Jeremiah 18:1-6
“Go down to the potter’s house.” Where would you expect to hear a word from the Lord? Where would you expect to learn a lesson in high spirituality and Godly living? And who would you most likely seek out if you were looking for some spiritual counsel?
Probably not many of us would go to the potter’s house. Or the insurance office. Or the mechanic’s garage. Or the hardware store. Or the laundromat. Instead, we would go to some religious center, maybe search out some guru, visit the pastor, or just read in Scripture for ourselves--maybe close our eyes, open the Bible, point with our finger at a place on the page, open our eyes and see what chance has directed us to.
If we were looking for a word from the Lord, most of us think we know where we should be able to find it. The potter’s house, or any modern version of it, would not be a place we would probably visit for such a word.
But the great masters of poetic and prophetic imagination, such as Jeremiah, do not play by the rules of customary spiritual revelation. They are unordinary personalities who have a way of making us see the things of God in the ordinary places of our living. They look at the everyday world and see things we don’t see. Then they attempt to direct our attention to what is right before our eyes. As Eugene Peterson writes, in describing these kinds of Jeremiah people:
They connect the visible and the invisible, the this with the that. They assist us in seeing what is around us all the time but which we regularly overlook. With their help we see it not as commonplace but as awesome, not as banal but as wondrous... For faith is not a leap out of the everyday but a plunge into its depths.
Prophets like Jeremiah help us see with new eyes. They help us see God where we assumed we’d never run into God. They direct our attention to visions of God’s truth where we only thought we’d see a potter’s wheel and a bunch of moist clay. In order to find a word from the Lord, we are not offered an escape hatch into the pie-in-the-sky. Instead we are thrust into the hubbub of the marketplace. That’s where we will find God and God’s truth.
“Go down to the potter’s house.” At the potter’s house there was a lesson to be learned, a truth to be visualized. Something only the potter could demonstrate. Meaning that could only be seen in the process of wheel-thrown pottery. Because I’ve done some work with wheel-thrown pottery, I know a little bit about the process.
I
The first step is kneading the clay. It is vitally important to prepare the clay before working with it on the wheel. Though the clay is dense, it has all kinds of air pockets in it. The potter must first knead the clay, like bread dough, and get it as compact as possible. There were even times I had to throw the clay down hard on the work table to get out obstinate air bubbles. If the potter does not do a good job at this preparatory step, if there are air pockets left in the clay, when it is fired, those air bubbles will get superheated and crack or explode the pot’s wall.
Also, during the kneading of the clay, depending on how coarse the clay is, the potter will find little bits of stone that are too large for the formation of a pot. Those need to be picked out ahead of time. If they aren’t, while the pot is spinning in the potter’s hands, the larger pieces of rock will catch on the potter’s fingers and tear a hole in the pot.
In creating a pot out of a lump of clay it is vital to do the first step of preparation as well as possible. If this step is slighted, it will show up in the spinning action on the wheel. But then it will be too late. The only thing the potter can do at that point is collapse the pot down and start all over again, back to the preparation phase. It’s best to do what’s needed ahead of time rather than finding out it’s too late further along in the process.
What God is telling Jeremiah, as he watches the potter, is that the people’s faith had gotten off to a bad start. Their religiosity had gotten way out of hand. They had lost the substance of their faith while they were trying to make and follow rules. The only way to change the people’s faith was to make a change--to deliberately start all over again. Their faith was full of a lot of air, as well as chunks and bits that were ultimately destructive. It was going to be necessary to start over, and give the people something more solid and compact to work with.
II
The second step of making something on the pottery wheel is called “centering the lump.” A lump of clay that has been prepared by kneading is placed on the center of the wheel. Getting the wheel spinning very fast, a bit of water is splashed on the lump of clay. Then the potter must place her hands tightly over and around the lump. She must exert great pressure on the lump, often not only with her hands and arms, but the weight of her whole body. This is done until she can feel the lump is not only secured to the plate of the wheel, but also that it’s balanced and smooth in the very center of the plate. If the lump is not centered, then any pot created from that lump will be off center and unworkable.
With that part of the artistic process in mind, Jeremiah uses it to create a powerful image of how God acts with us. Jeremiah saw, in this messy potters hut, with water and bits of clay flying everywhere, a portrait of God at work on God’s people.
God is the potter, who exerts a sure and certain pressure on us lump-of-clay people in order to get us centered. God knows that there can be no work done on us or through us until we have had a proper beginning, a secure foundation, a clear balance and symmetry. That centering has to be wrought by God on the wheel of our everyday living. God must put hands upon us, we lumps of clay, in the furious spinning of our days and create, first, a balanced lump.
If we hope to be a pot, we must first be a lump. Not just a lump, but a lump in God’s hands. A lump whose lives have been centered under the loving pressure of a loving God. That takes some humility. Imagine a wad of clay trying to center itself on the wheel. And yet, so many people from the time of Jeremiah (and earlier) until our own time, try to put their own lives in balance, put their own houses in order.
The question we must honestly answer is, “Who made me what I am today?” Who, if you were honest with yourself, would you say has had the greatest hand in who you are? God’s hands, or your hands? Honestly.
How often have I seen that happen in the life of a person. They may allow God to be the potter, to put those hands down upon their life and start the process. But the pressure may be too great. Or they think they know what God’s up to and can finish the job themselves. They stop God from continuing a foundational work in their lives.
It’s not until later that the warble effect takes over. Anything and everything they try to fashion out of their lives ends up in frustration and failure. But if their life had been completely centered by God, then they would be ready for the next step.
III
After the blue collar work has been done of kneading and centering the clay, the white smock work of the artist begins. This is called pulling up the clay. After putting her thumbs down into the middle of the spinning, centered lump, the potter must, with one finger of one hand on the inside and one finger of the other hand on the outside, begin to pull the sides up and form basic, straight up walls. With moistened fingers, she can begin to put some shape to the raised and spinning walls of the pot.
The only way to do this well is to apply equal, gentle pressure from the inside AND the outside of the wall of the emerging pot. What she is doing is actually pulling clay up from the bottom, and as it spins, dispersing it evenly upward as she moves her knuckle or fingertip up the wall. The pressure she uses must not be too hard or she will go through the wall and ruin what she is creating. It must be just enough to keep pulling clay from the bottom lump, bringing it up, lengthening the pot walls to the height she wants.
When God works on our lives, God puts gentle pressure on us from the inside and on the outside. God is working internally on our hearts, our minds, our personality, our thoughts. And God is working on us with a sure and directed molding pressure from the outside, like through our relationships, our work, our families, our daily activities. God puts those creative hands in both parts of our lives (inner and outer) to get us ready to be the people we were meant to be. God is molding us for the work that is meant for us to do.
But this is still not fashioning the pot. It is the final preparation stage before shape and artistry is given to the pot. So, three out of the four stages of making a pot are all about preparation.
You are kneaded in God’s hands. Are you ready to be what God is fashioning you to be? No.
You are attached and centered to the wheel, given a good foundation, given some balance and symmetry to your life. Are you ready to be what God is fashioning you to be? No.
You are pulled up from the lump. You are standing steady, strong and elastic, with basic form and shape. Are you ready to be what God is fashioning you to be? No.
IV
The final step is what everything else has led up to: artistically fashioning a pot. It is an interesting process of how a pot is finally shaped and designed. The artist may have a shape in mind. Many potters use characteristic shapes or glazes that distinguish their work from others. Or a feature is added to the design that marks it as the artists own. Or the shape and design may be a dynamic interchange between potter and clay so that form and feature are decided upon in the process of creation.
In that dynamic interchange between potter and clay, there are times when something is wrong. The potter can’t get the clay to do what she wants it to do. Or a design is thought of that just isn’t compatible with the shape of the vessel. It is at this point that the potter knows what she must do. She must collapse the pot down upon itself and start over on her centered lump of clay. It is not an easy act for a potter to do--believe me--after spending time on a pot that didn’t work out. There is some grieving involved with relumping something you’ve invested your time and self in.
But it is the potters prerogative. The clay has no say. It’s only reason for being is the fashioning in the potters hands. Such is the message of God to Jeremiah at the potter’s house. Jeremiah comes to understand that the potter-God completely controls the clay. The potter can reshape it. The potter is not committed to stay with any particular form or shape. This is not just Jeremiah’s theme. It’s also taken up by Isaiah:
Does clay talk back to the potter:
“What are you doing? What clumsy fingers!” (45:9)
We are not as self-determining or independent as we think we are. It is a lesson that is always learned the hard way. We are so determined to be the writers of our own story, the captain of our own ship. Self-determination is the American way, but it is not the Christian way.
The idea of being as compliant and yielding as a lump of moist clay is so foreign to us, it seems our whole being revolts at the thought of it. But God as potter and we as clay is the very nature of that relationship. That cannot be avoided or denied. That’s not to say we try--we have come up with all kinds of creative ways to avoid God’s shaping hands. Mostly to our peril.
What Jeremiah comes to understand from the potter as the potter smashes a pot down and starts over, is that this is both a message of judgement and of hope. You never know when God will pull you down, collapse you in on top of yourself, thus bringing you back to a position of humility--a lump.
Our worlds can collapse. What we thought was just fine may be a terrible misperception about our spiritual health and well-being. We may feel we were a beautiful pot-in-the-making. But we really didn’t let God have much of a part in the making. To be pulled down by the potter God is definitely humbling, and possibly humiliating. But even the humiliation may be part of God’s intentions. That is the judgement side.
The upside, the word of hope as witnessed by Jeremiah is that the potter never pulled a pot down and left it that way. It was always re-centered and refashioned. No one likes to be so humbled as to have their lives collapsed back into a lump--indistinguishable, formless, uncharacteristic, nothing like you were before. But in the midst of such an event, you learn new meaning under the centering pressure of God’s hands. The dawning of meaning provides the foundation for a new creation. God who pulls you down, always makes new out of what got pulled down. The hands of our artistic God surrounds, re-centers, and reforms the lives we once had. We will never be quite the same. But we will be what God wants us to be.
The paradox is that when our lives are being collapsed, we may feel that God is farthest from us. That God has for some reason left us horribly alone. The truth is, God is neither out of reach or out of touch, but is amazingly in charge of the whole process. God’s hands are active in the whole spinning mess. It is in those times of reforming that God’s hands are around us most intimately and purposefully. The truth is that God is catching all the falling pieces and bringing them back into the lump of new beginnings, out of which creation and recreation revolves.
And it’s amazing what God can make!
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