The Clay of Our Lives

We all live with limitations. Some limitations are physical, some emotional, and some mental. We face limitations of age, opportunity, and talents. Most of us do not like encountering our limitations. It is no wonder that we have limitations. Our bodies are made of clay. Few facts are as amazing, humbling, frustrating, than that simple understanding that we are made of earth. Near Lake Huron, there is a small river that for a stretch has a clay bottom. It is slippery to walk on. If we took some of that clay home and mixed it with enough water, four parts clay and six parts water, the same percentage of clay and water in our bodies, it would still just be clay and water, and yet here we are in our bodies, capable of doing wonderful feats like we saw in the Rio Olympics—well at least some of you are more able to do that than the rest of us. We are, as Psalm 139 says, “fearfully and wonderfully made.” We are capable of creating amazing things, like this beautiful church, and having wonderful, inspiring ideas. It is humbling to acknowledge that we are all made of clay.

Most of us do not want to be creatures of clay. We want to be gods. As we get older we have plenty of indicators as our bodies find new ways to prove we are made of clay not steel. A woman went to her ear doctor who recommended that she get a particular kind of hearing aid. “I have it myself,” the doctor said, “I recommend it highly.” “What kind is it?” the woman asked. The doctor looked at his watch and said, “It’s almost 11:30.” Over and over we reach limits on what we can do, on what we cannot overcome. It is humbling, yet it is important, because it puts us in the right way of thinking about our relationship with God.

In our text for today, Jeremiah is told by God to go down to the house where the potter lives. God is going to give him a sermon to preach and God needs Jeremiah first to watch the potter work with clay. It was easy for anyone to spot the potter’s house. If you could not smell the fire from the kiln, you could see out in front all manner of clay pots, jars, jugs, cups, bowls, and plates. Jeremiah watched the potter sitting outside at a wheel. I recall an aproned woman in Albuquerque using a wheel that probably was not much changed in design from Jeremiah’s time. It was really two wheels, attached by an axel and turned on end. A lump of wet clay was turning on the top wheel, and below she would regularly kick a big second wheel, to keep up the top wheel turning. Her wet hands were on either side of the turning clay and the lump becomes first an even globe, and then a thick bowl, and then gradually the intended shape, a tall vase. But on this particular day, as Jeremiah watched the potter work, the vase collapsed, it folded in upon itself and flew apart. The potter stopped the wheel, gathered the clay into another ball, and began again.

God says to Jeremiah, cannot I do the same thing with the nation of Israel? If Israel does not behave according to my will, do I not have the right to destroy it and make something else? If I choose to bless it, and it ignores my blessing, cannot I change my mind and reject it? God tells Jeremiah, say to my people, “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.” (Jer. 18:11.)

This is a very strong, very stern warning that is hard to hear. God can destroy those who do evil. God will not tolerate injustice. But there is a sweet side to it as well. God is the potter who makes beautiful things, and can bring forth goodness even out of poor clay.

Some of us might wish that God were a little more obvious about destroying the clay pots gone wrong and a little more obvious about remodeling the old clay into something new. In early August I had the privilege of being the daily preacher at Camp Berwick in Nova Scotia. The overall theme for the camp was a study of the Truth And Reconciliation Commission Report dealing with the suffering of Canada’s First Nations peoples caused by the residential schools. We heard painful videotaped testimony from some survivors of the schools, how the schools were places of punishment and terror. One man spoke through his tears remembering that he was four years old, and the government agents required his parents to put him on a plane to a distant school where he would be raised to fit in white culture. He remembered being on the plane looking out the window to see his parents standing there, and they did not, they could not, fight to get him off, and he hated his parents for it. The children who survived the violence and illness were made to feel worthless, their identities were removed from them, they were not allowed to speak their languages, wear their traditional clothes, or to talk with their siblings if they were in the same school. The only parenting that many of the survivors knew was what they had received in the schools, so what did they pass on to their children but the same abuse they had received. One survivor said he was afraid show any affection like a hug to his own daughters when they were growing up in case that would make him one of them, one of the pedophiles who abused him in the schools. One woman said she was glad for alcohol, it was the only thing that prevented her from killing herself. So where was God when all that was going on? Where is God now for all those aboriginal peoples who were taught to believe they are worth nothing, good only as second class citizens?  

Most of us have not been through that kind of devastating experience. Yet we can relate to their stories because we too might ask where God was at certain moments in our own lives when terrible things happened, when circumstances radically changed our lives, and things seemed to fall apart. You and I ask the same kinds of questions of our own lives or those around us, when our being made of clay is all too obvious, and our lives have fallen apart. Perhaps it was through addictions, or accidents, or betrayal by a partner or a friend.  We are left picking up the pieces of our lives. In these circumstances, we may be all too aware of the clay of our bodies, and not enough aware of God as the potter.

But God is the potter, continually at work, remolding the clay, making a new creation. Jeremiah is a prophet, God’s mouthpiece. God told Jeremiah when he was just a boy, “You shall speak whatever I command you.” (1:7.) “Now I have put my words in your mouth.” (1:9.) God sends him over and over to the people to save them from the consequences of their actions, to get them to change. In the instance of our text it is with the message that they are the clay but God is the Potter. It is just one of many vivid images God uses to get the people’s attention. God give Jeremiah object lessons for the people of Israel. Jeremiah buries a beautiful, expensive, woven linen belt to show it decays like Israel has decayed. He smashes a clay jar to show what will happen, to them. He passes a cup to the leaders of the nations, and tells them to drink deep of God’s anger at them for what they have done. He takes a yoke used to harness animals, and puts it over his own head to symbolize what would happen to Israel at the hands of the Babylonian invaders. Over and over God uses object lessons to get the attention of the people and over and over they won’t listen, or won’t change their ways. The people are taken captive but it is not for lack of God trying to save them. After the Babylonians do invade and take them away to present day Iraq, God then gives Jeremiah other messages of how God will rescue them, God is trustworthy, God has not forgotten.

Why does any of this matter? That happened thousands of years ago. Here is the reason. The God who is revealed in Scripture is the same God who is present to us. God is still acting to save us, to guide us in loving ways. I like to think that God has been active in the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has gone across the country north, south, east, and west and listened to different tribes. I like to think that the Commission is God at work, bringing good out of evil. Marie Wilson, one of the three commissioners, was with us at Camp Berwick. She lives in Yellowknife and is married to a residential school survivor. They were married for 15 years before he told her any of the details of what happened to him. Like so many other survivors, they have been afraid to speak because when they spoke when they attended the schools, no one believed them or they would be punished. When Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a formal apology on behalf of the Canadian Government for our role in the residential schools, Marie asked her husband where he would like to be to hear it. He said at their home, surrounded by family, watching it on TV. Immediately after the apology, he said he wanted to be at the community center where so many people had gathered. When they arrived an elder was just rising to speak. He was a hunter, who looked like he lived in the bush. Most of the people thought that he was going to comment on the apology. Instead, he spoke into the microphone these powerful words, “I want to speak to my wife. I apologize to you for all the abuse you suffered and our children suffered at my hands because of what I received at the residential school.” For Marie what was so powerful about this was this elder claiming his own role in the apology, as Marie challenges we all must do. We all need to find out how we can treat First Nations people as our brothers and sisters. Such action is the Spirit of God at work.

How do we handle the sorrow and brokenness in our own lives? Where is God in that? Perhaps there are two parts to the answer. The first is that we admit that we are just clay, and God has made us as we are. The second part is in the basic recognition that we remember that it is not all just up to us. God is the Potter, and we are the clay. God is to be trusted. God still acts to save us, guide us, mold us. God molds us with beautiful music, with words from the Bible, with worship, through the Holy Spirit teaching us how to pray, as the Gospel of John records. God molds us through our encounters with people and creation. And through this all, God is making us into a new creation, where we will not know the ravages of time, and will dwell with God in glory. Near the middle of Jeremiah, after all the warnings to Israel go unheeded, God decides to do whatever is needed. God promises a new covenant. God remolds even the covenant. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people…. I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” (31:33-34.) We understand that New Covenant to have come in Jesus Christ, who became clay for us, and took our guilt from us, giving us his Spirit to accomplish God’s will.

I love the story of the women two runners in the 5000 meter qualifying heat at the Olympics. As they were running they brushed each other in the race and they both fell, but the New Zealander, Nikki Hamblin, stayed down, dazed by the fall and out of medal contention. The American, Abbey Agostino, started running again but looked back and instead of running on, stopped, and went back to help her up. “Get up, we have to finish this. Yup, yup, you’re [all] right. This is the Olympic Games. We have to finish this.”

That is the God we see in the book of Jeremiah. God saw we were after all, just clay, and after all the urging us on, saw that we had fallen and came back to pick us up, that we might finish the race, sharing in God’s glory. “Behold I make all things new.” (Rev. 21:5.) Amen.