Refashioned

Jeremiah 18.1-11

Jeremiah, a prophet of God, spoke to the people of Israel at a time when they were divided and in exile. Israel was in two parts, Jerusalem (the southern kingdom), and Judah (the northern kingdom). The people of God had divided from themselves and when they divided, they lost their strength. They were no longer strong against the nations that wanted to overtake them, so they were ousted from the land they had been promised so long ago by God, and they went into exile. They were separated from their land and from the place that God had given them to be together. The people of God were feeling lost in an unfamiliar place and they were bending to pressure around them.

Jeremiah was sent to them to proclaim the message of God. His job was to tell them what God wanted them to know. In today’s scripture passage, God wanted Jeremiah not only to talk with the people, but also God wanted him first to see a potter at work so that he could understand what God was saying. Jeremiah went to the potter’s house and watched the potter work.

Have you ever worked with clay? It always looks so easy to see someone else do it. On the potter’s wheel the clay seems to respond immediately and gracefully to the potter’s every move. With agile hands, the potter draws the dark, wet earth up from a slab into a tower and then drops a hand down into the middle to hollow out an inside. The clay becomes a pot that curves out to form a big belly of a wall or in slightly to create a concave arc.

But there is some skill involved. The clay is not immediately ready to form a pot. When it is dug out of the ground near a stream bed, or out of a tightly-sealed bucket, the clay is not ready to respond to the potter’s hand. First the clay must be worked. It has to be turned over and over in the potter’s hands, which warm and loosen the clay with every touch. It is turned in on itself and pulled out another way. It can take time to work with the clay so that it will be receptive to the potter’s touch.

Then it is placed on the wheel. Slowly, as the wheel is turned, the potter balances the clay upon the wheel, centers it in the space so that it will not wobble as the speed of the wheel increases. Only after so much attention has been given to the clay, does the potter begin to draw the clay up into a pot. And then, as likely as not, the pot will fall in on itself. Dark earth returning to dark earth. Fragile walls falling back into the mud pack. But the clay is not lost. It is not tossed aside as unresponsive and useless clay. The clay is given another chance. The potter begins again, with the same clay folding it in on itself, balancing it on the wheel.

Gently, gently, the potter pulls up the sides of the pot. Tenderly, taking care to pay attention to it, the potter urges the clay to stretch and grow beyond its natural desire to remain in the river bed into a useful and gorgeous vessel.

After Jeremiah had seen the potter work, he could tell the people of God what God intended for them. God intended to build them up. God wanted to tend to the people and work with them, to soften them and mold them and draw them up into a beautiful vessel. The people of Israel were up to their old tricks. They were disregarding God and choosing to go their own way instead of in God’s way. But even though they were being willful and stubborn, even though they were turning from God and cared only about their own opinions, even though their actions said everything except that they loved God, God was not willing to toss them aside.

Those stubborn people were God’s people. They were Israel with whom God had made a covenant that said that God would be with them and help them and protect them. God could have chosen to start all over like with Noah and the ark, but instead, like a potter with clay on a wheel, God chose to refashion Israel. The Israel that was built back up was made of the very same clay with which it had been fashioned before. Nothing had changed about the clay with which God was working. It was all the same people. It was the same group. Things were just going to be a little different now.

The clay was the same, but the way it looked when it was all put together was different. God desired something else for Israel and God helped them to build it up. Israel was refashioned into something more pleasing to God and better for themselves. Refashioned they were stronger.

It’s not so hard to see that we at Dickey Memorial are clay with which God works. We are very old clay that has been worked and reworked by God for one hundred and thirty years. New people are incorporated into our community and the clay is reworked to form our community again, only more beautifully, more fully. When people visit they speak of how warm we are and how caring. People notice not only the beauty of our church building, but also the beauty of the people of our church. And that does not change. The people of the church are the clay that God fashions and refashions into useful vessels.

This coming year is an exciting and, perhaps, perplexing time for our church. We are in the process of refashioning. We are trying to listen to God’s desire for us and to allow ourselves to be molded by God’s will for us. We watch our church rise upon the potter’s wheel in a new way beneath God’s hands. Though some things may look different we are only being refashioned. We are not reconstituted wholly new.

Our community stays the same. What is fundamentally us is the same. We remain a loving family who is always ready to welcome a new member. We remain caring disciples who look beyond ourselves and our doors to tend God’s sheep. We remain a curious group of people who desire to experience God together in fellowship and worship.

We gather around this table together to proclaim the unity of the church, to proclaim the grace of God that has drawn us together, to proclaim the forgiveness that washes over each of us equally. Though our Sunday morning may look different, we are fundamentally the same church that God has drawn together for so long and tended so lovingly.

Like the Israelites we need only to respond together to God’s guiding hand to be built in to the beloved community God desires for us to be.