Thoughts on Jeremiah 18 - Pentecost 15C

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BoW 513

Almighty God, you created us in your own image.

Grant us grace fearlessly to contend against evil,

and to make no peace with oppression.

And, that we may reverently use our freedom,

help us to employ it in the maintenance of justice

  to the glory of your holy name;

through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

(THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, U.S.A., 20TH CENT., ALT.)

Jeremiah: I did try pottery one year. I went to the wheel I had formed my clay. This big lump they told me would need to be wetted down before I could form it or shape it. Trying to find the right mix of water and clay was a chore in itself, too little and it wouldn’t shape easily, too much and all you had was mush, and the outer layers of clay would just run away, and so it would take even more time and effort to get it reshaped and restarted.

The truth of clay though is that if you get the clay just right, the shaping you can do with it is amazing, though it will not hold for ling without some firing in the kiln. Add some glaze to make it even harder. The real kicker is that if you just let it set up and dry and it begins to have failures in the structure, you can wet it, and push the clay back into shape, add some clay, or break it down altogether, such that you have a simple blob of clay again.

God has tried to get the moisture mix right for Israel, and after many years of shaping and forming God has set Israel out to dry again, to harder and begin to be stronger in the ways of the Lord. This time though as the cracks form, God calls Israel out and tells them they need to keep it together, or God is going to have to take the whole shape back to a formless lump of clay to reform, be tried by the shaping and the drying.

Jeremiah 18

At the Potter’s House

 1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD : 2 “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

 5 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 9 And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, 10 and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.

11 “Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the LORD says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’