“Cracked Yet Whole” Rev. Meredith Loftis Jeremiah 18:1-11 September 4, 2016

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.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. 4 The 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: 6 Can 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. 7 At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, 8 but 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. 9 And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, 10 but 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. 11 Now, 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.

This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Consider the scene before you. A bent yet strong back labors over a spinning pottery wheel. Covered in splatters of clay from head to foot, focused on the spinning lump of earth before her, perhaps humming softly, her hands shape and mold, shape and mold, shape and mold. She is lost in her own world as she sculpts; the desired vessel in her mind waiting to emerge. It seems like a peaceful process, the rounded curves of a vessel appearing before her eyes, shape and mold, press and feel. Yet, it is years of practice that have lent her the calm she displays. Her hands gently pinch the edges of the vessel as they grow wider. It blossoms before her. And yet suddenly, she collapses the clay back down into a lump, the peaceful rhythmic pulsing of the wheel stops for a moment while she regains her breath. The clay resembles nothing of the bowl she had begun, but she turns back to it; she always turns back to it. And she starts again, using her whole upper body. She starts shaping again that same clay. Her muscles become taut again, she leans in with her whole body; and yet it is not peaceful to begin with, it is not an easy journey. The clay is often resistant or stubborn, and yet she never gives up on it, though she might despair. But give up, she won’t. I am not a potter. I took one pottery wheel class ages ago and found it rather trying, but I’ve always been fascinated by the process. To feel the clay between your fingers and witness it changing shape seems like a precious chore, one that takes time, patience, and persistence. This is what I’m imagining as Jeremiah encounters God in the workings of another human’s endeavors. God has bid him to seek the Lord’s word from the potter’s house. Witnessing strong dirty hands deeply engaged with wet clay, Jeremiah recognizes that God is speaking through the potter’s actions, declaring that God shapes and builds and even destroys God’s people, Israel and other nations, just as this potter claims the worthiness of her vessel before her. The

1 clay is at the mercy of the potter’s will. If dissatisfied, she starts again; yet the potter does not discard the ruined vessel, but takes great care and focus to start again, to reshape, remold, and rebuild. Jeremiah, court prophet to King Josiah in the 6th century B.C.E and later through the reign of King Zedekiah, lived in a time of great upheaval and despair as he witnessed the sacking of Jerusalem, the end of the Kingdom of Judah, and the exile of the Hebrew people into Babylonian captivity. With its king and leaders exiled, and most devastating of all, the Temple destroyed and in ruins, Jeremiah’s prophetic messages to repent or expect harsh consequence have come to fruition; it seems that God has abandoned His people, and they lose their city, their livelihoods and their very identities. Thrust into a despairing situation, ordered by God to command the Hebrew people to repent and turn back to their God, Jeremiah encounters a people set against him and his messages. In dramatic demonstrations, he famously strides through the city bearing an oxen yoke around his neck and proclaiming God’s sentencing on the people if they did not repent, amend their ways, and beg for mercy. They are accused of idolatry and not observing the Sabbath. These people have turned away from God. And yet as dire as the pronouncements seem, God offers a glimmer of hope, as God always does, if they amend their ways. Our God always recognizes that we are God’s own creations and deeply wishes us to be a part of the sacred and divine life of God. Although, often the process of realizing God’s faithfulness comes in unexpected and seemingly painful ways. We are each invited to step into the potter’s house, to consider how God is shaping each of us, and how God is shaping us together as a covenant community called to be the people of God. We must witness the cracks and disfigurements in our vessels, the sin in our own lives, and in the communities that we are a part of. We must recognize the way we harm ourselves, our neighbors, and God, continually asking the potter to amend his creations so we might glorify God. Potter and clay—God and God’s people—stand together as partners in a journey that we shape together, sometimes painful but always to further God’s mission to build God’s kingdom. However, it is dangerous to think that God creates us, winds us up, and sets us off as if we have no choice in the journey we are on. Theologian Anathea Portier-Young proclaims, “We are neither automatons nor closed circuits. The shape of our character and our lives is not fixed. We remain supple. We, as individuals and as communities, may be formed through education and the practice of virtue. We may be deformed through abuse and ambition. We are susceptible to influence, suggestion, temptation, and corruption. We are also resilient, and capable of astonishing goodness and true conversion. Through it all, even in the company of others and even in relationship with God, each of us forms our own intentions and exercises our own free will.” 1 This is the beauty of our God to allow us to freely engage in God’s world, a freedom hampered by sin that grips us and turns us away from God. This message from Jeremiah serves as a reminder of that covenant relationship we have with God. And this is what Jeremiah is appealing to: our actions and ways do matter; our experiences shape us - that human frailty and sin affects us through worshiping idols (those

1 http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2972

2 things we put before God); we forget to rest, are in broken relationships, shaped by abuse, addiction, conflict, violence, discrimination, and inequality. However, as vulnerable earthen creations, the cracks, and chips, and missing pieces that are a result of being human do not have to define us. But we do have to consciously turn back to the Creator. The cracks will continue to grow if we forget the one who first breathed life into us. In fact Jeremiah is begging the Hebrew people of Jerusalem to change their ways or God will “pluck up,” “break down,” and “destroy” the Israelites. It is hard to hear scripture like this, and we should struggle with the note of judgment that we hear in this scripture, as much as we want to avoid it. But this is what I hold onto and what I want you to hold onto as well: the potter or God, does not toss out the unfinished piece, though it is spoiled, but reworks it, rebuilds it, and allows us to witness God’s working yet again. God does not forget anyone of us. That doesn’t mean that God’s reworking and rebuilding won’t be painful. It might be the most painful thing we ever encounter. I have no doubt we all wonder why God has allowed something to happen to us. Many of us can account for the pain we have suffered, but so often it is that pain that sharply refocuses us to the God who will never forsake us. The Israelites still went into captivity, becoming slaves to a foreign people, completely devastated because the house of God, their Temple, was in shambles. To Babylon they marched, weary, broken people. But God continued to sculpt away, revealing that their story had not ended. They did not remain shattered pieces on a dusty floor. No, the people returned and remembered God, and the Temple of Jerusalem became a temple of flesh, manifested in a divine clayman named Jesus Christ, the perfect and flawless creation sent by God, because God could never forget us; because the potter, our God, always has the final word. We are a resilient people because of the God that accompanies us, the God that never abandons us regardless of what we’ve done. And perhaps we even realize that our cracks and our flaws might be used to glorify the one who first knitted us within our mother’s womb. The vulnerable clay from which we are made is intimately shaped by the creator’s hands, always recycled and reused but never discarded. Sometimes we feel completely useless, cracked beyond repair or maybe even as if we have been shattered against the hardest surface, unable to piece the shards back together. Clay is a material of infinite possibilities, and we as clay people are on a journey, not dictated by a removed God, looking down from the clouds, but by a God who joins us in the process of being shaped and sculpted, who witnesses the cracks that appear and loves us despite them, who might reshape us into another vessel after our lives have fallen apart, who might even use the cracks to God’s glory. Theologian Sally A. Brown states that: “Like the potter, God is deeply invested in [each of our lives and] our common life [together]. The potter does not work aimlessly, nor does God. Every turn of the wheel matters [even when those turns are painful and unbearable]. God means to shape us for purposes that often exceed our vision and imagination, and which most certainly exceed our typical preoccupations…” 2

2 Sally A. Brown, Feasting on the Word , Year C, Volume 4, page 29.

3 Let me leave you with one more pottery metaphor, perhaps my favorite—one I had learned about a while ago, yet rediscovered when preparing this message, an ancient art form from the East, an art form that in fact embraces broken pottery. Without the misshapen pieces of damaged pottery, it would not exist. It is called Kintsui or Kintsukuroi. Kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of repairing pottery; a practice that few engage in (at least Americans I know of) for most of us think a plate broken into 5 pieces is now useless. I would simply sweep up the remains and sadly toss in them in the trash. Why would I want such a piece when I can easily buy a new one? However, Kintsukuroi places value in broken pottery, repairs it and enhances it, bringing it back to wholeness with an unlikely and valuable substance: gold. It is the art of using gold or silver lacquer to bind pottery pieces back together, understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. 3 It treats damages or disfigurement as “part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.” 4 It does not replace or cover the original pieces, but serves as the glue to make it whole once more. What a beautiful way to consider our own brokenness and the mercy of God. We are cracked vessels, marred by things we only wish to hide, but because of Christ we are in fact made whole. We do not have to hide or fear that our sin, our pain, our suffering will define us. Like the gold or silver filling jagged cracks making a pottery piece even more valuable, Christ acts in the same way for us. We are made more beautiful, because Christ binds himself to us in our weaknesses, in our broken and sinful ways, making us worthy and redeemable in God’s eyes. What binds us together is the most valuable thing God could use to make us complete. We are cracked yet whole; sinful but forgiven through Christ.

3 http://vikramkamboj.com/2015/12/kintsukuroi-the-japanese-art-of-embracing-broken-and-flawed-things/ 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

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