9 September 2007 – Proper 18C * Jeremiah 18:1-11 – Luke 14: 25-33
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at
God’s Choices, Our Choices, New Choices
Too often we feel as if we have no control over our future. There are numerous other forces at work beyond our control. Worse still, we find it all too convenient to blame someone or something else for how things are turning out. Common targets of such blame are parents, genes, society, diet, music, peers, the Church, multi-national corporations, congress, the White House, the judiciary, the media – the list can go on and on and on.
Against such a fatalistic world view, Jeremiah the prophet was given a metaphor by God in an attempt to establish a more responsible world-view. The people of
Pottery, clay, was as common to manufacturing in Jeremiah’s time some six centuries before Christ as something like steel or plastic is for us today. Such things as bricks, lamps, toys, ovens, roof tiles, figurines, tableware, storage jars, cooking pots, even jewelry were all made of clay.
The Lord God of
This is an invitation for all of us to come, go, see and hear what the Lord has to say. And what we see is the Lord sitting at a potter’s wheel “throwing” a vessel of clay. It is spoiled, somehow not what the Lord has in mind, so the potter reworks the vessel until it seems “good to him.” God starts over – God begins again – God begins anew.
The initial lesson is perhaps obvious: God can choose to deal with us – individuals and nations – as God chooses. God has the freedom and the power to shape us and re-shape us. God can simply destroy us or start over with us as God pleases.
What is revolutionary in Jeremiah’s portrayal of this scene is the suggestion further on that the clay, the vessel, we, also makes choices: we can choose to be good or to be evil, we can choose to listen to God’s word or not. Clay cannot choose, but we, individuals and nations, as clay in God’s hands, can and do make choices every day – choices that either reflect God’s will or not. We can choose to repent and return to the Lord’s way, or not.
According to the choices we make –as individuals and as nations – God says, “I will change my mind about the good I had intended to do.” God as potter wants to do good for us, but when we stray from becoming a vessel that “looks good” to the potter, the potter can and has and will destroy one vessel to fashion a new one.
The choices we make matter. How we choose effects our future. We are responsible for what happens – we have a moral responsibility for creating the world in which we live.
Jesus makes a similar point to those who would be his disciples. All his talk about hating family, counting the costs and giving up all our possessions takes the importance of God’s choices and Our choices to a whole new place.
Jeremiah calls people to return to traditional moral norms and values – Jesus calls us to go beyond such traditional norms. What Jesus asserts is that living in accord with traditional moral choices is not enough to respond to God’s new movement in their lives. It will involve making choices that seem to make no sense at the time, but will lead the people to shape their future by making such radical new choices in the present.
Our calendar of Feasts and Fasts in the Book of Common Prayer celebrates the lives of individuals who have made such bold choices in an attempt to reshape the future of the church, the nation and the world.
Last Tuesday, we remembered one such individual: Bishop Paul Jones, born in 1880 in the rectory of St. Stephen’s Church,
Bishop Jones spoke openly of his opposition to the war, expressing his belief that “war is unchristian,” a position for which he was attacked in the headlines of the
The report called for his resignation, and in the spring of 1918 Bishop Jones resigned as Bishop of Utah. For the next 23 years, however, until his death in 1941, he continued a ministry within the church and society dedicated to peace and conscience, speaking always with a conviction rooted in the Gospel.
“Where I serve the church is of small importance, so long as I can make my life count in the cause of Christ,” he said in his farewell to the Missionary District of Utah.
We all pray for a world without war, without violence, without the kinds of hatred and thirst for power that leads us into one conflict after another. God keeps sending us one voice after another with names like Gandhi, King, Berrigan, McCalister and Jones. We sing, “You are the potter, we are the clay, the work of your hands…." Forgetting, perhaps, that we have the choice to be molded by God's hands, or not. "Or not" leads to war, global warming, poverty, etc.
God’s choices, our choices, new choices – Jesus challenges us to shape our future by the choices we make in the present. Jeremiah and Jesus both offer a hopeful view of the future by saying the choices we make in the present will shape our future. It is up to no one else but us – one choice at a time – to join with God in creating the world God wants this to be.
“Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” May we come, go down and listen. Amen.
Please join me in singing:
Come, go down to the Potter’s House
And listen to my word
Come, go down to the Potter’s House
And listen to my word
Just like clay in the Potter’s hands
So you are in mine (repeats in each verse)
Come, go down to the Potter’s House
And listen to my word
Turn back from your evil ways
And all the things you do
Turn back from your evil ways
And all the things you do
Just like clay in the Potter’s hands
So you are in mine (repeats in each verse)
Turn back from your evil ways
And all the things you do
Before you go to wage a war
Measure all the costs
No matter where you serve the Church
You count in the cause of Christ
My word is love, my word is peace
How will you make it yours
The choice you make is the chance you take
To serve the Lord our God
Copyright Sounds Divine
Kirk A Kubicek
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