A MESSAGE FROM REV. KAREN KINNEY: THE POTTER AND THE CLAY
Grace and peace to you,
One of the rhythms of the life and faith journey that you study, reflect on and absorb in seminary is that of order, disorder and reorder (also known as orientation, disorientation and reorientation). We live through these cycles – at one moment our life is one of order – everything is going along fine.
Then we experience some kind of life/faith event 
– maybe it is a natural disaster, maybe an illness, a job loss, a schism, an uncertain future that puts us into a cycle of disorder. We are thrown by this event into a period of disorder or disorientation where up is down and blue is green – the event has thrown us into turmoil and we often go through a period of uncertainty, questioning, upheaval.
But then, something happens to put us back on a path of reorder – maybe the work we do with a Spiritual Director, maybe a support group, maybe a new job, etc. The world is no longer upside down for us, but right-side up and we can make sense of it again.
This is what Jeremiah takes the people of Judah through – he leads them into an understanding of how the order of their life became disorder and then as the book progresses, he leads them back into reorder. The invasions and Temple corruption that upended their lives leading to disorder, gives way to a new covenant God wishes to make with the people as expressed by Jeremiah that reorders their lives.
This week we take up one of those order/disorder/reorder stories from Jeremiah 18:1-11. God instructs Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house to see the potter at work. The potter does not like how the clay is shaping up under his hands so the potter starts on another.
The Lord says – see this is what I can do to you Israel (Judah). You the people are clay, and I, the Lord, am the potter. Repent of your evil ways (not challenging the Temple corruption, worshiping other gods, lacking care for the immigrant, the widow or the orphan) and the clay will be shaped well. Don’t do this and I will start over.
Hmmm… Jeremiah gives voice to their disorder – to the evil and violence all around them, to the pain and grief they are experiencing, while also helping them to understand that reorder is always theirs to have if they allow God to do the shaping. How often do we yield to God to shape us, to change our hearts, to mold and remake us? How often do we confess our pain and grief, our anger as a way of moving out of the disorder of upside-downness so that we can let God in? Many questions to ponder as we continue our Jeremiah series. Come and see. Come and explore.
Blessings,
Pastor Karen