The Potter's Hand (or the Play Dough Sermon): 15th Sunday After Pentecost Year C

The Potter's Hand (or the Play Dough sermon)

Play Dough just won't do certain things.

Play Dough has its own agenda. It won't stand up tall. It seems to favor being short and squat. It doesn't like to reach out. It likes to keep to itself. It won't do anything delicate or subtle. Clumsy and crass is Play Dough. It won't survive well for long without proper storage. Has a tendency to dry out. Goes from Play Dough to Play No.

Any artist or craftsman will tell you that materials have their own kind of willfulness. Every material has things it likes to do and things it doesn't like to do. And a lot of artistry is learning how to work with materials and use their willfulness in service of one's purpose or vision. It's all about learning what the materials like to do, so that when one is working with them, one isn't confronted with the frustration of trying to get a material to do something it just won't do.

But no matter how good an artist is, no matter how well an artist might know a particular material, there are times when that material won't even do what it usually likes to do. When it just won't cooperate at all.

Jeremiah is led to a very particular place, to witness a very simple human activity. With the addition of the word of God, this simple human activity becomes a powerful parable, a brilliant teaching moment in which God's relationship to God's people is very elegantly described.

God instructs Jeremiah to go to a potter's house and watch the potter work. And Jeremiah observes that the clay, as he says, spoiled in the potter's hand, so that the potter had to smash the clay back down in order to remake it.

Last week, I suggested we might want to dismiss old Thomas Aquinas from the room, with his ideas about the omnipotence and omniscience of God. And old Thomas will still find himself uncomfortable this morning. Because God is showing Jeremiah a whole lot of emotions that an all-powerful, all-knowing God could never have, a situation that such a God would never get stuck in.

I sometimes hear us talk about God as if every moment of our lives has been planned by this inscrutable and unknowable God, as if our lives and our futures are fixed, and it remains for us simply to trust this and go about our business, for surely the ways of God are beyond our capacities. To be clay in the potter's hand is to be passive. It's all up to God. So why think about it at all?

I think too that we have our fair share of Deists in our midst, those who think that God is no longer among us, that God no longer interacts with God's people. Jesus came and Jesus left and now, these folks believe, it's all up to us, at least until we die, and then we go to wherever it is that Jesus went to. The potter's hand is only on us before we get here and after we leave. All the time in between is up to us.

Now, we might all figure the bible is really of no use in the whole God conversation, but as long as I serve the church I will insist that the bible remain the touchstone and measure of all our conversations about God. And the bible very clearly shoots down both the image of God as the master puppeteer and the image of God as the absentee landlord.

But if God is not one or the other of those, if we are neither passive clay nor masters of our destinies, then what are we, and who is God?

This amazingly simple and very dynamic image makes it very clear. First of all, it speaks of a nation, God's people. God is not working on the level of individuals. God is working on a broader inter-relational context. Secondly, it speaks of a God who is an artist or craftsperson, who is working toward a vision and purpose. Third, it speaks of this nation, this people, as a living material God is using to accomplish God's vision. Fourth, it describes this material as having it's own part to play in enabling or frustrating God's vision and purpose for it.

There are some things Play Dough just won't do. It doesn't like to stand tall. It doesn't like to reach out. It goes dry if it's neglected.

It's true that when the Play Dough doesn't do what we want it to do, we smash it back into a useless and formless lump, or tear it into pieces. And if we give thought to the worldwide people of God, all the people everywhere who claim to be God's people, we might well wonder whether this great piece of Play Dough is in the shape God wants it, or whether is might now be torn into pieces and scattered about, or smashed into a formless and meaningless lump.

And we might well wonder whether we are fused into this material, or even want to be. Whether we want to be a part of something that can take a beautiful and lovely shape one day, then be torn to piece or mangled into shapelessness the next. We might ask ourselves whether we really wish to be reshaped, remade, re-created. Jesus asks us if we really want this kind of transformation, which might well cost us some relationships we value, might well put us at odds with the majority of the world. Do we want to be challenged the way Paul challenges Philemon, to embrace ideas and practices the world might call foolish or self-defeating, or even revolutionary?

If the people of God are like Play Dough in the artist's hand, we might hesitate about becoming a part of that Play Dough. We might not like the idea of that rough handling, what Jesus calls "taking up the cross."

But there are some things Play Dough is very good at. It's flexible and can be molded into many shapes. It can be torn apart and put back together easily. And if it's cared for, it will remain moist and ready for play, well, forever.

We in the church have a word for the kind of life we live together, this strange and powerful Play Dough way of life. The kind of life that can be smashed or torn apart, and then remolded and fused back together, the kind of life that can go flat as a pancake but then get back up into something taller than it was, the kind of life that is constantly being made more and more beautiful, no matter how many times it falls short of its purpose. Yes, we Christians have a word for this Play Dough kind of life.

We call it "the body of Christ."

We call it "resurrection."

Amen.