Jeremiah 18:1-11

¹The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ²“Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” ³So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. ⁴The 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. ⁵Then the word of the Lord came to me: ⁶Can 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. ⁷At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, ⁸but 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. ⁹And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, ¹⁰but 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. ¹¹Now, 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.

Text © New Revised Standard Version, used with permission.

In many churches the sermon would have been based on the Gospel reading, from Luke, but there is much for us to glean from the passage from Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was a prophet, and the task of the prophet was to remind the religious hierarchy of their responsibilities in following God’s teaching. The same applies to today’s prophets – and, yes, there are plenty around today, but, like in Jeremiah’s day, some people wanted them in places where they couldn’t do any damage. Time and again a prophet would rise from the people and point out that the hierarchy were not always doing the right thing according to scripture, and the hierarchy, realising that the perks they had woven into their ways of doing things and getting others to do things, would be lost if they truly repented of their sins and turned their teaching around.

The common way of looking at the story of Jeremiah being led to the potter’s house runs along the lines of the potter being able to remodel the clay of the vessel under construction if what is developing is not desirable. God, as the potter, can restart the modelling process, or can continue to model that same piece of clay into something remarkable, because un-fired clay is malleable, not brittle or rigid.

Something else comes to my mind, though. In 1859 Charles Darwin stirred the religious world by publishing a book on evolution. “God forbid” cried the churches, which had, for millennia, taught that God created the world in six 24-hour days, and rested on the seventh. Evolution and Darwin were diametrically opposed. Darwin must be shown to be a fraud. Many of us have heard the joke about a man asking God if it’s true that one second to Him was the equivalent of ten thousand years to us, and, with a positive reply asking for a million dollars, to which God responded “in a minute.” If we take that line, then the “periods of time” (which is far closer to the meaning of the Hebrew text than “24-hour day”) become exceedingly long – well beyond the comprehension of even the people who finally wrote down the passages we find in Genesis. New species are still being formed, older ones, with no further part to play in the potter’s work, are disappearing. That, of course, should not be taken as an excuse for doing nothing about human contributions to the accelerating number of species becoming extinct. Improvements within one species take time to develop, just as the shape of the potter’s vessel takes time to develop. Arms and legs could be formed to fit a purpose, and modified as that purpose changed. We, too, can be co-creators with God of new things in today’s world, but if we go off the beaten track prepared for us then we can be in need of the prophet’s call to repentance and reconciliation, or in need of the potter’s intervention, as happened to Saul on the way to Damascus.

Jeremiah’s message is not just for those of his own time, but for Christians today too – all of us, and everyone in between. How far have we strayed like lost sheep because the potter is not in control? Are we willing to allow the potter to regain control and make something remarkable from the mess we offer? Do we need to change our ways? That could be at a personal level; it could have much to do with what happens in our churches; it could involve how we, as a church, respond to things which go wrong beyond our control. Are we going to be co-creators with God of a new revolution within the church, and the benefit from the rewards of repentance? I hope so.