Abstract
Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hands of the potter, so are you in my hand.”
He sat in his cluttered workshop, the sleeves of his dusty overall rolled up to the elbows. The stone turned as his foot pumped the wheel. One hand dipped in and out of a basin of water as he worked the clay. We watched in silence as the amorphous lump began to take the shape of a vase. He made it look so easy but instinctively we knew that it was anything but easy. .
It was the island of Arran and for us the potter’s workshop was a holiday novelty. For Jeremiah and the people of the ancient world the potter at his wheel would be a familiar sight. And whether he was making a plate, a bowl, a cup or a jug the potter would always be in demand for pottery is fragile and easily broken.
Is it too much to imagine Jeremiah as a regular visitor to the village potter?
On some days he would call to replace something broken.
On other days you can picture the two men chatting as they put the world to right.
On this day it was different however because Jeremiah had not come to chat or replace something. Instead the word of the Lord had come to Jeremiah and Jeremiah had a message for God’s people Israel.
Although we don’t know much about Jeremiah we know that he was a priest. He lived in Jerusalem during the latter part of the 7th century and the early years of the 6th century B.C. There were dark days for the southern kingdom of Judah and something of that darkness is reflected in Jeremiah’s personality and message and his book offers a fascinating insight into a man who often struggled with his faith and sometimes recorded remarkably honest statements about his feelings towards God.
Although Jeremiah never questioned God’s righteousness, he could not help himself wondering why it was that the wicked appeared to prosper and the faithless lived at ease. 2
Have you wondered that too?
If so then what sustained Jeremiah throughout a sometimes lonely and troubled life was the memory of his divine call, his conviction that from the womb God had known him and set him apart for this prophetic task. 3
In Hebrew tradition prophecy was not really concerned with gazing into some kind of crystal ball and foretelling future events but had much more to do with present events and circumstances. And because it was concerned with the present the role of prophet was to discern and proclaim something of God’s will for a particular people or situation at a particular time and place.
Reading his book you discover that typically one of Jeremiah’s prophecies started with a commonplace, everyday object or event, an almond twig, a boiling pot or a potter working at his wheel. From this mundane starting point follows a question and answer dialogue with God out of which the prophetic message is disclosed.
In other words, the prophet’s skill was not really to see different things from other people but to see things differently. And in seeing ordinary things differently, the prophet discerned something of the promise and purpose of God.
So what was it that Jeremiah saw, and then saw differently?
What he saw was the potter busy at his wheel, his hands carefully working and shaping the clay.
What he noticed was the end result was not always pleasing or acceptable to the potter.
Perhaps the clay had not been of the right consistency or the shape of the pot was not to the potter’s liking. Jeremiah noticed that sometimes the potter would discard the piece and start again. And having seen and noticed this ordinary, everyday event what Jeremiah saw differently came to him as a word from God, a prophetic word about God the potter and Israel the clay.
As the clay misshapen on the wheel is first discarded and then reworked by the potter into something more pleasing to the potter’s eye, Jeremiah wondered if this is how God dealt with Israel, constantly re-shaping and re-working her until she was pleasing to God’s eye and fully reflected God’s purpose.
It is a lovely image, powerful and evocative, and it set me wondering whether it offers a helpful insight into the life, worship and activities of the church today.
From its earliest times when the first disciples didn’t know what to make of Peter visiting the home of the Roman centurion Cornelius, struggled over the question of circumcision and fretted about Paul’s great missionary adventures into the Gentile world, the Christian church has continually been shaped and reshaped by the Holy Spirit in response to the new social, political or economic context in which it found itself.
The Reformation brought dramatic change to the church in Europe, socially and politically as well as spiritually, and inspired by their conviction of the centrality of scripture and St Paul’s great message that faith alone was necessary for salvation, congregations and schools were established in parishes throughout Scotland as John Knox and his colleagues set about re-shaping the worship and life of the church in Scotland.
And today with the centre of Christianity having moved southwards from its European heartland to Africa and South America it is evident that the Spirit of God is still shaping and re-shaping the life and worship of the church.
In other words the history of the Christian church reveals a constant process of discarding and re-working and while the central message of the church might not change, that nothing can separate us from the love of God revealed in the life and teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the life of the church, its patterns of worship and governance, are always in a state of flux.
And one of the reasons they are always in a state of flux is because the truth being explored in Jeremiah’s perceptive prophecy is the freedom of the potter to shape the clay. The clay is always at the potter’s disposal and not the other way round and so Jeremiah discerns that Israel exists to serve God, not God to serve Israel.
Reading this passage today I find a profound reassurance for the church in Jeremiah’s wonderful image of the potter’s wheel. Hope and judgment are brought together as the image reveals the truth of a more fundamental relationship; that we are in God’s hands, not God in ours.
And in this we can draw strength and encouragement: that the God we worship is continually shaping and reshaping God’s church until it and all creation truly reflects the purpose of God’s love.
Footnotes
2
Jeremiah 12: 1
3
Jeremiah 1: 4ff