Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
September 7, 2025 – Church Picnic
Scripture: Jeremiah 18:1-6
Have you ever watched a potter working on their wheel? They start with a lump of clay in the centre,
and the wheel starts spinning round and round and round, and the potter uses
their hands to shape the clay up and down, outward and inward until the final
vessel emerges.
I heard an interview with a potter this week, and it was fascinating. The potter almost ascribed a personality to
the clay. It was almost like the potter
didn’t choose what the clay would become, but rather the clay chose. The potter might set out to make a vase, but
the clay becomes a mug instead. And the
potter in the interview said that some days the clay just refuses to be formed
into anything. If that is the case, the
potter sets aside the lump of clay to work on another day. But the potter never throws away the clay –
never discards it. Maybe the next time
the potter tries, the clay will be ready to be shaped, or maybe it will be the
time after that, but the clay is precious and is not thrown away.
I found this interview to be very comforting, because I’m not always
comfortable being compared to a lump of clay.
My mental image, before hearing this interview, was that the potter has
all of the power to bend the clay this way and that, and that the clay is just
a passive lump. And I don’t want to be
compared to a passive lump of dirt! But
it sounded as though, to a master craftsperson, that the clay is part of the
process. The potter has to listen to the
clay in order to create the very best end product.
And so maybe Jeremiah is on to something when he paints this metaphor for
us. God is the expert potter, working
collaboratively with us, the clay, to create something beautiful, something
that endures, something that will be a part of the whole. And if it doesn’t work out today, God will
try again tomorrow.
And if we want to take it a step further, Jeremiah wasn’t speaking to
individual people – he was speaking to all of God’s people as a
collective. God says, “You are my
people, and I want to shape you collectively so that you can be the best that
you can be, so that you can bring food to everyone who is hungry, give water to
everyone who is thirsty, comfort everyone who mourns, accompany everyone who is
lonely.”
This morning, Whynn was baptized, and she has become part of this collective of
God’s people. God will be working with
Whynn, collaborating with Whynn, so that as she grows and moves through life,
she will gradually become who God created her to be, as part of all of us,
together doing God’s work in the world.
And even though a potter’s wheel never slows down enough for the potter to
leave a thumbprint in the finished vessel, the marks of the potter’s hand are
all over the things that they create.
And we too bear the marks, the fingerprints of God in our lives and in our spirits. You were beautifully and wonderfully made by a
Creator who is greater than anyone could ever imagine! Thanks be to God. Amen.
The “clay” that we used in the Story for All Ages
as we saw that things can be awesome and beautiful
even when they are different from each other
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