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Jeremiah 18: 1-11 Sept. 5, 2004
Muddy Hands of Love
XX Donald Trump’s famous two words have become a popular saying these days: “You’re fired!” For the young protégés competing and courting his favor, those two words spell dread, disappointment, and death to their chances of making it to the top of Trump Towers and a future full of success.
“You’re fired!”
But in “potter’s terms” … “you’re fired” is a good thing… the long, arduous process from clay through formation … and completion through high temperature baking is done, and the artist can stand back and say with pride, “You’re fired!”
Today we have a story from the Old Testament about a field trip God sent the prophet Jeremiah on: down to the local potter … who threw the pots for bowels and pitchers and plates … the everydayness of life …
Something Jeremiah never gave a thought about (potters and wheels) … but God said… “I want you to go down to the potter’s house and watch what she is doing, because you are going to learn about me.”
So off Jeremiah goes. And what does he see: a woman sitting at a wheel… two wheels.. one on top of the other.
It is hard, physical labor. The wet clay is a formless lump. The potter carefully places it on the center of the wheel as she begins to spin the top wheel… both arms are place around the clay, placing even pressure as the muddy clay is kept moist and with a thumb here and a finger here… with well worn hands, a shape begins to form from the nothingness.
it’s It looks like it is taking shape. Will it be a cup… a bowl… a pitcher? The potter’s hands and arms are muddy; she is totally engrossed in her work; part of her seems to be going into this simple, ordinary household pot. And then…. She stops… It’s not right. It’s gotten off center, unbalanced… it leans where it shouldn’t … the strength and integrity that should be there aren’t.
Before Jeremiah can say “it looks good to me”… she has gathered up this piece of herself and thrown it back into a formless lump of clay to start over.
And Jeremiah watches as the potter take that same lump of clay and began again… slowly… patiently… reforming … reworking… reimagining her creation. This time the clay stays centered. This time the clay seems to work with the potter’s hands, not against them … this time the mud yields to her hands and rises up as a beautiful work of art in the midst and caress of those muddy hands.
And then as Jeremiah was marveling at this process… thinking “all this work for a common bowl?…” … he hears God speak to him:
“Can’t I do the same thing?? With you?? With my People?? I take you and work with you and form you. I speak and you do not listen. I guide and you go your own way. You act so independent… and yet the power of creation and destruction is still within my hands.”
XX On our vacation we went to the small town of Joseph in the Wallowas.
Joseph has become an art Mecca… and one of the things it is known for is bronze statuary. The place where the bronze work is done is called a Foundry ..and we visited one.
The process starts with clay… though not on a wheel. The artist starts adding clay and shaping it, scraping it, adding contour and shape and lines and definition. The one artist we watched worked for weeks, sometimes months on just the clay part of the process. The clay stayed pliable and moldable … until the time the artist was satisfied… and then it was fired and a mold was made, wax was poured, another mold, the wax melted out, the molten metal poured, and the finishing process of smoothing, refining and color.
I was struck at how pliable and moldable the clay stayed during that initial creating process. There is flexibility, and an ability for the unfired clay to still be remade, changed; … right up to the point of those two words: “You’re fired!”
This Jeremiah reading is a story… a lesson about being flexible… willing to change… into what God wants of us… not what we determine is good and right and apart convenient and profitable …. It’s a story about being “putty in God’s hands.”
When Jeremiah received this message from God, Old Testament Israel was anything but putty in God’s hands. They were getting lax about being God’s Holy People… set … living their lives differently… being a light in a dark and confusing world. They were doing their own thing. They were listening not to God, but to the voices around them… the customs, the religions. No longer was God defining who they were… the culture around them was defining them.
It was like that lump of clay on the potter’s wheel, the wheel turning… but instead of the Potter shaping it, it’s left to centrifugal force do the shaping… you can imagine what happens: pretty messy!
Jeremiah was a prophet. A prophet’s job was to call people back to being faithful to God. That’s why Jesus was also called a prophet, because he called people back to God… back to being Holy … different from the every-which-wayness of the world.
Jeremiah saw trouble ahead if folks didn’t “get back on the wheel” and let God reform them. Half of Israel had already been conquered by the Babylonians and taken away. Jeremiah saw a direct connection… that somehow, if things didn’t change, God was going to get their attention in some not so comforting ways.
Being at the Potter’s house, though Jeremiah saw hope. They could change… they just had to be willing to listen to the right voice… be shaped by the right hands… but it was their choice…. Their decision to start living out.
XX I picked up a book at my mother-in-law’s house… it’s the one by John Stossel, Give Me A Break! In it, he tells of all the whistle-blowing he has done on people, their products and policies that are flat out lies, illegal, and wrong. Over and over again he thinks there will be the Perry Mason moment of repentance, confession, apology…. But over and over again, his truth-telling is met with a “so?”
That’s the centrifugal force of our world… our society. That’s what’s shaping us, our children, our public policy. Pretty messy.
This is such a rich picture of Jeremiah at the potter’s house… watching the potter with mud up to her elbows. Perhaps as Jeremiah watched, he remembered the story of Creation… when God the potter took dirt and water, and with muddy hands and made Ada’m… and Adama’… formed them with love… and breathed life into them.
XX When my children were young, we had lots of stories on record and tape. We played them over and over, and we all ended up memorizing them… especially the ones that also had a song.
One of those is the story of The Gingerbread Man. A little old woman carefully makes a gingerbread man cookie with two legs and two arms, a head and a face. She bakes him, but as she takes the pan out of the oven, he jumps up and runs away singing:
“Run, run, as fast as you can…
You can’t catch me,
I’m the Gingerbread Man!”
He’s very clever, and avoids lots of mishaps, extolling his independence and intelligence until he has to cross a river.
He can’t do that on his own, so a fox offers to take him across, and eats him on the way!
Jeremiah sees God’s people asserting their independence and individuality… and he sees a fox up ahead only too happy to gobble them up.
If Jeremiah were to step into our world… what might he observe about our faithfulness? If we are a people “called out” to be holy … to be disciples of Jesus … to live his words … to build his reality here … how are we doing?
And the we is Christianity .. not just Trinity or First Church… not Methodists or Baptists … but the People called after Jesus’ Name … we who bear the name of Christian? What do people observe about us? Are we all on the same page? Do we war within our ranks? Do we politicize our faith? What are our different agendas and what games might we be playing?
It is so easy to miss the Message. Like the Gingerbread Man, we jump off to assert our freedom and individuality and end up where we didn’t want to be.
The Message is the so-contrary-to-what-seems right direction of Jesus. Like Alice Through the Looking Glass, Jesus’ directives make no sense in the prevailing culture.
When we keep trying to put our logical or practical or relevant spin on discipleship, we end up not centered on the Potter’s wheel, but rather tossed and disoriented by culture’s centrifugal force.
There is much in “cultural” Christianity now that says if we “act” in certain ways, make the right rules and exclusions… vote in a certain way… then we will go back to being a blessed nation.
That’s not what Jeremiah or Jesus were about. Their message was about the heart. In chapter 31, Jeremiah goes on to talk about the future day when we would act from the heart … know from the heart … not from rules on paper, the majority vote, or emotional manipulation.
Jesus lived the Different Way… and died the Different Way. He didn’t just open heaven.. he opened our eyes to the heart of God …. To those muddy hands of love trying to keep us centered on the wheel, so we can become not just pretty to look at…. But useful! But it takes working and reworking and remolding and starting over. What we will be is still in the eye of the Potter.
Today we celebrate Holy Communion. Think about what we use… grape juice and bread.
But think about where the grape juice and the bread came from… it’s been a journey for both. The grape was yanked from its vine, crushed, strained, heated, bottled … just to get to this cup (wine has an even longer, more arduous journey!).
Think about the bread taken from kernel to grinding, mixing, pounding and shaping and baking… to this plate. All to remind us that God is still intimately involved in our lives… loving us… wooing us… changing us… breaking down… centering … fashioning and building us up in a totally new way, for a new life, for a new purpose.
How do we respond to this gift? Will we stay in tight bundles of self-defined religions and independent ideologies.. or are we open … moldable … willing to be re-formed, re-newed,
re-deemed?
Jesus himself said, “This is my body, broken for you!”
Each moment of every day we choose: to be molded by the outside pressures of centrifugal force … or centered in the God’s muddy hands of love.
Amen. (Change My Heart O God)
The Rev. Pamela Nelson-Munson
Trinity United Methodist Church
Eugene, Oregon