So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was
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. Then
the word of the Lord came to me: Can 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. [Jeremiah 18:3-5]
One of the cosy assumptions of much popular Christian piety is
that God has a plan for me. It follows
that I will be happy in life if I carry out God’s plan for me, and presumably miserable
if I don’t. So a major task of fervent
earlier years was to discover what God wants me to be, what God wants me to
do. I met young people in more or less
permanent indecision because they couldn’t be sure that what they were doing was
what God wanted. It could extend to whom
God wanted me to marry – presumably nowadays, whom God wants me to move in
with…
This level of faith and understanding is egocentric, all
about me. One of the signs of maturity
in faith is discovering one day that it’s actually not all about me, or my
spiritual life and development, or my happiness and fulfilment. We then start to learn that the real task of
faith is letting go of the demanding ego, constantly needing to occupy the
space which belongs to God. This is a
very large freedom.
Moreover, when Jeremiah visited the potter’s house, and
watched the potter at work, he saw that God can sometimes start all over again,
as it were. This should come as quite good
news. As the lump of clay was being
formed into a pot, the potter decided that for some reason it wasn’t right, so
he crumpled it down and started again. And
we should carefully note that it wasn’t the clay’s fault. It was the potter who hadn’t got it
right. The task of the clay was always
simply to consent, to allow itself to be formed – and in this case,
reformed. Benedictines call this conversatio, the reminder each day that
God’s Spirit is at work, challenging and changing us, and making all things
new. Usually the changes are subtle and
long-term – sometimes they may be more dramatic.
It might be silly to extend this metaphor of the potter
beyond what it can bear… But I can’t resist suggesting that the divine potter,
perhaps, does not have an outlet shop somewhere where you can buy the seconds
cheaply, a shelf of flawed pots getting hocked off for half price. This potter corrects his mistakes, and will
bring all his creation to perfection, in ways we certainly don’t see or
understand from where we are, and which lie for us wreathed in mystery.
Our YES to God, in the stillness and silence of our prayer,
is holding open the door by which not only we ourselves, but all God’s
suffering humanity and ecosystem, all that is not yet right, is being
remade.
So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was
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. Then
the word of the Lord came to me: Can 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment