“In the Potter’s Hands...”

A sermon based upon Jeremiah 18: 1-12 
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time,  July 8, 2018 

(6-12) Sermon Series: Jeremiah: Prophet to the Nations

When I was in High School, my favorite part of my day was art class.   My talent was pencil work, especially drawing portraits.  I also did quite a bit of painting with oils and acrylics, but my teacher, Mrs. Crawford, introduced us to many other methods and mediums. 

One day, when I entered the room, there was a potter’s wheel placed in the corner of the room, but no one was allowed to go near it.   Several months later an older student came to our class to give us a demonstration.  That was the first time I’d ever seen a potter at work on the wheel.  As I watched, and after we got to try it ourselves, I realized that making pottery wasn’t just an art form, it was a learned skill that took a lot practice to perfect.  I also learned that even a skilled potter is constantly challenged by the quality of the clay.  Even the most skilled potter will have to start over, when flaws are discovered in the clay.

In one of the vivid images in all Scripture, the prophet Jeremiah likens the molding and turning of clay pots to the molding and making of the people of God.  Just like the quality of the pot depends more on the quality of the clay than the skill of the potter, so the making of God’s people depends most on the willingness of a people to be shaped and molded by God’s will and purposes.   In other words, God’s people do not have to be perfect, but they do have to be willing to allow God to use them and to perfect them, as they learn his purposes and his will.

GO DOWN TO THE POTTER’S HOUSE (2)

So, what does it mean, when Jeremiah was instructed by the Lord to “go down to the potter’s house”?   What was God trying to teach the prophet?  

To help us begin to think about a couple of examples from common life:   “A young mechanic was doing his studies about engine repair. He was in the final stages and was discussing with his instructor what he felt was the most important thing he needed to learn to master the engine. He told his instructor that he had read all of the relevant material on the internal combustion engine, the rotary engine, and turbochargers. He stated that he knew that the engine has nine systems, just like the human body: the oil system, the cooling system, the fuel system, the exhaust system, the electrical system, the drive train system, the steering system, the suspension system, and the braking system. He told his instructor that, if needed, he could enumerate the laws of thermodynamics and thermal electric power. The instructor reached out his hand, and the young mechanic, thinking that he was about to be congratulated, quickly placed his hand in the instructor's hands. As the instructor grasped his hand, he felt the fingers to see if there were any calluses, and he felt the palms, and they were as soft as a baby's skin. The instructor grasped the young mechanic's hands, briskly pulled him close, and whispered in his ear. "If you really want to be a mechanic, let me give you a piece of advice. Go down to the auto shop and wrap your hands around an engine, and stick your fingers in some grease, and then you will know what it means to become a master mechanic."

A young college student wanted to know everything she needed to be a master in addressing

social problems. As she met with her advisor, she discussed her training in sociology and the

grades she had obtained in human psychology. She told him that she understood Freud's theory of personality, and that she could identify and describe Erik Erickson’s eight-stages of human growth and development: she knew about trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame and doubt, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. role confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generatively vs. stagnation, and integrity vs. despair. The advisor looked in the young woman's eyes and he saw the intensity of her dedication and the sincerity of her commitment. Then he took out his notepad and wrote down these words. "You have learned all the theory, and you have received all the training. The only thing that you need is to come in contact with human problems. Go down to the neighborhood center and touch the lives of boys and girls, men and women, and after you give them all that you have in you, then they will give you all that you need to address human problems” (Lord, Send The Wind by James McLemore)

In this text, God was preparing Jeremiah to receive his message, and the first thing God told him was you have to "go down...." In order to understand the message Jeremiah would have to "go down” ... go down from his high studies, go down from his priestly position, go down from his isolation, go down to see an example from everyday life.   Sometimes, as Christians too, when we are seeking to understand how to live the Christian life may try understand it by doing more than reading, talking, discussing, or studying about it.  What we really need to do is to go down ... go down talk to our neighbor, go down to a hospital, go down to a jail,  or out on the road.  Until we come ‘down’ to get up and close and personal to what is really happening right now, outside of our own world of ideas, we may not know what it means to know and do God’s will.

When Jeremiah was preparing to speak God’s message, the reason God chose the potter’s house was partly because you couldn't cook a meal unless you went down to the potter's house. You couldn't carry water from a well unless you went down to the potter's house. To beautify your house, to plant flowers in a vase, you had to go down to the potter's house. And God's message to Jeremiah was, If you want to understand who I am, Jeremiah, you have to “go down to the potter's house."

The potter's house was called the Bayith Ytsar, the house of molding or making, because the potter would take the clay and mold it and make it, and give form to that which had no form. When God made humans, the description given in Genesis 2:7 is that the Lord God formed the man.  This same word "form," in the Hebrew, ytzar, means that God took clay, like a potter, and molded the man into God's own image, just as the potter molds and makes the clay into pottery.  This is another reason, Jeremiah was to ‘go down to the potter’s house’.  Jeremiah was to remind the people not only that God gave them life, but that God had given form and purpose to their lives too.

THE VESSEL WAS SPOILED… (4)

When Jeremiah reached the potter's house, he saw the potter working at the wheel, but the pot that he was working on was marred, or ‘spoiled’, so the potter took the clay and reformed it into a new pot. God told Jeremiah, ‘My people are just like that clay. They are marred, spoiled and broken, but they refuse to be remade’ (v.10).  The skilled potter can take old clay and make something new out of it, but human clay, given a mind of its own, must be willing to submit to the will, way, and work of the potter.   God’s people must not only ‘go down to the potter’s house’, but like clay they must submit and yield to the renewing and reshaping work of the potter.

While it is normal, if not natural, for the clay to become marred or messed up from time to time, it only becomes a problem when the ‘clay’ becomes hardened, unbending and inflexible.  This is the problem Jeremiah sees with Judah and Jerusalem.  The ‘nation’ has become a people who ‘turn to evil and will not obey’ (v. 10).   The New Living Translation puts it rather directly, interpreting the people’s response to Jeremiah’s message: "Don't waste your breath. We will continue to live as we want to, stubbornly following our own evil desires." (Jer. 18:12 NLT).  It’s not that Judah is in the ‘mud’, but that they are stuck in the mud and want to continue being mud, without any desire to be reshaped or renewed by God’s will or purpose.

Can’t we become the say way?   I know that each of us are already fixed in our ways and fixed in our habits. I know that we are used to doing things the way that we do them and saying things the way that we want to say them. And I know that if we don't want to change, nobody is going to make us change very easily.  But still, knowing us like I do, I’ve still got this message for us, for you: "Go down to the potter's house ...” and take another look at how the potter works and reworks the clay over and over.   The potter does not magically wave his hand and a vessel is complete, but it is a process; a progression which includes trials, errors, failures, and restarts.  Now these flaws have nothing to do with the lack of skill with the potter, but the potter patiently guides the clay through ‘thick and thin’, through start and restart, until the vessel is perfected and made complete.   In the same way, Jeremiah tells God’s people, God is like a skilled potter, sitting at the wheel of life, ready to change and rearrange us, if we are willing to ‘go down to the potter’s house’.   

We all need to let God help us, because all of us, at times, have been broken by life, and marred by wrong choices, and damaged by situations, until our vessel can’t hold life within us anymore.  If this is you, I've got a message of hope: In your heart "Go down to the potter's house." The Lord is ‘down’ there, and he can take your brokenness and fix it, or your marred condition, and heal it.  It all starts when you are willing to "go down to the potter's house."

HE REWORKED IT …. (4)

When Jeremiah sees the potter at work with the spoiled, marred clay, he especially notices how he ‘reworked’ it into something new.   This is the hopeful word Jeremiah wanted to bring but Judah was not ready or willing to hear.  What Jeremiah saw was that when God is the ‘potter’ and you are his ‘clay’, there is always hope.   No matter how dark or desperate life has become, it is never too late to begin again.  You can always start over with God as long as you are willing to for God to start over with you.  You may be thinking, "I've really messed up my life", but it doesn't have to stay messed up.   You may be thinking, "I've married the wrong person." God can make that person the right person by making you the right person. You may be saying, "I've gone too far." No matter how far you have gone, God can bring you back.

Thomas Edison was a great inventor, but when he was 67 years of age, he had a horrendous fire that burned up everything he owned in New Jersey. Every asset he had which at that time in 1914 was worth about $2 million dollars was totally uninsured. All of his experiments, all of his records, all of his equipment, all of his work, and all of his labor had gone up in smoke.

Edison had a 24-year-old son that came out to where the fire was roaring and burning up his entire life's work. The two of them tried to stop the fire, but they couldn't do it. The son said, "I hated even looking at my dad. I just knew he would say that his life and his work were going up in flames." He said, "My dad was out there. The wind was blowing in his hair. His face was all red from the flames. He was pouring sweat and I didn't know what he was going to say to me."  I couldn't believe what I heard. He said, "Son, go get your mother quick. She has never seen anything like this!" He went to get his mother just so she could see the fire. Later on this son said, "My dad was out there the next morning kicking through the embers and he said to me, 'Son, there is something wonderful about a fire like this.'" The son looked at him in amazement and said, "Dad, what in the world could be so wonderful about a fire like this?" He said, "Son, it just kind of seems to burn up all of your mistakes and failures and give you a brand new fresh start."

Three months later that company presented to the world the first phonograph, because here was a man who didn't see his problems or his failures as the end, but simply an opportunity to start new and fresh with new beginning (As told by James Merritt, in a sermon, New Hope, at esermons.com). 

LIKE CLAY… YOU ARE IN MY HANDS (6)

I don’t want to over-glamorize or universalize the emotional strength of Thomas Edison.   It is beyond doubt that Edison was an extraordinary, talented, and unusual person, but what we need to also understand from Jeremiah is that Israel’s God is no ordinary God; who is no ordinary reservoir of truth, hope, and promise either.   The God who told Jeremiah to ‘go down to the potter’s house’ is the kind of God who declared to his people, “Can I not do with you, o house of Israel, just as this potter has done?” (v.6).  When Jeremiah was sent to the potter’s house, it was still not too late, for even though the clay was spoiled and marred, she was not beyond repairing and reshaping.  “I will change my mind about the disaster I intended to bring…” (v. 8b), God said.   “If that nation turns from it’s evil…” (v. 8a), everything can be reworked.  With you in my will and in my hands, this great coming catastrophe could be avoided, is the message Jeremiah wanted to bring: “Just like the clay in the potter’s hands, so you are in my hand, O house of Israel” (v. 6).   Will you allow me to remold, reshape, and rework you, my people, God said?  

This was how Jeremiah put God’s question to Israel, but it is still God’s question to us too: Will we allow God our potter, and are we willing to be his clay?  Will we, as the song says, be ‘yielded and still’ allowing God to ‘have his own way’ in us, in you?   It’s in the last line of that old hymn, that determines of what happens next.  It’s where the writer says to the LORD of his heart: “Have Thy Own Way Lord, Have Thy Own Way. Hold over my being absolute sway, Filled with Thy spirit till all can see Christ only always living in me.”  We can’t be reworked or reshaped until God has ‘absolute sway’ in our lives so that Christ is ‘ONLY always living in me’

There's a great story that illustrates how we trust our lives into the potter’s hands, that was once told about noted thinker and inventor Albert Einstein. Einstein was on a train leaving Princeton Junction in New Jersey, heading north.  When the conductor came to his seat, Einstein was unable to find his ticket. He searched through all his pockets and looked in his briefcase, becoming extremely disturbed. The conductor tried to comfort him, saying, "Dr. Einstein, don't worry about the ticket. I know who you are and you don't have to present your ticket to me. I trust that you purchased a ticket."

About twenty minutes later, the conductor came down the aisle of the train once again and saw Einstein, still searching widely for the misplaced ticket. The conductor again said to him, "Dr. Einstein, please don't worry about the ticket. I know who you are!"

At that, Einstein stood and said in a gruff voice, "Young man, I know who I am, but I am trying to find my ticket because I want to know where I am going!"

I love that story because to one degree or another, we all want to know where we're going. We want to know what's next. We want to know that everything is going to be okay. In order to reach such semblance of certitude, we often decide that we need to rely on our own ingenuity. We decide that the only one we can trust to create our future oneself.  

But what we need to understand is that God’s redeeming power is only released into our lives, when we fully yield and trust ourselves as clay in God’s hands and allow Christ to live in us.  Through, Jesus, God is like a potter working from the inside, reshaping our hearts by his reenergizing grace that will remake and reform us.  But for this to happen, we must humbly yield ourselves to God as pliable and bendable clay.   We must ‘trust’ that God knows who we are and where we are going.

There is an apt analogy of how Christ lives in us, to reshape and remake us, which is a story that originally came out of South Africa, entitled "The Parable of the Pencil"   The inventor of the pencil addressed his finished product as follows: "I want you to remember four things: First, your goodness or true worth is within you. Second, you'll need to be sharpened as you go through life. Third, you'll be in someone else's hand, otherwise you'll make an awful mess. Fourth, you'll be expected to leave a mark." (told by James A. Feehan). 

That’s not a bad way to get the point, and the main point Jeremiah saw was that God is the Potter, we are the clay. We spend so much of our lives – time, money, angst, energy - trying to shape our own lives.... But God knows who we really are, what’s inside of us, what we were created to be... and only God can shape us and challenge us and to lead us to live our best life.

 So, let me close with a statement Will Willimon once gave to his highly educated congregation: “Forgive me, and forgive the church, for sometimes implying that Jesus will make life easier for you, that Jesus will fix everything that’s wrong with you, that Jesus will put a little lilt in your voice and a little sunshine in your life. Chances are, he won’t. He can do even better than that: Jesus can make you a disciple””( William Willimon, Pulpit Resource, vol. 32, no. 3, edited by fte)

When Jeremiah says “he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.” (Jer. 18:4 NRS) since God is pure love, what is ‘good’ for him, is also ‘good for us’.  Will you allow God to have his way with you, so you can have your best life through him?  Amen.