September 9, 2007
“Like Putty In God's Hands”
OR "The Grace Of Being Pliable"
Jeremiah 18:1-11

How many of you are old enough to remember Mr. Bill?  You know, Mr. Bill, the claymation figure from Saturday Night Live in the late 1970's?  Mr. Bill was a nice guy, but he always had the misfortune of… well, getting squashed and smashed and squished in almost every way imaginable.  In the same way a generation before when Gumby and Pokey occasionally got bent out of shape, literally, Mr. Bill experienced some sort of tragedy, only his was every single Saturday night.  Quite often, it was two or three times in a short three-minute episode, and a few times his dog Spot or his car or whatever else was around him, got mashed, pounded, or flattened, also.

But the amazing thing was, before the vignette was over, Mr. Bill would have snapped back into shape with nary a scratch on him.  Gumby and Pokey… the same thing.  They became a whole new creation, ready for the next misadventure.

Now, hear me out: What I'm about to do is NOT to compare Mr. Bill's creator, Walter Williams (a.k.a. “Mr. Hand”) to the Lord God Almighty nor Mr. Bill to one of God's people…  but I might come really close.  At least the author of Jeremiah18 comes pretty darn close.  Close, not in the sense of God unwittingly wrecking havoc with our lives and us getting squished in the process, but close in the sense that like Mr. Bill, we are like putty in God's hands, and God, our creator, will ultimately have with us as God will.

Jeremiah uses the metaphor of clay in a potter's hand.  Like a master potter with a potter's wheel in full spin, God takes the people and forms them into something beautiful, useful - most often both. 

The Hebrew word used by Jeremiah for “potter” “Yatsar,” is the very same word used to mean “formed” or “fashioned,” in both the creation story in Genesis 1 and in the exquisite Psalm 139:

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
   you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
   Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.

I need to keep being reminded that no matter what others say or what my clouded mind concludes, from the very beginning "I am fearfully and wonderfully made."  We need to remember that the God who created all the universe chose to make each one of us - knit each one together in our mother's womb, intricately wove our beings in the depths of the earth, and spun out before us all the days of our lives.

And yet every now and then something doesn't go quite right.  Perhaps the clay was too soft, or the hand twitched, the mouth of the jar is too broad or perhaps the potter just didn't like the way it seemed to be going at all.  God takes the creation, and folds it in upon itself, gently balls it up, kneads it, and starts all over again.  Something new takes shape.

Sometimes, those is done out of love, but sometimes this reshaping is done out of anger because of how we have treated, creation, one another, and God.  Isaiah 64:6-9 reads:

We have all become like one who is unclean,
…
There is no one who calls on your name,
   or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
   and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
   we are the clay, and you are our potter;
   we are all the work of your hand.
Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord,
   and do not remember iniquity forever.

But as with many metaphors, the one of the potter falls apart if pushed too far.  Jeremiah knows that, and pushes anyway.  Yes, we are the creation and God is the creator, and at times we feel completely helpless in the hands of the Almighty.  Shaped and formed, only to be crumbled and refashioned again and again.  But we also know that, unlike the clay, we have an effect on the Creator, and what we do and say, and who we are makes a difference to God.  The clay may be a little more or less resistant to the hands that shape it, but ultimately it must give in.  We, however, can be deliberately stubborn, or, in Jeremiah's words, “do evil” in God's sight, and God responds.  There is a sense of mutuality in our relationship with God that cannot be said of the craftsman and the clay.

The other place where the metaphor expands beyond its simple message is in the ability of the Creator to change, and not just the creation.  Much like God's promise to Noah after the flood, and to Jonah after Ninevah's repentance and transformation, God, the sovereign of the universe and creator of all that is, promises to change.  “But if that nation… turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it.”  Of course, this can go the other way, also!

Ultimately, the Good News of this metaphor, this scripture, is that change is part and parcel of who God is and who we are to be toward God and one another.  Jesus reminded us “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of God.”  Paul reinforces this with his words from Romans 12: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

We can change!  God can change!  In a world which all too often feels intractable, inflexible, and set in stone, there is a divine imperative to be reshaped, reformed, renewed.  You can teach an old dog new tricks, or at least God can!  When it seems we've already been molded, glazed, kiln-fired and sold… God looks at us as if we were the fresh, soft clay of our birth.

Therefore, isn't investing in education for all ages the embodiment of a deep faith in God as the potter?  In Christian Education, Spiritual Nurture and Development, Bible Study, Community College, Continuing Education, or any other form of on-going learning we essentially say to God, “I am pliable, bendable, shapeable… mold me, use me?

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.
Melt me,
Mold me,
Fill me,
Use me.
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

Isn't that the call of education, growth, learning?  Not only to be able, but to be willing to be reshaped and remolded by the divine into something more wonderful than ever before?  How do you need to be reshaped?  Where are you getting the continuing education you need to be refashioned into what God intends for you to be?  Have you given up on growing?  Do you think transformation is “someone else's job?”

Let me suggest you read Jeremiah 18 again.  God is looking at each and every one of us and sees not a hardened heart or a stone-hard mind, but the fresh, soft clay of our birth.  If God, who has been around a lot longer than any one of us, can change, then certainly we can change to.

I'm reminded of the great country and western song “Some People Change.”  One verse reads:

His old man was a rebel yeller,
Bad boy to the bone, he'd say,
Can't trust a color'd feller
He'd judge em by the tone of their skin,

He was raised to think like his dad,
Narrow mind and full of hate,
On the road to nowhere fast,
Till the grace of God got in the way,

Then he saw the light,
and hit his knees and cried and said a prayer,
Rose up a brand new man, left the old one right there,

Then the Chorus:
Here's to the strong thanks to the brave,
Don't give up hope, some people change,
Against all odds, against the grain,
Love finds a way, some people change(1)

Yes, we are like putty in God's hands, and there's no better potter to whom we could entrust ourselves.  And yes, there is a grace in being pliable. Let me conclude with a quote from the early Church Father, Irenaeus:
"It is not you who shapes God; it is God who shapes you. If then you are the work of God, who does all things in due season, offer him your heart soft and tractable and keep the form in which the Artist has fashioned you.  Let your clay be moist, lest you grow hard and lose the imprint of the Potter's fingers."

Amen.



(1) Some People Change, Words & Music by Michael Dulaney, Jason Sellers, and Neil Thrasher; recorded by Kenny Chesney as well as by Montgomery Gentry

Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2007 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096