“HARRY POTTER OR THE MASTER POTTER?”
JEREMIAH 18:1-9
18:1 This is the word that came to
Jeremiah from the LORD:
2 "Go down to the potter's house,
and there I will give you my message."
3 So I went down to the potter's house,
and I saw him working at the wheel.
4 But the pot he was shaping from
the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
5 Then the word of the LORD came to
me:
6 "O house of Israel,
can I not do with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand,
O house of Israel.
7 If at any time I announce that a
nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed,
8 and if that nation I warned repents
of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned.
9 And if at another time I announce
that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted,
10 and if it does evil in my sight
and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.
There was a time when I wasn’t
really sure if God was calling me to be a minister.
It happened many years ago
when I was in seminary. The doubt became so strong that I almost dropped out
of seminary. That’s something that happens a lot when life gets a little
rough. You begin to have doubts.
You begin to
doubt yourself or the people around you.
Sometimes you even begin
to doubt God and wonder if God really cares.
When life gets a little rough,
it would be great if we could all be just like Mickey Rivers. Do you remember Mickey Rivers?
He played baseball many years ago for the New York Yankees. He once told
a reporter he said that he didn’t let things bother him. Listen to what
he said. “Ain’t no sense worrying about things you got control over,
because if you got control over them, ain’t no sense worrying. And there
ain’t no sense worrying about things you got no control over either, because if you got no control over them, ain’t
no sense worrying.”
(Dallas Morning News, May 20, 1984)
I don’t know about
you but when life gets a little rough I find it hard not to let all that doubt and worry creep into my head. In some ways, I find it easier to identify with the woman
who was always afraid that someone was trying to break into her house. Maybe
you can identify with her too. The woman drove her husband crazy. One night she
heard a noise. So, she woke him up out of a sound sleep. “I think there’s someone downstairs,” she whispered.
Reluctantly, the husband went downstairs to investigate. Imagine how shocked he must have been when he discovered that
there really was a burglar in the house. Imagine how shocked the burglar must
have been when the husband didn’t yell at him or threaten to call the police.
The husband just looked at the burglar and said very calmly, “Boy, I sure am glad to see you. Would you please come upstairs? My wife has been waiting ten
years to meet you.”
What do
you do when life gets a little rough? Experience has
taught me that you can do one of two things. You can look for the Harry Potter
way out of the problem. Or you can put yourself into the hands of the Master Potter.
Let me explain by starting
with Harry Potter. Harry Potter, of course, is the young wizard in the incredibly
popular series of books written by Joanne Rowling. Now when Harry Potter comes
face to face with a problem like the ones that we face in our day to day life all he has to do is wave his magic wand. He waves his magic wand and abracadabra; the problem is solved. Of course you and I don’t have a magic wand, but sometimes that’s what we want. We want quick and easy solutions to our problems. No muss
or fuss.
It’s sort of what happened
every Thursday night years ago when you turned the television on to watch “The Walton’s.” Now mind you life was also rough for the Waltons. They also
had their share of problems. No matter what the problem was though it all got
worked out by the end of the show. Grandpa could have a stroke. Grandma could
fall into a well. John Boy could get caught smoking a cigarette behind the barn. Before
the hour was up though they were all climbing into bed and cheerfully saying, “Good night John Boy.”
If that’s
what you’re your looking for then I’ve got some bad news for you. You’ve
come to the wrong place because that’s not the way God works. Jeremiah
found that out one day when God sent him to watch a potter at work in his shop. Jeremiah
watched the potter shape and mold a lump of clay and then it dawned on him. That’s
what God does with us. God is like that potter.
God is the Master Potter who is always shaping us and molding us to be the people God knows we can be.
You can see that
God in the words to a hymn that we sing from time to time.
Have thine own way, Lord!
Have thine own way!
Thou art the potter; I am
the clay.
Mold me and make me after
they will,
While I am waiting, yielded
and still.
That sounds good, but unfortunately,
it isn’t easy to let the Master Potter shape you and mold you. First of
all it requires a lot of humility. When life gets a little rough it means you
have to say, “not my will but your will be done Lord,” and you have to really mean it.
It also means you have to
move beyond complaining about the problem and let the Master Potter go to work on you. You can’t be like the woman who
got really excited when Halley’s Comet was about to make it’s return to the heavens high above the earth. The woman decided this was a once in a life-time opportunity to experience something
really amazing. So, she paid big bucks so she could travel all the way to the
mountains of Peru and get a really good to travel all the way to the mountains of Peru and get a really good look at the comet. When she got there she found herself standing in the freezing cold. Then even though she was surrounded by these amazing Inca ruins she looked through a telescope and grumbled,
“That’s it? That’s all there is? I came four thousand miles to see this crummy little fuzz ball?”
If you really want the Master
Potter to help you out you have to be humble and you can’t grumble. You
also can’t run to God and say, “Okay, Lord…I’m going to let you be the Master Potter here but just
remember what you really need to do here is go to work on that lump of clay over there.
What you really need to do is make my best friend so she isn’t so selfish.
What you really need to do is make my husband or wife a little more patient.
What you really need to do is make my boss or teacher less selfish. Make
my husband a little more patient. Make my boss or my teacher a little less unreasonable.”
Instead you let God go to
work on you. You bow your head and pray with a humble and grumble free heart,
“Have thine own way,
Lord! Have thine own way!
Thou art the potter; I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after they will,
While I am waiting, yielded and still.
You let God shape you and
mold you. You do that knowing that when the Master Potter is done with you, you’ll
be a better person. You’ll be a more complete person. You’ll be a person who better understands what it means to be created in God’s image.
Several years ago Will Willimon,
chaplain at Duke University,
got a call from an irate father. When Willimon answered the phone the first thing
the father said to him was, “I hold you personally responsible for this!”
The father was irate because his daughter had just informed him that she had decided not to go to graduate school. Instead she was going to go and do mission work in Haiti. “Isn’t that absurd!” the father shouted. “A BS degree in mechanical engineering from Duke and she’s going to dig ditches in Haiti.”
Willimon listened to the irate father and then said, “Well, I doubt that she’s received much training in
the Engineering Department here for that kind of work, but she’s probably a fast learner and will probably get the hang
of ditch digging in a few months.” The irate father wasn’t amused. “Look,” he said, “this is no laugh matter. You are completely irresponsible to have encouraged her to do this. I hold you personally responsible.”
As the conversation went on Willimon pointed out that it was the parents who
actually got the ball rolling. THEY were the ones who had her baptized. THEY were the ones who read Bible stories to her. THEY were the ones who took her
to Sunday School and let her go on a ski retreat with the Youth Ministry group from their church. “You’re the ones who introduced her to Jesus, not me,” Willimon said. “Yes,” the father replied, “but all we ever wanted was for her to be a Presbyterian.”
When life gets a little rough
and you let the Master Potter go to work on you, you can be sure of one thing. The
problem probably isn’t going to be solved the way you thought it would be solved. You also may not end up being the
person you thought you would be, but you will be the best person you can possibly be.
Amen.
Rev. Dr. Richard A. Hughes
September 9, 2007
