Clay

Sermon

To really get into the Scripture text this morning, I decided to do an experiment—I decided to make a bowl using a children’s pottery kit. I made a video of it, which you can see online here:

“We are the clay, and you are our potter, we are all the work of your hand.” What did I learn from making this?

Well, even in this kid-sized project, I put a lot of work and energy into it. There’s a lot of prep and cleanup. When I look at this bowl and see its shape, I see my fingers separating the clay from itself. I see the bottom curves shaped by my pinky going through it. I see in little ways struggle and triumph.

I’m getting to know a lot of you at Westminster through Zoom meetings, and a lot of you do amazing art, whether painting, drawing, sculpture, music. Or maybe you don’t do art exactly, but you build things with your hands, or you write books, or make clothing, or do something where you take STUFF and put it together in a new and creative way.

And so I hope in some way you can relate to creating something and taking pride in it. This bowl is no work of art, I know. But I made it! I took care in making it!

“We are the clay, and you are our potter, we are all the work of your hand.”

God takes pride in forming you. In guiding your lineage of ancestors and family that came to you. In shaping you in your mother’s womb. In forming your personality from the inside, in shaping you through your experiences from the outside.

Consider this. Imagine that Michael were to walk from his organ to the pulpit, take my bowl, and smash it on the floor. How do you think I would feel?

I would be so mad! I don’t care that this is essentially a kid’s toy, I made it! And I choose what happens to it! And then I’d be so sad. I would grieve that I put some time into this project, and then it’s destroyed.

Well that’s how God feels about you. When you get hurt, or suffer, God is not indifferent. God has already put so much work into you and doesn’t want to lose you. This of course brings up the question my son, at 5 years old, asked me a couple of weeks ago: “If God wants good for us, why doesn’t God just prevent the bad things from happening?” And I just had to say, honestly, I don’t know.

But at least we need to start from the baseline that we are so worth it for God, that we can ask, don’t you love us enough to take care of us? That is at the heart of this Scripture passage this morning. It is the plea of a prophet of Israel saying, God, why don’t you just come down now and show us your power? See, my son is asking the same questions as the Old Testament—God, why don’t you just save us, show the nations your justice? God, I know even we ourselves have messed up this world so much, but don’t abandon us! We are the clay, you are our potter, we are the work of your hands! So DON’T FORGET US!

Do you think this passage has any relevance for us today? I laugh because it so obviously does.

But what if today we started just by believing that we are worth enough to yell at God to not forget us?

It would be bad enough if Michael came and just smashed this bowl I made. But what if I just said, this is worthless, it can’t even hold that much water, and I just threw it right here? It would say something about what I felt about myself and how I don’t value the work I put into this.

And yet, why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we treat ourselves as if we are not worth God’s attention?

Do you believe in your heart that you are a precious, beautiful creation of God’s? You may have heard this lesson since childhood, and so you may think, yeah okay, God made me and loves me, blah blah, got it. But think how much of our adult behavior comes from not grasping we have inherent worth.

We tell ourselves our clay bowl is only worth as much by how much water it can carry – the bowl’s function for others. As Brené Brown would say, What story are you telling yourself? I’m only worth as much as I can accomplish? I’m only worth as much as people like me or don’t reject me? I’m only worth as much as I can do for the people around me or for the world? I’m only worth as much as how I look or how I measure up to certain standards? I’m only worth as much as I live up to what my parents or mentors think I should be?

It is these lies we tell ourselves that cause us to create so much pain. For ourselves. And for others, trying to prove ourselves at other people’s expense.

But you already have infinite worth. We are the clay, God is the potter, we are the work of God’s hands. Before you can do anything for anyone, there is already the foundation of divine creativity and divine love deep in your bones.

And frankly, there is work you have done to make your clay jar beautiful, but it has nothing to do with proving something for others—but instead all the ways that you have taken your circumstances and made something greater from them, all the ways that your own hands have molded growth in yourself, and all the times you chose to love others and love yourself out of your abundance of love rather than desperation for worth. And in those ways you have been nothing less than a co-creator with the divine potter forming you.

You are the work of God’s hands. And so you are worthy of love and voice and dignity just by being.

Maybe that’s the mantra you need, every morning when you wake up, say to yourself, I am the work of God’s hands. I am the work of God’s hands.

With all the struggles we have with faith, I wonder if believing in our infinite worth, regardless of what we do, might be for many of us the greatest leap of faith of all.

So this is hard enough. But I can’t end there. Because yes, you are the work of God’s hands. But so is your neighbor.

You cannot have one without the other.

Let’s make this real. Who are the people in your life that you struggle with treating as if they are the work of God’s hands? How have you been treating them as if they are only worth as much as how much water they can fill? How would your actions change if you saw them differently? This is not a rhetorical question; actually think about real names, and think about real actions that would change. Write it down if you have to.

And finally I want to think about the people who are not treated with divine dignity by our society at large. Look, I walk around the streets of Portland, and I see all the Black Lives Matter signs up, all immigrants are welcome, all of the signs on homes, heck, even at grocery stores. And I am not diminishing those, they mean a lot to me, they signal that I and other folks are safe and that these homes and institutions are striving to be better. But how much do these lives actually matter to you?

Do you see marginalized folks as real living people of infinite worth with hopes and desires and stories, or are they just ideas on your progressive Portland policy list? Do you only care about Black women as much as they save your elections? How many lives and stories of the people you say you care about do you actually know in some sort of intimate way? Not that you can only care about people you have relationships with, but how many relationships do you even have with Black and Brown people, or other marginalized folks, and why?

I know Portland gets systemic change—your bike lanes are a literal work of art. But we know the utopia was built by pushing out Black and Brown folks and poor folks, with homeless tents camped outside the organic grocery stores. And I wonder the imagination we could have if we saw all of us as the work of God’s hands, all of us as real human beings, building this together.

We are all made of the same clay! So let’s stop hurting ourselves. The potter is still working on us all. Amen.