Jeremiah 18:1-6
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, “Can I not do with you, house of Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, house of Israel.”
Freedom to be Broken
When I was in College, I took a pottery class. During this class, I became intimately familiar with clay. I became familiar with all of its little intricacies… I learned how stubborn it could be… and I learned just how much work it really took… to make a pot. The absolute most difficult thing about this entire class was working on the pottery wheel.
How many of you have ever worked on a pottery wheel. It is not easy. The very first time I sat down, I took a lump of clay and put it down on the wheel… I stepped on the foot pedal… and the clay flew off sideways and hit the guy next to me. Fortunately… he laughed!
I learned very quickly in that class that making a pot was hard. I learned that there is a lot involved in the process of making a pot. There is a lot you have to think about as a potter, a lot that you have to do make sure your pot succeeds. The process of working clay into pottery is truly a lot more detailed and complicated than many of us know.
It is a long process of working, shaping, baking, painting, and re-baking the clay. But even more amazing… that is only half of it. Before the clay can ever be worked by our hands… the clay itself needs to be prepared.
The clay that comes out of the earth is very raw and filled with imperfections. If you were to take clay right out of the ground, form it and fire it… most of it would either crumble or explode because the imperfections inside of it. In its natural state… clay is not ready to be made into anything.
The clay must be filtered, softened, and left for a long while to resettle and become the smooth and pliable clay that you and I would recognize. Then it is placed on a table and beaten with a wooden mallet. The Potter does this to remove any air bubbles that might be trapped in the clay. If he doesn’t, the air bubble will form a pocket that will produce a weak spot and cause the vessel to be fragile and unusable, or in extreme cases… explode when it is being fired in the kiln.
Clay in its original state is worthless to work with. In its natural state… clay is not ready to be made into anything. Now… in our Old Testament Scripture today… the analogy is spelled out for us quite clearly. All throughout the bible this same illustration smacks us in the face… brothers and sisters… we are the clay, and God is the potter.
Like the clay, we are worthless in our natural condition – in our natural state… we are not ready to be made into anything… however God is able to see the vessels that we can become, therefore, he begins the very long process that will bring us to a place of usefulness. He begins the way any potter begins with clay… by digging us out and washing us clean.
Just like any potter… if during the spinning process… the pot becomes mis-shaped, the Potter does not throw the clay away and start fresh with a new piece. How could he? He has already invested too much time in salvaging the clay from the soil and preparing it for use. He is a very patient Potter, always seeing the finished work of art before it is actually completed. He is willing to wait on the clay… always working with it and not against it to bring it to the place the potter wants it to be.
That is the main lesson of our scripture text today. God took Jeremiah, the young leader to see the potter’s shop. He witnessed the failing of the clay, the misshapenness and imperfections, and he saw the potter instinctively reach down and reshape that flawed clay. The clay would rebel time after time and go its own way… but the potter did not give up on it… he kept working with it, kept building it up, and kept picking it up every time it fell.
The potter stops for nothing… no matter how much we resist… no matter how much we rebel… no matter how much we want to go our own way… the potter does not throw us away… he continues to work with us… always working to bring us to the place that he has called us to go. He knows that in time we will be made into something beautiful.
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Once there were two parents in a gift shop looking for a birthday present for their daughter. Suddenly the mother spotted a beautiful vase, “Look at this lovely piece of work”, she says to her husband. He picks it up and says you’re right, this is one of the loveliest vases I have ever seen.
At that point something remarkable happened… something that only happens in children’s bookw. The vase began to talk. “Thank you for the compliment, but I wasn’t always beautiful.” Instead of being surprised that the vase can talk, the father asks it, “What do you mean when you say you weren’t always beautiful?” “Well,” says the vase, “once I was just an ugly soggy lump of clay. But then one day some man dug me out of the ground and took me back to his shop. He spent a very long time picking out all the parts debris inside of me, cleaning me, and preparing me. When I had sat for a very long time, he picked me up and began to work me, turn me, and fold me. It was very uncomfortable, but every time he folded me I became more solid. Then he started to poke me and punch me until I hurt all over, his hands stretched me and molded me, a very… very painful process. I resisted him for a very long time… he would pull left and I would flop right… he would pull up and I would sit down… I don’t know how many times he had to pick me up off the wheel to start all over.
Finally, I began to let him work with me as I started to understand there was some sort of purpose behind it. I allowed his hands to make me into a vessel. All of the potter’s work was going to be tested very soon as I was going to have to face the extreme heat of the potter’s kiln… with all that the potter had done for me… I should be strong enough to face the fire.
The potter put me into the furnace where it got hotter and hotter until I couldn’t stand it. I could feel myself hardening all throughout as my loose clay particles began to transform into something solid… into something hard and permanent. Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more, the man took me out of the furnace.
When I was completely cool, a pretty lady put me on this shelf, next to this mirror. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was amazed, I could not believe what I saw. I was no longer ugly, soggy and dirty; I was beautiful, firm and clean. I cried for joy. It was then that I realized the plan that the potter had for me all along. He wanted me to become this beautiful vase… and I resisted him, rebelled against him, and fought him. Thankfully, the potter is a patient potter.”
(Illustration from sermoncentral.com)
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When God works with us, it may be painful. There are times too when what God wants for us and what we want for ourselves are at extreme odds with one another… and we fight against the hands of the potter… but we need to remember, always… that we are in the hands of a loving God, and that he is making us into something beautiful… into something useful. So my challenge for you today, is that if you feel the tugs of the potter, the hand of him working on you… become the good kind of clay that follows the hands of the master… and follow the purpose that God has for you.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
