Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Insights from Jeremiah: Clay in God’s Hands"

Text: Jeremiah 18:1-11

about the book of Jeremiah

is the way in which Jeremiah gets messages from God

through these astounding visual images.

Scattered throughout the book

are scenes like this:

"Hey, Jeremiah!"

"Yes, God?"

"Look over there and tell me what you see."

"Well, Lord, it looks like a pot about to boil over."

"Good, Jeremiah. Here’s what it means.

Now go and tell the people."

Boiling pots . . . almond branches . . . a hot wind . . .

a linen waistcloth . . . jars filled with wine . . .

a broken flask . . . potter and clay . . .

God uses these real-life objects and situations

to make the story real for Jeremiah

and to help him tell the story to the people.

Now I know,

it’s possible to stretch any analogy too far,

and I hope I won’t do that here.

But if we take some time to think about

what we heard this morning;

what it means if God is the potter and we are the clay,

some interesting possibilities begin to surface.

For instance,

kick in your imagination for a minute

and try to imagine,

what kind of pot God has been, or is,

shaping you to be.

Are you sturdy, or are you fragile?

Are you used for something

like carrying, or cooking, or pouring;

or are you more decorative,

to display the skill of your creator?

Are you shiny and new and freshly glazed,

or are you showing signs of use and wear?

Now, none of those is a bad choice!

The only question for which

we need to be sure we have a correct answer is:

did God make me this way,

or did I make me this way?

How many of you have ever tried to make a clay pot?

On a wheel, or with little snaky coils, or whatever . . . ?

It’s not easy, is it?!

At least, I’ve never found it to be.

Can’t quite seem to get the thing round . . .

or symmetrical . . . or smooth.

And even if you get the thing just like you want it,

it only takes one air bubble

in your pot or someone else’s,

to blow them all up during the firing process!

We learned that the hard way

in 8^th-grade Girl Scouts!

It’s not easy to work with and to shape the clay,

and get it to turn out

just the way you want it.

Imagine, then, how much more difficult it would be

if your clay had a mind of its own

and kept arguing with you

and fighting back.

You’re trying to make a nice tall vase

to put some of the flowers from your garden in.

And the clay refuses to build past a certain height.

"I’ve always thought of myself as short and round," it says.

"Can’t you make me that way?"

"Look," you explain patiently to the recalcitrant mud,

"I’ve made fifteen small round pots already.

See them over there on the windowsill?

What I need now is a tall vase

to put my chrysanthemums in."

"Not me," says the clay.

"I’m afraid of heights."

and it promptly collapses for the third time.

Now that’s a fairly ludicrous scene.

However, it is a not inaccurate description

of what God has to work with

when God tries to form and to shape us.

What happens when God is working

to form a Sunday school teacher,

and the clay decides to sprout golf clubs

and disappears on Sunday mornings?

I can think of a number of times

God has had to rework me –

and still does, of course –

but I’m thinking especially about early college years,

when I became aware for the first time

that God was shaping me to be a minister.

"Hold it just a minute," said I;

"there’s some mistake here.

Shouldn’t you be shaping me to be a lawyer?

My family is full of lawyers, as you know."

"No, dear," said God, and went on working.

"Yes!" I hollered, and did everything a piece of clay could think of

to shape myself how I wanted to be.

Well, you see how much good it did me.

God, who creates and forms us,

knows so much better than we do

what we are destined to be and where we are needed.

It is said that Michelangelo was such a great artist

that he could look at a block of marble

and see the statue that was inside,

waiting to be uncovered by his hammer and chisel.

God is the same way,

seeing all of us lumps of clay

and knowing how each needs to be formed and shaped

for its own good and for God’s glory.

Jeremiah sees this,

and he sees also that Jerusalem and its people

are a far cry from being who God intends them to be.

But along with this depressing news

he also sees good news:

It is never too late for God to reshape us

if we’re willing to let it happen.

And that’s true no matter how

we got misshapen in the first place.

Perhaps the easiest to see is

how we get misshapen by our own choices.

Like me telling God

to make me a lawyer instead.

Like the Sunday-school teacher

becoming a Sunday-morning golfer.

Many of us clay critters

get bumpy, and out-of-round, and asymmetrical,

because we’ve chosen to go off in our own direction

rather than the direction God has pointed us in.

That’s one reason we confess our sins

in worship every week.

It’s rare that even a day goes by

that we don’t do something, big or small,

that demonstrates how we think we know better than God

what shape our life should take.

We make choices that misshape us.

But all it takes is our invitation

for God to put us back on the wheel

and reshape us.

What is even better news, at times,

is that God can rework us

even if we got out of shape through no fault of our own.

For example:

if you have ever lost someone you love,

whether to death, or divorce, or something else . . .

you know how that feels like

someone kicked a big piece out of you

or broke several chunks off you.

God can rework and heal the damage, over time.

You won’t ever be the same clay pot

that you were before;

but neither will you be worse, or weaker,

or less than what you were.

You will simply be different

because you have loved,

and you have grieved.

Another example:

children who are abused begin their lives

warped and misshapen

by forces completely outside their control.

And though they often do a heroic job

of trying to reshape themselves

in order to survive,

complete healing usually requires

a lot of reworking at God’s hand.

When someone is hurt as a child,

their whole foundation has to be rebuilt;

and that’s a task only God can do adequately.

What good news it is to know

that God can heal us

from the damage that others do,

whether it’s minimal, or serious.

Interestingly, too,

God will sometimes reshape us

not because there’s anything wrong with

how we are now,

but because a situation has changed,

and God wants us to adapt to it.

For example,

some folks I knew in San Antonio;

I suspect I’ve told their story before,

because it seems so amazing to me:

He was an English professor at Trinity University;

she was a Christian Ed director at a Presbyterian Church.

They had two or three daughters, I forget.

Anyway, they were both successful in their work;

they did a good job raising the family,

and when the kids were grown,

God had something new that needed doing.

So Harry and Christina gave up

their secure, well-paying jobs;

they gave up their comfortable home in Alamo Heights,

and they went to Pakistan as missionaries,

and later to Romania.

God made them one shape

for the first part of their lives,

and that was exactly what they needed to be.

But then they were willing to be reshaped

to meet other needs that God had in mind.

One word of warning:

Being reshaped, and remade, even by God,

is always painful.

Sometimes a little, and sometimes a lot.

I don’t know why it has to be that way,

but it is.

Of course, it can also be joyful at the same time!

Because we know that what is to come

is better than what is now.

God wants to shape us

in God’s own image . . .

for God’s purpose,

and for our renewal.

Praise be to God!

Amen.

© 2004 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)