Anathea Portier-Young, Associate
Professor of Old Testament at Duke University Divinity School in Durham, North
Carolina, invites us to consider the image of God and God’s relationship to
humanity as it comes to our scripture reading this morning. She writes: “Other scriptures invite us to
imagine God as ruler and judge, writer and teacher, farmer and builder, father,
mother, and lover. Jeremiah 18 invites us to see God as an artisan and artist.
The image is not new in the scriptures. Genesis 1 portrays God as the first
poet, designer, metalworker, and landscaper, as God speaks, divides, fashions,
and populates the cosmos. In Genesis 2:7 God first shapes clay, sculpting and forming
humankind from the sediment of the earth. As God’s hands knead and smooth the
moist dirt, God breathes life into God’s new creation, so that the human being
is simultaneously grounded by this connection to earth and animated by the very
breath of God.”
God is the potter, we are the clay . . .
a powerful image.
It is to this that God calls the prophet
Jeremiah . . . “Go down to the potter’s house and there I will give you my message.” Obeying God, Jeremiah goes to the potter’s
house where he witnesses the potter at work.
There he saw the potter working at the wheel. As he watched he noticed that the piece the
potter was throwing was misshaped; so, the potter mashed it down and started
over shaping into a pot that was much more desirable and useful. Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: “O
house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does? Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are
you in my hand, O house of Israel.”
It is here that Jeremiah realizes the
message that God can shape and reshape us, and God labors tirelessly at the
wheel on our behalf. God assesses our
character, perceives our strengths and weaknesses, builds on our strengths, and
when flaws are found in us, works diligently to remedy them.
I am not a potter . . . not even an
artist. God blessed other members of my
family with those skills. Though I do
not have those skills, I have learned a little about working with clay. Most potters are thrifty individuals who
never throw even the smallest bit of clay away.
One potter told me that she had a can that she threw the leftover and
so-called “mistake” pieces of clay.
There she would let it accumulate until she would clump it all together
and rework it into a piece of art. Which
she could do over and over again until she stuck it in a kiln and fired
it. Once it was fired, it became hard
and brittle . . . never to lose its shape.
Upon firing, it was what it was.
That, too, is a part of the message that
Jeremiah receives from God. Never does
the message convey at any point that the clay God works with is ever fired . .
. at least not on God’s end. From the
very beginning—in Genesis, God shapes and breathes life into God’s creation.
At the same time, God reminds Jeremiah
that God has the choice to throw away or destroy if creation becomes hard and
brittle, set in its ways: “If at any time I announce that a nation or
kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned
repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I
had planned. And if at another time I
announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does
evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had
intended to do for it.”
It is up to the people . . . it is the
people’s choice as to what happens.
One of the things that I find
fascinating when I am hiking in the mountains, especially up Woodbine Canyon,
are the trees. As you know, Woodbine
Canyon is a windy . . . really windy place.
As I hike, I see trees that have been twisted and bent by the wind, and
I see tree that have been snapped in half.
I always wonder why some tree bend and shape to the wind, while others
break in the wind. Those that allow the
wind to bend and shape them survive and thrive; those that don’t, die.
So, it is when it comes to the Spirit’s
movement in our lives. In the movement
of the Spirit . . . God’s hands . . . we are molded and shaped. We are made.
We are made over and over again as we journey through life. Remember, God assesses our character,
perceives our strengths and weaknesses, builds on our strengths, and, when
flaws are found in us, works diligently to remedy them. And, the choice is ours as to whether we
allow it to happen or we become rigid in our growth and faith.
The choice is ours.
Thankfully we have a patient God.
It is God’s will that we become who God
created us to be. It is the
Spirit’s—God’s hands—that guide and shape us.
There are qualities of the Spirit as shared in Galatians 5:22-23: love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control. There is also compassion
and justice. These are the bricks in the
foundation of Jesus’ admonishment to love God completely and to love others as
we love ourselves. The Spirit moves to
shape us to be these things in the image that God created us to be. For it to happen, God is willing to start over
and over again. Willing to pick up that
lump of clay and mold us and make us.
But, as always, it is up to us . . . it
is our choice.
For years I thought of those twisted and
bent trees shaped by the wind as being stubborn. The reward was this mangled looking tree that
just would not break to the will of the wind.
Now, as I have gotten older, I see them differently. I see them being shaped to survive the wind .
. . I see them becoming what they need to be in order to grow and thrive. I see that they have learned to move with the
wind. Those broken trees . . . well,
they were the ones who lost out in the end because of their unwillingness to
grow with the wind that moved them.
So, it is with the clay in the hands of
the potter . . . so, it is with us in the journey of faith and life. The choice is ours . . . do we allow the
potter to mold us and shape us, or do we become brittle and worthless? Do we allow the Spirit to move through us to
bend and twist us into what we need to become, or do we allow it to snap and
break us? As Jeremiah and we are
reminded, from God . . . it is our choice.
From this reading what do we glean?
We glean that we are the clay in the
potter’s hands—God’s hands. Clay that
needs to have a willingness to allow God to mold us, shape us, and make us to
what God desires us to be . . . God’s children . . . chips off the ol’
block.
We glean that we must be willing to
allow the Spirit to work in our lives . . . to stop and know God.
We glean a simple prayer sung in a
familiar hymn:
Spirit of
the living God, fall afresh on me.
Spirit of
the living God, fall afresh on me.
Melt me,
mold me, fill me, use me.
Spirit of
the living God, fall afresh on me.
May it be our prayer. Amen.
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