Formation

Scriptures:  Jeremiah 18:1-11     Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

                     Philemon 1:1-21       Luke 14:25-33

In junior high school, I dreaded art class.  While I was great at reading and solid in math, somehow, my artistic skills stopped developing around age 3 or so.  I never got much beyond stick figures and lollipop trees -  you know, tree trunk that looked like a lollipop stick and a round green blob at the top representing leaves, that looked like a green lollipop.    And to this day, that’s about my level of artistic achievement.  I never wanted the teacher or other students to see my alleged artistic creations. The one brief segment I actually enjoyed – sort of - was on making pottery.  Maybe because I liked playing with Playdoh when I was very young.  I remember being handed a ball of clay, being told to roll it out flat and pound it with all my might so that any air bubbles were forced out – we were told that if there were any air bubbles in the clay, anything made from it might explode in the kiln.  The teacher really went on an on about pounding out the air bubbles.  So I duly used a rolling pin to flatten out the clay and pounded it to get rid of the air bubbles, formed a tiny little pot, and painted it some hideous color or other, and then over the weekend the teacher fired all our creations in the kiln.  By some miracle my little pot didn’t explode – I guess I got rid of all those dreaded air bubbles after all – and I had an ugly little pot for my mom to use as a planter or such.  And thus ended my career as a junior-high student potter.

In today’s Old Testament reading, led by the Spirit, Jeremiah goes to the potter’s house for a kind of art appreciation class.  Jeremiah notes his observation. The potter was working at his wheel, spinning the clay as the potter worked it.  At my junior high school, we just had stationary tables – two dozen or so pottery wheels weren’t in the budget, and would have taken up a huge amount of classroom and storage space if they had been.   As the clay spun on the wheel, the potter was dissatisfied with the form it had taken, so the man rebooted the process, smashing the clay back into a lump, pounding out those nefarious air bubbles, and then reworking it into something else.

And then Jeremiah had a thought….a horrible thought.   A flash of insight, bringing dread upon him.  “That’s what God intends to do with this messed-up country of mine, with this messed-up people of mine.  God intends to basically flatten the country and start over to create something new out of it. Yikes!”  Jeremiah went on to write, speaking for God, that depending on a country’s actions, God can relent and spare a country for which God had intended punishment, or can punish a country that God had previously blessed.  And then, speaking for God, Jeremiah wrote that God was a potter shaping evil against Israel – which Israel could avoid if it changed its ways.  Of course, we know from history that Israel didn’t divert from its self-destructive course.  And the image of a potter flattening out and reshaping a lump of clay is a vivid image to describe the exile to Babylon and the restoration that came decades later.

A few thoughts.  God is constantly in the process of forming and re-forming us, as individuals, as a congregation, as a nation.  Jeremiah’s words with respect of Israel are a helpful, if humbling, reminder that though our country has been greatly blessed in the past, God’s future plans could be more of the same, or could be very different….depending on our actions, our obedience or disobedience.   In the words of Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”  That’s true for individuals, and for nations as well. 

As individuals, in the words of the Psalm we read together earlier this morning, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  And we are constantly being remade, re-shaped, re-formed throughout the course of our lives.   If the clay I pummeled back in junior high school were a living being, the process of being formed into a pot would have been very painful for the clay as I flattened it out with a rolling pin and pounded it to get rid of those sneaky air bubbles.  And while we are grateful for blessings, it is often the painful experiences in our lives that form or deform us, depending how we respond to them.  Someone who grew up poor, or experienced poverty in early adulthood, may respond by becoming greedy, wanting to hoard money so that they never experience hunger again.  Or they may respond with generosity, deciding that they didn’t like being hungry and don’t want anyone else to experience hunger.  Someone who has been bullied or excluded or threatened may respond by shutting down and becoming a bitter recluse, or may respond by drawing a wide circle of inclusion in their lives so that others don’t experience what they experienced.   Our painful experiences can make us bitter or can make us better, depending how we respond.  Or as Franciscan Fr Richard Rohr writes, “If our pain is not transformed, it will be transmitted.”   It’s tempting to rebel – Isaiah also contains images around pottery.  In Isaiah 45:9, we’re given the comical image of a lump of clay criticizing the potter, saying “what are you making” or “you have no hands”.  But we can also trust that God can bring good from our painful experiences.

Our New Testament readings show people in process of formation.  In our reading from Paul’s letter to Philemon, Paul asks Philemon, a wealthy slaveowner, to welcome back a runaway slave, Onesimus, as a brother in Christ.  In the society of the day, a slave was seen as a sort of living tool, to be used as the master saw fit, with no rights of his or her own.   Onesimus had run away from Philemon and been led to the Gospel of Christ by Paul.  Remember that Paul had written to the Galatians that “In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female”.  Before Christ, Onesimus and Philemon were on the same level.  And Paul encouraged Philemon to see Christ in Onesimus, even to see Paul himself represented in Onesimus – that is to say, treat Onesimus as you’d treat Paul.  Of course, Paul was a man of his time, and we can criticize him for not demanding Philemon liberate his slaves.  Even so, Paul was asking Philemon to set aside his privilege as master in dealing with Onesimus, which must have felt to Philemon like an amputation. 

In our reading from Luke’s gospel, Jesus is calling on his listeners to let go of their attachments to anything that would hold them back from the reign of God.  Wealth, possessions, even beloved family ties – Jesus said all of these had to be let go.  The theme of letting go of wealth recurs in the book of Acts, which was Luke’s sequel to his gospel – remember that the early disciples sold all their possessions and shared the proceeds to support the poor.  To let go of wealth, comfort, family – all of this feels like a series of amputations.  But, like a master sculptor, Jesus is trying to remove anything from our lives that keeps Christ from being formed in us.

God is a potter forming us as a nation, as individuals – and as a congregation.  Especially in a tiny congregation like Emanuel Church, every new person who arrives, every new experience in the lives of our new or longtime members, everything that happens on Sunday morning or at other gatherings of the church, everything that happens in our community ministries, shapes us as a family of faith, forms us into the likeness of Christ.  We are a different congregation from what we were a month ago, a year ago, five years ago, fifty years ago. 

As we go forth, may we be open to the work of the Master Potter in our lives.  May we be open to being shaped and formed into Christ’s image, no matter what the cost.  And may we be used by God in the salvation of our neighbors. Amen.