The Clay Is Still Wet: Refusing Despair

All right, with that, we are in a series that will take us through Easter on the work and the book of Jeremiah. And so far, we have talked about Jeremiah's sense of inadequacy. We have talked about being a prophet in uncertain times. And today we're going to one of the most famous passages from Jeremiah, and that's Jeremiah chapter 18.

Give me one second to get my screen sharing all set up here, because I've got slides. Actually, as soon as I did that, I realized I messed it up. One second, sorry. There we go.

All right, so we are in Jeremiah chapter 18. And this is the word of the Lord. There's going to be a video playing, hopefully, that you'll be able to see as I read this.

So receive this scripture. 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 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. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. James Baldwin wrote in 1961, To be black in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all of the time. For a long time, that was a statement white Americans could read and nod at sympathetically without really understanding.

But I think more of us non-melanated folk are starting to get it now. The incessant rage. The constant low-level hum of it.

The way it sits in your chest when you read the news. As historian Jamar Tisby wrote, Authoritarianism isn't new in the United States. It's just newly visible to most white people.

This month, ICE has lynched, murdered, killed Renee Good and Alex Pretty. We're a year into an administration where our president is threatening wars over Greenland like it's a board game. Jobs in our city still feel precarious because so many of them are tied to a federal government that's being gutted.

The news is relentless. And so the question I've been asking myself, the question I want to ask you is, Does the future feel inevitable to you? Because what I've noticed in myself and conversations I've had with many of us is this creeping sense that the future is fixed, already written.

That the kiln has fired and that the clay has hardened. Despair, as I've talked about before, despair starts to feel rational and responsible even. Like we're just being realistic about how bad things are.

So it's our duty to be cynics and to be despairing. But what I want to say this morning is that despair is basically a form of determinism. Despair says that the future is sealed.

Despair says that there's nothing that we can do. That fate has had its final word. And despair, very interestingly, is something that lets me off the hook.

Because if everything is already decided, then my actions don't really matter anyway. Despair is the sort of end game scenario of Calvinism and determinism. So God in Jeremiah 18 tells Jeremiah to go down.

To go down to the potter's house. To go down to the potter's house. And there God says, I will let you hear my words.

And I find this interesting. God doesn't say, I'm going to tell you something right now. God doesn't say, here's a vision.

Now deal with it. Rather, Jeremiah tells, God tells Jeremiah to go. Go somewhere.

Position yourself. And then there at the potter's house, I will speak. And as you read through Jeremiah 18, you notice there's actually a lot of directional language in the passage.

Rise. Get up. Go down.

Turn. Uproot. The Hebrew is full of these movement words.

And what I want to point out to us this morning is that Jeremiah had to go somewhere, watch something, watch the potter at work before he could hear anything from God. I think about that for us. We are a congregation filled with activists of people who are already rising and going and marching and donating and voting.

We are a people already in motion, already doing the work. But are we going to the places where we can hear? Not just the places that we can act, but the places where we can listen for the word of the Lord.

There's a rhythm implied here. Go down, watch, wait, and let the word form before you speak it. So, Jeremiah goes to the potter's wheel.

He watches a potter at work. And the vessel gets spoiled. The potter is having a bad day.

Or maybe more accurately, the clay is having a bad day. The clay doesn't cooperate. It collapses.

It goes off center. It has an air bubble or something. But the potter doesn't throw it away.

And there's a whole other sermon here about how the potter doesn't throw the spoiled work away. The potter reworks it into another vessel as seemed good to him. Now, again, the Hebrew here is doing tons underneath the surface.

The word for making, yatsar, is the same word used in Genesis when God forms the human from the dust of the ground. Genesis 2. God formed the Adam, the first human, from the clay and breathed life into him and became a living soul.

The potter reworks the clay as seemed good to him. Again, the Hebrew is the word tov. And that is that repeated refrain in Genesis 1.

And it was good and it was good. And God makes humans and it was very good, very tov. So this is all creation language that I think Jeremiah 18 is bringing up for us.

Creation language. God, the yatsar, the maker, the potter, the sculptor. God with hands and the clay.

And the word spoiled. The potter is making something. Something gets spoiled.

That's the word that shows up in Genesis chapter 6, right before the flood narrative, that humanity had spoiled the earth. And God sees how corrupt, how spoiled the earth has become. So Jeremiah is watching the potter and he's seeing echoes of creation, of fall, of flood, of recreation, all happening in this wheel.

And then comes the theological bombshell. God says, I might declare that I'm going to tear down a nation. But if the nation turns from evil, I will change my mind.

And I might declare, God says, that I'm going to build up a nation. But if that nation does evil, I will change my mind. Now, this is not typically how I think about prophecy.

I tend to think of prophecy as prediction. God sees the future and reports it. Done deal, written in stone.

It's what happens in Genesis 6. He goes to Noah. God goes to Noah and says, I've seen how you all have spoiled the creation, spoiled the earth.

And so I am going to flood the earth. And that seems to be a done deal. But that's not what's happening here.

This is conditional prophecy. The prophecy is written in wet clay. This is God saying, the future is not sealed.

The future responds to what you do. I remember sitting in chapel at my Christian college and the preacher saying something like, God has no plan B. Which is just obviously untrue.

Of course, God has a plan B and a plan C and plan D and plan double Z. Because the whole biblical story is God responding and adapting and working with the mess that we make. Adam and Eve, they eat the fruit and God adapts.

Israel wants a king that they shouldn't want and God adapts. The people reject the prophets and God adapts. And ultimately, God does the most strongest form of adaptation they can, which is by becoming one of us.

This is the whole Jonah story. Jonah runs away from God because Jonah is afraid that if he goes and prophesies to Assyria, that Assyria will repent. And God will change his mind and not blast Assyria into smithereens.

God is not a deity who sets things in motion and walks away. They are a God who is in it with us, responding, reworking, relational, refusing to give up on the spoiled clay. Now, this potter imagery can easily become a picture of a god as a cosmic puppeteer.

God is one with total control who can do whatever God wants. But any potter or artist will tell you that clay has a mind of its own. You work with the clay.

You respond to what it's doing. You can't just impose your will onto it. In theological terms, there's actually a difference between omnipotence, so all-powerfulness, and all-mightiness.

So omnipotence, omnipotence, all-powerful, is this idea that comes from Greek philosophy, actually. It's this idea, it's Aristotle's idea of an unmoved mover who can do literally anything, in genie's words, unlimited cosmic powers. Snap fingers, fix everything.

And it's interesting because this is more influenced by Greek philosophy than Hebrew scripture. Hebrew scripture never uses the word omnipotent. It uses the word almighty.

And it comes from watching what God actually does in scripture. A God whose wisdom and power are adequate to the task that God has undertaken. A God who definitely is in all places, at all times, working to maximize well-being, but working with us, not instead of us.

The Hebrew and Greek words that we translate as almighty in our Bibles don't actually mean omnipotent. They never did. This idea comes from philosophy.

It's not the Bible. Theologian and philosopher Thomas J. Ord has pointed out that if biblical writers believe God could control outcomes single-handedly, they did a remarkably poor job of saying so. They never claim it.

What we do see in scripture instead is a God who is decisive and is the decisive cause among many other causes. A God who works with creation, not despite it. A God who invites cooperation rather than overriding it.

And that's actually a more powerful God, not a weaker one. Anyone can win a chess game if they're playing both sides. The mastery is in working with an opponent who has real moves.

The potter's skill isn't in forcing the clay. It's in responding to what the clay does. Reworking what gets spoiled.

Shaping something beautiful out of the collaboration. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from a Nazi prison, put it this way. He said, God is weak and powerless in the world.

And that is exactly the way, the only way, in which God can be with us and help us. And Bonhoeffer was talking about the incarnation, about Jesus showing up as flesh and blood. This is incarnation theology.

God experienced helplessness as a baby. God experienced hunger. Perhaps even experienced the feeling of God forsakenness.

God lived in a backwater country occupied by empire. And God died at the violent hands of the state. And yet, God didn't stop being God because of all those things.

We're still in the season of epiphany. And epiphany is a season that reminds us of the implications of the incarnation. God with us.

Emmanuel. Philippians 2 says that Jesus, being the very nature of God, emptied himself. The potter actually became clay.

It's like, kind of like the Pinocchio story, but inverted. In Pinocchio, the wooden boy becomes a real boy. But the incarnation is more like if Geppetto became a wooden figure in order to show the wooden figures how to become real.

As Saint Athanasius said, the Son of God became man so that we might become God. And Jesus' hands were always in the dirt. When he stops the crowd from killing the woman caught in adultery, he writes in the dirt.

When he heals the blind man, he spits in the clay and puts it on the man's eyes. The potter knows what it is to be the clay. Now, there is a harder edge to this passage that I don't want to skip over.

God says, look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. And that, for many of us, is uncomfortable. Many of us, I know myself, want a safe God, a nice God, a God who never gets angry.

But I don't think I want to be too committed to a wrathless God. I actually need God to be angry. I know it's really cliche in sermons to quote this, but it's hard not to quote the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when Mr. Beaver says, safe?

Who said anything about safe talking about Aslan? Of course Aslan isn't safe. But he's good.

He's the king, I tell you. And I need God to see the violence of our country, the deportations and the cruelty and the casual disregard for human life and be angry about it. Because here's the thing.

God's wrath is good news. If you're the one with the boot on your neck. If you're being oppressed, the last thing you want to hear is that God is totes chill about it.

That God is neutral. That God sees what's happening and just shrugs. No, I need a God who sees and is moved, who gets riled up, whose spirit then moves in God's people to act.

Now, of course, all the caution here. Any church that claims to act on behalf of an angry God can go down some evil paths very, very quickly. So whatever anger we have needs to be shaped by Jesus Christ.

It has to be a cruciform sort of anger, a self-giving sort of anger. Sort of anger that impels me to love my enemies, to work so that my enemy stops causing harm. Because that harm hurts their victims and it also corrupts their own soul.

I need an anger that helps me to bless those who curse me. Which means I ultimately want for them not destruction, but repentance. I want them to turn so that God will relent.

I have to do what I can to not be like Jonah, who was afraid of his enemy's repentance and God's relenting. I have to watch my own heart. It is too easy to cheer God on.

Yes, God, bring disaster on the evildoers. And it's much harder to pray for the evildoers to repent, to want the spoiled clay reworked rather than thrown away. So this passage ends with an invitation.

Turn now, all of you, from your evil way and amend your ways and your doings. There's parallelism here. God is shaping and devising.

Israel is also shaping and devising evil. And the question is, who will turn first? So here's where we land.

Despair says the kiln is already fired. That the clay has hardened. That the future is sealed.

But the potter says the clay is still wet. The wheel is still spinning. I am still at work.

The future is still open. And I know this congregation. I know that you're already doing the work.

You're voting and protesting and donating and showing up. And you don't need me to tell you to go do more. So what I want to offer you is this.

Your spiritual life is not disconnected from your activism. Prayer is not the thing that you do after the real work. Prayer is part of the work.

Howard Thurman said the movement of the spirit of God in the hearts of men and women often calls them to act against the spirit of their times. Or causes them to anticipate a spirit which is yet in the making. In a moment of dedication, they are given wisdom and courage to dare a deed that challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires.

Walter Wink, theologian, says, History belongs to the intercessors who believe the future into being. This is not prayer as magic. It's not pray hard enough and God will fix it.

It's something deeper. Wink continues, The future belongs to whoever can envision the manifold of its potentials, a new and desirable possibility, which faith then fixes upon as inevitable. This is the politics of hope.

Hope envisage is its future and then acts as if that future is now irresistible, thus helping to create the reality for which it longs. The future is not closed. Intercession is spiritual defiance of what is in the name of what God has promised.

So what do we do with all this? Let me speak to you personally first. Many of us walked in here today carrying something heavy.

A mistake that you made, a relationship that fell apart, a path that you thought your life would take that didn't pan out. And you're being, and you've been treating all of that like hardened clay, like it's done, like there's no reworking, like God has moved on to other projects. But I want to tell you that the wheel is still spinning and the potter's hands are still wet and God is not finished with you.

Not because you've earned another chance, but because that's who the potter is. The spoiled vessel gets reworked into something else, something good. Your past is not your destiny.

The kingdom of God, this reality where things are made new, is available to you today. Right now. Not after you get your act together.

Now. And I want to speak to us collectively, that to those of us who live in this city and in this country and in this moment, it is very tempting to believe that America is a lost cause. That the clay has hardened, the kiln has fired, and that we just get to be observers watching the slow collapse of something that was maybe never as good as we thought it was.

I'm not here to tell you everything is fine. It's not. Jeremiah wasn't telling Israel everything was fine either.

God was shaping consequences against them because of their evil. And our nation has its own evil to account for. The cruelty at our borders and in our cities.

The worship of wealth, the neglect of the vulnerable. But the passage doesn't end with judgment. It ends with invitation.

To turn. To amend. Which means that turning is still possible.

Which means the future is not sealed. Which means the church with a capital C scattered across this country in little communities like ours has work to do. And not just protest work and donation work, but the interior work of intercession, believing a different future into being, refusing the seduction of despair.

Fannie Lou Hamer said it plainly from the middle of the Mississippi freedom struggle. She told a room full of church people, You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it on your lap. And she also said all we have to do is trust God and launch out into the deep.

Both things are true. Prayer and action. Trust and movement.

Intercession and incarnation. History belongs to the intercessors who believe the future into being. The clay is still wet.

The future is still open. Amen. I'm going to turn it over to Josh to lead us in our communion with me.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Josh. I'm one of the elders here at the table.

And I'll be leading us in our, as Anthony called it, our pantry communion this morning. I believe we're going to have some words also on the screen with me. So as you see them, please, please follow along.

We have heard the word proclaimed. And now we come to the table of God's grace. The Lord be with you.

Lift up your hearts. Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God. It's great to be God.

Thanks. It is right, our duty and our joy, always and everywhere, to give thanks to you, Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, mother of us all. Therefore, we praise you, joining our voices with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven who forever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of your name.

Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, Lord God of mercy and love, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed are they who come in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest. Holy and gracious God, in your infinite love, you made us for yourself. And when we had sinned against you and became subject to evil and death, you, in your mercy, sent your only son, Jesus Christ, into the world for our salvation.

By the Holy Spirit and blessed Mary, you became flesh and dwelt among us. In obedience to the divine will, you stretched out your arms upon the cross and offered yourself once for all, that by your suffering and death, we might be saved. By your resurrection, you broke the bonds of sin and death, trampling hell and Satan under your feet.

As our great high priest, you ascended to heaven in glory, that we might come with confidence before the throne of grace. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, our Lord Christ took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples. Saying, take, eat, this is my body, which is given for you, do this in remembrance of me.

Likewise, after the supper, Jesus took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink this, all of you. For this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink of it, do this in remembrance of me.

Therefore, we proclaim the mystery of faith. Christ has died. Christ has risen.

Christ will come again. And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done. On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. As Anthony said, since we are not together, we are taking communion in whatever manner you have. So hopefully you have some bread or crackers, juice, or drink near you.

Please partake now at your own pace. And I'm going to turn it back over to Anthony. I've got one more song for us.

This is by Friends at the Table, the mini, and their song, Forgive Us. We try, we fail, we try, we fail, do too little, too late. We wish, we could walk away.

We hurt, we're hurt, nothing seems to work. We don't know what to say. Forgive us, forgive us, forgive us, forgive us.

We know not what we do. Be with us, be with us. Forgive us, forgive us, we don't know what to do.

We don't know what to do. What's wrong, what's right, hard to see without sight. Blimey, we come to you.

Forgive us, forgive us. Be with us, we know not what we do. Be with us, be with us, be with us.

We don't know what to do. We don't know how to pray here, stay here. Lord, all we hope is that you're here.

Help us, seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly here. Forgive us, forgive us, forgive us, we know not what we do. Be with us, forgive us, we know not what we do.

Be with us, be with us, we don't know what to do. We don't know what to do. We don't know what to do.

Receive this benediction. Go from this place knowing that the clay is still wet, that the wheel is still spinning, that the potter's hands have not left the work. Go, knowing that your past is not your destiny, that your nation is not beyond repair, that the future has not yet been written.

Go, as intercessors who believe the future into being, as people who refuse the seduction of despair, as communities who incarnate the presence of God wherever you are. And may the God who became clay to know what clay knows, the Christ who wrote in the dirt and healed with mud, the Spirit who hovers over chaos and brings forth life, go with you, work with you, and shape something beautiful out of all that seems ruined. Go in peace.

Amen. Thanks, everyone. Stay safe and warm.

Thank you.