Scripture Jeremiah 18:1-11
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 had 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.
Sermon
When my son Ned was in the third grade at Blessed Sacrament School, he participated in the annual end of the year musical. In fact, he had a pretty big role. The play was called “Big Kings Come in Small Packages,” and it was about Josiah, who inherited the throne as king of Judah when he was just eight years old. (2 Kings 22) Scripture introduces Josiah’s story by saying, “He did what was right in the sight of the Lord and walked in all the way of his father [ancestor] David; he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.”
Josiah is known in scripture for being a brief, shining light in the darkness. He followed a series of very bad kings, who were worshiping pagan gods, and not the God of their ancestors. But he didn’t do this at age eight. When was about twenty-six years old, a priest discovered a scroll of the law that had been found abandoned in the Temple, and gave it to the king. His secretary read it aloud, and Josiah realized that the people had wandered far from what God desired. He consulted the prophet Huldah, and she confirmed what he believed—that Judah had wandered away from God and would be punished unless they returned to God with all their hearts.
I wish I could say Ned played Josiah, but he did not. Ned was the villain in the play, Josiah’s terrible father, Amon, one of those idol-worshipers. At one point, referring to Amon’s prayers to the pagan god Baal, a chorus of third-graders did a rap. “I don’t think Baal is awake today./ You might as well pray to a bale of hay!” Then they went into a chorus for the song, which was, “Bale of hay! Bale of hay!”
It was pretty adorable. At the same time, the song told a potent truth, that is still absolutely true today: We can get caught up in worshiping things. For the Israelites, it was, for a time, statues of a storm god and his wife Asherah, a fertility goddess. For us it can be… our stocks. Our cars. Our phones. We can get caught up, just as easily as ancient peoples, in paying homage to things, and not God.
This is the background and context for today’s beautiful and unsettling passage from the prophet Jeremiah. We can’t precisely locate the date when this was written, but it’s safe to say it’s during that long stretch when the kings of Judah had gone awol from the God of Israel. Despite Josiah’s recommitment to the law, his destruction of all the idols in the temple and beyond, his calling the land and its people to repentance, and his encouragement of the people to worship God alone, none of that lasted beyond his own lifespan. Alas.
It’s important to notice that Jeremiah’s words here are not to individuals, but to a people—a nation, which Jeremiah can see is on a treacherous path. In the year of our Lord 2025, so much of what we observe in Christian culture emphasizes individual piety, the question of whether any given person is “has a personal relationship with God.” And heaven knows I don’t want to discourage any of you from seeking and finding a connection with God that is personal, and uplifting, and a solid rock on which to stand in a world that seems to be tilting off its axis. But the God of scripture speaks both to nations and to individuals. Who the people are, individually, is not the main point here. What matters most is who they are as a people. That is still true. And when God looks at God’s covenant people, in this moment, the covenant has been broken. He sends that message through Jeremiah.
The word of God as revealed to Jeremiah is told in an unexpected way. Rather than giving the prophet the hard truth unfiltered, God first sends Jeremiah to see the work of an artisan: A potter. God asks Jeremiah to observe the potter at work, and what Jeremiah sees is a moment familiar to everyone who ever threw a pot or sewed a quilt or painted a landscape or knitted a chicken: the moment when your creation is not to your liking.
Professor Anathea Portier-Young of Duke Divinity School reflects on this moment:
Other scriptures invite us to imagine God as ruler and judge, writer and teacher, farmer and builder, father, mother, and lover. Jeremiah 18 invites us to see God as an artisan and artist. The image is not new in the scriptures. Genesis 1 portrays God as the first poet, designer, metalworker, and landscaper, as God speaks, divides, fashions, and populates the cosmos. In Genesis 2:7 God first shapes clay, sculpting and forming humankind from the sediment of the earth. As God’s hands knead and smooth the moist dirt, God breathes life into God’s new creation, so that the human being is simultaneously grounded by this connection to earth and animated by the very breath of God. Now, in Jeremiah 18, we hear that God did not simply shape us once for all. [i]
So. There is the potter, working at his wheel. But the vessel he is making is spoiled in his hand—something has gone wrong, and the pot, or pitcher, or urn is not what the potter had imagined it to be, so now, he is re-making it into something new. Something better. Something more in line with what he had hoped it would be.
I can do the same with you, O my people. Thus saith the Lord. I hold you in the palm of my hands.
This moment connects powerfully to the psalm we have shared, Psalm 139. The image of being held in God’s hand is usually comforting—she shall raise you up on eagle’s wings, make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of her hand. And the idea of God knowing us intimately is also beautiful and comforting, until you have the thought, wait, can I ever get away from God? And then the proximity of God becomes unsettling, and the psalm starts to seem a little menacing. [ii]
But the answer to the problem the psalm presents is the same as the answer to the problem Jeremiah is reckoning with, and Saint Augustine understands it perfectly: The only possible way to escape from God is to run toward God. Only then will divine pursuit stop and will you find mercy. [iii]
This is exactly what God is asking the people to do through the words of Jeremiah: Come back to me. It is so clear to me in a passage like this that God does not want to crumple up the nation of Judah like a used paper towel. God wants very much for God’s people to return, heart and soul, mind and strength, to love and worship God. God is a poet and an artist, whose creation has taken a turn that hurts God—that gives God sorrow. God is not a sociopath who wants to do damage wherever and however possible. God is like an exasperated mother who threatens something she never really intends to do. And at least one king, Josiah, tries to steer the people back to the loving relationship that gives God joy and gives God’s people strength, and clarity, and hope.
Josiah’s son, Jehoiakim, was king when the Babylonians swept in and carried God’s people away into exile. Was this the hand of God, crushing the pot at the wheel? You could see it that way. I don’t. There were plenty of bad political decisions that led to this, so it’s entirely possible that this was more a matter of foreseeable consequences than the wrath of the almighty.
It's odd, isn’t it, to think of God as one who changes their mind. And yet, this does seem to happen all through scripture. God’s people are faithless, and God is distressed. But during the long years of exile, the prophets sing to the people of God’s consoling love and care. Is it God changing the divine mind? Or are we witnessing an evolving understanding of God as scripture unfolds? Does scripture ultimately lead us to believe that God is all about love? Or is that just wishful thinking?
It turns out, this is the Presbyterian way. When interpreting scripture, we are encouraged, by official Presbyterian statements, to follow “The Rule of Love.” Here’s a quote of that guidance:
The fundamental expression of God’s will is the two-fold commandment to love God and neighbor, and all interpretations are to be judged by the question whether they offer and support the love given and commanded by God. [iv]
Scripture leads us to believe that love the chief attribute by which we know God. Even in this passage, in which God seems to be threatening God’s people, the prophet reveals a love that undergirds God’s pain at their people’s faithlessness. And yes, I believe God experiences pain when we do not love one another or love God.
If God is a potter, then God wants to mold us into people who love God with all our heart and soul, and mind and strength, and who love one another as we love ourselves. God is fully aware that we can be the clay—that we can change, and be molded, by life experience, by our joys and sorrows and triumphs and traumas. But we can also be molded by the gentle hands of God, if we would allow God to shape us into the people God wants us to be. We can be the clay. And we can know the beauty and gentleness of the loving vessels God wants us to be.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Footnotes:
[i] Anathea Portier-Young, “In this week’s Old Testament lection, God invites Jeremiah to enter a potter’s shed and there observe the potter working with clay, so that Jeremiah may better hear God’s words (Jeremiah 18:1), understand God’s way with Israel (18:6), and summon God’s people to conversion (18:11): Commentary on Jeremiah 18:1-11, September 4, 2016, Working Preacher. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23-3/commentary-on-jeremiah-181-11-3.
[ii] Jason Byassee, “God is so perpetually present we cannot even speak of God in past or future tenses: Commentary on Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18,” January 14, 2024, Working Preacher. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-psalm-1391-6-13-18-6.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Presbyterian Understanding and Use of Holy Scripture: Position Statement Adopted by the 123rd General Assembly (1983) of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Copyright: Office of the General Assembly (Louisville, KY: 1999).