And not a rhyme in sight
I am a great believer in the use of poetic language to communicate truth, especially when it is old and familiar truth. When the great prophets of the Old Testament were shaking the foundations,none of their ideas were new. It was the same old theology with which their listeners, and their listeners’ great, great grandparents had grown up. What was new was the language- edgy, troubling, provocative and full of poetic and polyvalent brilliance.
Today I preached the first sermon of the year on our church’s motto text from Jeremiah 18 v.6 ”Like clay in the hand of the potter,so are you in my hand”. What follows was the introduction to take people from one clay ‘episode’ at the dawn of time, to another outside the potter’s house…
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Long long ago- before the clock had ticked its first tock. When the hours and minutes themselves were fresh out of the box with packaging strewn around. When the ridges of the mountains were drying like the golden crust on a pie. When the skylark was trying out the notes of her voice in a cloudless sky. When the great blue whale slapped the ocean with his mighty tail and sent the shoals of little fish diving deep for tranquility. On the day when the earthworm nudged through the still warm earth and the elephant huffed, unafraid, at a scurrying mouse.
On that day God bent down towards his creation and scooped a handful of clay into his palm. He pressed it and rolled it, warmed it with the warmth of his planet-sized hand, and then began to shape it. Here and there his palm print left a trace, like veins across the shiny surface of the clay as it took its new shape. Finally he bent towards the clay figure in his hand, breathed life into it – the kiss of life from a creator to his creature.
Man stood erect, surveyed his new home. He looked down at the earth from which he had been shaped and strode off across grass and sands, oceans and mountains to conquer, quell, master and understand. Sometimes understanding stood at the back of the queue though. War, jealousy and greed shouted him down like naughty children. Man covered up the palm prints on the surface of his soul; and God rued the day that clay had come to life.
Seasons came and went. Kings rose and fell. Mountains crumbled into valleys and volcanoes thrust in steaming anger through the ocean bed.
Aeons later a man whose soul felt the palm prints clearly went, as bidden, to the potter’s house. ‘Watch, Jeremiah’ God said, and Jeremiah watched. Fascinated, he saw the potter work the clay as God once had done. He recoiled to see a tiny speck in the clay grow into a monstrous growth as the wheel spun in the potter’s hands. Would he throw it out, toss it on the spoil heap like a bad job? He did not, and deep down in the muscle-memory of the God-made soul, where an imprint lingered from long ago; Jeremiah understood.
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