Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
Search me, O God, and know my heart.
O God, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O God, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
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.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written all the days that were formed for me before they existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts,
O God! How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them - they are more than the sand;
I come to the end - I am still with you.Jeremiah 18:1-11
The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the
potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.Then the word of the LORD came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the LORD. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it.
And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the LORD: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.
Gracious God, as we grow in relationship with you, give us courage to follow you wholeheartedly, letting go of all that holds us back from being shaped into the people you are beckoning us to be. May the words of my lips and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O Holy One, my strength and my redeemer. Amen.
This is a Sunday when those of us who have control issues are once again being challenged to give it up and give it over to God. The passage from Jeremiah serves as a pretty severe warning to those us who have grown accustomed to thinking that the nations of the earth are autonomous and free to do as they please. Not so, according to the Prophet. The God who formed the universe in the Genesis story is here depicted as a potter, and the nations as clay. As the potter is free to do as the potter wishes with the clay, so God will do as God wishes with the nations. Judah's status as the chosen people will be no protection for them if they continue to act contrary to God's will. At the Republican Convention, a protestant pastor from San Antonio said, ”God does not exist to bless America, but America exists to bless God.” And so the Prophet Jeremiah would agree, that we as a people must never forget in whose hands the clay of our lives is held. Our job is not to get myopic—regardless of political party or religious affiliation—our job as people of this planet is “to step beyond our national borders to view first the world and then the universe and to accept our responsibility in the larger vision.” (That quote is from John Shelby Spong’s article "Republicans at Prayer in Madison Square Garden," Sept. 1, 2004.)
Now the confounding part of it all—again for those of us who like to think we are in control, or at least in control of our little corner of it all—the confounding part is that according to the Psalmist this morning, this vision, this larger vision, is one that we as humans have no earthy way of comprehending. “Such knowledge is too wonderful for us; it is so high that we cannot attain it.” Earthly vision—God’s vision. Because we are human, as the psalmist so poetically describes in Psalm 139, we are limited in our capacity to perceive the fullness of that which is Divine. We cannot fully comprehend God’s self, let alone the vision God has for the Universe.
Is it enough, then? Can it be enough to go on, and can we be content knowing that there is a vision that is bigger than we are? Is it enough, I wonder, to know that we are a part of something that is so beautiful, so whole, so magnificent that we are scarcely able to perceive it? In this lifetime we are lucky if we catch glimpses of it, not even the whole picture in its entirety but just glimpses here and there. Can that be enough to sustain us as people of faith? Now that question can be kind of a disturbing—or it can be kind of liberating, depending on how you look at it. Here is what I mean when I say it can be liberating. I know that so far I have said we don’t have control, that we are clueless, both of which are true and a little unsettling—but stay with me.
People say simliar things to me over and over again: It will all be better once I can get my past under control, or my family situation under control, or my health, or my life under control. Well, right there I see an invitation to liberation, because for starters, these are all situations that are out of our control. They always have been and they always will be. Remember the potter—our lives are in the Potter’s hands. God finds a way to work through all situations. At every twist, at every turn, God has been, is, and always will be there, even if we never figure out how to make sense of where we have been, where we are now, or where we are going. God is still there.
Ultimately, we are not responsible for how it all will go. That doesn’t mean we don’t have responsibility to the greater vision. It means that we are not solely responsible for it. Therefore we have to give up thinking we’ve got to get it under control. And that is where the liberation comes in—when we realize God is in there swinging with us, that it is not up to us all on our own, but that God is there to get us through. Then we stop carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders. See, the delusion of control is oppressive. It prevents us from ever fully engaging in our own healing or the healing of the world. It perpetuates the "I have to wait till everything is perfect to feel good about my life" syndrome, and it is not serving any of us. In fact, it is standing between us and the freedom God has to offer. It is standing between us and putting ourselves out there for a new and better job, or mending a broken relationship, or developing a positive self image. To me, this is a liberating idea. It means I can let go of feeling responsible for everything, right or wrong, that has ever happened to me or someone that I love. I find that a relief; perhaps some of you will also.
Secondly, we have got to rid ourselves of this notion that everything is going to be OK. I hate to break it to you, but in our lifetimes everything is not going to magically become OK. When I was an actor, a teacher of mine used to tell me to give up trying to get that monologue perfect—it is impossible. The best you can hope for is that you will hit your mark (that means really feel it, really connect with the material so that something magical happens) once or twice during a performance. If you can do that, and let go of having to be perfect all the time—then you will be a great actor. At first that advice seemed pathetic to me: a whole life of acting and the most I could hope for was a handful of moving moments? But over time I began to see the liberation in it, the freedom that came from letting go of having to get it all right all the time. Finally, I got to a point where it was enough for me to show up and do my best every night. And sure enough, once in a while, magic would happen.
And the same is true of faith, my friends: we say we’ll get to it only when we can do it 100% perfectly. And so most of us keep putting it off. Well, here’s the good news: no one does it 100% perfectly. The most faithful people I know have bad days, days when they don’t feel like getting out of bed, days when God feels far away, days when it all seems to go terribly wrong. To heck with days—I would say more like months, even years. And that is what it is to be human. See, God doesn’t expect perfection. God is more concerned with the effort, the intention.
God keeps showing up over and over again, and I think the only thing God hopes for in return is that we will keep showing up as well. Not as who we hoped we would be, on that elusive day when everything has fallen into place, but today, as we really are. The clay, pure and simple. A life lived well is a life in which we as people of faith seek to hit our mark once or twice a day if we are lucky. We don’t have to aspire to a time when everything will be OK. It is what it is, with its beauty and with its brokenness, and because God is in it, it is enough. Our lives our important and magnificent lives, though just a tiny fraction of what makes up God’s vision for all that is. And if we are lucky, we catch glimpses of God's vision, when our beauty lines up with its beauty. What if that were enough?
I want to provide you with an opportunity to rest in a couple images from the texts. The first is the image of God as the potter. I'm handing out some clay now, and I invite you to take some of any color that appeals to you. Feel the clay in your hands, noticing how it feels. Is it soft? Warm? Roll the clay around in your palms, squish it through your fingers, flatten it, poke it, roll it into a ball, or tear it into pieces. Jeremiah said that God is like a potter holding us, shaping us, molding us into objects of beauty and usefulness.
A friend of mine went to visit with his pastor. Upon leaving she asked him, “What do you think God was thinking on the day you were created?” Now this question might make some of you giggle uncomfortably, because it is easy to go right into self-deprecation mode, but I want to you to resist that temptation and listen to the question: “What do you think God was thinking on the day you were created?” What beautiful things, perfect things, was God thinking about while you were being formed in your mother’s womb. Now, take the clay as if you were God in that moment. I’m going to ask you in a second to make a tiny bowl and fill it with the thoughts that God has about you, about your core being, about your truest self. The easiest way is to form a ball and then plunge your thumb into the center of the ball and work out through the middle. While you are creating your bowl and filling it with God thoughts, I’ll sing for you the song that my friend Mark wrote in response to the minister's question, “What do you think God was thinking on the day you were created?”
Sing to me the song that you sang the day you created me—
A new day is dawning and I want to sing my own creation song.You, great artist of life.
Bringing color and shape to the void.
Your creativity feeds the artist in me
And I long to work by your side.
ChorusYou, great dancer of peace.
Whose rhythms bring order to us
Show me the steps and the movement of life
For I long to dance by your side
ChorusHow wondrous you are empowering those
Who hear your voice on the wind
Your spirit blows through awakening us
To your art, your dance and your song
Chorus
My own creation song
You are my creation song.
If we belong to the God who has known us from the first moment of our existence, a God who holds us in the palms of God’s very hands, a God who treasures the immense value of each and every one of our lives, how can we help but be in awe of the beauty in all of creation, in each other, in each moment? Let us be awakened again this morning—awakened to see ourselves as the perfect creations God envisioned us to be—for truly in God’s eyes each of us is beloved. In all things redemption is possible; in all things forgiveness is closer than we think; in all things love can guide us back to our innate nature that is grounded in the Creator—but we have to stop muscling it so, criticizing it and trying to control it. If only we were as tender with ourselves and with each other as God is with us, wouldn’t the world be a different place? It would be a glimpse of that bigger vision: God’s vision, where all of creation sings and dances and walks tenderly with the One by whose hands we were created.
Sing to me the song that you sang the day you created me-
A new day is dawning and I want to sing my own creation song.