Proper 18C + Clay in the Potter's Hands + 9.8.13

Melissa Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(Jer. 18:1–11; Ps. 139:1–5, 12–17; Philemon 1–21; Luke 14:25–33)

Image from Facebook page for Diana Glyer's Clay in the Potter's Hands

When I first began to read this letter of Paul to Philemon, I thought, what a crafty fox!  I mean, he talks as if he isn’t imposing anything on Philemon and yet he suggests the letter be read out loud in public and points out that he says “nothing about owing” him his whole self.  How arrogant, I thought.  If I received such a letter, I should think I might tear it up if it came from anyone but God. 
But ah, there’s the catch!  We don’t know why this letter was written, but what if, smart rhetorical thinker that Paul was, we can see Paul’s relationship to Philemon as a bit like our relationship to God? 
Look at it again.  “I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order than your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced (vs. 14).”  And later, “I say nothing about your owing me even your own self (vs. 19b).”  None of us owes our lives to another person, indeed this was a huge breakthrough in our understanding of why human slavery cannot be Christian. But we all owe every aspect of our selves to God.  And in Jeremiah, we have this marvelous passage about his visit to the potter’s house, and we are reminded, that just like the clay in the potter’s hands, we are totally at God’s mercy.  We are that clay, molded, we are vulnerable in God’s hands. 

And yet, amazingly, God never compels us.  Never uses the fact that he knit us in our mother’s wombs to force us into following God’s way and will.

The “Vaso Nuevo” or “New Vessel” song that we will sing in the Spanish service today talks about asking God to make us a new vessel, since we are like clay in the potter’s hands.  But I wonder, would we be so eager to have God remake us when we think about this image in Jeremiah?

Yet there is truth to the image—we are all being molded by God into who we are truly meant to be.  And even so, God cannot work with half the clay.  In her book, Clay in the Potter’s Hands, Diana Glyer mentions that the clay must completely attach to the potter’s wheel in order for the potter to create a vessel.  She calls this process “committing” and suggests that we, too, need to be fully committed to God’s work in order for God to be able to use us.[1]  God can’t work with only half the clay.

Psalm 139 reminds us that God has that whole claim on our lives that Paul discussed in his letter to Philemon, that we owe God our whole being.  “It was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb (vs. 13).”  God is closer to us than our breath, having created every aspect of us, even the breath in our lungs.  As Glyer describes it, “clay gets all over the potter as the potter works with the clay:” “When I’ve been sitting at the wheel for a while, the water saturates my hands and the wet, slippery clay works itself into the folds of the skin at my knuckles…. Eventually… tiny, tiny bits of clay work themselves into the very pores of my skin.  And stay there.  I can’t avoid it.”[2]  That’s kind of like us and God.  God’s hands are embedded with us, and we are covered with God’s fingerprints.  There is no separating us.

Yet, and here’s the truly amazing thing.  This God who has this claim on us, this intimate connection that goes beyond any claim we can have on each other, this God gives us a choice.  We are given the choice to respond to God or not!  Perhaps because he preferred to do nothing without our consent, in order than our decision might be voluntary.  Because we have a classy God.  It’s just Amazing.  It’s just Grace. 

Taste and See… the goodness of a God that doesn’t impose.  All this being said, free will or no, the choice remains.  Jesus challenges us in today’s gospel message.  God can’t work with half the clay, or with half our lives.  We need to be totally committed.  In the English reading for today, it says “he who … does not hate father and mother, etc.” (Luke 14:26) but in the Spanish, it reads: “si alguno … no me ama mas que su padre, su madre, etc. (Dios Habla Hoy),” or “if anyone … does not love me more than his father, mother, etc.” and I think the Spanish Bible translators were onto something here.  Because looking at the word translated “hate” here, misei in the Greek, it isn’t describing just an active hate, but it can also mean to disregard in a situation of preferring one person or thing over another.  Now, to understand this, you have to look at the historical Jewish family.  We were talking an extended family, to which loyalty was unconditional.  And Jesus is challenging that loyalty. 

He is saying you need to prefer me, so that when the time comes you will be able to do all you can to spread the gospel message, not just what is convenient within your family situation.  And when you think about it, this total commitment is what was required of the early Christians.  It didn’t always mean they neglected their families, sometimes their families got right to following Jesus with them, but they certainly put God first.  We are also called to that commitment.  This means we take seriously the choices we make in our lives, whether in the personal or the political.  Perhaps we may think about our choices with a God-orientation first.  How, for example, might the choice facing Congress regarding intervention in Syria look?  If we eschew the primary importance of family, or national loyalties like our ties to Israel, but only try to see the situation the way God might see it, what guidance do we receive? 

This means we take our worship seriously (although we can certainly also have fun!) We must pray daily so that the Potter will be able to mold us, so that we will be open to the Spirit.  Glyer notes that she once heard that an individual lump of clay is “full of itself” and that it needs to be opened in order to be worked on by the potter, made into a vessel that will serve a purpose.[3]

So, we have to leave space in our lives too, not fill them up in every moment with activity.  We must take time and make space to pray.  And this is a way of living out our commitment to God. 

A wonderful image that Glyer shares when she talks about the clay fully adhering to the wheel, making that full commitment of itself to the work of the potter’s hands, is that it then gets centered on the wheel, and that part is also God’s work: “that wobbly, bumpy, misshapen lump of clay rests under the skill of the potter’s hands, and as a result it becomes smooth, solid, and centered.  And so it is with my soul.”[4]

And herein lies the good news—the last words that we heard from Psalm 139 today said “I am still with you (vs. 18b).”  And how true!  In all of this, whether we are slow to commit, or whether we are quickly centered on the Word and work of God, God abides with each and every one of us, his beloved creation.  God encourages us, molds us, so that we can each be a new creation, un vaso nuevo, a new vessel, in God!

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[1] Diana Glyer, Clay in the Potter’s Hands (Lindale & Associates, 2009), 35.

[2] Ibid, 18-19.

[3] Ibid, 47.

[4] Ibid, 43.