In the Hands of the Potter
A sermon by Brent J. Eelman
Abington Presbyterian Church
September 9, 2007

Jeremiah 18: 1-11
    The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ²‘Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.’ ³So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. ⁴The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
    5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: ⁶Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. ⁷At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, ⁸but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. ⁹And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, ¹⁰but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. ¹¹Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.* 
 

    The psychiatrist and author, Paul Tournier, lectured once about the importance of hands. Hands reveal a great deal about a human being. The scars and the callouses of hands often tell a story about that person. The human being is a remarkable creature. Anthropologists conjecture that the hand, with the opposable thumb, was as important as anything in the development of human beings. Our hands hold tools. We can hold other hands. We use our hands to build and to tear down. We use our hands to fashion and even change our environment. We use our hands to write and type. We use our hands to show affection. We use our hands to signal to one another. The Latin word for hand, manus, is also the root for the word “man”. So important is the human hand to history. Hands tell a story. The story that hands tell for us today is from Jeremiah. It is the story of a potters hands.. but also the hands of God. Today I want to 1. Look at the account from Jeremiah and the analogy between the hands of the potter and the hands of God. 2. I will examine it in terms of our individual lives and our own need for transformation and change. 3. I will conclude with three brief biographies of lives reshaped in the hands of the potter.

I

The prophet Jeremiah was contemplating the events that were occurring around him and in his life. His message lost him friends. His family thought he was delusional. He was an object of scorn and it was affecting his physical health. He felt that his world was collapsing. Things were not making sense. At God’s command he went to the house of the potter. Pottery was one of the first objects that were fashioned by human hands and are often pieces and shards of pottery tell us about past civilizations. Jeremiah observed the hands of the potter as he went about his craft. He was working with a piece of clay, fashioning a pot. But the pot is not turning out the way he intended. Something was going wrong. Perhaps it was crooked, too thin in places. We can only guess. What does the potter do? He took the pliable clay and reworked it into something that was useful. Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: “Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done?"

The light bulb went off in Jeremiah’s head. He got it! God was reforming, literally, humanity. Just like the hands of the potter took the useless clay object and refashioned it into something that was useful, so God was taking the unfaithful people of Judah and remaking them… the original product was not useful, and so God was remolding the nation of Israel. It made sense, but Jeremiah’s insight did not obscure the fact that the work of the potter is pretty hard on the clay.

Have you ever watched a potter at work… their hands are at once gentle and powerful. They take that clay and smash it and throw it around to get it ready to shape, and then they shape the clay by firmly changing its shape and appearance. In Jeremiah’s analogy, the clay is humanity. If you have ever seen a potter working on clay, the thought of God doing that to humanity (much less us!) is not altogether comforting, but it is necessary. Humanity is not as God intended, and so God is busy in the world, reshaping humanity. They are firm hands, but also loving hands….

I think about the old hymn that goes:

Have thine own way Lord, have thine own way.
You are the potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after thy will
While I am waiting, yielded and still.

Picture the potter reshaping the clay. Do we think that it will be altogether pleasant????

II

The analogy of the potter also extends to our personal lives. When God enters our lives, more often than not it is like the potter with clay. God enters our lives to bring about transformation. God enters our lives because we need to move away from behaviors that are destructive, addictive and painful, and move towards spiritual health: move towards a relationship with God that nurtures the hungry soul. Often we need to move toward a special calling that God has for us. The potter is both brutal and gentle while reshaping clay. Can we expect different when God, the divine potter, enters our lives to reshape them?

Jeremiah gives us another way of understanding the difficulties and struggles of life. He gives us another explanation for the difficulties and circumstances that often bedevil us. We often moan, “Why me?” We live in the great age of blame and so we point fingers at other people and at circumstances and say that the world is conspiring against us. But Jeremiah’s vision of the potter suggests that these events in our lives might actually be the presence of God, who comes as a potter to reshape the clay of our being. Often we experience this as failure, those moments when things fall apart, but these events, by the grace of God, may be the moments when god is reshaping us and calling us to new obedience. Let me conclude with three examples from life

III

I love British mystery stories and one of the great mystery writers was Dorothy Sayers. She was a very devout woman who wanted to be an Anglican priest. It was not possible at that time, but she went to see a bishop to talk about the possibilities for ministry. He was patronizing and suggested that perhaps she should find a nice young priest and get married. She left incensed and saddened. She was angry at this bishop until a friend suggested to her: “Why don’t write a book and kill him in it.” And so she found her calling as a mystery writer.

The second is Vincent Van Gogh. I must say, that few artists have touched my soul in the manner that he has, but art was not his first pursuit. He wanted to be minister like his father. He was sent as a missionary to the Bourinage in Belgium and there he ministered to the poorest of the poor. His superiors in the church, however, felt that he was a failure in the mission field because he was overly compassionate. He gave away his stipend and all his possessions to make the life of the poor Belgian mining community more livable. (Where did he get that idea??) And so they removed him from ministry. One of the ways that he dealt with the turmoil of his life, and the negation of his perceived call to the ministry was to draw and paint… He never enjoyed success in his lifetime. He never sold a painting, yet his art now hangs in places of honor, and never fails to touch the human spirit. Ironically, his first painting of recognition is “The Potato Eaters” a picture of a poor Belgian mining family at dinner… eating only potatoes.

The third life is John Newton. We know him as the author of the hymn, Amazing Grace. He was not always a pious British parson. His early life was as a sailor, specifically a slave trader, running slaves from Africa to the Americas. On a homeward voyage from one of his slaving journeys, while he was attempting to steer the ship through a violent storm, he experienced what he was to refer to later as his “great deliverance.” He recorded in his journal that when all seemed lost and the ship would surely sink, he exclaimed, “Lord, have mercy upon us.” Later in his cabin he reflected on what he had said and began to believe that God had addressed him through the storm and that grace had begun to work for him. Once again, turmoil was the source of God’s grace and reshaping. Newton’s life was transformed in the hands of the potter, recreated by the amazing grace of God.

For the rest of his life he observed the anniversary of May 10, 1748 as the day of his conversion, a day of humiliation in which he subjected his will to a higher power.

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come;
’tis grace has bro’t me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.

Then there is your life. I encourage you to examine your own life. Is it in turmoil? Are you experiencing the pain and anxiety of the “dark night of the soul”? Jeremiah causes us to look again at what is happening and ask if it is not the hand of God.. the hands of the divine potter who is shaping and reshaping our lives… This is the good news.  Amen.

*The New Revised Standard Version Bible, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989.

Abington Presbyterian Church, Abington, Pennsylvania,  www.apcusa.org