The Potter’s House
Jeremiah 18:1-11
Sept. 5, 2010
It’s tempting, and maybe even appropriate, to read this passage from Jeremiah and note the obvious metaphor of God as potter, of humankind as clay in the potter’s hands, and then to point out the cry against injustice and oppression that is at the heart of Jeremiah’s prophetic vision.
It is tempting, and not inappropriate, to seek some contemporary meaning in the words here attributed to the Creator – “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.”
It is tempting, and certainly within our understanding of the preacher’s job, to point out the ways our nation might be implicated in Jeremiah’s jeremiad.
And it is tempting, and well within the bounds of a Reformed theological understanding of the theological task of preaching, to speculate on what God is here saying about God’s own nature, what with the evident delight in God’s freedom to change God’s own mind on full display here.
Any one of those approaches to this text would be appropriate, perhaps enlightening, and surely worthy of a Sunday sermon, and thus each is tempting. But while I pondered each perspective while wrestling with this text, one image kept coming back to me and leading me in an entirely other direction. So, I’m first acknowledging in passing the many possible readings of this text that I’m setting aside in favor of one image: the actual potter, the artisan who lives and works at the potter’s house.
Have you ever been in a potter’s workshop? What words come to mind as descriptions of such a place?
I thought of dusty and musty, in a rich kind of way.
All of these possible descriptions – a place with jars of clay, a potter’s wheel, an oven for firing pots, tools for shaping and so forth – have in common the clear understanding that we are talking about a place of work.
When you consider your own place of work what words come to mind as descriptors?
I could reduce the description of my work place to Karl Barth’s famous dictum that one should preach with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Barth overlooked one thing: good coffee!
Seriously, any place with books and tools for research, reflection and writing is a good beginning for me and if there’s a pot of good coffee, well all the better. But that is only a beginning, because my workplace must also be filled, some of the time, with each of you else none of it is worth doing.
We all have places of work, and, ultimately, that work touches the lives of other people or it’s not worth our time.
What strikes me about the potter’s house, however, is the apparent ready ease with which Jeremiah is able to sense the presence of God. God is in the potter’s house. The potter’s work lends itself readily to Jeremiah’s understanding of God, and that understanding also shapes the way the potter’s work is understood. God is in the potter’s house, and in the potter’s work.
On this Sunday of the Labor Day weekend, a weekend when we celebrate work by taking a day off from it, it’s good and right and appropriate to ask ourselves where we see God in our own work. Do we feel called by God into the particular work we do? Do we sense God’s presence in the work itself? Does our work further God’s purposes in the world?
The singer Charlie King has a wonderful line in one of his old songs: our life is more than our work and our work is more than our jobs.
How would you answer these questions with respect to your job? With respect to your work? With respect to your life?
Sept. 5, 2010
It’s tempting, and maybe even appropriate, to read this passage from Jeremiah and note the obvious metaphor of God as potter, of humankind as clay in the potter’s hands, and then to point out the cry against injustice and oppression that is at the heart of Jeremiah’s prophetic vision.
It is tempting, and not inappropriate, to seek some contemporary meaning in the words here attributed to the Creator – “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.”
It is tempting, and certainly within our understanding of the preacher’s job, to point out the ways our nation might be implicated in Jeremiah’s jeremiad.
And it is tempting, and well within the bounds of a Reformed theological understanding of the theological task of preaching, to speculate on what God is here saying about God’s own nature, what with the evident delight in God’s freedom to change God’s own mind on full display here.
Any one of those approaches to this text would be appropriate, perhaps enlightening, and surely worthy of a Sunday sermon, and thus each is tempting. But while I pondered each perspective while wrestling with this text, one image kept coming back to me and leading me in an entirely other direction. So, I’m first acknowledging in passing the many possible readings of this text that I’m setting aside in favor of one image: the actual potter, the artisan who lives and works at the potter’s house.
Have you ever been in a potter’s workshop? What words come to mind as descriptions of such a place?
I thought of dusty and musty, in a rich kind of way.
All of these possible descriptions – a place with jars of clay, a potter’s wheel, an oven for firing pots, tools for shaping and so forth – have in common the clear understanding that we are talking about a place of work.
When you consider your own place of work what words come to mind as descriptors?
I could reduce the description of my work place to Karl Barth’s famous dictum that one should preach with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Barth overlooked one thing: good coffee!
Seriously, any place with books and tools for research, reflection and writing is a good beginning for me and if there’s a pot of good coffee, well all the better. But that is only a beginning, because my workplace must also be filled, some of the time, with each of you else none of it is worth doing.
We all have places of work, and, ultimately, that work touches the lives of other people or it’s not worth our time.
What strikes me about the potter’s house, however, is the apparent ready ease with which Jeremiah is able to sense the presence of God. God is in the potter’s house. The potter’s work lends itself readily to Jeremiah’s understanding of God, and that understanding also shapes the way the potter’s work is understood. God is in the potter’s house, and in the potter’s work.
On this Sunday of the Labor Day weekend, a weekend when we celebrate work by taking a day off from it, it’s good and right and appropriate to ask ourselves where we see God in our own work. Do we feel called by God into the particular work we do? Do we sense God’s presence in the work itself? Does our work further God’s purposes in the world?
The singer Charlie King has a wonderful line in one of his old songs: our life is more than our work and our work is more than our jobs.
How would you answer these questions with respect to your job? With respect to your work? With respect to your life?
posted by David Ensign at
9:50 AM
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