Proper 18 B + Molded for freedom + 9.8.19

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(From Diana Glyer, Clay in the Potter's Hands)

M. Campbell-Langdell
All Santos, Oxnard
(Jer 18:1-11; Ps. 139; Phil 1-21; Luke 14:25-33)

“Now we're talking about a difficult thing
And your eyes are getting wet
I took us for better and I took us for worse
Don't you ever forget it
Now the steel bars between me and a promise
Suddenly bend with ease
The closer I'm bound in love to you
The closer I am to free”[1]
These are some lines from the Indigo Girls’ song “The Power of Two” from their Swamp Ophelia album (1994) that always feel true for me about marriage and commitment.
Yesterday Ana and David tied the knot here at All Santos and we got to see two people pledging their troth to each other. “Troth” is an old fashioned word for pledge or commitment. It is literally saying that they promised to put God and each other above health, money or any other tie that might pull them apart.
And I think this is a bit of what the song lyrics above mean. When we pledge our troth to another person, we are in a sense bound to them. Sometimes life will put up bars against what God has put together, be it romance, friendship, or even our relationship with God, but there is power in what God has put together.  By God’s grace, when we feel that connection and pledge that troth, somehow it all gets a lot easier. Not easy. But what had seemed impossible is very doable, with God’s help.
Now that is exactly the kind of commitment that God wants from us.
God wants us to pledge our troth to God, to commit to following God. So that nothing, no possession or connection, might keep us from God. This is the only way for the clay of our beings to be free enough of impurities, clean enough that God can shape us. That God can mold us into the vessels we are meant to be for God and for each other. Vessels that brim with love for others, for God and for all of creation.
But this shaping is so important not just for when we are glad. This shaping by the Potter’s hand is invaluable when we find moments when it feels impossible to see the way. Moments when we are shocked.
The events of early Monday morning, specifically the loss of thirty-four people on the Conception; thirty-four people just trying to enjoy their holiday weekend off of Santa Cruz Island, shocked our entire community. How could such a thing have happened?
One might have asked, how could the divine potter have just scrapped a boatload of vital clay? Of families, young people, people in the prime of their life, people brimming with love for the ocean, and for creation?
But of course, it was not God’s doing. I do not believe in the kind of God who would create so lovingly and form so lovingly and then just scrap it all in violence. It is clear in the passage from Jeremiah that God thinks about it, but it is simply not in the nature of love to do so.
No, we know that God accompanies us through tragedy rather than perpetrating violence against us. We are still learning more but the “why?” of the boat fire seems to be a mechanical failure or some other fluke. Human clay fails at times, without reason. And human inventions, no matter how seemingly perfect, have flaws. Tragedy occurs. We don’t know why. But we do know that we need God all the more in the midst of them.
And speaking of that, I pray and trust that God was in the midst of those thirty-four on early Monday morning as tragedy stuck off the island. I trust that those who experienced such a sudden passing felt God’s presence amongst them. I pray that, like Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego in the book of Daniel, they were accompanied. If you don’t remember the story, let me remind you. Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego had failed to worship King Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image and so they were thrust in the fire, but God protected them. Here are the verses from Daniel:
“Then Nebuchadnezzar was so filled with rage against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that … He ordered the furnace heated up seven times more than was customary,  … So the men were bound, still wearing their … garments, and they were thrown into the furnace of blazing fire. Because the king’s command was urgent and the furnace was so overheated, the raging flames killed the men who lifted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But the three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down, bound, into the furnace of blazing fire.
 Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up quickly. He said to his counselors, ‘Was it not three men that we threw bound into the fire?’ They answered the king, ‘True, O king.’ He replied, ‘But I see four men unbound, walking in the middle of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the fourth has the appearance of a god (Daniel 3:19-25).’”
I imagine that an angel was sent among those on the Conception, guarding them, that even as the flames consumed their bodies and freed them from every bind on this life, God nonetheless was shepherding them faithfully into the next.
Because that is the promise. We will never be abandoned. We are God’s own. God has known us from the womb, perhaps before then, we do not know. And God will guide us home when it is time, bending the steel bars between death and resurrection. Until then God leads us onward until then, shaping us into better and better vessels of love.
That is why we pledge our troth to God.

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