A sermon on Jeremiah 18:1-11 by Nathan Nettleton

As I began to consider what God might be saying to us in the readings set for tonight, I was drawn to the first reading, the one from the prophet Jeremiah about his visit to the potter’s house. Possibly I was drawn to it because I thought I might be able to get our resident potter, Paul Gahan, to preach on it and give my self the day off, but by the time I thought of that, Paul had long since planned to be away this weekend. Nevertheless, I remained drawn to it, even though I have no experience as a potter whatsoever. But as I began to reflect on the passage more, I realised that Jeremiah probably had no experience as a potter either. This story is not written by one who is a potter, but by one who is watching a potter at work. And I have done that.

Looking through my records it appears that I’ve never preached on this passage before, which is a bit surprising given how popular it is. It is often a mistake as a preacher to see two quite different messages in a passage, and then try to do them both instead of choosing one and leaving the other for another time, but I want to take that risk tonight, hopefully without going two sermons in length.

The first angle I want to take from this story has to do with the ways that God speaks to us. The opening words of the story, and they’re repeated again before it is over, are “the word of the Lord came to me.” Such words stir up a fair bit of anxiety for many of us who seek to know and follow the ways of Jesus. We mostly cope okay when it is said by the Biblical prophets like Jeremiah, but when it is said by people we know, many of us shift uneasily in our seats. Most of us have known people who frequently say “the Lord told me this,” or “the Lord told me that”, and often they seem very reluctant to give any account of how the Lord told them, and how they know it was the Lord. They sound as though it was as clear and unmistakeable as a voice on the other end of a telephone, and that leaves most of us feeling either inadequate, or sceptical, or both. For most of us, clear-cut experiences of a voice from God have been once or twice in a lifetime experiences if we have had them at all. We certainly don’t feel like we get daily voicemails from God.

But this story from Jeremiah makes me wonder whether his experience at the potter’s house was a lot more like something many of us are more familiar with. A couple of months back, Alison wrote a beautiful little reflection on something seemingly insignificant that happened in a worship service here. It was the littlest thing: Sylvia straightened up the stole that had been left awkwardly draped over the lectern by the preacher. Alison observed Sylvia’s action, and meditated on it and allowed it to speak to her. And when she wrote about it, I’m sure most of us who read it were not only convinced that God had spoken to Alison, but that God was speaking to us through Alison. As best I remember, and if I know Alison, she didn’t say “The Lord spoke to me saying…” But the Lord did speak to her, and through her to us.

Jeremiah “went down to the potter’s house, 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. Then the word of the Lord came to me …”

Now, I have no way of knowing for sure, but I suspect that Jeremiah’s experience may not have been much different from Alison’s. He watched, he observed, and an insight came to him and he recognised it as a God moment. You see, Jeremiah does not say, “The Lord spoke to me in an audible voice and here I am dictating it for you, word for word.” He says, “The word of the Lord came to me.” And more often than not, when we say that a word or an insight or a revelation “came to us”, we are not reporting a voice, are we? So, my first sermon for the night is don’t go hankering after regular experiences of an unmistakeable divine voice, but instead, learn from Jeremiah and Alison. Make a practice of taking any little thing that catches your attention and meditating on it. Reflect, and be open to the insights that come to you, for very often it is in such things that the word of the Lord comes to us. Some of you are familiar with the practice of lectio divina, or spiritual reading, where you meditate on a word or phrase that catches your attention in something you read, and allow that word or phrase, turned over and over in your mind, to become something through which the word of the Lord comes to you. What Jeremiah and Alison are showing us is the same thing but without words. It doesn’t have to be a word or phrase from something you read; it can just as readily be a little thing you observe. I suspect that most of Jesus’ parables began in exactly that way. A little thing observed and reflected upon, and the word of the Lord comes to us.

Now for my second sermon. How do we respond to the word of the Lord that comes to us? Or how do we respond to what God is trying to do with us? If we had read one more verse tonight, we would have heard the people of Israel responding to the message that Jeremiah receives in the potter’s house by saying, “It’s no good. We’re hopeless. We can’t change. Our destiny is out of our hands.”

Indeed the vision in the potter’s house can be quite a threatening one. We are the clay. God is the potter. God’s hands will do whatever God’s hands will do, and there is nothing much we can do about it. The psalm we sang in response had a similar image in it. “You close in on me, pressing your hand upon me. All this overwhelms me.” To some people who have been stalked or physically abused, these images can be disturbingly familiar and very threatening. God’s hands close in on us and seek to impose God’s will on us.

But actually, the message of Jeremiah’s vision is quite the opposite. It is not suggesting that God has all the power and there is nothing we can do to change God’s mind. In fact, the idea of God changing his mind in response to what we do is explicitly stated in the passage. The central image of the vision is of clay that is refusing to cooperate; clay that is resisting the will of the potter and not coming out the way the potter intends. And the potter may have to change his mind about what to do with this clay accordingly. So clearly, the vision puts forth a relatively equal and two-way relationship between us and God. It does not call us to a fatalistic resignation, but to a willing and voluntary submission.

The image of God’s hands moulding us like those of a potter are only threatening if we are determined to stay as we are and resist being changed. If we believe that God has our best interests at heart, and knows even better than we know ourselves what we could become, given the chance, then being reshaped by God’s hands will be a welcome and promising prospect. It is here in God’s hands that we can find the fulfilment of the yearning, deep in our hearts, to be all that we ever dreamed we could be; all that we were created to be. But the one thing that we most need to be in order to allow that to happen, is pliable, or flexible. Because sure, like the clay Jeremiah saw on the wheel, we will frequently go wrong; go out of shape. But as long as we remain soft enough and open enough to be remoulded in the hands of the divine artisan, such mistakes and deformities are no threat to the final outcome. We simply submit again to the loving and skilful hands of God, and the ugly lumps will be smoothed out and the beauty we were destined for will emerge.

We are only in danger from the hands of God if we harden into our present shape and refuse to ever change again. This is better illustrated in the next chapter where Jeremiah takes a completed clay jar, one that has already been fired and glazed in its final shape, and smashes it to show what will happen to those who have become too hard and inflexible to ever change their ways. I remember an old t-short slogan that said “some people’s minds are like concrete — all mixed up and permanently set.” Jeremiah’s image is similar, although it is about our whole lives and behaviours, not just the state of our minds. And clay is a better image, because, unlike concrete, it can stay pliable for a long time and keep on being reworked over and over, as often as required.

So, if my first sermon was to learn from how Jeremiah received the word of the Lord, my second is to learn from the word he received. God has created you and destined you to become something beautiful and extraordinary; fearfully and wonderfully made. And God loves you and will not willingly give up on you. No matter how much your life goes out of shape, if you will remain pliable and open to change, you can trust God to continue to work with you, reshaping you lovingly and skilfully until all the beauty and wonder shows through.

As we sang before: “We praise you, O Lord. For all your works are wonderful.” This is the word of the Lord! Amen!