Just in case you didn’t know, according to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, a crackpot is defined as “a person who is crazy or very strange.” I am sure this was not a news flash for just about anyone here this morning.
I spent quite a bit of time this past week trying to think of someone I could use as an illustration, we all would identify as a crackpot. My mind went first to the world of politics. But I realized no matter who I picked there would be someone who thought them to be the exact opposite of a crackpot. So, not wanting this sermon to turn into a political debate I decided to leave the politicians out of it even though I could make an argument they are all both crazy and strange just because they get into that line of work, but hey, I digress.
Tuesday, while I was attending Pastor’s Retreat at Lakeview, I was having lunch with my close friend Jay Jackson. He was, as is normal, giving me a hard time about something. I don’t even remember what now. So I told Jay my sermon this Sunday is about crackpots and he was going to be my poster boy. And, with that, I took out my telephone and took a picture of him, this picture. I had to be true to my word, didn’t I. You see, Jay has at least three qualifications proving him to be a crackpot. First, he is, after all, a Methodist preacher. Second, he is a district superintendent and every Methodist preacher knows that means he has gone to the dark side. Third, and possibly the highest qualification is, he is my friend and actually admits to it in public. With all that going for him he has to be at least a little strange and more than a little crazy.
I do feel qualified to call Jay a crackpot because apparently I too am a crackpot. There are at least two people who have claimed, perhaps not so much in their words as the looks on their faces, that I am a crack pot in their lives, though they probably would have picked some other noun besides crackpot and it might not be a noun I could mention in a Sunday sermon, or elsewhere in public for that matter. I speak of my two, now grown sons, Wayne and Christopher. On more than one occasion, particularly when they were teenagers, as I attempted to pour out some piece of fatherly wisdom upon my boys they looked at me as if I was more than very strange and at least a little bit crazy. And, if left up to any of our children to decide, I doubt I would be the only one in the room who could be called a crack pot. Oh, and more than once I saw Jay’s kids look at him as if he were crazy or very strange so I guess there are four reasons he is a crackpot. Today, I anxiously await the day my grandchildren will look at their father, hopefully in my presence, with a look that will clearly communicate to him, he too is a crackpot.
On the other hand, there are cracked pots. I think we all know what a cracked pot is. It is kind of a self-defining term. It is a pot with a crack in it. A cracked pot might look something like this. Well, actually this one is more of a broken pot. A cracked pot, at least to most of our ways of thinking, probably isn’t good for very much. It isn’t going to hold any water, or most anything else for that matter. At least it isn’t going to hold very much, for very long. If we want our pot to carry something, to hold something, it really needs to be whole, complete, undamaged. For it to be cracked or broken, the pot probably will fall short of its intended purpose. (Go back to main sermon slide)
When it comes to being a crackpot, I do think I am in pretty good company. Not only am I in the company of my friend Jay, I also feel as though I am in the company of a lot of the characters of the Bible, including the prophet Jeremiah in our lesson this morning. In the lesson Jeremiah is speaking for God and the people are treating him as though he is crazy or at least very strange. All Jeremiah seems to want to talk about is gloom and doom. There is nothing that feels good about his message. The Israelites might be looking at him and saying to themselves, “Why doesn’t this guy ever say anything positive? He just talks bad about us. He makes us sound evil. Really, we aren’t bad people.”
To tell the truth, what Jeremiah is saying isn’t exactly easy to listen to. For all intents and purposes, God, through Jeremiah is chewing the Israelites out for not remaining faithful to the covenant relationship they, God and the Israelites, had made. God, and Jeremiah say, “I brought you out of Egypt, I led you through the wilderness and all its pitfalls. I brought you to the Promised Land, a plentiful land. I helped you to conquer the land, really I gave you the land. And what did you do in return, you defiled the land and you turned away from me and worshipped other gods, worthless gods and by doing so, they have made yourselves worthless. They have turned away from me, the living water and instead have dug out cisterns, cracked cisterns that not only can’t hold Living Water, they can’t hold any water.”
Wow, there is a lot to digest there and none of it is all that easy to hear. It should easily bring us to a pretty serious question, “What worthless gods do we worship that in turn might make us worthless?” I fear we serve many worthless gods. The list would have to include money, power, fame, instant gratification, success, entertainment (I will let you define that one, or you might be thinking I’ve quit preachin’ and went to meddlin’) and that list only names a few of the possibilities. And, while I joked about Jay and me too being crackpots, we are all crackpots if we don’t think we ever go chasing after worthless gods.
The Israelites were God’s covenant people. That means together they were in a covenant relationship with each other and with God. In our society another worthless god we tend to worship is rugged individualism. We like to think we live on our own, we can do it all for ourselves, we don’t need anyone or anything. Yet the truth is, we were created by God to be communal creatures. We need each other. In Genesis, after God made Adam, God realized the man shouldn’t be alone so God made woman to be the man’s helpmate. Any of us who think, who believe, we do this life all on our own with nothing from anyone, well we are truly crackpots.
Just as the Israelites of old were God’s chosen people, today we are those chosen people. When we united with this congregation we also signed our name, as it were, to an already existing covenant between the Church (the people of God) and God. We promised to uphold this congregation, to be a part of this congregation and support it with our prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness. It is a covenant relationship we enter into with each other and more importantly, we confirm the covenant we entered into with God at our baptism. When we walk away from that covenant, when we neglect that covenant, we give up the Living Water for cracked cisterns that won’t hold water. We turn away to serve other worthless gods and in turn make ourselves worthless. To make ourselves worthless is crazy, it is strange. Therefore, we are crackpots.
While being a crackpot, at least in that sense isn’t such a good thing, I think being a cracked pot might not be so bad. Earlier I said, “A cracked pot probably isn’t good for very much. It isn’t going to hold any water, or most anything else for that matter, at least not for very long.” That statement isn’t entirely true. The truth is, I think, we are all cracked pots. God created all of us to be whole and complete. But, I don’t care who you are, even the most faithful among us go through times of doubt. Even the best among us, at times turn and serve other gods and the world starts to beat on us a bit.
I love the image Paul uses in 2 Corinthians where he talks about the treasure we carry in clay pots. Paul is using the image of the clay pot as an analogy for the human body. We walk around in this clay pot. As we go through life our clay pot gets beaten on, sometimes by others but also sometimes we beat up ourselves. Then instead of being a clay pot that looks like this, perfect and pristine, without a flaw to be seen anywhere, we end up looking a little more like this other clay pot, beaten, broken, and cracked. Maybe to some we might even seem worthless. The world might deem us as unable to hold water. We are, after all, broken, battered, beaten, incomplete and cracked. We are less than whole.
But guess what, there is good news, God isn’t finished with us yet. Though God was angry with the Israelites in our lesson, when we read the whole story, the story beyond Jeremiah, it doesn’t take long to understand that God just might like us cracked pots. God loves and redeems what the world likes to call useless. God has something for both crackpots and cracked pots.
There is an old wisdom story from India I ran across years ago that illustrates God’s love for cracked pots like all of us.
A water bearer in India had two large pots, one hung on each end of a pole, which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was pristine and perfect. The pristine pot always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the mistress's house. The same wasn’t true for the cracked pot as it arrived only half full.
For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to her master's house. The perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfectly completing the job each day for which it was made.
But the poor cracked pot was totally ashamed of its own imperfections. This pot was miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do. After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day at the stream as the water bearer filled her pots on her daily errand: "I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you."
Why?" asked the bearer. "What you have to be ashamed of?"
"I have been able, for these past two years, to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your mistress's house. Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don't get full value from your efforts," the pot said.
The water bearer felt sorry for the old cracked pot, and in her compassion she said, "As we return to the mistress's house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path."
Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming the beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and this cheered it some. But at the end of the trail, it still felt bad because it had leaked out half its load, and so again it apologized to the bearer for its failure.
The water bearer said to the cracked pot, "Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back from the stream, you, even in your imperfect state have watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my mistress's table. Without you being just the way you are, she would not have this beauty to grace her house."
The moral of the story is, each of us have our own unique flaws. We're all cracked pots, perhaps even crackpots. But the Master Gardener can use us anyway despite the flaws we may have. Perhaps it would be even better to say, because of the flaws we have. God is at work in us.
You see, if we haven’t traded in the Living Water for cracked cisterns of our own design that won’t hold water, even the Living Water, God can use our cracks, our flaws to spread the Living Water to those in the world around us. When we live our faith, when we show our faith, the Living Water is pouring from us, despite our condition, to change the world.
May we all live up to our end of the covenant because we should always know and remember God always has and always will live out the Divine covenant.
