The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
September 9, 2007
Vol. 10 no. 32

Everything But...
           I don’t really want to ask what the phrase that “we’ve all gone to pot” really indicates, but Jeremiah’s visit to the potter is a genteel place to should start. The craft of the potter hasn’t changed much in 3000 or so years, and a lot still depends upon the potter’s deftness of hand and touch. A beautiful pot can be ruined in an inattentive moment, yet the clay is not destroyed, remolded to attempt another moment of inspiration and beauty.
          Jeremiah is nudged into going to the potter’s house by a Word of the Lord inserted into his ear, and sort of like going to see a movie that you are told “has meaning” he tries to make sense of this very common activity. The starting over again aspect of pottery making is what caught his eye and imagination. Israel - indeed all of humanity - is that malleable clay which persistently, almost inevitably, gets messed up. Jeremiah hears God saying that this remolding is part of God’s famous words to pluck up and break down and destroy. A lot of people prefer that method of divine judgment - just wipe ‘em out and start all over.
          Being a dyed-in-the-wool Protestant (even if that means we aren’t a “real church”!), I want to see this clay work as a “re-formation.” Sometimes I mess things up enough through inattention, ignorance or arrogance that I wish I could start completely over, go through that door for the first time again. It is never quite possible to do that, but it is better to fail at recreating and reforming ourselves than to continue being the brittle old pots with glaring flaws etched into us. Reform us, make us into something quite new and different.