Pots and Possibilities

A Meditation on Jeremiah 18:1-11
Sunday, September 8, 2013

1.

Some years ago, I came across an address given by the great orthodox rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, to a group of students at the beginning of another school year.  I think of it now, and every September, and especially this year as Kate and I send our oldest child to college for the first time.  “When you are young,” Rabbi Heschel said to the kids that day, “start working on this great work of art called your own existence.”  Isn’t that lovely?

And it was 1960-something.  It might well have seemed, to the old rabbi and his audience, that war and bigotry and chaos were winning the day.  King shot dead, cities burning all summer, and the war in Vietnam raging on.  But, standing before those students, standing in a long line of Hebrew prophets, Heschel was undaunted.  He was hopeful and fearless and prophetic.  

And actually, the whole quote’s even better:

“Above all,” he told them.  “Above all, remember that the meaning of life is to live life as if it were a work of art.  You are not a machine.”  And I love that part.  Heschel in the 60s.  “You are not a machine,” he said.  “So when you’re young,start working on this great work of art called your own existence.”  Isn’t that amazing?!  Isn’t that advice we all need to hear, every one of us, of all ages, from all walks of life?!  Teachers and students.  Activists and CEOs.  Parents and grandparents.  Start working on this great work of art called your own existence.  Make that your mission.  It’s never too late.

Some of us here are starting back to school this month.  Some of us are turning the corner on an old life, and looking for signs of a new one.  Some of us here have lived through indescribable loss and grief these last several months.  And some of us are taking on new ministries, new challenges, new relationships.  We’re all in this together.

And the message this morning is Heschel’s and the prophet Jeremiah’s: It’s never too late.  The meaning of life is to live life as if it were a work of art.  You can start now.  You can start this morning.  You can start this week.  Working on this great work of art called your own existence.

2.

Now the thing is, creativity is a risky business.  This is what Jeremiah discovers all those years ago in Jerusalem.  Creativity so often breaks you before it puts you back together again.  And how long does Jeremiah watch that potter at his wheel?  How many times does the potter have to flatten the lumpy piece of clay and start over again?

Creativity, it seems, is risky business.  For you and me and every other fledgling artist out there.  Whether you’re a painter before a canvas or a composer at the piano.  Whether you’re a dancer before an audience or a potter at the wheel.  Whether you’re a parent raising a toddler or a freshman heading off to college.  Start working now on this great work of art called your existence.  But know this.  There will be broken pieces before you’re finished.  The creative process almost always breaks us before bending to our passion and manifesting our vision.

So Jeremiah hangs around, maybe for hours, watching the potter spinning his wheel, watching his focused throwing of a pot, and then his scrapping it all and beginning again.  There’s the wave of sweat on his brow.  The love in his fingers and hands.  The intensity in his eye.

And it’s there, in the potter’s house, that Jeremiah discovers just the right image, just the right metaphor: for his own life, for own journey, and for his people.  There are broken pieces, shards of busted pottery everywhere.  Dust and sweat and dreams gone bad.  And in the midst of it all—in the midst of all that brokenness—a pottery turns his wheel, working another lump of clay into a gorgeous vessel of grace.  A potter and his hands and his clay.  Never giving up.

Let's try this out.  Faith (our faith) has something to do with seeing God’s partnership, God’s collaboration in the midst of all the brokenness that surrounds us.  Faith has to do with trusting that the broken pieces of our lives can live again, sing again, dance again.  Faith has something to do with leaning into grace and mercy, when all we see are broken shards and busted dreams.  Like the pottery in his house, his hands working the clay again.  Like the teacher in class, believing in the kid no one else can reach.  Like the monk on a hill, trusting that prayer makes a difference in a violent world.  Faith leans into grace and mercy, when all we see are broken shards.

3.

Every couple of months, I’m invited to visit with a class of women who meet here on campus.  They’re inmates, these women, serving time in the county system; and they’re coming up on the end of their sentence.  GEMMA—the weekday program we host here—busses them here several mornings a week.  And it prepares them for life beyond incarceration: building healthy relationships, becoming compassionate parents, taking care of body and soul, that kind of thing.

Several weeks back, I again visited with a dozen women in jail-issue jumpers.  And we talked some about their dreams, and we talked some about their mistakes, and we talked some about second chances and third chances and how far God goes in forgiving our foolishness.  It was really a lovely, honest, engaging conversation.

As I was looking at the clock and thinking of leaving, one woman—with bright eyes—leaned across the table.  And she asked me: “Your church has been so great to us.  What can we do for you?”  She was so earnest, so enthusiastic, so grateful—that I had to sit back, I had to tuck my watch away in my pants pocket.  “What can you do for us?”

And who knows why, but I found myself describing for this group of inmates my vision of a peace path and meditation garden right here on campus, a kind of walking oasis in the midst of our city, a place where friends and families come to rest, to think, to walk a labyrinth and find inspiration.  I told the women I imagined a beautiful path that led from our sanctuary door, up the hillside, through the wooded area and into the field on our upper acre.  I told them I imagined a garden there, a place for renewal and reflection.  Looking out over the Monterey Bay.  Making a connection between earth and spirit.

There might have been twelve women around the table that morning—and every one leaned forward and listened intently.  I swear I could almost see the garden in their eyes, imagine it in their faces.  And when I’d finished, the one with the bright eyes—the one who’d asked the original question—she sat back and said: “I think we should help you with your path.  We can move rocks, and plant flowers, and make something beautiful up there.  I know we can.”  And all around here, heads were nodding, smiles stretching, lives changing.  I’ve got to tell you: it’s why I love my job.  Moments like that.

You see, faith trusts that the broken pieces of our lives can live again, sing again, dance again.  Faith has everything to do with leaning into grace and mercy, when all we see are broken shards and busted dreams.  Faith is something like the potter at the wheel, sweat on his brow, love in his hands, working the clay and believing in life.  A great work of art.

This is something like the experience a dozen of us had Friday morning, witnessing Cordelia Strandskov's legal adoption of baby Beatrix in a Watsonville courtroom.  Cordelia's life, and Beatrix' too, as great works of art.  The two of them leaning into grace and mercy together.  Bea came into this world in a messy wave of brokenness, on a jailhouse floor.  And now look at her, at her family: dancing with God in everyday life!  Faith is like that.

And it's something like the mats and sleeping bags set out every Sunday night, here in the Upper Room, families finding comfort and hospitality on an old wooden floor.  Believing their lives too are shaped by the hands of God.  Trusting that their future too is guided by God's grace.
Our calling: yours, mine, ours.  This fall and every fall.  It's to trust that the broken pieces of our lives can live again, sing again, dance again.  Here, at this table, in this holy place, we make and we break, we imagine and we forget, we place ourselves on the potter's wheel.  And we partner with God in the midst of all the world's war and brokenness.  Great works of art, all of us.

4.

But you know, just the same, as sweet as all this is, there's an urgency in this morning's prophetic text that doesn't let up.  Jeremiah comes off as something like the Malcolm X of his generation, the Malcolm X of Jerusalem in the 7th century BCE.  If other Hebrew prophets sound like Martin King in the pulpit or Bobby Kennedy on the stump, Jeremiah is impatient and agitated.  He's watching Israel in free-fall, a kingdom collapsing all around him.  Like Malcolm X in the 60s, he aims to wake his nation from its moral slumber, before its cities burn to the ground, before a whole people is hauled off to exile.  "Turn now," Jeremiah insists--and we'd best take note.  "Turn now, all of you, and amend your ways and your doing."

This whole bit about living life as if it's a work of art, this whole bit about artistry and creativity in daily life--it's not just hollow Hallmark hot air.  To live your life as a work of art--to approach each day as canvas, each minute as prayer--this is to partner with God in the healing of pain, in the binding of the brokenhearted, in the building up of ancient ruins.  And it just can't wait.  Your life just can't wait. 

So long as you see yourself as another machine in the system, as a tiny cog in Wall Street's economy, as a peon in a mighty and disinterested universe; so long as you see your life that way, you miss life's great mystery and participate in its distortion and worse.

But when you look in the mirror tonight, before bed, and when you see not a machine, but a great work of art...when you see in the midst of all the broken pieces a potter's wheel...when you place yourself on that wheel and trust the good hands of the potter himself...then healing is at hand.  The world turns toward the voice of love.  Songs of blessing and praise make the sun rise and moon dance.  Beatrix is taken home by a mother who will always love here.  Homeless families feast on warm food and tender love.  Even war is not inevitable, not in Syria, not anywhere.  When you place yourself on the potter's wheel and trust the good hands of the potter himself, all things are possible.  Amen.