Decades ago in college I took an art class that included a session in the pottery studio. Let’s just say that clay, a potter’s wheel and I did not get along. It was dirty, messy and all I produced was a blob of clay. I couldn’t shape it to save my life. It was without a doubt, a frustrating experience.
As I’ve recalled that time and explored the texts 
for this morning, I have discovered some things. So let’s look at the second letter to the church in Corinth. Paul says they have this treasure in clay pots – meaning them – they are the pottery vessel God has shaped so that God’s power flows through them. He and the other apostles can always count on God especially during times of what we might call disorder – times that disorient us, make us feel angry or fearful or uncertain.
Listen to his words again: We are experiencing all kinds of trouble, but we aren’t crushed. We are confused, but we aren’t depressed. We are harassed, but we aren’t abandoned. We are knocked down, but we aren’t knocked out. We always carry Jesus’ death around in our bodies so that Jesus’ life can also be seen in our bodies. (2nd Corinthians 4:7-10).
In other words, Paul says, we are in a period of disorder, but God is reordering our lives and our witness so that we can continue to spread the good news of the Gospel. So that we can continue to be the living vessel of Jesus’s love and actions. That’s not a bad clay pot to be is it? To be shaped by God into that living message vessel.
But then we get to Jeremiah and suddenly the story isn’t so rosy anymore is it? God sends Jeremiah down to watch the potter at work on his/her wheel and just like me, the potter doesn’t like how the clay is shaping up, so he casts that one aside (some would just re-smash it if it is pliable enough) and starts work on another.
Then Jeremiah has the audacity to say that this is what the Lord can do to the people if they don’t yield back to God and change their ways. Remember last week that Jeremiah is angry about how the people are not caring for the immigrant, the widow, the orphan and that they are yielding to the corrupt Temple leaders rather than to God.
Jeremiah sees in this potter/clay scene the same God/people action. God is the potter, they/we are the clay and we either yield/surrender to God and become who God has called us to be, or God reworks us. Either way, in our relationship with God we are changed people. Do we do this willingly or do we do this by kicking and screaming all the way?
How do we yield to God to make us into the people God needs us to be in order to know God’s love and give it outward? How do we surrender to God’s hands to mold us and make us into a community of faith that faces outward, not inward? How do we accept that God might be calling us to something very different than what we have experienced before?
Easy to ask those questions – hard to answer them! Because I recall my own times when my orderly life went into disorder. I found a job but it wasn’t where God was calling me, and even though the workplace was quite toxic, I was afraid to leave it. I needed the money, the stability of a job. I needed to be able to keep my car, the house, insurance! And, what happened – I was forced to leave.
Have you ever experienced times like that? Where you hung on to something that you just knew wasn’t the right thing but you were too afraid, too uncertain, too full of doubt to leave it? And, then after being in that disoriented state, a new path opened up that led to a reorientation of your life?
I have a confession – this has happened to me on more than one occasion. But always, someone and/or something was put into my path to move me out of that disoriented phase to a reoriented place. To start over on my clay self to make me a different vessel. I have felt a little like Paul discovering I hadn’t been abandoned, wasn’t crushed, wasn’t knocked out for the count because God was still there, God had not left me.
Maybe this is what Jeremiah is trying to tell the people, and notice, this is telling a community of faith and individuals, this: God really is the potter who can shape us if we yield. We can still feel doubt and uncertainty; we can feel pain and grief – those are all vulnerable emotions that God can handle from us. The people of Judah were feeling all of that – remember they have been going through a century of traumatic events – invasion, occupation, brutality and violence, exile. They feel quite abandoned by God, and they find themselves relying on other gods and corrupt leaders rather than yielding to the one who loves them and asks them to love others. To care for others, to return to a way of living that ushers in God’s kindom.
Jeremiah gives them a way to voice all of those vulnerable emotions, but he doesn’t leave them there. He gives voice to what many of us I suspect feel – why is God doing this to me? Why is God doing this to us? Jeremiah takes that and says – here is your accountability – you need to yield, you need to repent, to return to God and God’s way of Love. This is what Jeremiah’s community of faith needs to do, and in Judah’s case it is a whole nation.
What might happen if we did just that? If we acknowledged our pain, our grief, our doubt, our fear of an uncertain future, and instead focused on really turning back to God? To rely on God through prayer and community conversation to show us that path back to a reordering, which by the way, is never the same as the order we left. A reorientation phase has new components, a new path we might never have considered, a new way of being God’s love in the world. But we won’t know that if we don’t yield/surrender to God so that God can continue to mold and shape us. So that God can turn us into beautiful vessels of Love that know they are not abandoned or knocked out.
A turning point in my own life of trying to be vulnerable and let God remake me was Henri Nouwen’s book: The Road to Daybreak, which is his story of leaving Yale Divinity School to join the L’Arche Community in Canada as a chaplain. Over and over he talks about how his prayer was to surrender to God’s desire for him. Show me the way Lord, and I will follow you.
That is a frustrating prayer for sure until you yield/surrender to God. My prayer for us as this community of faith is that we will pray that prayer over and over again – Show us the way Lord, and we will follow you. We will follow you through our vulnerable emotions, we will follow you as you lead us to new paths. We will be your clay and you will be our potter. May it be so. Amen.