Sermon 8th September 2019 –
13th Sunday after Pentecost
Text: Jeremiah 18:1-11 – Moulded by
God.
With Father’s Day last week no doubt
many fathers received home-made gifts from their children.
Whether it was macaroni glued to
paper with some sparkles on it or maybe something a little bit more complex –
no father goes through and analyses it to point out errors.
You didn’t spell Father correctly –
your drawing of me has the wrong colour hair – the thing you built me is a
little bit flimsy.
No, we love them because our children
made them.
And they too are so proud of what
they made and would be devastated if the following day or week they found that
you had thrown their creation in the bin or shoved it into a draw.
“Didn’t you like what I made for you”
would be evident on their sad little face.
If you saw the same thing at someone
else’s place made by someone else’s child you’d probably laugh at it.
In our Old Testament reading we see a
story of God the creator at work using the image of a potter moulding a piece
of clay.
God sends Jeremiah to the potters
house because he wants to teach him about his relationship with the people he
has created – firstly the Nation of Israel – but also us.
Jeremiah went down to the potter's
house, and there he saw the potter 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.
What Jeremiah observed here was that
the potter didn’t throw out the vessel or get angry and pound his fist into the
clay and curse it when he notices something wrong with it.
No, he gently works with the clay and
remoulds it.
What God is teaching Jeremiah here is
a lesson on how God works with us.
None of us are perfect – we all have
our flaws and faults.
Some of them have occurred through
birth.
Some of them have occurred because of
the way we have lived our lives.
Some of them have occurred as a
natural part of our advancement in years.
I’m sure that there are very few who
look in the mirror and say – wow – you’re perfect in every way.
We find our faults and sadly in
today’s world we don’t know how to deal with our faults and flaws.
Even more sad is we don’t know how to
deal lovingly with other people’s faults and flaws.
We judge ourselves and we judge
others.
We discard ourselves and we discard
others.
We try to find ways to hide our flaws
and faults so others don’t see them.
And many times we do that by pointing
out other people’s faults and flaws so they look at them rather than us.
Everything has to be perfect in
today’s society.
We see the photo-shopped pictures of
celebrities and believe that we too should have that image.
And if we don’t get enough “likes” on
our photos on social media we get depressed.
If someone makes a comment we don’t
like on one of our pictures we “unfriend” them.
We are living in a very superficial
age where vanity has taken over people’s lives and they feel that they have
nothing to live for once their looks fade.
But the beauty of life is that God
never looks upon us like that.
And that’s because God is the potter
who created us.
And when he looks at us he sees
himself because we are created in the Image of God.
So to reject us or to criticise us he
would be criticising and rejecting himself.
And God wants us to see ourselves in
that way – as created in his image even though we aren’t perfect.
We have our faults and our flaws but
we have been created by God.
We might not understand sometimes why
God has created me in this way or allowed something to happen but we trust God
that he loves us as our creator and doesn’t discard us because of our faults.
Sometimes life changes for us whether
it’s through ageing, sickness or an accident and we start to question our value
in life.
But God - as seen in the potter
example - reshapes us for his good purpose.
It might not have been an intended
situation as God never causes pain or suffering for anyone but he will continue
to use us and mould us in his own special way.
And we might not even know how God is
using us – and that’s what we call faith.
That’s what Jeremiah saw: he reworked
the clay into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
God never discards anyone.
We might discard ourselves or others
but God never will.
He treasures everyone.
He doesn’t see the faults or the
flaws but loves what he has created.
And there’s the challenge for us too.
To see the faults and flaws and
differences in others and ourselves as part of the creativity of God.
To understand that God is the
creator.
And even if they might be things we
disagree with the challenge is to still see and accept people as children of
God.
That’s not to say God has
specifically created a person with that fault or flaw but that he does not
reject them but continues to love them and use them in ways we don’t always see
or understand.
Some people may use that as an excuse
for unacceptable behaviour – God made me this way – but that is for God to
judge and deal with.
Jeremiah was sent by God to watch and
observe the potter in action who never rejected his creation even with the
faults in it but continued to work with it – reshaping it into a vessel he
would continue to love and use for his good purposes.
He didn’t send Jeremiah to judge or
criticise the work of the potter but to see the potter at work creating his
masterpiece.
And so we are called to see ourselves
and others as works of God as St Paul so beautifully puts it in Ephesians
Chapter 2 - For we are God’s
masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good
things he planned for us long ago.
So may you see yourself and others as
God’s masterpieces and remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and
God is the one who created us and beholds us dear to his heart.
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