The Potter's Hand: Jeremiah 18:1-12 - Third Sunday after Pentecost

It is said “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure;” but one person’s treasure can also be another person’s trash.

I frequently receive calls from people wanting to pianos and organs to our church.

My grandmother’s piano was her prize possession. Unfortunately, when she went to live in a nursing home, we couldn’t find anyone who could take it, including me. Pianos weren’t allowed in the apartment we were living in at the time, but even if they were, the costs to move a piano are astronomical. Well over $1,000. That’s why I always decline the offers.

China is another example of one person’s treasure being another person’s trash (not the country, the formal dishware). Once upon a time, China was a family heirloom, because each piece was a hand-made and hand-painted work of art. But now, thrift stores can’t even give it away.

I guess these are signs of the times.

Photo by Matt Perkins on Unsplash

In today’s first reading, God sends the prophet Jeremiah to the potter’s house, where he finds him working at his wheel. The vessel he was working on was made of clay which had hardened prematurely. You’d think that if the clay was hard, the potter would throw it out and start over again. But that’s not what he’s doing. He’s reworking it into a new vessel.

This all serves as an object lesson for Jeremiah; a warning: the house of Israel is like the clay in the hands of the potter. Yet it has become hardened by sin. God’s not going to throw it away, because God will never break faith with his people. But God will break the hard clay so that it can become what it was meant to be: a sacred vessel through which God blesses the world.

Isn’t that what a vessel is for? Cups, plates, and bowls are serving vessels used to convey food, water, wine, or something of value so that it can be received by someone else. If you need water, it doesn’t help if someone sprays you with a hose, but it does help you if it’s handed to you in a glass or a cup.

We, too, are sacred vessels through which God blesses the world. God is the potter; we are the clay. But sin hardens us so that we cannot become what we were made to be. We make ourselves the potter and treat God as the clay. What is an idol? It is a sacred object we create to harness supernatural power for our own benefit.

And it’s not just the pagans who do this; Christians do it, too. You are the potter, God is the clay.

There are limitless ways that you can create God in your own image, to suit your beliefs and desires; limitless ways to bend the bible to your will. Consider the prosperity Gospel, where faith and good works are rewarded with health, wealth, and happiness. Ultra fundamentalism breaks God and the bible down to black-and-white terms, and applies those terms to all the complexities of life, leaving no room for God to speak to us in our doubts, our questions, and differing viewpoints.

If you’re a control freak, you are the potter and life is the clay, and you must make everything and everyone conform to your will. Thanks to social media, you can be both the potter and the clay. You can use photo editing software to curate a perfect image of yourself living the perfect life.

If you insist on being the potter, what do you need God for? What’ the point of seeking God when you’re playing God?

So much religion is about believing and doing. Christianity begins with receiving. You are sacred a vessel. You are created by God to receive God’s life-giving and life-sustaining goodness. Everyday, God is forming you, molding you, and shaping you into a masterpiece, made to convey God’s blessings to others.

You know that sometimes pottery gets broken. When you are shattered and broken, God immediately gets to work, making beauty out of brokenness. God’s healers are wounded healers.

When you are hardened by sin and resist God’s creative work, God breaks you to remake you. God’s judgment shatters your hardness and God’s forgiveness makes you new again, for nobody is disposable to God.

God is the potter. You are the clay.

My challenge to you today is to understand yourself first and foremost as a vessel created to receive God’s faithfulness. So how are you receiving the living God today? You cannot serve God unless you are being served by God. You were not created to be an empty vessel gathering dust on the shelf. You need to be filled with the fine wine of mercy and the rich bread of grace. You can’t feed the world from an empty plate.

And remember: God isn’t finished with you yet. You are still becoming and always will be becoming what God had in mind for you since the foundation of the world: God’s holy treasure, a sacred masterpiece, created for the blessing of all the world. Trust the potter’s hand. Receive the living God.

  ¹ The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ² “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” ³ So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. ⁴ The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
  ⁵ Then the word of the Lord came to me: ⁶ Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. ⁷ At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, ⁸ but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. ⁹ And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, ¹⁰ but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. ¹¹ Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you, from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.
  ¹² But they say, “It is no use! We will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil will.”