The Way We Are
Jeremiah 18:1-11
Psalm 139
As a family we used to love playing cards, especially BS or I doubt it. It was a great lesson in how very different our two children were and are. You know how the game works? You try to get rid of your cards by naming what your discarding without anyone seeing them. So if they think your lying, they say I doubt it. That forces you to turn over your cards and reveal whether you were lying. If you were caught you have to pick up the whole pile. If you were telling the truth the other person picks them up.
Morgan who was very quiet and reserved would have this tell. His tongue would go off to the side of his mouth, he would stutter and look to the side. 3- 7’s. Charlotte on the other hand, three years younger than her brother would confidently and defiantly, and too young to know what she was about to say, said, 5 4’s.
It's a very humbling experience to have more than one child.
It also brings up the old debate of nature versus nurture.
They’re born who they are. But that doesn’t mean we, as parents, walk away throwing our arms up in the air when start to go astray and make lousy choices. We nurture them. We hold up, celebrate, and reinforce the good and we discipline and we nudge them in different directions when they make lousy choices.
I remember complimenting my now x father in law on his 4 wonderful children. When he didn’t say thank you I called him on it. He said, as a Pastor of over 30 years he knew too many wonderful parents who had children who made a lot of really bad choices and the parents were not responsible for that any more than the kids who had made the right choices.
How is it any different with this God we call father, (or mother) or creator.
We have been given free will. And we have a God who is most powerful and knows us intimately as the psalm this morn suggests. It’s is perhaps one of our most beloved psalms because of the intimacy of relationship.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
3You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
And then the verse that ties this psalm to the Jeremiah reading- (Beth)
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
God shapes our beginnings, our endings and every day in between, so out is the nature or nurture argument because God is fully immersed in both.
So while you may have been born stubborn or pig-headed, God can transform that and nurture you into the calm and caring person you all are today. By the same token, if you're born quiet and reserved, God can help you develop new pieces of your self, reshaping, reforming you into qualities of confidence and self-assertiveness.
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The Jeremiah passage you heard while still sounding intimate because of the image of God as potter and us as clay, Jeremiah was speaking to all of Judah and the people of Israel who had entered into a covenant with God, warning them of God's ability to throw them into exile if they don't change their ways.
The part of this scripture that amazes most theologians is this-
According to Jeremiah- God changes God’s mind depending on what we do. This messes with theologians ideas about God's sovereignty.
It doesn't mess with my ideas of God's sovereignty at all. God is still calling the shots, but how we respond, and the fact that we are in it with God makes perfect sense to me especially when we’re talking about covenants.
Which is always a two-sided street.
Covenants are an agreement between two parties. Those agreements, like marriage, place us in a direct relationship with God. Like the one we enter into at baptism, belonging to God, sealing the covenant of grace in our lives, through Jesus Christ. Those are pretty words, but what do they mean? It means we both belong to god, but enter into active participation with a God who calls us into a kind of dance. Being led, following, lading and listening, for all the ways that bring us into a deeper relationship with God and the full expression of God around us and within us.
This Jeremiah passage perhaps more than anything teaches us that we are not passive as clay. We respond to touch of those hands, to the weight of his pressure, to the spinning of the wheel. At times we respond by surrendering ourselves and other times, we dig our heels in and choose another way, ignoring the artists lead.
Sam wells-
Like most artists, the potter finds that the first attempt wasn’t a huge success, and the original plan is research that leads to an improved outcome next time around. That’s how art works. Art doesn’t fundamentally lie in the creation of the material. The material is a given—to be understood, practiced upon, cherished, for sure, but not created. Art lies in the recreation of that material in a new form, according to a governing idea or set of ideas.
The material is a given. That’s us. That's the nature piece. We’re human, born perfectly imperfect. But the creation of who we are to become, even at 50, 60 80 or 90’s is born in relationship with God. And maybe, I can’t say for sure, but if you’ve been practicing, dancing with God for long enough, you find that you’re a pretty simple piece of work. Not adorned or hanging on a museum wall, but as simple and as beautiful as a white linen napkin, or a field of daisies we call weeds.
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The artistic process of listening for all the ways in which God is reshaping and reforming us individually, and as a church, is a process and it’s a practice. The practice of listening for God, discerning which way to go, listening for the next choice, listening for how God is speaking through the people in your life, through moments with strangers, through stories we read, sunsets we witness, birds that show up, old friends who call unexpectedly, there is nothing that happens in this life that cannot be understood in some sense as God intricately weaving God's spirit into your life.
The part of the psalm we didn't hear….says it best
Search me O god and know my heart
test me and know my thoughts
See if there is any wicked way in me
and lead me in the way of everlasting...
I could make this sermon about what God will do with us as a nation if we don't change our wicked ways…but you've been receiving a lot of that lately. And this week, God was speaking to me through many of you, who are suffering personally right now.
So instead I want to remind you of what happens when we feel we’ve been pretty well shaped and formed by God and we’re good. We’ve been glazed and we’ve been put in the kiln and were shiny and life is good and the job is working, and the heart is in good shape, and the family is good, and then something happens and we fall and shatter into pieces on the ground.
Sometimes our falling feels like it was out of our control. Falling to the ground takes on a loss beyond our understanding. Like the sudden loss of a job or health, or the destruction of your home because of fire or earthquakes , or depression, or the loss of a child, the repercussion of PTSD, or the struggle with addiction. We lose our sense of grounding, of wholeness, we may even lose our sense of God.
Other times, falling feels like maybe we did it to ourselves, we made a choice our of fear, out of self-interest, without regards to how it would affect others. We have an affair, cheat on our taxes, make a bad investment, act cruelly towards someone who didn't deserve it, in a nutshell, we screw it up.
We fall. And the potter, who created us to rely on him in the first place, picks us up, and if we are willing, will reshape us, reform us into something even more beautiful than before.
For centuries the Japanese have demonstrated for us the art of kintsugi. When a ceramic pot or bowl breaks, the artist puts the pieces together again using gold or silver lacquer to create something stronger, more beautiful, then it was before. The breaking is not something to hide. It doesn’t mean that the work of art is ruined or without value because it's different than what was planned. The artistic practice is born from the philosophy of Kintsukuroi which is a way of living that embraces every flaw and imperfection. Every crack is part of the history of the object and it becomes more beautiful, precisely because it had been broken.
There is nothing in this life that you will go through where God cannot pick up the pieces of what has shattered, and fill them with gold into something invaluable. In a covenantal relationship, our willingness to surrender, as part of the creative process with God, we allow ourselves to be led, to make amends, to take responsibility, to change, to grow and to share with others. Transformation, repentance, reforming, beginning again. Pick your favorite word. God is the very process itself. And as one created in the image of God, you are born into that same creative process, in relationship with, in covenant with, God the creator.
Jesus Christ poured the cup of the new covenant, the one which forgives you and loves you and calls you into a new creation….
That can't happen if you spend too much time beating yourself up for any of it. Or beating up God for it. Old stories of yourself as sinner or as victim only get in the way of what God is trying to do with you now. You can be regretful, but holding on to regret as a form of self-punishment stops the creative process of what God is trying to do with you now... Let the old die.
And listen to this song which hold these lyrics and take it in….
So now every old scar shows
from every time I broke
And anyone’s eyes can see
I’m not what I used to be
But in a collector’s mind
All of these jagged lines
Make me more beautiful
And worth a higher price
Amen