O Lord, we pray, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and in the longing of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
Around the world today in many churches there have been potter's wheels set up, clay has been brought into the church, drop clothes thrown down, and potters have started practising their art - with water, clay, wires and knives, and of course their hands.
I don't know any potters here - and I would like to pass it around right now.
Let us become children for a moment and get used to this play dough that I have brought. Share it around. Take a small chunk. Feel it in your hands as you squeeze and knead it. You can make many things with this clay. A "sort of round" ball, a potato with eyes, or a cube, or if we had a lot of time a dinosaur or your pet poodle.
You may wonder what this had to do with worship but bear with me.
Jeremiah was a prophet from a very early age and he lived about two and one-half thousand years ago. The people of Judah, where Jeremiah lived, had entered into some rather unhealthy and useless political alliances and the long and short of the story was that they were conquered and sent off as refugees into exile.
Jeremiah was faithful to the truth of God but he suffered imprisonment because the people, and especially the king, did not want to hear his message.
The prophet Jeremiah had a vision, a message from God. It involved him getting off his knees and going to the workshop of a local artisan, a potter. There he was able to see as well as hear what God's message for the people really was.
Now here comes the good part. I'd like you to take the play dough and make a miniature pot, or a bowl, or a glass.
Do you like it?
Now maybe it doesn't suit you. What do you do?
Do you throw it in the garbage and ask me for a new lump of play dough? Or do you squish it up and start over?
You START OVER, of course!
Indeed you can make many pieces of pottery or art with this play dough and use it over and over (if you keep it in an airtight container).
A potter works in much the same way.
She takes a lump of clay and sits at the wheel. The wheel goes round and round and the pot takes shape. The scraps are thrown into a bucket. Sometimes, for no apparent reason the pot collapses and it is reshaped and the potter starts over.
After another try or still another try the pot is ready for the kiln. The extra pieces in the scrap pail are not garbage though. They are mixed together and put on the wheel to make another pot.
Nothing is ultimately a failure, nothing wasted.
When Jeremiah first related the vision he had of the potter and the clay, a vision that God gave unto him, he was trying to tell the people that this is how God relates to them.
That message is as much for us as it was for Israel in the time of Jeremiah.
God wants us to become beautiful and useful vessels, not to carry water or hold food,
but to carry the good news of his love and call and care and purpose.
Sometimes things go wrong.
- sometimes we, through no fault of our own go astray,
- sometimes it is because of a conscious choice we have made,
- Sometimes it is because habits and behaviour patterns have
overwhelmed us,
- sometimes it is because of values and beliefs we have clung to for
years, values and beliefs that deny God - things like the importance
of worldly success.
Regardless of the reason we have gone astray. God is always there wishing to re-shape and re-make and re-new us, indeed to reshape and renew the creation itself.
You see, we believe that the creation is good. That from the beginning God has known us and called us good. God calls us to follow in ways that lead to life and wholeness but when it does not work out or when we stray from this plan God is still there to help us to start over, with a clean slate.
To use the analogy of the potter, God forms us back into the shapeless lump of clay and asks us to allow him to shape us into a beautiful and useful vessel.
This process may not always feel good to us - the clay.
The process the clay goes through for the air to be removed and the bits and pieces of whatever to be absorbed is not an easy one - as anyone who has potted well knows. It is work for the potter - and undoubtedly it is work for the clay. The clay is pounded, thrown, and battered - until it is pliant - the defects removed - the material easy to work.
Such working might be thought of as a bit like the challenges we face in life, those things which take the wind out of us, deflate us, overwhelm us, the criticism that we receive from those who love us, the guilt that we feel in the heart of our hearts because of things we know God doesn't like. But remember, out of this, battering, this pounding, this cutting, when we surrender ourselves to it in the way God wants us too when we learn from it in the way that the Spirit is leading us, something very wonderful can arise.
This message of the potter and of the clay is a beautiful message because it tells us that we always have another chance
that when we failed
that when we have lost the beauty that we once had,
that when we have gone off on a path that is not helpful
that God can rework us, that God can salvage us, and make us beautiful, and that it is God's purpose to do so.
It is a wonderful message, because it tells us that God indeed labours over us, that even when things seem really difficult, when we are feeling assaulted or when we are having crosses thrust upon us, even when, to use the word's of today's gospel, we are being called to give up our families and our possessions, God's hands are all around us seeking to do a wonderful thing for us - and to us, - seeking to make us vessels of his love and his beauty, - seeking to make us what we were created to be, those who live abundantly and love abundantly.
That is in fact what happened with the people of Israel. Disobedient, selfish, neglectful of the poor and the needy around them, they were reworked by God during their period of exile in Babylon. Everything they had was taken from them and they were reworked by God.
Finally, after a sufficient amount of time had passed, the people were returned to the promised land renewed and revitalized, with a new mission, a new focus, a new sense of the wonder of God, and of how God wanted them to live.
From these people came Christ Jesus, the child promised long before, the messiah predicted by all the prophets.
From them comes the message we believe today, a message of grace and of redemption
a message of God's love and power.
Next time you are in a potter's shop, admiring a fine pot or vessel, think of the process that the clay has gone through and how the potter has struggled with it to make it so beautiful, and give praise to God for his love for you and for me, give praise to the Potter for his work over the clay.
Blessed be the name of God, day by day. Amen
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