|
|
|
The Potter and His Pots
Taken from a talk
given at
the Blaby Convention, 27 May 2012
|
Read 2 Corinthians 4.1-18 God the Potter The prophet Jeremiah had a lot to contend with. God called him to the prophetic ministry when he was still just a boy. God used Jeremiah mightily, but generally He gave him messages for his own people which they really didn't want to hear, so poor old Jeremiah was much persecuted by the Jews, and his name has become proverbial for a bearer of bad news! In chapter 18 of his prophecy, God tells Jeremiah to act out a parable: 'This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: "Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message." So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was spoiled in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me: "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?" declares the Lord. "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel .... Now therefore, say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, 'This is what the Lord says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.'" What is God saying here? He's saying, 'Jeremiah, go and tell the people that I am the Potter, they are the clay. I created Israel ‑ my beautiful pot! ‑ but Israel has sinned, and unless they 'turn from their evil ways', I may have to destroy them. But ‑ it's not too late for them to relent and to repent, and to let me re-mould that mis‑shapen clay into a new, God-fearing nation.' And God doesn't stop there. In the next chapter, He has a new task for Jeremiah: 'This is what the Lord says: "Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take along some of the elders of the people and of the priests and go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There, proclaim the words that I tell you, and say, 'Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem.' 'This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. .... Then break the jar, while those who go with you are watching, and say to them, 'This is what the Lord Almighty says: I will smash this nation and this city, just as this potter's jar is smashed and cannot be repaired.' Desperate measures, for desperate times! And here is a verse from his Book of Lamentations, chapter 4, grieving over how the Israelites had become devalued in God's eyes. He writes, 'How the precious sons of Zion, once worth their weight in gold, are now considered as just pots of clay, the work of a potter's hands!' Did you notice the reference to 'the Potsherd Gate'? The KJV describes it (quite correctly, in its way, but not literally) as 'the entry of the east gate', but the New Living Bible calls it more literally 'The Gate of Broken Pots' ‑ the Hebrew word is 'Harsith'. Archaeologists reckon that, in those days, because the kilns in which they were fired couldn't generally achieve a high enough temperature, cooking-pots were quite fragile, and very easily broken ‑ apparently, a large family might get through as many as one pot a week! That would have kept the price down, for sure, but it must have also meant that there were bucket-loads of broken potsherds being chucked out daily, and it seems that the East Gate of Jerusalem ‑ 'The Gate of Broken Pots' ‑ was the favoured route down to the official City Rubbish Dump below ‑ the Valley of Ben Hinnom, or (as we also know it) Gehenna, where the burning rubbish was always smouldering away. (If any of you saw Professor Mary Beard's fascinating series of BBC2 programmes about ordinary people living in Ancient Rome, you'll have seen shots of a huge mountain of broken potsherds, which still survives in the middle of Rome, to this day!) So what is it about 'Pots and Potters', then? ‑ they keep cropping up, in the Bible. We've already heard Jeremiah on the subject, and now here's Isaiah, in ch.45: 'Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but one potsherd among the many potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?' Isaiah yet again: a well-known passage, full of regret, from chapter 64: 'All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No-one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, O Lord; do not remember our sins for ever. Oh, look upon us we pray, for we are all your people.' You can find the same kind of imagery in the New Testament, too. It occurs in 2nd Corinthians, and here is Paul again, writing to the Romans, in chapter 9: 'God has mercy on those whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens the hearts of those whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who can resist his will?" But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' Doesn't the potter have the right to make, out of the same lump of clay, some pottery for noble purposes, and some for common usage?' Little Clay Pots My first wife, Margot died of cancer in 1985. One of her little sayings was, 'We always need to remember that we're all just 'little clay pots', really,' and I suppose she got that expression from Paul saying to the Corinthians, 'We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.' The conclusion that Paul reached was that 'Therefore we don't lose heart. Though outwardly we're wasting away, yet inwardly we're being renewed, day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So ‑ we fix our eyes not on what's seen, but on what's unseen.' There's hope for us 'little clay pots', then! 'A little clay pot' is one of the most enduring and graphic images. You take a lump of soft clay, you throw it onto a revolving wheel, or you mould it in some other way, until it takes on the shape that you want it to have. If you're happy with the result, you might decide to decorate it, and then you've got your pot. But if you're not happy with the result, you simply mash the clay down again, and then you start over. Now if you're the potter, that's fine, of course. You're in charge. But what if you're the clay? That's more challenging. The relationship between the potter and the pot is a truly intimate one. The potter is the 'hands-on' creator. I have a mug which, at first glance, looks like a perfectly ordinary mug. Probably, you would think, there are hundreds of identical ones around, coming off the assembly-line at some pottery. But you would be wrong! This is a hand-made mug, produced for Traidcraft at a small pottery in Pondicherry, India, and though there are indeed other similar mugs around, no two will be identical. Look carefully, and you see that it's slightly mis-shapen, and that there are the marks of two fingers and a thumb on this mug ‑ two fingers and a thumb which belonged to the Indian potter who made it. FINGERPRINTS Pat Marsh, England [From 'A Place for Us', compiled by Geoffrey Duncan] You and I are indeed 'little clay pots', and each of us is an individual ‑ each of us is different. We're made from what God calls 'the dust of the ground' ‑ in other words, 'clay'. Here is part of what the scholars sometimes refer to as 'The Second Creation Account', from Genesis chapter 2: 'This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens ‑ and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground ‑ the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.' 'The dust of the ground', and 'The breath of life' ‑ those are the raw materials from which you and I are made. The one can't operate without the other: 'The dust of the ground', and 'The breath of life'. Take my breath away, and I die ‑ Dust to dust ... ashes to ashes'. It is interesting to remember, I think, that Jesus actually used 'the dust of the ground' to heal a blind man. This is from John chapter 9: 'As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. ... He spat on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and he put it on the man's eyes. "Go," he told him, "wash in the Pool of Siloam". So the man went, and washed, and came home seeing.' You may wonder whether, maybe, the man had cataracts? ‑ at all events, Jesus used 'the dust of the ground' to heal him; but, on occasion, Jesus also used 'the breath of life'. After his Resurrection, but still some days before Pentecost, Jesus gently introduced his frightened disciples into The Life of the Spirit by literally breathing on them, just as God had originally breathed into Adam's nostrils. This is from John chapter 20: 'On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them, and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." ' 'The dust of the ground', formed into 'a little clay pot', and then ‑ in some marvellous way known only to God ‑ empowered and enlightened by 'The breath of life'; '... and the man became a living being.' Broken Clay pots are fragile things ‑ they are all-too-easily broken. And we, too, are fragile ‑ easily cracked, easily broken. Life can seem precarious ‑ as we grow older, we may experience hardships: old friends and family members may get sick, and perhaps die; we ourselves may experience health or other problems. We can be truly grateful for our National Health Service; it may be able to repair the pot, and perhaps replace a hip, here or there, but it can't yet make a completely new pot for us, from scratch! Paul says in 2nd Corinthians, 'we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.' 'Broken-ness' sounds like a terrible thing, doesn't it! ‑ the very last thing that we would choose to experience. And yet ... and yet ... 'broken-ness' is precisely what is required of us, before we can truly enter into what that great Chinese Christian known as 'Watchman Nee' called 'The Normal Christian Life'. What has to be 'broken'? ‑ well, not our individuality, but our self-centredness. Not our personality, but our stubborn-ness. And how does God achieve this? ‑ not by hitting us with a hammer until we give in to him, but by bringing us to the foot of the Cross, and showing us there how Victory comes through Self-sacrifice. The Master was searching for a vessel to use; This sense of 'broken-ness' is not just our passport into the Normal Christian Life ‑ it is far more than that. In the poem, The Master says to the broken pot (now at least partly mended, and ‑ if you like ‑ re-born), 'There's work you must do! Just pour out to others as I pour into you.' That puts a different perspective on what we might think of as our 'damaged' lives. It means that those 'cracks' in the pot are not there to be whinged about! ‑ they're there to be used! ‑ and used, especially, to help other people who are 'going through the mill'! Here is a little story which is very much to the point: An elderly Chinese woman (in another version, an Indian man!) had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do. After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. 'I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.' The old woman smiled, 'Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side?' 'That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.' Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You've just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them. So, to all of my cracked pot friends, have a great day and remember to smell the flowers on your side of the path! Cracked and broken things do have a real value. Think of that 'alabaster box of ointment', broken to release a beautiful perfume, which filled the whole house. Think of the chorus of a familiar old hymn: 'O to be nothing, nothing, only to lie at his feet, A broken and emptied vessel, for the Master's use made meet!' And think of Joseph, for a moment. Like Jeremiah, Joseph had much to put up with: sold into slavery by his brothers, wrongly accused by Potiphar's wife and imprisoned for years. But he emerged from his experiences victorious, and ready to do God's work. This is from Genesis chapter 41: 'Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from Pharaoh's presence and travelled throughout Egypt. During the seven years of abundance, the land produced plentifully. Joseph collected all the food produced in those seven years of abundance in Egypt and stored it in the cities. In each city he put the food grown in the fields surrounding it. Joseph stored up huge quantities of grain, like the sand of the sea; it was .... beyond measure.' The account goes on, 'Before the years of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph by Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On. Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh and said, "It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father's household." The second son he named Ephraim and said, "It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering." Think about that, for a moment ‑ 'He made me fruitful in the land of my suffering'. I mentioned Margot, earlier. She died of cancer in 1985, three months after we'd celebrated our Silver Wedding. She had a natural gift for talking to people who were in need of help and comfort. After she died, I looked through the little address-book that she kept in her handbag, and it was full of names and addresses of people I'd never heard of. People whom she'd met just once, probably. People who'd talked to her ‑ on a train ‑ on a bus ‑ and who, I expect, had never forgotten the experience. Occasionally, since Margot's death, I too have had the chance to talk to people who've recently experienced bereavement, and ‑ if it's seemed right at the time ‑ I've tried to share with them a bit of my own experience. I suppose, in the Chinese story we heard, that's a bit like letting water trickle out through the cracks, and then finding that you've watered the flowers. I don't know whether what I shared was helpful to them or not ‑ but that's not really the point, is it. That part we can safely leave with God. I suppose what I'm really saying is ‑ you don't have to be a 'trained counsellor' to help people in need. I've nothing against 'trained counsellors', and they undoubtedly help many people to sort themselves out, but the Apostles weren't 'trained counsellors' ‑ except in the sense that they received their training from watching Jesus at work, and (later on, after Pentecost) from the effects of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So ‑ don't worry about the 'cracks' ‑ use them! As Margot used to say, 'We always need to remember that we're all just 'little clay pots'. Crack-pots? ‑ well, maybe! Damaged goods? ‑ very probably! We're human ‑ we have our limitations. Paul had no illusions about his limitations. 'We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.' ... and then, he supplies the reason for his victorious life: 'We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in us.' In the same letter, Paul writes, 'Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort that we ourselves have received from God.' Peter, in his first Letter, talks about 'a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade ‑ kept in heaven for you. ... In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith ... may be proved genuine, and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.' And Peter's final conclusion is that 'those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator, and should continue to do good. That 'little clay pot' that Jeremiah saw being made 'was marred in the hand of the potter', but it was remade into what Mother Teresa called 'Something beautiful for God'. We all experience times of difficulty in our lives, and they can be hard to endure, but we gradually come to realise that it's only through those really hard times that we grow ‑ just as the chrysalis can never develop into the beautiful butterfly without the terrible struggle which pumps blood into its wings, and helps it to unfold them. 'Little clay pots' do get chipped and cracked ‑ broken, even, sometimes. As I suggested earlier, many of us have been through difficult experiences ‑ physically, emotionally ‑ maybe both. In a TV programme like the Antiques Roadshow sometimes one of the experts on the show will look at an old pot, and say, "Well, over the years it's suffered some damage, you know. If it were perfect, I'ld expect it to make a couple of thousand pounds, at auction! As it is now, it's only worth a few hundred, I'm afraid. But, you know, a good craftsman could restore it for you, so that you wouldn't know it was ever damaged!" Take heart, little clay pots! What you need is a good restorer! ‑ a Restorer with a Capital 'R' ‑ and I know just the Expert Craftsman: our Loving Heavenly Father! God loves us ‑ every one of us! ‑ he knows what we're going through, and he's going through it with us. A famous nineteenth century Bishop of Durham, Bishop Handley Moule, wrote, 'There is no situation so chaotic that God cannot, from that very situation, create something which is surpassingly good. He did it at the creation. He did it at the cross. He is doing it still today.' A morning prayer based on words by Bishop Moule reads like this:
Lord, be with us Now isn't that lovely! Remember the hymn, written by John Newton, the reformed slave-master: 'How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer's ear. It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds, and drives away his fear.' Remember too what Paul wrote to his friends in Corinth: 'Therefore we don't lose heart. Though outwardly we're wasting away, yet inwardly we're being renewed, day by day.' My present wife Kate has drawn my attention to some lovely words on a calendar-reading, back in January. I've discovered that they form the last verse of a hymn written by Robert Cleaver Chapman:
'Thou art the Potter, we the clay, |
