Jeremiah 18:1-6; Philemon 10-12

What shapes us ?

 We have just talked about we are molded by the forces in our world. There are ethnicity, religious tradition, popular culture, family dynamics, language, peer influence, television and movies.

Someone shared the anecdote of a man who heard barking outside his front door and when he opened it found the neighbor’s little dog.  In its mouth was a newspaper.  The man was so pleasantly surprised that he took the newspaper and gave the dog some steak and cookies.  The next day he heard the same bark outside the door. When he opened he saw the dog surrounded by seven newspapers.  Obviously he had molded the dog to behave a certain way.

The military titan we have heard referred to as the Duke of Wellington at the end of his career was asked what I would do to mold his soldiers if given another chance. His answer was simply:” I would have given more praise.”  There are all kinds of ways to mold people, friends. Praise is an important one.

Onesimus is a slave who has helped Paul in his work. Paul was impressed by his service and by his attitude. He feels like a father towards this slave.  This created a problem for Paul so many centuries before the end of slavery.  How could he send Onesimus back as a slave when Paul had molded him to be anything but a slave. This is a huge question.  We can see Paul deal with this issue of freedom and slavery at different points in his letters. You could say that not only was Onesimus molded by Paul, but Paul was molded by his encounter with Onesimus.

Jeremiah talks about the molding hands of the Potter who begins anew each day to form a new vessel or receptacle.  Sometimes the work starts out bad but ends well. Sometimes it begins well, but ends badly.  Such is the work of God with the Hebrew people and with us.  The clay is remolded and the Potter makes adjustments.

In the town of Athens, Georgia, there is a social service agency called the Potter’s House. In this agency, discarded people such as drug addicts and alcoholics learn to reenter society by fixing people’s discarded appliances. There are two simultaneous processes of recycling going on: Drug addicts and alcoholics are rehabilitated as they rehabilitate cast off appliances. There is no waste in the Potter’s House as invididual collect old appliances, repair them and sell them, only to discover that they themselves are repaired in the process. There is no waste in the Potter’s House. The potential of all humanity rests on the idea that God does not create waste, God recycles!  There are ways to redo the lives of people who lose their way they can be remolded.  The whole history of the Bible is about God putting together what the people break which is mostly themselves.  What is deformed is remolded, what is cracked is patched up, what is ugly is made beautiful.

The Jewish tradition tells a story of the first Lubavitcher rebbe, Schnur Zalman, the founder of one of the most vital of today’s Hasidic communities. His young son once came running to him, crying inconsolably. Between huge sobs, he managed to say:”Father, I have been playing hide and seek with the other children. It came my turn to hide, but after I found a good place, I sat there in the woods for hours for others to find me. No one ever yelled into the woods to tell me to come out. They just left me there alone.” His father put his arms around the child and held him close, rocking him back and forth. “Ah my son,” he said. “that’s how it is with god too. God s always hiding, waiting for the people to come look for God. But no one wants to play. God is always left alone, waiting to be found, hoping someone will come; but crying because no one seeks God out.” What this story does friends is put a human face on the Potter and reminds us of God’s loving nature. God loves the work and loves the end product. The Potter knows what comes off the wheel and out of the oven is never mathematically perfect, but never gives up on the clay.

Friends, the question is: are we flexible enough?  Can we allow for God to mold our lives. Are we clay or are we dried and sun cracked pot that can no longer be molded?  Part of giving oneself over to Christian faith is to say:” God, I am allowing you to turn my life into something I am not planning it to be.  I will be flexible. I will allow myself to be redone. I am not insisting on being in control of everything. I am willing to rethink what I am doing and make adjustments. I am ready not to have my ducks lined up all the time.”  Are we ready to be clay in the Potter’s Hands?  May God help us. Amen.