never made the connection and just figured it was something boring we did before we got to the hopefully good stuff. A little piece of me died.

For their sermons I picked scriptures that they drew out of a basket. They were less than enthusiastic about that system. So to be fair, I challenged myself for this worship theme of the “Songs of Summer” to choose a biblical song that I knew nothing about to see what it might have to say to us. If you’re one of those people who thinks we read something boring every week, this passage may strike you as no exception. It begins with everyone’s favorite scripture feature: a list of hard-to-pronounce place names.

“The Israelites set out, and camped in Oboth. They set out from Oboth, and camped at Iye-abarim, in the wilderness bordering Moab toward the sunrise.”

I’ve already lost you, haven’t I?

“From there they set out, and camped on the other side of the Arnon, in the wilderness that extends from the boundary of the Amorites.”

OK, I’ll skip the next couple verses, but the thing to know about this list of place names is, they’re not just describing a physical journey of the people. They’re also talking about a spiritual journey. This particular story gets told three times in the bible, and the place names are different each time. That’s because the authors aren’t as interested in the historical facts as they are in the meaning of the journey. They use different names to create a kind of spiritual geography. Each place has a meaning, just like if I tell you someone crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma or poured a glass of water in Flint, Michigan. Those names have an association for you beyond the spot on the map. But now I’ll skip down to the song.

“From there they continued to Beer; that is the well of which the Lord said to Moses, ‘Gather the people together, and I will give them water.’ Then Israel sang this song:

‘Spring up, O well! –Sing to it!—

The well that the leaders sank,

That the nobles of the people dug,

With the scepter and the staff.’

OK, that’s it. If that scripture seems a little dry to you, you may be even more upset to learn that I could have chosen the story that comes just before it in which the Hebrew camp gets overrun by poisonous snakes, Indiana Jones-style. Or I could have chosen the story from the very next chapter which features a talking donkey!

The stories before and after this one are way more exciting. But I noticed something else as I tried to put this passage in context, the stories before and after it seem like they come from different books. In the stories before the people dig this well, they are wandering in the wilderness, roaming the desert for decades. Pretty much every story from that first part goes like this: the people get hungry or thirsty; they complain to their leaders; their leaders complain to God; God sends food or water. But no matter how their needs are taken care of, it isn’t long until they’re unhappy again.

Meanwhile, the stories that come after our passage are all about the people settling into the land and creating a new life there. So our story, this song about a well, turns out to be a pivotal moment for the people. It’s the moment when they move from wandering to settling down. The moment when they move from complaining about their lives to building the life they hope for. The moment when they move from a focus on consuming to a focus on creating. And it all begins with the making of a well.

I’ve been thinking a lot about making lately. Last month I went to a conference on creativity and innovation in ministry. And as part of that conference I attended a Maker Faire. It’s hard to describe a Maker Faire. It is one part state fair, complete with bacon-themed food truck; one part tech convention, where you can watch a drone race; and maybe one part UCG small group, with workshops on everything from how to write code to how to make sauerkraut. The thing that connects all of these disparate exhibits and workshops is that the people who present are makers. They may make robots, or sweet potato pies, or a bowling alley that looks like a putt-putt golf course (it was awesome). But whatever it is, they are spurred on by their desire to create.

While I was there, I made this pin. It was in a tent sponsored by Google with a big banner out front that said, “Learn to Solder!” Now I had no interest in learning to solder, but, inexplicably, the friend I was with really did. Really. So we got in what seemed to me a very long line to learn how to solder.

After five minutes of waiting, I asked my friend if he was sure he wanted to spend so much time on this one activity when we were surrounded with cool stuff. He was. So for another twenty minutes I stood there, quietly grumbling, and dreaming about the bacon food truck. When we got to the front of the line and received our baggie of materials, it was even worse than I had feared. It was just a few small pieces of metal. I had spent half an hour waiting for this? If my life over the last 35 years had not required any soldering, why did I need to learn now? Who wanted a Google robot pin anyway?

We were ushered to a crowded table where an older man came up and pointed to the tip of the soldering iron in front of us. “That’s very hot,” he said, “Don’t touch it.” Then he pointed out the laminated directions on the table and suggested that we should actually do all of it a different way, which I couldn’t begin to understand. Then he disappeared.

And a crazy thing happened. I made this robot pin. I made this! By myself! And I came to see how making a robot pin like this one is perhaps the most courageous and impressive thing one can do. At least it felt like that for the next half hour. That day, soldering was definitely something I should know how to do, and I couldn’t believe I had gone 35 years without making a Google robot pin.

There was something that happened in that moment of making, a feeling of intense satisfaction and pride that came out of creating that pin, and more than that, a sense of power and purpose that came from recognizing my ability to face the challenge of those disparate parts and put them together in a way that made something new.

Once I sat down at that table, I realized I could no longer hang back and complain. I had to be the one to make that pin. No one else was coming to do it for me. I was invested. I was responsible. I cared. That pin was going to be exactly as good as I made it, and it wasn’t going to exist unless I worked on it.

Now I know it’s a ridiculously small thing. It really doesn’t matter. Whether this pin exists or doesn’t is of no consequence, but I think it points toward something bigger, something that does matter. Something we may need even in this very moment. There’s a shift that happens when we go from being consumers to creators. There’s a transformation in moving from criticizing the way things are to taking even a tiny step toward making them better.

There are lots of stories about the Hebrew people wandering in the desert and asking for water. And every time God provides the water. But none of those stories transform them. In this story too, it’s God who gives the people the water. But this time the people decide to become co-creators with God. They decide not simply to drink and move on, but to dig in. To make a well. You can see them beaming over it as they sing. It may not be the greatest well, but it’s the well they made. And having made it, they are changed. They are invested in that place and in their community in a new way. They are no longer content to wander, hoping they will happen upon something better. They are ready to build something better for themselves right there.

This week, again, we are face to face with some of the most intransigent problems of our world: homophobia and transphobia, racism and gun violence. There is so much to complain about, and more than that to shout, and wail, and rage about. And that shouting matters. It is important. We should shout about the individuals and institutions that have stoked hatred of the LGBTQ community, including the Christian Church; we should shout about the corporations that profit off of such violence and use those profits to defeat sensible gun control measures; we should shout about the lawmakers in the state of Florida and across our country who refuse to provide protection from discrimination for those of every sexual orientation and gender identity. There’s a lot to shout about.

But we also know, because this incident is not without precedent; because the spiritual geography of our country is riddled with names like Columbine, Newtown, Charleston, and Orlando; because each time another tragedy strikes there is a surplus of shouting and a lack of action, we know that shouting is not enough. If we want things to change, we have to become makers of a different reality, co-creators with the God who longs for this world to be a place of love and justice.

There is a popular meme on social media that goes around in circumstances like these. It says that when we are feeling overwhelmed by the tragedy in our world, we should look for the helpers, the ones who sacrifice themselves to care for others. I think that’s right. And this week, I am also looking for the makers. I am looking for those who, in the face of this unspeakable violence against LGBTQ lives, against Latinx lives, are finding ways to be of use, to create something beautiful and functional, to make something loving and just.

They are out there; the makers who from this tragedy will draft new laws, write new songs, create new apps, and found new not-for-profits, those who will build the structures that are needed to put an end to the hatred and the violence. Even now, they are getting to work, digging in to make something that they hope will help. And I want to be part of that in any way that I can, large or small. Because I know that making has the power to transform communities and the power to transform me.

This week I learned about one maker. A trans artist named Oliver Bendorf, who has launched a project called, Orlando Flyers, encouraging people to create messages of love and support for Orlando and for their local LGBTQ communities, messages of beauty that can be posted in public places. You’ll see some of them in a moment. Today between services, Kristen Stone and others are offering the opportunity to create your own flyers across the courtyard in Reimer Hall and take them with you into the spaces in our own community that need your message of love and grief and hope.

It’s a small act of creation. Making a flyer won’t solve the huge problems facing our country. But it may change me or you. Digging a well won’t build a nation, but it may begin one. Never underestimate the power of making, the power of digging in, the power of co-creation with a God who is about building Beloved Community in every place for every person.

We have to be the ones to make that community. No one else is coming to make it for us. It’s going to be exactly as beautiful and just as we make it, and it won’t exist unless we get to work. As the poem says, “The work of the world is common as mud…but the thing worth doing, well done has a shape that satisfies… The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.” Making something, even something small, can transform us, can invest us in a place and a people, can inspire us to be part of the solution. Even a tiny act of creation can become the turning point that moves us from our sad wandering into a place of singing as we begin to build the world in which we long to live.