In the Hands of the Potter
Formed from the Dust of the Earth to Hold Beautiful Things
I had the joy and privilege to preach at Summit Mennonite Church this morning. The passage for today was Jeremiah 18:1-11. I chose The Message paraphrase, which has the heading, “To Worship the Big Lie.”
God told Jeremiah, “Up on your feet! Go to the potter’s house. When you get there, I’ll tell you what I have to say.”
So I went to the potter’s house, and sure enough, the potter was there, working away at his wheel. Whenever the pot the potter was working on turned out badly, as sometimes happens when you are working with clay, the potter would simply start over and use the same clay to make another pot.
Then God’s Message came to me: “Can’t I do just as this potter does, people of Israel?”
God’s Decree! “Watch this potter. In the same way that this potter works his clay, I work on you, people of Israel. At any moment I may decide to pull up a people or a country by the roots and get rid of them. But if they repent of their wicked lives, I will think twice and start over with them. At another time I might decide to plant a people or country, but if they don’t cooperate and won’t listen to me, I will think again and give up on the plans I had for them.
“So, tell the people of Judah and citizens of Jerusalem my Message: ‘Danger! I’m shaping doom against you, laying plans against you. Turn back from your doomed way of life. Straighten out your lives.’”
We are all formed by the stuff of the earth. We see it in Genesis 2:7, “God formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive—a living soul!”
It’s only a chapter later when the clay pots of people the Lord had made were already turning away from him. Despite all of the evidence around them of God’s goodness and presence, love and kindness, Adam and Eve were deceived into believing the Big lie that God is not good, and then they ate the fruit of consequence. Humans have been worshipping the Big Lie of our own self-reliance and reaping the fruit of that deception ever since, played out in every age and on every world stage. Cain killed Abel and had to leave the abundance of God’s presence behind him. The people built towers to try to reach the heavens, aiming to be greater than the Potter.
All of humanity has been using our bodies, these earthen vessels, these clay pots, for good and for evil, forgetting that we are all made from dust by the one Potter, and that to dust we shall return.
Jeremiah’s message to the nation of Israel is a warning they do not heed. The message continues in Jeremiah 18:12-17:
“But they’ll just say, ‘Why should we? What’s the point? We’ll live just the way we’ve always lived, doom or no doom.’”
God’s Message: “Ask around. Survey the godless nations. Has anyone heard the likes of this? Virgin Israel has become a slut! Does snow disappear from the Lebanon peaks? Do alpine streams run dry? But my people have left me to worship the Big Lie. They’ve gotten off the track, the old, well-worn trail, And now bushwhack through underbrush in a tangle of roots and vines. Their land’s going to end up a mess— a fool’s memorial to be spit on. Travelers passing through will shake their heads in disbelief. I’ll scatter my people before their enemies, like autumn leaves in a high wind. On their day of doom, they’ll stare at my back as I walk away, catching not so much as a glimpse of my face.”
Bushwhacking through Underbrush
God tells the Israelites that the whole earth provides evidence of the Good Potter and his hand of provision. He is the one who holds all things in creation together, from the snow on the mountain peaks to the alpine streams, and yet Israel has chosen to go their own way, believing the “Big Lie,” trying to do things their own way on the land, getting tangled as they “bushwhack through underbrush in a tangle of roots and vines.”
As people who are formed from the dirt, we ought to pay attention to what we do to the land. Our very survival depends upon it. The way we treat the land has direct consequences for people everywhere, from starvation to malnutrition, from droughts to floods to wildfires, from severe storms to the desertification of land.
The prophet Jeremiah warns that when we worship the “Big Lie,” it shows in our behavior. Our sins of self-reliance, selfishness, greed, arrogance, and pride have direct and immediate consequences on the land and our surroundings, and those consequences can level nations.
We are seeing the shattering of many pots right now on the world stage, precious and lovely pots made in the image of the Great Potter, so many pots shattering over the sins of many fathers.
These sins of greed, selfishness, arrogance, and pride, these desires to dominate and control, they don’t just destroy nations. They level our own lives, too.
Earlier in Jeremiah 18, God says, “At any moment I may decide to pull up a people or a country by the roots and get rid of them. But if they repent of their wicked lives, I will think twice and start over with them.”
One of my favorite things about the potter’s wheel is that it is regenerative. Our God is a regenerative, resurrecting God who wastes nothing. Even when all seems lost, all of creation demonstrates God’s commitment to making all things new. He is this way in our personal lives, he is this way for nations, and he is this way in all the world. God is always doing a new thing, and we, as his children and image bearers, are invited into that good work.
The Biggest Little Farm
Just 40 miles north of Los Angeles, California, there is a farm. Prior to 2011, Apricot Lane Farms had been a 234-acre lemon and avocado farm. Like so many monoculture farms across the country, the soil on the land had been decimated by years of industrial farming practices. By the time Molly and John Chester arrived on the land, the property had been through multiple owners including two banks, who had foreclosed on the farm. Surrounding the land were other large-scale, monoculture properties, including ”Egg City,” once one of the largest poultry farms, which used to hold 3.5 million chickens and harvest 2.5 million eggs a day. Another nearby farm raised miles of red raspberries growing under plastic hoop houses.
Molly and John had a different vision for the land, one that imagined returning to an older, more sustainable way of farming that was most common prior to World War II. But when the Chesters arrived on their land, they were greeted with “dead soil.” After years of growing monoculture crops, spinning through cycles of pesticides and herbicides and fertilizers, the soil on their farm was nutrient deficient and as hard as a rock.
The Chesters had a massive challenge to face. They had purchased a farm that couldn’t sustain a crop. The previous landowners had done what they could to bring about a harvest from the decimated soil, but it was no use.
It was as if the Potter had seen what had been done to the land and pulled back his hand.
But the Potter is never afraid to start over.
With the help of Alan York, a world renowned expert in traditional farming practices, the Chesters learned what they needed to do to restore their land, using biodiversity and emulating how natural ecosystems work. Their goal was to have the highest level of biodiversity possible. As they say on their website, it all starts and ends and restarts with the soil. After all, we are all formed from the stuff of the earth. And our God is a regenerative God.
Over the course of time, Alan York and the Chesters worked hard to transform their soil by using ecologically regenerative farming methods, including cover cropping, compost application, managed grazing, and more. As a result, their farm yields some of the most nutrient-dense and flavorful food around. The farm that used to grow exclusively lemons and avocados until the land could yield nothing at all today grows more than 200 varieties of fruits and vegetables, and raises cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, and ducks, all organic and certified biodynamic.
You can visit Apricot Lane Farm or watch the documentary about their journey, called The Biggest Little Farm.
Formed and Shaped on the Potter’s Wheel for Good Works
But Sarah, you might say, what does that have to do with me? I’m not a farmer. I don’t plan on buying 200+ acres of decimated farmland in California.
But you are also formed from clay, my friend. We are each formed from the stuff of the earth. We are each shaped on the Potter’s Wheel, molded and made to choose this day who we will serve. The Potter has made his instructions clear, for individuals and nations, people groups and planet:
“It’s quite simple,” God says in Micah 6:8, “Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously— take God seriously.”
In our Instacart and Instagram culture of instant gratification, so many of us get caught up in the immediacy of our appetites without seeing the consequences of our actions. Our whole culture is this way. What is right for me, right now, is often all that matters. It’s easy to point the finger at the rest of the people and say to ourselves, not I, Lord. But a quick survey of my daily life shows how little time I dedicate to loving and serving others and how much of my life revolves around satisfying my own selfish desires.
Thank God, the Potter invites us, over and over throughout Scripture, to humble ourselves, to consider others and their needs, and to love others well. In every action, every purchase, and every interaction, we can ask ourselves, am I a person who does justly? Am I a person who loves mercy? Am I a person who walks humbly?
The Potter promises consequences when we do not, but he also promises blessings when we do.
In 2 Chronicles 7:12-14, after Solomon builds and dedicates the temple to the Lord, “God appeared to Solomon that very night and said, “I accept your prayer; yes, I have chosen this place as a temple for sacrifice, a house of worship. If I ever shut off the supply of rain from the skies or order the locusts to eat the crops or send a plague on my people, and my people, my God-defined people, respond by humbling themselves, praying, seeking my presence, and turning their backs on their wicked lives, I’ll be there ready for you: I’ll listen from heaven, forgive their sins, and restore their land to health.’”
Just like Apricot Lane Farm, there is hope for the decimated places in our lives. Jeremiah spoke to the people of Israel about 350 years after the temple was built. His words of warning to the people of Israel in Jeremiah 18 were probably delivered to the people around 604 BCE.
The people didn’t listen. Jeremiah said that the people would say, “Why should we change anything about our lives? What difference will it make?” For the people of Israel, it meant the destruction of Solomon’s temple nearly 20 years later.
This is often the question I find myself asking, especially with the magnitude of the world’s problems. What difference can I make? What difference will my recycling make? What difference will my food choices make?
If you look closely at Jeremiah’s message, he isn’t actually expecting us to make any difference whatsoever. We are not the Potter. God is the Potter. We are the clay in the Potter’s hands. He is the one who forms nations. He is the one who tears nations down. He is the one who restores the land.
All he asks of us is obedience. Trust. Love. To do the good work he has given us to do. To have faith that he is going to do what he has promised—he will restore all things. The outcomes are not for us to worry our pretty little clay heads over; we are to show up each day, be formed by the potter, and do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.
What is there for us to do? What can we learn from Jeremiah, those of us who are not in positions of power, who do not wield authority in government? The people and powers didn’t like Jeremiah much, but he still spoke up.
In an era of big lies, we can be truth tellers.
In an era of arrogance and certainty, we can humble ourselves.
In an era of division and destruction, we can be co-creators of the New Creation.
That’s what artist and author Makoto Fujimura calls us in his book Art & Faith: A Theology of Making, co-creators of the New Creation. He says, “When we make, we invite the abundance of God’s world into the reality of scarcity all about us. Think of God’s Kingdom, coming as a heavenly invasion into the ordinary, an infinite abundance into our scarcity-marked world.”
We can be like Molly and John Chester and choose life, peace, abundance, and beauty. We can walk through the world with a bouquet of joy, looking for opportunities to bless and not curse, to call out the good that is happening around us. We can look at “the others” around us with love instead of fear and do justly by them.
It is through the witness of Jesus Christ, whose earthen vessel of a body became dead soil and then rose, regenerated, into resurrected life, that we are able to walk boldly forward, trusting that no matter what, the end of the story is Good. Real. True. Beautiful. Paul tells us in Philippians 1:6, “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
I have watched friends shape bowls and mugs on potter’s wheels. It’s incredible. It takes patience and care, rhythm and pressure. You have to be in relationship with the clay. The Potter is hands-on. Our God is hands-on. He is at work. He is pressing in and pulling out, forming and shaping you.
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes:
“Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”
The Potter we follow and worship and aim to emulate is shaping us into little Christs. The Potter began a good work in each of us when he shaped and formed us in our mother’s womb. He began a good work in us when he breathed that first breath of spirit life into our bodies of clay. He will carry this good work in us to completion, all the way until the day of Christ Jesus, when we are finally and fully formed, united with God.
And in the meanwhile, we get to be a part of that larger good work. We get to be little Potters, shaping and forming beautiful things in this world.
The message of Jeremiah 18 to the people of Israel back in 600 BCE was a word of warning about coming doom if the people didn’t change their ways, but on the other side of all those warnings is a word of hope.
Our God is a God who remains faithful and true even when we are not.
Our God is a God of many chances.
Our God is a God of patience and kindness.
He loves us with an everlasting love.
Our God remains the Good Potter, from Genesis 1:1, “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” to Revelation 21:5, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
May we trust the Potter’s hands, obey the Potter’s commands, and love the Potter and all of his Creation well.