Saturday, September 7, 2013

The Act of Malleability, by Rev Steven R Mitchell for Mountain View United Church, Aurora, CO


The Act of Malleability

By Rev Steven R Mitchell

Mountain View United, Aurora, CO 9/8/2013

Based on Jeremiah 18:1-11

 

        When I was in my early twenties, I was a member of a downtown church whose pastor was one of those ministers that I list as being mentored by.  Through him, I learned the value of networking within the secular community, I observed the value of bringing healing where there was brokenness, and experienced a man who always seemed to know what to say.  He was one of two pastors that I studied under who I would refer to as mystics.  There was a running joke among the faculty at the Seminary that I attended that, “Roger Fredrickson could have a religious experience while just walking across a golf course”, followed by childish chuckling.  But it was true, this role model for me was so open to listening for a message from God, that he could have a religious experience while just walking across a golf course.

        There are many places and many ways in which God can and does choose to speak to us.  It can be on the golf course, it can be in a concert hall, or on a walk along a mountain path, or while patiently waiting for a bite on your fishing pole, or in the safe space of your own backyard.  For Jeremiah, his word from God came in two stages.  The first place isn’t identified but it could have been at home, or in a field, even at the temple. No matter where it was God told him to go to the potter’s house for that is where he would receive the message that God had for him.  So Jeremiah goes to the potter’s house and watches how the potter is working with the clay and it is through his observing the artistry of this potter that God comes to Jeremiah with a message for the house of Israel.

        The unfortunate thing for “Prophets” is when God is giving them a message for the people, it usually isn’t coming in the form of a pat on the back, but rather usually as a wake-up call!  Prophets have never been very popular among the general population because the message is usually telling people something they need to know but do not wish to hear.  Ministers from time to time have to be prophets as well, which makes us uneasy as we tend to preferred to be viewed as the caregivers and not the needle in the side. 

Even with the message of gloom and doom that God is passing on to Jeremiah, there is also hope given.  This message that God has given to Jeremiah isn’t for individuals as much as it is for the larger community.  As we read this beautiful metaphor about how the potter works with the clay to shape it into the vessel that the potter has planned for it, it is easy for us to think of the clay as the individual.  But by thinking this way, we are not giving full value to this passage.  Please do not miss understand me in this, the message is to the individual in as much as we are the sum of the whole.  So, it is through the individual that the whole community makes the larger shape of the vessel, that object that is designed to do the larger purpose.

The warning here for Israel and to Judah, is that they are not following God’s ways.   As a people, they are turning away from God, building temples and giving honor to the gods of other nations.  God is saying, as a people if you continue to turn away from me and my purpose for you, I will abandon you to your own follies.  Ultimately, this was seen through the captivity the Hebrews experienced by being carted off to Babylon.  The outcome of turning away from God, for the Hebrew people meant that they were going to be forced out of the promised homeland that God had given them. 

This passage begs a discussion on the old age question of God’s divine sovereignty and human freedom.  In other words, can we as people have the power to change God’s mind?  On the one hand, if we believe that God has a plan set out for us, does this not make us little more than puppets?  If on the other hand we understand that as Humans God has given us freewill, then how much power does God truly possess?  Rev Sally Brown, Associate Professor of Preaching at Princeton Seminary, says: “Jeremiah is addressing primarily the life of the called community.  God means to shape the community of faith in its collective social, religious, and political life to serve divine purpose.”  God states that if the clay doesn’t cooperate with the forming image of the potter’s hands, then the potter will crush it back into a formless state and start over again and continue to work and rework it, until the clay finally becomes what the potter has in mind for it to be.

The question needing to be asked is this: Are we being true to how God wishes to shape us as a community of faith?  Are we, as a collective body serving God’s divine purpose?  And if the answer is “no”, then what can we expect for our future as a community of faith?  If the answer is “yes” then what are the fruits that tell us we are conforming to God’s will?  As a society that prides itself on being independent, of being masters of our own ship, this is a message that we do not like to take an honest look at.  Yet if we do not, we can see through this scripture how God handles his people of faith, by crushing them until they are ready to be malleable enough to be reshaped to where they are useful to God’s purpose.

Again, Rev Brown says of this text, “The language implies that this clay can actively resist the hand of the potter!  In our common life, too, we can choose to align ourselves with God’s redemptive purposes or pursue self-interested agendas.  As your pastor I must ask Mountain View, “What is our purpose?”  “Is it of God’s purpose, or are we pursuing our own self-interested agendas?”  The truth of the matter is, if we are pursuing our self-interested agendas, then like the Hebrew people, we will be driven out of the ministry we say we are providing.  This is probably the most crucial question that we need to be asking ourselves this morning, “of whose purpose are we pursuing?” 

Yet God does not leave words of warning without words of hope.  If we look to other events when God has promised gloom and doom we see where God has had a change of mind.  When Nineveh was going to be destroyed by God, he sent Jonah to warn them to change their ways.  When they believed and repented, God did not destroy them but let them live.  Again, Abraham bargained with God to save those who were righteous in Saddam and Gomorrah, allowing for Lot and his family to live while the cities were destroyed.

As a community of faith, when we realize that we are not being the vessels that God has in mind for us, when we realize we are not doing the desire of God, we too can have a change of mind and heart, and become malleable in the hands of God and become that intended vessel.  When this happens, business as usual will cease and a new style of living will immerge.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The church in America in general can point to a myriad of reasons as to why we have lost members over the past half century and thereby have become ineffective, but are those true reasons or are they excuses for not being malleable to God’s will?  We as a specific community of faith are 40 years old this year.  Have we moved forward over that time span or have we become stagnated, living out our community faith through our own self-agenda over that of what God is calling us to be?  We have the free will to say “yes” to God’s mission for this church if we really wish to be clay in the potter’s hand.  The future of this ministry is in our hands, what shall it be, our way or God’s way?  God was speaking to the people of Judah and Israel through Jeremiah and God is still speaking to us today with the same words of concern and of promise!  Those who have ears hear!  Amen

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