"Potter's Clay"

(Jer 18:1-11; Ps 139; Luke 14:25-33) JG White

10:30 am, Sun, Sept 7, 2025, FBC Amherst

Along with “Have Thine Own Way, Lord,” we might sing:

Change my heart, oh God You are the potter

Make it ever true I am the clay

Change my heart, oh God Mold me and make me

May I be like You This is what I pray

1982, Vineyard Music

Taking a cue from the Hebrew prophet, Jeremiah, we think God is the Potter… who is the clay? I am, you are, we are. At times, we love this image. We see the strong but gentle Artist, working with the raw material, clay. There are so many possibilities. And if the soft pottery doesn’t quite get shaped right, just start again with the same stuff, and make it beautiful. Something beautiful for God.

Such has been our experience, perhaps, in life. So we thank our Master for a new beginning, for healing and help, for the fixing and repairing of our lives. So we should. We can take the Potter and clay image into our divine relationship. Even though this is not quite what Jeremiah chapter eighteen is saying. 

It is rather severe, when we read the whole thing. Well, read the whole book! There are some big warnings here. And when we wonder again, God is the Potter… who is the clay? The people of God are. The nation of old, in Judah. Today, the Church as a whole, we’d say. So we wonder when this chapter fits us, suits us, and when it does not. Is the Spirit of Jesus planning to take us down a notch, teach us a lesson, pay us back for our failures? Or is the Master just waiting to bless us and show favour upon His faithful ones?

God is the Potter… who is the clay? There really is a third option, if we read the Bible closely. Scripture commentator, Thomas Steagald, suggests that the clay in Jeremiah’s imagery is not the individual person, nor the religious nation as a whole. The clay that can be squished up and remade into something different is the will of God, the purposes of the Holy One. Verse eight of the chapter says, if that nation… turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. Christians sometimes like to hold onto the teaching of Hebrews 13:8 (and other places) that declares Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. Yet the witness of scripture has the Almighty’s mind changed on many occasions. It even is put into English as ‘God repented of what He was planning to do.’ God makes a U-turn. 

Is God not moved by what happens in our lives? The Master is influenced, changed, and responds to humans, and all creation, and what is going on with us, eh? So, like clay on the wheel of the potter, God can squash down the plan that no longer looks right, and develop a new plan, a new path, a new option. 

We know about changing plans in our own lives. This has been the week of back to school. And how many times has a young college student entered university or trade school, registered for a certain plan, only to change it after the first year, or half year? This certainly happened a lot, thirty-five years ago, when I went off to study biology and chemistry. So many fellow students changed their program. Some more than once. I stayed with my plan for four years, but immediately switched gears and ‘went up the hill’ to the Divinity College after my B.Sc. 

I know one person whose university career was like this: A diploma in fashion design. Then a diploma in costume studies.  A bachelor of science in geology (if I remember correctly). A doctor of optometry degree. Now, my sister works as an artist and a farmer. 

The Creator we worship, who reaches us in Jesus, who touches us with Spirit, is certainly an artistic designer, a geologist, a visionary with plans for all of us, and God’s farm is all creation. The warnings that Jeremiah proclaimed in his time, portrayed a God who was behind the world events that blessed or bashed the nations of people. And a God whose guidance of the world could change, take a new course, follow a new plan. Abba, a loving Father, responds to the world. When disaster was about to strike, as it was in Jeremiah’s time, the prophets and people of faith saw this as deserved and purposeful. The people had failed, so their earthly kingdom would fail. Jeremiah, known as the weeping prophet, spoke for decades in a time of turmoil. 

Oh how we see this still today, from our rather safe vantage point. The political corruption and evil, the economic disasters, the climate crises, all forebode a dark age ahead. We are reaping what we have sown. If we listen we hear some weeping prophets of our time. But if we feel the Potter is shaping evil against us and devising a plan against us, let us hear the call to turn. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings. There is yet a turning, an opportunity, a part to play in shifting the future. In changing the mind of God. If we feel at times the world is going to hell in a handbasket, we are yet called upon to be salt and light. A wee mustard seed can grow into a spectacular shrub. When the flood comes, we can be a refuge of faith and life. 

No wonder Jesus warned about the need to count the cost to follow Him. To be free of so many things we want to possess. In our lifetimes of prosperity, Christ our Master calls upon us to believe in compassion and generosity and lovingkindness. And to live compassion and generosity and lovingkindness. 

What are the Potter’s plans for our world? And can they change? Those who stay in touch with the Potter will know the heart of God, and learn how to join in on the divine plans. Let it be so, in Jesus’ name.