Cracked Pots

Isaiah 64: 1-9, 2 Corinthians 4: 1-12

 

 

Have you ever seen a potter at work? He fashions the clay, first kneading it until it gains the right consistency. Next, he must center it. The clay must be of even thickness. If one side is too strong, it will overcome the weaker side. Then, the potter begins the patient and gentle process of opening the clay. He is shaping it in its preliminary form. It barely resembles the final product. When it is shaped the way he created it to be, it is time for the object to dry. This is another slow process during which it cures, until it is ready for glazing to achieve the luster and look the potter intended. Last, it is fired--subjected to great heat for a prolonged period of time until finally, it is ready for use. If you leave out any of those steps or if you cheat on them, then you have something inferior and it will not last. The new creation takes its place in the world and goes to work as a piece of art or a vessel, whatever the artist conceived for that piece of clay. It’s amazing to watch what can happen to a slab of clay in the hands of an expert. 

Let me welcome Kirk Argo to the platform with me. As you can see, Kirk is a potter and he is going to do his work while we talk about pottering and clay. Of course, we aren’t really talking about clay at all. We’re talking about God and we’re using Kirk and his clay as a parable. You may remember that a parable is a story told in some way familiar to the audience in order to explain something difficult in a way that can be more easily understood. Jesus spoke in parables. That way, people understood him more easily.

In the latter chapters of Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet calls out to God to come back to his exiled people.  In Isaiah 64, Isaiah is tired and he wants God to make his presence known. When God comes down, nations tremble and mountains quake. Yes, Isaiah wants God to shake things up. He wants God to take over again and rule his chosen people. Isaiah uses the metaphor of the potter and the clay in much the same way that Jesus used parables.  Isaiah says: But God, you are our Father. Please look upon us again. Don’t forget us. “We are the clay, and you are the potter. We are all the work of your hand.” Isaiah meant it for his people, but the same idea applies to individuals.

My life is like that lump of clay. God has a vision of what he wants me to be. He made me in his image, but he made me unique, one of a kind. He started out by kneading me, just like the clay that Kirk is working now. He has subjected me to different situations, different life events, getting the right mix so that I could hear him, see him in the world around me. He brought me lots of experiences, good and bad: Sunday school, boy scouts, a father’s alcoholism, mental illness, college. Military, big cities, jobs. Law school, marriage, starting a business, children. Divorce, betrayal, a new start, a good marriage, seminary, church. Just a few nouns to represent my life. Your life has its own nouns and they describe you in your own unique way.

I finally began to notice a pattern. Through every passage—and that’s what they were—passages. I thought of them at the time as accomplishments or failures, but they were passages. Anyway, through every passage, I looked around and there was God. Have you had similar experiences in life? It isn’t easy, this thing called life. But it’s so much harder when you try to go it alone. I know now that God was kneading me, centering me for the shape he designed for me.

After all that kneading, I think God had me where I could see him. Like the clay, I was centered enough to be able to be worked with. Maybe that’s when I really saw Christ for the first time. I had acknowledged his presence for a very long time, but there came a point when I was ready to be worked.

Through the messiness and up and downs of life, God was at work in me. He was opening me just like Kirk is opening his work of clay. The Holy Spirit finally had room to abide in me. I began to understand that my life was not my own. It was more than words; it was an awakening.

I’m thinking about the story of Joseph. Betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, betrayed again by Potiphar’s wife and thrown into prison. But on the other side of all that betrayal, stood the Master Potter. God was crafting Joseph into the deliverer of Egypt. Joseph’s brothers come to him expecting the worst, and Joseph says “Do not fear. You meant it for evil but God meant it for good” [Gen. 50: 19]. Can you think of times in your life when you knew something was different, when you were open to the Holy Spirit in a way that you had not been before, when all those valleys in life began to make sense in the light of God’s walk with you, his presence in your life?

As the potter works, he realizes his creation is not right. It is missing something. It is not what he envisioned. The potter slaps his hand right into the midst of his creation, and it collapses in a heap. He starts again, this time perhaps with a little more consistency in the mix.  Sometimes, even when the vision is right, even when the touch is perfect, the pot warps and he has to start all over again. Sometimes he just doesn’t like what he sees and he destroys it to start anew. Over and over, the potter works his magic until at last, the almost finished product lies before him, ready for glazing and firing.

Ever feel like you try and try, and the more you try, the worse off you are. Ever feel like you know what to do and where to go and how you are to live your life, only to be slapped right back to where you started. Maybe it’s just God working you on his master wheel, getting you to just the right consistency, just the right mix. The apostle Paul gave it a name. He called it sanctification, the process of reaching for God, the act of pressing on, of falling short and falling down, but always and continually reaching to be more Christian, more filled with the Holy Spirit; the process of letting go and letting God.

Each of us is the work of the Master Potter. Paul teaches the Corinthians, and us, that though we are no more than jars of clay ourselves to be thrown about, cracked and splintered, nevertheless we are God’s treasures. Each of us is unique, created by God for a special purpose. We are afflicted, but not crushed, perplexed but not to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed. We are the work of his hand. Paul says that it is precisely because of our fragile state that we can show that surpassing power belongs to God and not us.

As our bodies and minds are worked and re-worked, we become a new creation, but not without the work. Like the clay, we must be open to Christ, shaped by the Holy Spirit, glazed by the creative power of God and fired in the sanctifying heat of life in all its adversities and triumphs. No steps can be omitted. No shortcuts can be taken. The process takes time if the result is to be a new creation. Where once we were cracked pots of no use or value, now we become treasures of the Master. Our lives are fashioned in the hands of the potter, and in the end we are hardened for service and glazed for immortality in the light of God

When God in the Trinity decided to build a bridge to us, he sent his Son to build it. The Master Potter made a way to reconcile himself to his creation. The Potter had cast himself upon the wheel. Jesus took his place as an earthen vessel in obedience to God.  The next three decades would harden and cure him into the human vessel for whom all of us find our model. He was tested, opened, shaped and fired. Jesus was tested more severely than any Christian has or ever will be. He would live to be glazed in the shadow of a cruel cross, but even that was meant for good.

We live in a world fashioned by God Almighty. The great I AM. Nothing is hopeless where God is concerned. When I think of where I’ve been, of all I’ve lived to see, I’m thankful. I’m thankful to be a cracked pot. I want to be a metaphor for Christ. I look at how God is shaping each and every one of us and I pray for the ministry that Paul brought to the Corinthians, that we might, each in our own, God-crafted way, be “servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” [2 Cor. 4: 1]. May God continue to work on us. If I can be a vessel whom God is opening and shaping, then I want to be a cracked pot. I hope you do too. He is the potter and we are the clay.

Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me.
Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me.
Break me, melt me,
Mold me, fill me,
Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me.

                             Daniel Iverson, 1926