Reflection - Potters

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/072816.cfm

Jeremiah 18:1-6
Matthew 13:47-53

Before taking a look at today's Scripture, I want to take a brief detour into one of the Psalms. The verses are from Psalm 97.

"The LORD reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the many islands be glad! 

Clouds and thick darkness are round about him;

     righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. 

Fire goes before him, and burns up his adversaries round about. 

His lightnings lighten the world; the earth sees and trembles.

The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,

     before the Lord of all the earth. 

The heavens proclaim his righteousness;

     and all the peoples behold his glory." (Psalm 97:1-9)

When I consider the images used ---

• Clouds and thick darkness are round about him
  
• Fire goes before him
  
• His lightnings lighten the world
  
• The mountains melt like wax before the LORD
  

When I consider these images it's not hard to understand that the author was speaking figuratively. How else would he speak? What words could he use to describe the indescribable? The parameters of his description are determined not merely by his own experience, but also by what his audience will understand. Neither poet nor prophet has seen the face of God. So the psalmist and the prophet speak in fanciful images. They draw a picture to be savored. Even then their words are inadequate.

God Himself uses even more vivid language. It is the language of creation. God has shared his brilliance in the beauty of a rainbow, the glory of a sunset and the wonders of the universe. He has manifested his power in the bonding of atoms and the cohesion of galaxies. He has circumscribed both His complexity and His simplicity in the order and organization of both living creatures and non-living things.  He has illustrated his magnificence in sunlit mornings, waterfalls, and nebulae. He has illuminated His love through mothers and fathers, spouses and friends. Whether poet or prophet or teacher of wisdom, the various human authors of Scripture sketch images of God in the only language anyone can understand --- the language of life and experience. God goes one better, His creation is the experience.

Nevertheless, because no one has ever seen God, you might say God has a problem; and that His problem is like that of someone trying to explain color to a person born blind or trying to convey the experience of a Beethoven symphony to a person who has never heard a sound. You might say that, but it wouldn't be true. We have seen Him. God's problem is not that He is so far beyond our limited human abilities, even though He is. That chasm He bridges with ease since all of creation is a revealing actualization of Himself. Rather, God's problem is suggested in the account of Jeremiah's visit to the potter. 

"I went down to the potter’s house and there he was, working at the wheel.
Whenever the object of clay which he was making
turned out badly in his hand, he tried again,
making of the clay another object of whatever sort he pleased.
Then the word of the LORD came to me:
Can I not do to you, house of Israel, as this potter has done? says the LORD."

Some might read this as a threat: God can dismiss you just as easily as He created you. See this potter? See how he destroys a creation which proves unsatisfactory? See how he takes the same material and just starts over as if the previous work never existed? Don't you see how similar the potter is to me, your God? Don't you understand how easily you can return to the nothing from which you came? Obviously, the case for interpreting the encounter with the potter as a threat can easily be made. God can start over any time he chooses.

I hear a different message. I hear the Lord reminding Jeremiah of the A, B, C's of reality. In order to do so, He takes Jeremiah back to a fundamental principal: I, the Lord, am God. There are no gods before me. 

The response of Israel comes two verses beyond where today's reading stopped.

     "they say, 'That is in vain! We will follow our own plans.'" (Jer. 8:12)

Except when faced with repercussions, who submits to authority unless they recognize the legitimacy of that authority? There comes a time when we all rejoice in breaking mom's apron strings. While we may still love and respect her, we no longer acknowledge that she has authority over us. The seed of independence has taken root.

So too, says Israel, with the God who will have no other gods. "The people of Israel say, 'That is in vain! We will follow our own plans.'" It is vain for God to say that we can have no other gods. It is narrow-minded for God to say His is the only plan. I myself will choose the tree from which I pick the apple for my life.

God formed man from the clay of the earth and the clay was given a mind of its own. The clay promptly forgot the fundamental principle: I, the Lord, am God. There are no gods before me. The image of the potter is not given to explain that God can obliterate his creation just as easily as He made it. For those who believe, that's a given. Rather it is offered as a reminder of the fundamental truth of existence. Whether we forget or ignore or dismiss that fundamental truth, it is still there, displayed before us in the language of all in existence: I, the Lord, am God. There are no gods before me. "The heavens proclaim his righteousness; and all the peoples behold his glory." 

Authority is one of the more challenging things human beings must deal with. We're cautious in accepting it. We're skeptical in acknowledging its legitimacy. But divine authority is like no other, for it is the origin of all authority. Which, I suppose, makes it just that much harder to fully accept. O, I do accept it, to a point. But there's always a reserve; and I ask myself why. Why am I skeptical and cautious? Why do I say --- just more politely than the people of Israel --- "I will follow my own plan"? 

God is God; there are no gods before him. And that truth is absolute whether I consistently acknowledge it or not. So too is his authority over me, just as the potter's is over the clay. Is my resistance to Him due to anything more than my failure to see His love, and proclaim with the heavens his righteousness?