Last Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, Pastor Mark and Sandy and Dave and Sharon Makela and Karen and I were at our North Wisconsin District, Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod Convention in Appleton. It was a good convention, and it’s amazing to see how God works at such gatherings of believers, but one thing happened there that happens at every convention. As the we discuss the candidates for various positions, there are the usual comments like, “So and so is a good man or a good woman,” or “Such and such a person is too liberal or too conservative or whatever.” I should know, I’ve said things like that myself. And I must confess that sometimes not a whole lot of research goes into these statements, except for first impressions and hearsay. Once a person gets a reputation, it’s virtually locked in place. That’s a good thing if it’s a good reputation, but it’s also easy to be written off.
No one likes being written off, as if somehow you’re flawed and incapable of change for the better. The Bahn family dog is a big dog by the name of Chopper. Chopper is old for a dog, about 10 years old. He’s big and overweight and furry and black. He almost looks like a little bear walking on all fours. He’s scared a few people in his time. But he really is a big baby that is sweet and gentle, and he has eyes that could melt your heart. Chopper started life in a pound. He was adopted and then returned to the pound, which is where we found him. He was written off. The people who owned him wrote that he is destructive. Let me tell how destructive he is. He goes in the bathroom and somehow manages to separate the cardboard roll from the toilet paper, while leaving the toilet paper in the holder, and he uses the cardboard roll for a nice doggie bone. We now keep the toilet paper up on the sink in the bathroom, and give him the cardboard at the appropriate time. Problem solved. Chopper, a dog who once was written off, no longer terrorizes toilet paper. He is a treasure of a dog inside that big old body of his. Now, if we could just get him to flush… (Just kidding!)
Paul, I’m sure, had to deal with his former way of life when he persecuted Christians, persecuting them even to the point of standing politely by and holding people’s jackets and nodding his head in approval as they stoned Stephen to death. After he met the risen Lord, Jesus, on the road to Damascus, and after he became a believer, it took a lot of convincing to get those early believers to trust him at all. I’m sure quite a few people wrote him off. Even in his letters to the Corinthians, Paul still had to defend his role as an apostle, an eyewitness of Jesus sent by Jesus to proclaim the good news of forgiveness through Jesus.
Even though Paul had to defend himself, he made it clear that defending himself was not his main goal. He was there to preach Christ. As Paul said, “…we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” Jesus is Lord. Paul was only a servant. Any reference Paul made to himself had to be understood with these facts in mind. Jesus is the one who was present at the creation of the world. Jesus is the one who is true God. Jesus is the one who forgives us through his death on the cross and his resurrection. If there is any good in us it is Jesus shining through us. If we accomplish anything for God’s Kingdom it is Christ working in us. Christ Jesus was Paul’s sure defense because Christ Jesus forgave him and called him in spite of all that Paul had done. Jesus re-created Paul and He makes us new as well. This is why Paul’s words now shout for joy as they declare to you and me that “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
God did not, has not, and will not write us off. He will not give up on us even though we may be tempted to give up on ourselves, to resign our selves and say, “well, this is just the way I am, I will never amount to anything. I’m just the scum of the earth. I’m like the pottery that the Old Testament talks about that the potter throws away and smashes. I just cannot break my wicked habits.” It’s easy for us to imagine that God has already given up on us, that there’s no hope. And yet God can get pretty far with a clay jar. He can do a lot with a clay pot. We may feel like we have been flattened, crushed, and torn, “But,” as Paul says, “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”
I get the impression that Paul is talking about clay pots that have not been dried in a kiln. They are still bendable, still able to be formed and molded and shaped by the Potter, even though the process may be painful. “God’s not done with me yet,” we can say. He has not written me off. Neither has he written you off. Paul continues by saying, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” Those are pretty amazing words. On the one hand they clear up the false notion that nothing painful happens to Christians. Paul, in fact, uses the term, “godly sorrow,” in this letter. On the other hand, they give us a glimpse that there is more to life than we can see with our eyes or even understand with our minds. Even if we should die, as believers in Christ we are not abandoned by Him nor destroyed. He is waiting to bring us home. Though God loves us, the mystery of that love is that He sometimes allows us to suffer for a purpose known only to him.
Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is able to identify some of the reasons for his suffering. He is a jar of clay with a purpose, and so are we. It’s the ultimate example of what’s inside being the thing that counts. Our outward distress and our weakness, even to the point of death, can serve to emphasize that treasure that is within us, the life of Christ, the death and resurrection of Christ, the power of Christ’s forgiveness, the awesome wonder of His love. We are just pottery, so to speak, but inside we have been given this treasure, the gift of faith, to believe in and trust in a Savior who stubbornly refuses to write us off.
Rev. Robert Roegner, who now is the Executive Drector of the Board for Mission Services, or LCMS World Mission, began his ministry as a church planter among the Kisi people in Nigeria, West Africa. He told us at the convention that when he began his ministry, people would run away in fear, calling him the “white bogeyman”. Yet God did not give up on him or his ministry there or on the people he was trying to reach. He told of another incident when one of the village chiefs offered him his daughter as a gift, a second wife. Instead of refusing the gift right away, Rev. Roegner delayed taking the village chief up on his offer until his boss from the States could come and have a talk with the leader of the village—chief to chief—and explain that this was a gift that could not be accepted. The village chief told Rev. Roegner, “You are a little boy, but a wise man.” He said this because the church planter had realized that he never could have set his feet in the village again if he, an ordinary person, turned down a gift from the chief. This was humbling for Rev. Roegner, because he realized that it was not his own wisdom that prevailed, but God’s. So it is for each of us that God works in us, with us, and through us as we believe in Him and trust in Him. It is not our wisdom or our strength or our power that we proclaim. Rather, we declare the glory of God. We kneel down in our weakness so that others can see Him. We appear ordinary in order that others can see how extraordinary God’s love is in Jesus Christ. God can get pretty far with a clay jar. He can do a lot with a clay pot.
Clay is special, not because of what it is but because of what comes into it from the outside, because of what it can hold. According to Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia, “clays consist of a group of hydrous alumino-silicate minerals formed by the weathering of feldspathic rocks, such as granite. Individual mineral grains are microscopic in size and shaped like flakes. This makes their aggregate surface area much greater than their thickness and allows them to take up large amounts of water by adhesion.” In other words, clay is dirt that acts like a sponge. It can take in water, and when it does, it can be used to make containers for some pretty special things. In the waters of holy baptism, God fills us with His Spirit, gives us faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, puts his name on us, and says, “I’m not going to write you off.”
I remember one clay pot I made in high school. It was my pride and joy. I couldn’t wait to take it home, but before I could, it fell from the top shelf of my locker and was smashed in pieces. Maybe your life feels like that right now. The good news is that God can fix even pottery that is broken. Remember, God can go pretty far with a clay jar. Jesus took on our human frailty. He entered this world as one of us. He knows what it’s like to be a clay pot. He knows what its like to be tested and to undergo every kind of trial. He knows what it’s like to be crushed on a cross. He did all of that for you and me, so that the Potter could know His pottery inside and out, and so that the Potter could love His pottery inside and out. You are special, not just because I say so, but because of what God put into you. With his strong, yet loving hands, God is forming you, as a person who is already forgiven and made new, into the person, the servant, He wants you to be. We have this treasure in jars of clay just waiting to get out to the glory and honor of God. Amen.
