You are the Potter, We are the Clay

[00:00:00] Grace, mercy and peace be to you. From God our father and from our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:09] All right, listen to this line from the last verse of what we just sang. [00:00:13] This is the. [00:00:16] I don't know, one of the fullest ways to think about the beauty of God's salvation for us, what it means for us. Yet she on earth has union with God, the three in one. [00:00:31] Just let that sink in a little bit. She's talking about the church, which is made up of God's people, his human creatures, who, well, are married to him as part of the church. That's one of the metaphors used. [00:00:51] But just think about that union. She on earth has union with God, the three and one union with God. [00:01:01] The story of our salvation is nothing less than God uniting us to himself, uniting human beings to himself. It's the union of heaven and earth. [00:01:15] It's incredible. [00:01:17] I need my bulletin. [00:01:24] In this relationship between us and God, between you and God united together, this is obviously not an equal relationship. [00:01:38] There's an unequal dynamic to it, and that is that God is our creator and we are created. [00:01:45] He's the shaper and he shapes us. [00:01:49] He is. [00:01:52] Well, Jesus Christ is the truth, and he teaches us the truth. He lifts us up into divine understanding and gives us his own mind. But it's not like we come to an agreement together. Let's negotiate this, and then we just are united as equals. That's not. That's not the dynamic of this relationship. There's a. There's a hierarchy there. [00:02:16] God is the potter. [00:02:18] We are the clay, as we saw in Isaiah 29. [00:02:23] There's another hierarchy in Isaiah 29, he says, because this, people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me. [00:02:42] Right. Hearts and lips. [00:02:45] There's a hierarchy there. There's a hierarchy. And don't let your mouth run without first. Directing it from your heart is a good thing to remember every day. Don't put your foot in your mouth. [00:03:02] I wonder how that relates to this image. I don't know. But basically, you need to be governing your words, just like you govern your actions. [00:03:13] But that's the key. Just like God governs his people, shapes his clay, you do the same thing. You shape your words. You govern your words and your actions. There's a hierarchical relationship like this between your head and your body, or at least there needs to be, right? [00:03:34] I was thinking this morning with Ken Strieb playing so beautifully on the organ, what would it be like if Ken were not mastering the keys and the keys were mastering him. That would be something not to listen to. [00:03:50] There's got to be an order there that's really obvious to. Right. [00:03:56] But actually, maybe it's not so obvious in our day and age. Maybe that's why, you know, that's a little bit related to modern art, why you look at modern art and you go like, what is that? [00:04:11] There's kind of a celebration of chaos and what springs up naturally, what emerges naturally without the intent of the artist sometimes. I mean, I said this a few weeks ago, but I think we're kind of in a phase in the lectionary where the readings are aiming us this way quite a bit. That's why you can look at the gradual later. But it kind of matches all of this, too. And it's been for weeks. But I think that today, as a young father, hearing from our society, I'm taught by our society to raise my children like, you might make modern art, right? Like, throw it at the wall and see what happens. [00:04:58] That kind of thing. [00:05:01] Order and hierarchy are bad words today, at least among some. This is the trajectory of our postmodern culture. It's a rebellion against order. It's a turning things upside down, we might say, because we think there's a right side up, turning things upside down and letting chaos rule, because order and rule are, well, inherently oppressive. [00:05:37] So anyway, it's not that obvious today, necessarily, that there needs to be someone in charge. Until you start thinking of real world examples like, you know, like your company, whether you're an employee or CEO or manager, whatnot, you recognize there's got to be order or this thing's going to fall apart or you're on a sports team or you're in a classroom, you're the child or you're the teacher. You recognize. Wait a second. There's got to be hierarchy. The child doesn't recognize that, right? But. But the best thing for the child is to be nestled in that hierarchy and to find his or her place in obedience to the teacher. And then everything's going to go well, you know, and be working in harmony, and they're going to learn, right? They're going to be shaped by their teacher like a, you know, like clay is shaped by the potter. [00:06:26] So this. This relationship, it's true on every level of reality. And here in Isaiah, we see it in the creator and the creature, the potter and the clay. We also see it in the heart and the lips. [00:06:42] God's saying, like, okay, you're honoring me with your lips, but it's not coming from your heart, right? [00:06:51] The proper order is for our hearts to be shaped by God, and then our lives, our words, our actions, to be shaped by our heart. See that? So to reverse it, my words and actions ought to be coming from my heart, which ought to be coming from God, right? Shaped by God. That's the proper order. [00:07:16] And finally, there's one more that's not as obvious, at least one more that I'm going to point out, and that is in the next line. And their fear for me is a commandment taught by men. Although I think it says it again somewhere there. [00:07:38] So, commandments taught by men versus commandments taught by God. [00:07:43] Some people take a verse like this, or like in our gospel reading about traditions. Like, you hold to the traditions of men and say, like, traditions of men, get rid of them, right? [00:07:54] No, no. The key is, what's the order? There is the tradition flipping things upside down and replacing God's word. Or is it shaped by God's word so we can still shake hands when we meet and look at each other when we talk to each other. And traditions like that, traditions aren't bad, but there's an order there, and it needs to be shaped. So the traditions of Mendez need to be governed by the commandments of God and not the other way around. [00:08:31] So we need hierarchy. There is this structure, and the best version of it is with God. [00:08:38] We can submit to God and have him shape us. There's no fear in doing that. [00:08:45] That's not going to create problems for us. Ultimately, it might not seem like the most fun path or like a good idea in the moment. Just like a child doesn't necessarily understand why his father or mother is telling him what to do and it's not what he wants. [00:09:03] We might not recognize it, but we know that just like an earthly father or mother, hopefully has the best in mind for a child. I mean, we kind of take that for granted, right? Well, we can trust that God has our best in mind. [00:09:18] How God showed his love for us in this while we were still sinners. Like, while we were rebellious children, not wanting to listen to him, done with him, while we were sinners, Christ died for us. God sent his son for us to sacrifice himself, to lay down his life for his sheep, for his friends. [00:09:44] We can trust God, transfer that image to the epistle reading, and Christ sacrificing himself for the church, laying down his life for the church, and treating the church like his body, like you care for your own body when you get up and take a shower and comb your hair and such. [00:10:09] We don't all value hygiene the same level or, you know, like, I don't know. [00:10:16] You know, I don't know. I don't put makeup on, you know, like, I'm thinking, like, you know, how much do I really care for my body? But I think I do, right? I mean, this is. [00:10:26] My body's pretty important to me, really. You know, if I didn't have it, I wouldn't be up here talking, right? And so I do love my body, and so I guess it's a good image, right? [00:10:40] Christ loved the church, and you got that image of, like, washing the church, washing us from sin, and being so messed up. So Christ here is pictured as a husband. And, I mean, the limitation of the image is that husbands don't live up to the. What Christ does for the church. [00:11:04] There's a comparison there in a sense, right. And something to strive for and to live into, but not a comparison in terms of degrees of success. [00:11:18] Christ loves with a perfect love and never has to say he's sorry. [00:11:24] But that's not true of any. Any of the human levels of this hierarchy that we're talking about. That's not true. Even with relation to my heart and my body. [00:11:34] Often I do my body a disservice by my own governing of it. [00:11:40] By eating what I shouldn't or just mistreating it is what happens. [00:11:48] There's an odd Bible story that speaks to. To this, okay, to the flipping things upside down, that I think is instructive and kind of fun. It's. You remember the story, maybe from Sunday school growing up, where Balaam gets a. Gets a. Gets rebuked by his own donkey. [00:12:10] Remember that? [00:12:12] So Balaam is asked by a foreign king to curse Israel. Of course it's not a good idea. That's not what God's going to want. And Balaam kind of knows it, but it kind of seems like he's, I don't know, you could say, honoring God with his lips and not his heart. Like there's a deceit going on within him, so that hierarchy is out of whack. But then he's also not. He's not submitting to God and his word. He's not being shaped by God's word. That hierarchy's turned upside down, and then he's riding his donkey, and that's a hierarchy, too. [00:12:55] Somebody riding a donkey is telling the donkey what to do, and the donkey shouldn't be telling the rider what to do. Ideally, you don't want your horse going wild or your donkey going wild. [00:13:08] You gotta direct it. And maybe you spend a long time. I don't know, I see some of you maybe have done this. I don't know. You got to spend a long time making that relationship work, right? Kind of like a marriage. Kind of like a, you know, parents and children teacher in classroom. Okay, so Balaam's riding this donkey, and they come to an angel standing in the way with a sword. Flaming sword, I think. [00:13:37] But Balaam can't see it. [00:13:40] Kind of like when you're going the wrong way, you've got the wrong. [00:13:45] I mean, you're going to harm your body or harm somebody else, right? But maybe you think it's a good idea. Like, you are blind to the consequences. Okay, but Balaam's donkey can see it. God gives the donkey the ability to see the angel, and Balaam can't see it. And so the donkey's stopping. He's like, no, we're not going here. Balaam's like, come on, let's go, let's go. Right? And then God gives the ability to the donkey to speak, and the donkey's like, honestly, I don't remember what he says. You got to go look it up, because it's hilarious, you know? [00:14:22] But he's just kind of like, come on. [00:14:29] There's a time for the body to rebuke the heart, right? There's a time for citizens to rebuke government. [00:14:45] It's not that hierarchies are always functioning well. [00:14:51] And so St. Paul says, husbands, love your wives, wives, submit to your husbands. There's a time for a husband to hear from a wife. [00:15:04] This isn't working. [00:15:07] You're not leading us according to God's will or something like that. And so a husband, as the head of the family, as the head of the wife, sometimes needs to hear it. [00:15:24] So the human levels of the hierarchy, there's always confession and forgiveness, repentance and forgiveness to make this work. Well, Paul reminds us, but I'm talking about Christ in the church. [00:15:40] This pattern applies to husbands and wives and to other levels of reality. But this profound mystery that I'm talking about, it refers to Christ in the church. [00:15:52] That's one reason to hold onto it, I think, is that Paul is saying that the relationship between husband and wife is not just about the relationship between a husband and a wife. It's actually expressing the pattern of the relationship between Christ and the church, between heaven and earth, between God and his people. [00:16:20] It's almost like a teaching tool and a reminder. It's this embodiment of a greater reality. And that is God's love for us and faith in God, both of them together. [00:16:35] We live in an age that says, forget the hierarchy, but children, children, God has given you parents, father and mother and grandparents and rulers, you know, authorities, governors, teachers, to look up to and to learn from, to submit to. [00:17:00] So your place that God has given you is one of submission, right, of listening and obeying. And that's a beautiful thing. And one day, one day you are going to be given responsibility to take up authority. It might be over a classroom, it might be in a family, it might be in a job or you might have a role to obey or to do what somebody else wants, the will of somebody else as an employee and whatnot. And so this is the time that you're practicing because when you get to my age, or any of our ages for that matter, it's a little harder to learn, right? But this is the gift that God has given us, that he has nested us in his hierarchy, he's made us part of his family, he's lifted us up out of wherever I would have led myself, apart from God's word. And he forgives us and he shapes us by his word, shapes us all together, holds us together in his love, in his body he calls us, his own body, his own family, his own country that we're citizens of. [00:18:19] And he'll never leave you nor forsake you. And it's a blessing to be part of the body with you, to be part of the country with you, part of the family with you. We are family in Christ. In Jesus name, amen.