Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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It is a fundamental faith-fact that God can do whatever he wants to do - it's part of the job description. He is in charge, and we are not. "It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves." For some this is a stumbling block which they can never get beyond, because (in a nation of "control freaks") it is "a thought too horrible": that our destinies might not be in our own hands.

God told Jeremiah to go down to the potter's house. He went, and as he watched the potter at his wheel, he heard God say, "Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so you are in my hand, O house of Israel." That is the first, and simplest meaning of this beautiful passage: that God is the potter. He is in control. We are the clay. We must yield to him and trust him. When I saw that Jeremiah's visit to the potter's house was the scripture for today, I knew immediately that we would have to sing (as we just did) that great hymn of submission and trust (based on this story from Jeremiah):

Have thine own way, Lord!

Have thine own way!

Thou art the potter; I am the clay

Melt me and mold me after thy will,

While I am waiting, yielded and still.

It's just a fact: life is often out of control (or, I should say, out of our control). That is a great frustration for me, and for people like me. I get up in the morning and write out a schedule for myself, and then I add to it a list of all the unscheduled (but important) things I want to accomplish that day. But every day I have no sooner gotten started ( It happens sometimes even before breakfast!) than both the schedule and the list have been torpedoed. Torpedoed, sometimes, by things I perceive as good, sometimes as bad. But, nevertheless, torpedoed. This past week, for example, on Tuesday morning, the organ company called. Said they had had a cancellation, and asked if they could install the organ right away, Wednesday and Thursday. Well, that was a good thing, of course. (We had thought it would be a month or so.) But, as good as the news was, it wrecked my whole middle-of-the-week schedule. (There's a reason I'm telling you this.) There were a mess if details that had to be taken care of quickly, and some decisions that had to be made sooner rather than later. And we had to coordinate the installation with other activities like aerobics, and choir practice, and preparations for a wedding reception, which was yesterday. Something good, but nevertheless something disruptive. I felt out of control, and (whatever the cause) I don't like that feeling.

And then, sometimes, I'm done in by things that are obviously not good. I took my car in Tuesday for some brake work, and was told it had some exotic disease, unrelated to the brakes. It wasn't even safe to drive it home. It had to be towed to a dealer and repaired. Another torpedo. My schedule all shot to heck!

Now, of course, my crazy week is of little importance. I tell you about it for two reasons. First, I suspect you've had weeks like that, too. Probably many. Life can be frustrating. It has a way of making its own plans and ignoring ours. Second is me, and how foolish I look (even to myself) in thinking I could control my life, schedule it up, experience no interruptions. Having things neat as a pin. And getting so frustrated. I suspect you've been there, too.

I don't mean to trivialize this subject. Sometimes life's interruptions are major, and very serious. A sudden illness. The loss of a job. A marriage that fails. Things we didn't plan on, couldn't plan on, but which change our lives dramatically. In all of this, we must understand (at some deep and spiritual level) that God is still in control. He is the potter. This is true faith: to believe that God is in charge, and that he can take our lives, which often seem so ugly and unorganized to us (like lumps of clay), and turn them into something beautiful. But, looking at the Jeremiah passage more closely, I realized that it said even more, more than simply that God is the potter and we are the clay, that he calls the shots, that we must yield to his will and trust him. That's the main thing, but there's more. The potter begins work on some vessel, and then it is spoiled somehow, so he remakes it into another vessel which seems good to him. There is a wonderful message of grace here. It is far more common, in the Old Testament, especially, for an angry God to pronounce utter doom. "I will dash it in pieces, like a potter's vessel." Traditionally,God's anger would mean it's over, finis!. But here there is the gracious possibility of re-making, of fixing, of regeneration (to use a Christian word). And that is good news for us, very good news, indeed! Maybe God can take something (or someone, or some country), full of imperfections and impurities, and make a new and beautiful thing of it... And, of course, that is what he has done and continues to do. The two great miracles of God's grace are that he loves us in spite of ourselves, and that he has the ability to make us new, to resurrect us from whatever grave we are lying in.

We visited the Waterford factory in Ireland, and took what is a wonderful tour. Visitors can get very close to the craftsmen and women as they work with that yellow-hot, molten glass, swinging it around, and cutting it, and shaping it. The guide said, "Waterford never sells seconds. If one of these crafts people sees even the tiniest flaw, he or she is instructed to destroy the piece immediately." And, sure enough, beside each worker was a steel drum full of lead crystal shards. But even there, she said, nothing was lost. The shards are melted down again and, made into a new pieces.

I thought about how God works with seconds. How, in his grace, rather than destroy the imperfect man or woman, he remakes him or her. And what glorious works he has done along this line. In a Tokyo museum there is a beautiful Japanese tea bowl. Centuries ago, somehow, it was broken. But an ancient artist put it together and filled all the cracks with silver. And now it is more beautiful, and more prized, than ever. So God takes what is broken and puts it together and makes it more beautiful than ever. Simon Peter: the mud he was made of was full of stones and lumps. The cracks in his vessel were visible all his life long, but God remade him (time and again, often with great pain and remorse) and made him beautiful. St. Paul: with his thorn in the flesh. Ugly to himself and perhaps even to others. But God's strength was made perfect in Paul's weakness. We all get discouraged in this world. Things seem to be getting worse. People have lost their way. This is an actual letter to Dear Abby: "I am a 27 year old liberated woman who has been on the pill for two years. It's getting pretty expensive, and I think my boyfriend should share half the cost, but I don't know him well enough to discuss money with him." So characteristic of our times. Values all askew! What are we thinking of? A radio talk-show host this week mentions a party for teenagers in New York state. Parents right there, condoning all kinds of illegal and immoral behavior. The police came and arrested the parents. What did the radio audience think? So alarming were the calls that came in that said, "It's no big deal. Boys will be boys."

If it weren't for God's power to make things (and people) new, the world would be a pretty hopeless case. But God can take a spoiled vessel and make it into something different, and better. For that reason, we need not be the victims of our genes, nor of our upbringings, nor of our past experiences. We should understand Paul literally: "If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation. Old things are past away. Behold, all things are new."