“In The Potter’s Hands”

Jeremiah 18:1-11

A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

August 12, 2007

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

            When this scripture passage came up in the lectionary, I thought it was a great opportunity to speak a bit about potters.  The favorite in our house is St. Harry of Potter.  We read the final installment on our way to and from Peace Camp this past month.  And yet, the events of this past week and a half have shifted the focus. 

The scripture speaks of a potter forming and reforming a pot.  I think that’s an appropriate metaphor for the failing and rebuilding of the 35W bridge.  Will everything be a metaphor for the bridge?  Or will the bridge be a metaphor for everything?  Maybe so, right now, as we continue to make sense of our lives as Minnesotans.

God is said to be a potter, having formed the first creatures out of the clay of the earth.  If God is a potter, then how would God be forming and reforming us in the aftermath of the past week and a half?  That’s what I want to look at this morning.

When Jeremiah was called to the ministry, he was told by God to be a prophet to the nations: to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant (Jeremiah 1:10).  He preached in the 6^th century before Jesus when the nation of Judah was conquered by Babylon and sent into exile.  Jeremiah’s task was to give the Hebrew people one last chance before the nation fell.  He railed against those who preached “Peace, Peace, when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14, 8:11).  He names the way religion had been compromised by commerce and politics.  He said that the temple, built as a house of prayer had become a den of thieves” (Jeremiah 7:11).  He had to say the hard words that the kingdom of Judah was structurally deficient. 

You need to get right with God or the walls of the temple are going to come a tumbling down.  They didn’t like what he had to say.  He was annoyingly belligerent.  He didn’t make good PR.   Initially the people mocked him.  Then they ignored him.  By the 18^th chapter, Jeremiah was getting fed up with being ignored.  He knew that ignoring the writing on the wall doomed the people.  So he tried speaking in metaphor.  Maybe they would listen then.  Many people were potters and they knew that spinning a pot was hard work. 

When a potter sees a flaw in the clay, she gives up on the original pot and starts making something else.  You can’t make a good pot out of flawed material.  You can make something else, but not a really strong pot. 

The passage from Jeremiah 18 is cause and effect oracle.  If only the people turned away from their evil ways, God would build them into a fortified city.  But if you continue on in your ways, the sad prophet told the people that their shaky structure of government was going to fall and they would be sent into exile. 

The temple of Jerusalem would in fact be pulled down during Jeremiah’s time and the people were without the foundation they had for their religion.   After Jeremiah’s time, the presence of God needed to be again in the midst of the wilderness and not in some human-made structure. 

            Recognizing the flaws in the clay or the steel or the concrete, or the inspections, or in the funding is what is occupying our minds, as bodies continue to be pulled from the wreckage of the bridge.  If those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, then it is our job to learn from the history of this place.

Jeremiah was dealing with people who were resistant to a good purpose.  We too are resistant to keeping our infrastructure solid, or at least paying for it.  If we were content to make due with a flawed pottery, then we have found the results of such folly.

God is portrayed in the scripture as threatening to destroy the people just as a potter smashes a pot.  But God gives them an opportunity to turn from their wicked ways before smashing the pot.  We know that most people didn’t listen to lonely old grumpy Jeremiah.  And their great homeland was littered with the pottery shards of all of their broken dreams.

I am not about to say that God punished us with this bridge collapse for any moral wrongdoing.  But I think we need to pay attention to the cause and effect that is the main point of this scripture.  Whether the construction caused the bridge collapse or not, we know that too many of our bridges are structurally deficient across this nation. 

If we do not attend to them, and that means making it a monetary priority, then we are in danger of another disaster.  And as we look at this bridge as a metaphor, then there are flaws in the clay all around us:

• Immigrants are treated as second class citizens because of their race or their language.
• LGBT folks don’t have hate crime legislation passed on their behalf.
• Mediocrity seems to be good enough when it comes to investing in the education infrastructure.
• Even though our inner-cities are structurally deficient with poverty, crime and drug activity, we expect the students to perform as well as suburban kids.
• We somehow have enough money to build not one, not two, but three stadiums in Minneapolis while we close our libraries and choose to inspect rather than repair our crumbling bridges.
• The rich continue to get richer and the poor continue to get poorer but we only recognize the foreclosure crisis once the stock market begins to teeter.
• This is a wake-up call.  And we need to remember that there is a long way to go from here. 

We need to look at the structurally deficient things in our lives.  We need to attend to those things that need to be mended.  We need to do as the Prophet Isaiah said and repair the breaches in our world and restore the streets in which to live (Isaiah 58: 12).

We need to repair the breaches in our lives.  We need to address what is structurally deficient and we need to remember what is solid.

First, this community is solid.  We have held each other close.  We have heard each other’s stories.  We have sung and prayed for the victims.  We have reflected on our very lives.  We have connected with family.  My Mom was in town this last week.  My Dad is here this morning.  Both my brother and I are in shows this weekend.  It’s a long drive and he can only stay for about 48 hours.  When I asked him why he made the plans to come, he said, “Well, a bridge came down in Minneapolis and I realized that life is short.”

 We need to continue to ask the right questions.  I’m not talking about the bridge blame dance.  I’m talking about the questions:  How can we best respond to this crisis?  How can we be present to the victims?  How can we facilitate transportation?  How can we support businesses and people affected by the collapse?  How can we remember the homeless people who lost their shelter from the storm when the bridge fell and other bridges came under such scrutiny?  How can we be a better community to each other and to all of Minneapolis?  How can we make sure this never happens again?

Where is God in the midst of it all?  I believe God is in the midst of all of our questioning and our responses.  God is here as we fashion ourselves as new people, with strong clay forged in honest and heartfelt compassion.

The wheel in the great potter’s shop is spinning and remaking each of us.  

God is looking at the clay and inspecting it for cracks.  Our job is to join God in that examination.  Clay is the strong material needed for a healthy structure.  It is the foundation.  Before we build anything, we have to start out with a firm foundation: solid, flawless clay.

In a sense this means connecting with our core.  Our core is strengthened by God, family and community.

Jeremiah said that all of the problems of Judah could be traced to the way people had lost sight of God.  Now, I’m not saying that we all need to believe the same things and I’m certainly not saying that the bridge collapse is because of our secularity.  But God’s purpose, the highest biblical ethic, is caring for the people of God.  It’s about looking out NOT for number one, but for the other six billion. 

We need to remember that God’s purposes are worked out in when we treat each other with respect, justice, mercy and compassion.  When we do this, we attend to everything that is deficient and we continue to build a strong foundation.  That’s why the Sabbath is here, so that we will have at least a weekly discipline of thinking beyond ourselves.

Family is the second thing that binds us to our core.  It is the clay from which we are formed.  No doubt, our families can be plenty flawed.  But for better or worse, they are part of who we are.  We need to celebrate our families and even do the hard work of reconciling with estranged members.  Life is too short and we need to not be stuck in regret.

Family can be a great source of connection and hope in the midst of trouble.  I have seen it in Betty and Lillian’s family these past few weeks.  I saw it in our family’s Cleveland and Kentucky connections back in July.  Even in the most estranged families, there is a concern and hope for our mutual well-being.

Finally, our community may well be the family of choice for many people.  These are the people who pick you up, who listen to you, who grieve and dream and hope with you.  The people of Minneapolis have been that community of hope for a lot of us.  And this is strengthening clay that binds us all together and builds a firm foundation of a brighter and stronger future.

Friends, we are in the hands of the great potter who wants the very best for us.  May we continue to be good clay.  May that clay, forged in faith, family and community spin into a shining vessel of hope and security.  May it inspire us to think, dream and act as though we are continually being formed by the hands of the great potter.