Introduction
The making of pottery was one of the most lucrative trades in ancient Israel. Archaeological digs have shown it was in plentiful supply and, when a piece of pottery was broken, it was obviously easy to get a replacement.
It is the abundant supply of pottery, which helps archaeologists now date the digs they are involved in by dating different styles of pottery to different era. I suppose that one-day archaeologists will dig up our plastic and date us - ha! Tupperware it must have been the 70s!
In all the changes in our world: with the advent of computers, modern communications, methods of mass production and the Internet, it is interesting to note that the craft of pottery has not changed that much in the course of human history. A potter transported through time 2000 years before Jesus would easily recognise what a modern potter does. In modern potteries there are some technology to turn the wheel and warm the kiln, but the essential processes are the same. This is why the passage we heard of from the prophet Jeremiah is easy to grasp - we know what a potter does and we can easily imagine what Jeremiah saw that day.
At the Potter's House
One day the prophet Jeremiah felt God tell him to go and visit the local potter's house. Being obedient, but also being rather puzzled, off Jeremiah went. He drew near the house - which would have served as a shop too and, as Jeremiah watched, the potter took a piece of clay from the mass that lay beside her hand, and having kneaded it to rid it of its bubbles, placed it on the wheel rapidly revolving horizontally at the motion of her foot driving the treadle.
The potter's wheel would actually have been two wheels. A large one suspended above a whole in the floor and connected to a smaller wheel by an upright pole. Using her feet the potter would have turned the lower wheel, the movement, through the pole, turning upper wheel.
From the moment the potter's hands were at work with the clay on the wheel she would mould the clay from within and without shaping the vessel which her deft touch; here, widening, there shaping it into a more slender form, fit for the Temple court or a royal palace.
When it was nearly complete, and the next step would have been to remove it to await the kiln, through a flaw in the material the pot fell into a shapeless ruin, some broken pieces upon the wheel, and others upon the floor.
Jeremiah expects the potter to take some new clay and make something - hopefully a bit better this time - but instead the potter uses the broken material to create something new and beautiful.
The potter is patient and long-suffering. Her careful use of the material is impressive as is her power of repairing loss and making something out of failure and disappointment.
Jeremiah's Interpretation
Jeremiah's ordinary experience of seeing a potter craft a vessel and then re-fashion and re-mould the clay to correct mistakes, led him to think about the nature of God. Jeremiah would, as an inhabitant of the ancient near east, have easily identified God with the potter and humanity with the clay. Most people in the ancient Near East saw humanity as being made of clay. In Genesis we read that God fashioned, or moulded, humanity out of the dust of the earth.
The symbolic act of the potter conveys the sovereign power of God. God's hand and the potter's hand have symmetrical capabilities. Both can destroy their own creations at will. As the potter can crush the pot, so God can destroy a nation or realm. As a potter can break a faulty pot and remould it into something beautiful so God can remake nations, and people, into something beautiful and worthwhile.
The passage is both comforting - in that we like to think of the gentle fingers of the potter moulding and shaping us, but also rather uncomfortable as we think of the destructive power of the potter - and hence, of God. But the passage shows us that God's threat of destruction is conditional; repentance and obedience will induce God to build and plant instead of destroying. As a bad vase can be made into a new one through the work of the potter, so a decree of God can be changed into a new one provided that conversion has been achieved.
The passage, therefore, is about judgement and renewal after judgement - a main theme of Jeremiah and his ministry. As a potter remoulds a spoilt vessel on his wheel, so God would remould the people who had been spoilt their sinfulness; God would destroy what they had been and reconstitute them to conform to the original purpose God had intended for them.
So What's This Got to Do with Us?
Every piece of Scripture we read has at least two layers of meaning. It obviously had a meaning for the time in which it was written, but it also has a meaning for us now as we read it. For Jeremiah the experience at the potter's wheel taught him that God can make and remake the realms of the world so that they are able to achieve their God-given purpose - just as the potter is able to make and remake the clay. God is sovereign over these powers, just as the potter is sovereign over the clay.
This meaning still stands - people and nations are still judged by God and one day our leaders, alongside us, will have to give an account of our actions to God. But the text has a more immediate meaning for our lives now as Christians at the start of the twenty-first Century. This meaning has five aspects.
First, the potter has a plan, an ideal that she is trying to create.
In the potter's mind she has a vision of what it is that she is trying to craft out of the simple clay that she works with. It may be a domestic pot, it may be a rich ornament for use in the Temple, or maybe it is a simple work of art that will simply be a thing of beauty.
In the same way God, as the great Potter, has a plan for the Earth and for us. We know that God's plan for us is spoilt by our weaknesses, our flaws, but God does not abandon us when our poor clay collapses or goes wobbly - or splatters over the wheel of our life.
Secondly, the potter achieves her purpose by the means of a simple wheel.
The beauty of pottery is that it is, in essence, very simple. All that is needed is some clay and a wheel to rotate. Nowadays we have wheels driven by electricity, but until very recently potters' wheels were driven by the potters themselves. It is in the simplicity and ordinariness of the clay rotating that the potter achieves her purpose.
So it is with God and us. It is in the ordinary round of our lives that God's purposes are achieved. We meet God's purposes, or refuse to meet them, in the everyday, ordinary, things of our lives. The people we meet each day, the people we speak to in person, on the phone, or through the Internet are all put in our path for a purpose. Sometimes they are there to teach us something, sometimes we are there to teach them. Most often it is in the simple things of life that God achieves the most profound changes within us. The simple sharing of a meal, after all, is at the heart of our worship.
Sometimes we expect God to do things through wind and fire, through hurricane and brimstone. We expect lightening flashes and voices from the sky. Yet God speaks to us in the everyday and ordinary things of our lives - just as God spoke to Jeremiah through the everyday and ordinary encounter with a potter.
Thirdly, the work of the potter is done through her fingers.
If you have ever watched a potter work you will know that the most gentle of touches can create a vessel of beauty and wonder. The touch of the fingers shapes the clay to make the most marvellous things. The touch is gentle, not oppressive.
In the same way we are formed and moulded by the gentle touch of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps us as we encounter others, as we learn more about God through worship, through teaching and through reading the Bible. The Holy Spirit gently moulds us through encouraging us when we are down and through correcting us when we are wrong. Sometimes when we are corrected - either through the loving words of another (or even through the un-loving words of another) or through the voice of our own conscience we feel very uncomfortable.
It helps me on the many occasions this happens to me to think of myself as a lump of clay being gently moulded and fashioned.
Fourthly we recognise through this passage that God continually remakes us.
Just as the vessel made of clay falls apart when a flaw in it cannot cope with the design, so we fall apart when our faults and flaws let us down. Our faults are many - we are each tempted in different ways. We each have different weaknesses. For some of us the weakness is, as John pointed out a couple of weeks ago, money. We can become too fixated by money and by material comfort. For others the weakness maybe judging others by how they look not at who they are. We may be flawed in the way we deal with others, we may be weak in our inability to resist gossip, or in our refusal to walk away from destructive relationships or people.
Now we have a choice when confronted by our faults. We can do any number of things. In my experience Christians, especially in the Catholic tradition, are tempted to have a pity-party as we wallow in our sins and almost boast about what miserable sinners we are. Sometimes Christians are tempted, especially in the Protestant tradition, to underplay their sinfulness. Knowing that God forgives us becomes an excuse never to say sorry.
Yet God uses our faults and failings, all the mess and clay of our lives, to re-make and re-mould us as once God re-made and re-fashioned a man called Saul of Tarsus. As we heard a few weeks ago, Saul was a persecutor of the Early Church but his encounter with Jesus remade him into the Church's greatest missionary. God re-made a man called John Newton, a slave trader who later repented and through the mess of his life made an Anglican minister - known now mainly for the hymn Amazing Grace.
God re-makes and re-moulds each one of us. God takes the mess of our lives, the mess we have made with our lives, and gently re-moulds us, gently re-fashions us so that we start to conform again to the purpose, the ideal that God originally has for us.
But the final, and most important, meaning this passage has for us is that our attitude, as the clay, is essential.
The clay must yield to and trust the potter. The clay on the wheel cannot say "get off - that hurts" to the potter. The clay has to stay there to be fashioned according to the plan and purposes of the potter.
Humans, however, have the right to get off the wheel - even though that might mean we get spattered all over the place! If God is to make us and continually re-make us into God's own image then we have to yield to God and the fingers of the Holy Spirit in the same way that the clay does to the gentle hands of the potter.
We have to trust that the experiences we have which make and fashion us will be for our own good. We have to trust that God will use the everyday, the ordinary, the hum-drumness of our lives to make us into something beautiful.
My Life Will Be Different Because of This Passage......
The work of the potter does not stop with the wheel. Once the potter has made her vessel it needs to be proved by fire. The fire is not comfortable for the clay, but the clay emerges from the kiln stronger. Then the potter needs to paint and glaze the vessel --and each time the colour or glaze is applied it is proved again in fire.
In our lives we will continually be proved by fire. We will continually have experiences that shape us and then we will be tested, and strengthened by the fire. It is not so much that God is there warming up the furnace - as some would have us believe, but that God allows us to undergo the testing by fire to refine us and make us stronger.
Being a Christian is about being continually formed and re-formed by the great potter. In God's gentle hands we are made into something beautiful. The flaws in our nature are gently worked out by the persistent and loving eagerness of the Potter. Sometimes we collapse into an ugly mess on the wheel of our world, but God can, if we let Him, scoop us up and starts again. Just as we think we get it right, we will be tested and proved by the flames. In all this we are being moulded. By understanding this process is going on, and by understanding that this process will happen again and again in our lives, we will learn, like the clay, to yield to the gentle fingers of the Potter.
Prayer
Loving God,
You are the potter,
We are the clay.
Mould us and fashion us,
Into the image
Of Jesus, Your Son.
Help us as we are moulded by the gentle fingers of your Holy Spirit,
Help us when we want to get off the wheel,
Help us as we are proved by the fire,
So that, at the end, we may,
Even in these earthen vessels,
Be heavenly treasure.
Amen.
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.