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Sunday, September 5, 2004
Sermon: “A Visit to the Potters House”
Scripture: Jeremiah 18:1-11
Reverend Larry Gerber

PP1: On page 394 of our hymnal we find this song: Something Beautiful
(Words are from Gloria Gaither, music by William J. Gaither)
Something beautiful, something good;
all my confusion he understood;
all I had to offer him was brokenness and strife,
but he made something beautiful of my life.

Americans think nothing of tossing old telephones, toys and containers into the garbage, but people in poor countries like Cuba have learned to turn trash into treasures. Same for our recycling God.
Recycling.

We do it with newspapers, bottles and cans. Sometimes with old batteries and computer printer cartridges. But how about rotary-dial telephones?

Not likely. Junk like that gets thrown in the trash.

PP2 If we lived in Cuba, however, the story would be different. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the economic crisis deepened. Poverty became pandemic, and Cubans were forced to engage in some truly inventive recycling. Since they had nothing new to work with, they found creative ways to make something out of nothing.

One person took an old rotary-dial telephone and turned it into an electric fan.

Another took an empty plastic bottle, one that used to hold antifreeze, and transformed it into a sign for his taxicab.

Still another person took a little plastic bear, a child’s old squeeze toy, and attached it upside down to a set of bicycle handlebars so that it would become a bike horn.

Now that’s what you call real recycling. Not simply putting old newspapers out on the curb. This is the kind of creatio ex nihilo reinvention that stands as a true tribute to creativity. And there’s no waste.

It’s this kind of appreciation for the recycling potential of the old, the tired, the tried and true, for which the prophet Jeremiah gained a new appreciation when God suggested he take a look at what was happening in the potter’s house in Jerusalem. The people of Israel were on a perilous path of perversity and injustice and idolatry, and Jeremiah could see that they were likewise on a collision course with judgment and exile. But then he saw what the potter was doing, and he listened to the word of the Lord. Jeremiah began to see that divine creativity might allow for a very different outcome.

PP3 “I went down to the potter’s house,” says Jeremiah, “and there he was working at his wheel. 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” (Jeremiah 18:3-4). The potter did not give up when the first vessel was spoiled, but he reworked it into something that was good and useful, like a Cuban recycler turning a phone into a fan, or a plastic bottle into a taxi sign.

PP4 Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: “Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? ... Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel” (v. 6). God makes it very clear that he can smash a spoiled pot and throw it in the trash, or he can recycle it into something that is good and useful and pleasing to him.

PP5 The key, says the Lord, is repentance. The fate of the vessel depends on its willingness to change —— or to be changed (7-10).

Jeremiah sees that God does not want to trash us —— he wants to recycle us. Although God describes himself as a potter who is bringing judgment against Israel, he also stresses that there is a recycling option that is always open. “Turn now, all of you from your evil way,” says the Lord, “and amend your ways and your doings” (v. 11).

Repentance is the key —— turning ourselves around, and beginning to walk in the way of the Lord. If we make a move away from sin and toward our Savior, we’ll find that God is willing to rework us into something that is remarkably fresh and creative and new. Our Lord wants to use us, not discard us. He wants there to be no waste.

Granted, sometimes we feel like old antifreeze bottles, empty and dirty and cracked, but we don’t have to end up in the trash. God is not the Lord of the Landfill, anxious to get rid of anything that is ruined, spoiled, damaged goods. Instead, God wants to rework us, recycle us, and turn us into something that is pleasing and useful and good.

PP6 But we have to make the first move, and turn ourselves around. Actually, it’s the second move. God makes the first one, inviting us to return, reminding us that his love is constant, begging us to amend our ways. That’s his move.

So we need to make the second move: turn around to face the One who is eager for a reconciliation.

So why is this “turning-around” move such a tough one?

Part of the problem is that any kind of change is a huge challenge for us. Even when we know —— when we know —— that a change, a move, a journey to a new moral and ethical climate would be good for us, we resist this course of action.
Resistance: It’s part of the psychology of change. “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy,” wrote the French writer Anatole France, “for what we leave behind is part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another.”

Tha’’s why we prefer to stay in “retail therapy,” the clinical —— if not more palatable —— term for shopping, gilt trips as it were, for example, because it feels good to go out and buy the latest fashion or most up-to-date electronic gadget. It’s hard to repent of gossip, because it feeds our ego to be in a position of superiority, with control over a tidbit of scandalous information. It is hard to repent of gambling, because we get such an adrenaline rush from making a bet and pursuing a jackpot. It is hard to repent of Internet pornography because of its addictive nature and its appeal to our baser selves.

As much as we may want to make changes in these areas, we know that our repentance will leave us feeling somewhat deflated. When we turn away from such sensual delights, we leave behind a part of ourselves.

In short, we don’t repent, because —— we don’t want to, really. That’s it. We don’t want to, we don’t feel like it. Le’’s admit it. Sin, rebellion, control, can be fun. We don’t want to give it up. So we don’t.

PP7 Another barrier to repentance is fear of the unknown. To do an about-face and head in a whole new direction —— which is, at heart, the core meaning of repentance —— is a truly daunting proposition. After traveling on one path for weeks or months or years, it can be disorienting and frightening to spin around and move in a radically different direction. We have to wonder: Am I really going to enjoy living a life of simplicity after years of maxing out my credit card? Am I ever going to feel any heart-pounding excitement if I focus on service projects instead of slot machines?

Repentance is the first step in becoming a whole new creation, like a squeeze toy changing into a bicycle horn, and it’s not clear from the beginning that any of us is going to enjoy the transformation.

Yet, while we fear the unknown, we often come —— eventually —— to loathe the known. We’re tired of the despair, the uselessness. Tired of passing the Paxil for peace of mind. Tired of living in a spider hole of depression and meaninglessness. We’re weary of our search for guiltless pleasures. We tire of our weakness; we long for redemption. We’d like a new and fresh start.

Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger calls this the “misery index.” In his negotiations in the Middle East, he argued that people will come to the table when the cost of conflict becomes too high.

At the potter’s house, we come to the table, the potter’s wheel, when we understand that the cost of living in sin, ineptitude, misery and despair is too high, and that only a reworking, refashioning at the hands of the Master Potter will work to turn our lives around.
PP 8
Fortunately, God is ready and eager to take:

•• what is broken and fix it,

•• what is wounded and heal it,

•• what is defiled and cleanse it,

•• what is bitter and sweeten it,

•• what is impure and purify it,

•• what is incomplete and make it whole.

•• what is ugly and turn it into something that is beautiful.

PP9 (duplicate PP1)
Something beautiful, something good!

All my confusion He understood!

All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife, but He made something beautiful out of my life!

PP10 (bread and cup: leave it up during communion)
With God, there is no waste. Anyone and anything can be transformed by the power of God, changed as dramatically as a telephone turning into an electric fan.

Objects of necessity. What a great term to apply to ourselves, as we come to see ourselves as lumps of clay in the hand of our potter God. We are the creations that God has chosen to advance his will on earth, the clear signs of God’s desire to invent new solutions to the problems that arise in the course of human history.

It really doesn’t make sense for us to resist the changes that God is making as he recycles us for his purposes, because there is nothing more satisfying than being“objects of necessity,” key components of our Lord’s world-changing movement of love and peace and justice.

When God recycles, there’s never any waste. Only forgiven and reinvented people who are good and useful and pleasing both to God and to others.

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766