September 8, 2019 -Jeremiah 18:1-11; Luke 14:25-33
Jeremiah 18:1-11; Luke 14:25-33
The Potter
Lectionary 23C – September 8, 2019
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Our baptismal bowl was made by a local potter.
It is a large bowl and she threw it on a wheel –
in exactly the same process that Jeremiah describes almost 3000 years ago.
The potter’s name is Valerie Metcalfe and
we commissioned her to make this for us 15 years ago or so.
She came to visit us to get a sense of what we wanted and when I told her how big we wanted
the bowl to be she said she had never thrown anything that big before –
it wasn’t going to be easy!
She persevered, though, and after many attempts she finally got it –
and the result is amazing.
But it truly wasn’t easy for her –
I think there were times when she just about gave up on the clay.
In the end, it took her so long I’m not sure she made much money on the commission –
it cost her.
But we are grateful, and the bowl is beautiful and useful.
The clay is not easy to work with.
When I was in high school I wanted nothing more in art class than to throw a
beautiful greek style bowl with a pedestal.
I tried and tried all semester until I finally had to admit defeat.
Working clay on a wheel is not easy.
Jeremiah compares the people of Israel to clay this morning, and God to a potter who
is attempting to shape the community and make it into something beautiful and useful.
God’s vision for the people of Israel is for them to be a community of manna-sharing and
mercy-giving.
A community in which all have access to the earth’s resources.
A community in which none go hungry.
A community in which there are no big deals and no little deals.
A community of kindness and a community in which members enjoy the gift of one another
and the gifts of the earth.
A community that is very very different from all others around.
A community of generosity and sharing in which
the vulnerable are particularly valued and cared for.
A community that brings blessing to all its neighbours.
God has been attempting to shape the people of Israel into this kind of community for centuries.
But it has not been easy.
Shaping a community – a big bowl, not just an individual little bowl – is not easy.
Like Valerie Metcalfe, God has to work and work and try over and over at great cost to
shape the clay into something beautiful and useful.
There is a cost to the potter in all this.
In Jesus, God comes among us and has a go at it again.
Jesus builds a community of disciples around himself and attempts once again to
build a community of people that is both beautiful and useful.
A community committed to healing and feeding and forgiving and sharing.
A community of good neighbours – a community for whom the word neighbour means
any one who is in any need.
But it is not easy.
This morning, Jesus looks around and sees a large crowd following him on his way to
Jerusalem.
And he wonders if they, too, have counted the cost in being his followers.
Do they know what they are getting into?
We know Jesus uses strong language to get people’s attention and to make a point.
But is he really telling people that they can’t be his disciples unless they hate their families?
Probably not – after all, that would seem inconsistent with Jesus command to love.
In the context, Jesus likely means that you have to be willing to bring shame to your family
by doing the things following him requires: eating with those not of your level,
forming relationships with those considered dishonourable,
befriending the disreputable.
Putting healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and including the excluded above concerns for
your family’s reputation and honour – all things which Jesus apparently did,
and for which he was likely considered the black sheep of his family.
In the ancient world, the extended family was everything and it was your duty to
do things that brought more and more honour to your family, not shame.
It is likely that Jesus is saying this is part of the cost to becoming his disciple,
and if you can’t imagine doing that, you best not even start.
There is a cost to being a follower of Jesus,
a cost to being part of a community that is beautiful and useful.
A cost to following a controversial figure opposed by religious and political authorities.
Ultimately Jesus would bring the ultimate shame to his family –
he would be found guilty of being a criminal and die in the most shameful way:
on a cross.
There is a cost to the potter Jesus who attempts to shape his community the church into
something beautiful and useful.
God in Jesus is still turning that wheel, still trying to shape us into a community that is
beautiful and useful.
The costs to us may be different than those in Jesus’ time.
It is unlikely any of us here will bring shame to our families by being part of this community –
although in other parts of the world that is still true.
But there will be a cost – we will be shaped, our priorities will be re-ordered.
And that will cost us in time and in money and in where we put our energy.
Community meals and food banks don’t happen by magic.
Nor does keeping the lights on here and paying the bills so that all the amazing work of
First Lutheran Church can continue.
At the beginning of our Fall programming year,
we stand at the beginning of another great adventure.
How will the potter continue to shape us, as a community and as individuals fit for
being participants in God’s mission to love bless heal and feed this world and
every person in it?
How will it change you? And what will be the cost?
What new capacities are you being invited into?
What new thing will you volunteer for?
How can we become more the community that is held in God’s imagination?
How can we become more beautiful? And more useful?
And how will – and how does – the potter shape us?
Take a moment – and think of how you are being shaped here at FLC as individual members
and
as a community by God the potter into something beautiful and useful?
What are the things here that form you?
[give time for responses and engage in conversation about them]
You can see how God is still at work, right?
And how God is shaping us.
God is tireless – shaping us week after week into something beautiful and useful.
Never giving up, always working the clay into something new just when it seems like
it might never take shape.
God has estimated the cost and figured the cost is worth it.
In Jesus, God set aside glory and came to us a very humble person in Jesus and
suffered with us everything a human being can suffer.
In great love, God in Jesus even gave us his life, and at great cost forgave us,
and in great beauty gives us the gift of the same Spirit that was at work in Jesus.
That’s a pretty high cost.
But God has done the math – and calculated that it was worth it to shape a community
here at Sargent and Victor in the West End of Winnipeg that is both beautiful and useful.
Like that big bowl Valerie Metcalfe threw for us, it is hard to shape a big community –
but that is the vision God the potter has for us and
that is the vision we have for ourselves.
And God won’t give up until the thing is complete – no matter the cost.
So let us give thanks for the potter and
let us give thanks for the ways in which the potter continues to shape and form us.
A new thing – and a new start – is always possible.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
