Series: April 2025
Speaker: Rob McClellan
Today's Sermon
"Good Clay"
Jeremiah 18:1-6
18 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.
“Good Clay”
One of the chapel skits at my childhood summer camp featured a potter molding “pots” (counselors). The creations were all different, and initially some felt inferior to others. In the end, each found they had a special purpose. The moral: God loves you as you are, for you have a gift to offer the world. Of course, campers liked the skit not only for the message, but because the potter was funny, hamming it up as he spun the counselors around on a mock potting wheel, all while faking some not quite recognizable accent. I remember thinking, “Oh, how I’d love to be in that skit.” But, of course, I was only a boy.
We may say we like to be shaped by God, but change is hard, the changes we say God wants to make no exception. It’s no barrel of laughs, though laughter can be a part of it. Change is daring work, for it means letting go of old securities, and as a result we can find ourselves quite resistant. Can you recall trying to institute change and running into barriers? Maybe you’ve tried shift a dynamic in a relationship. Maybe you’ve been in a workplace that needed to change and you experienced what an uphill struggle that can be when others don’t buy into the vision. Maybe you’ve simply tried to break some of your own habits and fallen into a “maybe tomorrow” mindset. Inertia is real.
Change is somewhat mysterious. I once took a doctoral course on the subject. If faith is about formation and transformation, I wanted to know more. On the last day of class, after all the readings, all the lectures and presentations, the professor said even with all the research he had done, when it comes to what causes people to change, he just didn’t know. The matter is too muddy, complex, layered, maybe different for different people or circumstances.
One catalyst appears to be meaningful relationships. You’re more likely to be affected by someone’s perspective you know and respect. This was certainly true in the church debates over questions around sexuality and equality. The biblical, theological, and even scientific arguments may have been impactful to some, but at least anecdotal evidence suggests what moved the needle most was resistant people knowing someone who was gay. Some of these people never even solved their biblical questions. Their love for another simply overcame perceived obstacles.
Similarly, take an issue such as climate change. The science is clear, the evidence overwhelming, yet still some resist. Such resistance is disproportionately prevalent in the United States, but that tracks in light of our rampant distrust of one another. Evidence alone does not persuade. What some are recognizing now is that one of the more effective ways for people to make a difference is simply to talk about the subject with people they know. I was at an event at Climate Week in San Francisco just this week and listening to the head of Project Drawdown, Jonathan Foley, atmospheric scientist formerly of the Cal Academy of Sciences. He recounted moving from the Bay Area to rural Minnesota, where he lives now. Contrary to what his California friends assumed, Foley has found it quite easy to talk with people about climate change there because he’s built relationships with his neighbors, many of whom are farmers. They connected around the impacts of climate change on farming. People are more likely to shift when they connect as people around common concerns.
It's much easier to prescribe change for others than it is to swallow the pill of change oneself. As your bulletin cover quote puts it, “Change is Good: You Go First” which is actually a title of a book about leadership.[1]
“You” is a much easier word to say than “me,” and more important than both may be “we.” The bias of our particular culture is to default to the individual, and while individual action is important, it is often vastly insufficient. Christianity is our culture has been massively individualized. There is something nice about the intimacy of a personal faith, but our tradition was really born as a communal good not a private one.
In our passage today, the clay is not an individual. The clay is Israel, the ancient kingdom, not to be conflated with the modern nation-state. Many can quote some of the opening lines in which God says “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” (1:5) but how many know the end of that sentence, “I appointed you a prophet to the nations”? Jeremiah was a prophet, meaning he was societally focused. The prophet’s work was to critique the collective, the country and its values, the world. God’s concerned not with individual souls here, but the soul of a people.
God is so dismayed at the shape the kingdom has taken, regardless of its stated values, God balls it up and starts again. They have turned away from justice, which is described earlier in the text as caring for the vulnerable and, as chapter 17 verse 17 puts it, amassing wealth unjustly. Individual and societal failures, each affecting the other.
One who understood this side of the Christian calling was the pope we just lost, Francis. Of course, we Protestants don’t have a pope, but there was much to admire about this one. I didn’t agree with him on everything, but sometimes I think I don’t even agree with myself on everything. Pope Francis was known for his pastoral sensitivities, his embodying inclusion and warmth even if he didn’t always codify it doctrinally. Francis was admired for taking seriously the model of Jesus Christ, and himself washed the feet of prisoners, including Muslims. He was far more welcoming to LGBTQ folks in the life of the church, and displayed the humility of a servant leader who rejected more lavish traditional papal accommodations for a modest apartment dwelling.
Pope Francis had a prophetic side too. The two go hand in hand. Caring should lead us to justice and justice should lead us to be more caring. He didn’t just tenderly hold fragile pots; he also called out when societies were misshapen. In his Good Friday mediations just last week, moving through the stations of the cross, including where Jesus falls, he offered a sharp critique clearly aimed at the West. He said, “Today’s builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers, and that those who fall along the way are losers. Theirs is the construction site of Hell. God’s economy, on the other hand, does not kill, discard or crush. It is lowly, faithful to the earth.”[2] He understood justice was really about caring for the most vulnerable, human and beyond. On the matter of the earth, he wrote powerfully about the environment in his encyclical Laudato Si.
In his final address, Pope drew upon the very imagery we find in our reading today from Jeremiah stating, “All those who put their hope in God place their feeble hands in his strong and mighty hand; they let themselves be raised up and set out on a journey.”[3] We are in the hands of the great potter, which means we have to be interested in being reshaped. The pope went on with Easter words:
Christ is risen! These words capture the whole meaning of our existence, for we were not made for death but for life. Easter is the celebration of life! God created us for life and wants the human family to rise again! In his eyes, every life is precious! The life of a child in the mother's womb [so you can’t claim he’s a mere puppet of the left], as well as the lives of the elderly and the sick, who in more and more countries are looked upon as people to be discarded.
What a great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day in the many conflicts raging in different parts of our world! How much violence we see, often even within families, directed at women and children! How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalised, and migrants![4]
Pope Francis had particular concern for migrants, yet for some reason some Christians don’t want that mentioned in churches. Yet Christianity, like Judaism, Islam, and most religions I know have explicit teachings about caring for migrants and refugees, both of which are under attack in our society. We will not have fewer migrants in the future, but more, and in part because of conditions we helped create. Reasonable reform with compassion for those caught up in dangerous situations is one thing. More chaos and cruelty, deportations without process, deporting citizen children with cancer is something for which no Christian should stand. Now only may we speak of these matters, we must. How we shape our communities is a matter of faith. It doesn’t mean we create theocracies, just that we take seriously the moral and ethical demands of our faith and, for Christians, of our savior. I don’t use “savior” language very much here. I once asked a class just what Jesus saves us from, since I’m not one for the notion we’re destined for hell without the offramp of Jesus. One, among, a number of great answers I got was, “Jesus save us from ourselves,” meaning the worst of our instincts. That I can get on board with. Some of our worst instincts are to vilify the other, demonize the outsider, and to scapegoat.
Jesus saves us by touching the untouchable and Jeremiah saves us by teaching us to learn to be touched by a God who wants to reshape us. I always wanted to be in that skit were God was the potter. It turns out we can be. Do you know what God says to Jeremiah when he shows a little reticence to being an instrument of change? “Don’t say, ‘I am only a boy.’”
God’s ready to make something beautiful. Are we ready to be good clay?
Amen.
[1]Mac Anderson and Tom Feltensetein, Change is Good: You Go First
[2]https://catholicvote.org/pope-francis-good-friday-meditations-at-the-colosseum-a-call-to-conversion-and-compassion/