SHAPED BY WHOSE HANDS? JEREMIAH 18:1-12 SEPTEMBER 9, 2001 ***** I’d like you to imagine the situation... The Babylonian army is at the gates of the city... Although the Israelites have held off the Babylonians so far, any time that the enemy is at your gates, you know that a "life-changing" experience may be in order. The knees of some are knocking... and yet there are those in Jerusalem who are criticizing them... saying that because they are God’s chosen people they don’t need to worry. Faith will get them through.  Times are tough... its getting ugly. The prophet Jeremiah isn’t so sure that they are secure. He’s just heard that voice again... This time the voice tells him to go down to the potter’s house and wait for the Word of the Lord. When he hears that voice, Jeremiah knows better than to refuse. So he goes. While he’s there, he watches the potter at work. The potter takes a handful of clay and places it on the wheel. Jeremiah watches as the vessel begins to take shape. He watches as the loving hands surround the clay and cause it to come to the form that the potter wants. He watches as the fingers hollow out the inside. As a little water is added to smooth the pot. But suddenly the potter decides that the shape is not to his liking. He takes the clay, reduces it to a lump and begins again. After watching the potter at work for some time, the word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah. "Can I not do with you, O house of  Israel, as the potter has done? Are you not like the clay in the potter’s hand to me? At one moment, I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it... but if that nation concerning which I have spoken turns from its evil I will change my mind about the disaster which I intended to bring on it." The warning to Jeremiah is clear.  If the nation doesn’t repent, doesn’t change its ways... God is about to reform the clay... to remake the pot. Jeremiah recalls the legend of the great flood where a regretful God decides to start over again. Still,  all is not yet lost. There is still the possibility that the people will repent. And there is still the chance that God will relent... That hope holds out until the 12th verse..  Now our pew bible misses the real sense of the import of that verse... Listen again to it as it comes to us from the New Revised Standard Version: But they say, "....  It is no use!  We will follow our own plans,  and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil will." Our own plans...  the stubbornness of our evil will! ***** Last week, I told you that I thought that Jeremiah speaks as though he were speaking to us... Its as though he knows what we’re going to be like some 2,500 years later. Perhaps that’s only because I’m looking at it from my vantage point... but it surely fits. I bought a new computer last year.  It had the new windows program installed... Windows Millennium Edition,  ME for short. Every time I boot my computer, I see it in big letters across the screen... ME I saw it as a sign of the times.   It seems as though capitol ME is the most prominent feature of our landscape. From the woman who angrily cuts us off in the parking lot to the man who mows his lawn at 10:30 at night... From the teenager who drives through town with his car stereo cranked up so that you can hear him coming for three blocks to the young woman with a cell-phone at the movie. From the neighbor who allows her dog to bark day and night to the man who drops his trash alongside the road We each decide that we will follow our own plans and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his or her own will. This is not a new thing.  As Ecclesiastes once said, "There is nothing new under the sun." But there are cycles in which self-centeredness takes the stage. Just as Jeremiah’s folk were centering on themselves, so we are today. Ours is a society in which people are competing fiercely to win. Its a litigious society in which we sue at the drop of a hat. Whatever the situation, whether it be a program like the Survivor series on TV... or a football game... or a lottery pick, we are all seeking to be winners. The controversy between the Democrats and the Republicans in Albany over the budget is uncivil because there are so few people willing to listen to the other.  Each wants to win at any cost! As a result we ALL lose. Same thing happens in the church.  Every issue takes on a win/lose face. The wrestling over the ordination of gays and lesbians is uncivil because the polarized sides are each seeking to defeat the opposition rather than listening respectfully to those who happen to think differently than they do. Its like one of those programs on TV where the two sides engage in shouting matches... interrupting and trying to drown out the other side. As I said, this is not new. Its a sign of chaotic times in which change is happening. Is there anyone who would disagree that we are in such times? I think we’re a lot like the Israelites on their journey through the wilderness to the promised land. When you’re in the midst of great upheavals, people get nervous. Our society is in the midst of  the wilderness... No one knows where we’re going or where it will end.. (Well I guess we really do, but we don’t act like it.) Of course, you’d expect people to be concerned and self protective when the enemy is at your door. Of course, you’d expect people to be frightened when life is chaotic. Of course you’d expect us to be anxious when we’re living in the wilderness. The wilderness IS a difficult  place to live. And as usual, just as in the wilderness, people are looking for concrete answers. Some want to go back to the good old days... where life may not have been all  that good, but at least we knew what to expect. But when the time of wilderness is also the time in which individuality is treasured individuals will seek out each and every potential path their community can take believing in their very heart that this is the ONLY way to go. Current Presbyterian worship is a good example. Some people want to applaud or raise their hands in worship... others do not. Some people want to sing praise songs in worship... Others insist on the well-known traditional hymns. Some people want us to take time to greet each other, others detest that practice. When the preacher preaches, some people want an educated, well-thought out sermon while others want to hear the Holy Spirit and will listen with their hearts. When I started attending church in the early 70’s there were no such questions. We ALL knew what TRUE worship was. Some people believe that the only way to understand the bible is to take it literally while others believe that truth only happens when you consider the historical and other similar implications of it. But we each act as though ours was the only RIGHT way to do it. There’s a story of a judge who was put in the same position as many church leaders today. Two men came to the judge’s court with a complaint. The first man spoke to the judge and described the event that had brought them to court. The judge listened carefully, and when the man was through, exclaimed, "You’re right!" "Wait a minute," cried the other.  "You can’t just listen to him and pronounce him right. You haven’t listened to my side." So he proceeded to tell the judge about the case from his point of view. When he had finished telling it, the judge was convinced again, and said to him, "You’re right!" "Wait a minute cried a spectator.  You listened to the first man and said he’s right. Then you listened to the second man and declared that he was right too. You can’t do that." The judge thought for a moment and said, "You’re right!" Too often as the above story and our own experience reminds us, there is not one, but multiple right answers or at least multiple opinions about what is right... and wrong... Oh and by the way...Mine is right and yours is wrong!!! And as my many years of experience in marriage counseling tells me, when one person wins in such a situation, the relationship invariably loses. The question is not who is right and who‘s wrong... but rather can we learn to live together even though we have great differences? And isn’t the church the place where we should demonstrate that ability. The people in today’s story were unable to come to agreement about what was right and what was wrong. Walter Bruggeman, famous old testament scholar, suggests that this is what happened: The people did not repent. Each person went his or her own way. And the result was that God allowed the judgment to happen. In 587 BC the temple was destroyed, the king exiled, leading citizens, including Jeremiah were deported and public life came to an end. There was no group.  There was no longer a nation of Israel living intact. The people were in a new wilderness in a new land. As they faced the condition of the day, the question was not who’s right but rather "How can we put things back together and make it right again?" The hope of returning to a unified Israel was beyond their control. Rather, the question had become, "Can we learn to live together while we are in exile?" Or stated another way, "What are the appropriate practices and behaviors of a faithful people living in a time of change?" They were in a desperate situation and they had only themselves and their faith to cling to. There was no temple with its sense of the presence of God. Bruggeman suggests that the old testament stories and writings from the exile may be one of the few or only resources that churches have today to move us through the present wilderness and confusion... from chaos to hope. He reminds us that like the Israelites, the Lord will at the right time bring us home. We have that promise from God. What the people did in exile was to move to a community of compassion and justice. They began to live not so much according to the laws of the old life, laws which caused them to demand righteousness... but to try to care for one another... even when they didn’t agree. The proper response to such difficulties is not to tighten the laws... to try to force everybody into compliance and conformity... It won’t help for some leader to announce the right steps, path or solution to get us marching out of the wilderness in a straight line, as if there were a shortest distance between our present problems and the future solutions. If one or more leaders knew the way out, we all would have lined up and taken the necessary steps long ago. Instead the proper response in times of chaos is to try to hold together and to trust our faith to answer the question, "How shall we live together in the wilderness?" "What promises, covenants, and behaviors will we offer to one another and to God while we live, search and experiment together in the wilderness?" The practice of loving, civil behavior in our churches is the central mark of faithfulness for a community that needs to learn to trust in God. **** The potter is at work at the wheel.  God is re-forming the pot that will be God’s church in the coming years. The response of the people who make up that pot... the members of the church the clay in God’s hands as it were... is to be open and trusting... and to have faith that God’s will will be done... Meanwhile, we need to be on our knees... asking for forgiveness... praying and hoping for our arrival in the promised land... Amen.