Sermons

“Fearfully and Wonderfully Made”

Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-18 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – September 8, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that our hearts might be made bold for the journey of transformation that life in Christ offers. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

How does it feel to hear that God knows everything single thing there is to know about you?  God knows things about you that even you don’t know, some of which you might not even believe. How does it feel to hear that? The psalmist seemed to find it a bit overwhelming.  “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,” it says, in a tactful bit of understatement. And yet, it’s also a bit relieving, isn’t it?

There are so many different descriptions of the way we relate to God and God relates to us throughout scripture.  I think the contrast between the two we’re looking at today can be helpful to examine. Let’s go back to Jeremiah to get started.  Poets have loved this passage for centuries.  The metaphor of God as the master potter is so appealing.  “Thou are the potter, I am the clay,” goes the old hymn.  There are all sorts of lessons to be gleaned here, not least about our need to stay flexible, as wet clay, so that God can do the re-working necessary to shape us into the right kind of vessel, rather than drying out and becoming broken, useless pieces.

But it seems possible to me that we love this metaphor so much, partially because it portrays a process that is so much easier than actual life.  In the potter and clay scenario, all the responsibility is on one side.  By taking the part of the clay, an inanimate object, we pretend that our only job is to stay out of God’s way as God does all the work.  Even the staying wet and pliable, if you watch an actual potter, is dependent on the potter adding water and slip, not on something the clay itself is supposed to be doing.

When is the last time you watched a potter?  Have you ever seen someone work with clay on a wheel?  It’s kind of mesmerizing to watch and often astounding, as something recognizable emerges from a blob.  But another reason we like this metaphor is because the mishaps that can happen with a potter’s wheel can feel like accurate representations of what happens in our lives sometimes.  If you go to YouTube and search for “pottery fail”, you’ll find a lot of examples of what I’m talking about.  Here’s one. Sometimes it all goes splat.

When our lives fall apart like this, the idea that God will pick us up and start over and put us back together is immensely comforting.  And there are times when this is the most important lesson to pull out of these verses.  But it’s also important to remember how Jeremiah is using the metaphor, namely, as a threat.  ‘You’d better straighten up and fly right, Israel, or God the Potter will squish you up so fast you won’t even see it coming!’  And maybe, in Jeremiah’s day, that was a responsible use of a metaphor, but in the centuries since, this idea that God intervenes in the affairs of nations and kingdoms, plucking up and destroying and building and planting has been widely abused to promote select agendas and various short-sighted foreign policies.  The idea of clay on a wheel getting spoiled and then being re-worked sounds so creative and smooth and painless.  Translated into international relations, it involves things like war and famine and untold suffering.  And yet, somehow, we often still like to blame things like that on God, using Jeremiah as our justification.

What if these verses are really more wishful thinking than they are helpful description of how God acts in our world, when it comes to our personal live and international affairs?  Sometimes our lives do go splat, and it’s important to remember that God is with us as we put the pieces back together.  But probably more often, our lives aren’t going splat, so much as spinning slightly faster than we can keep up with, and God is calling us not to submit so much as to grow.

This is where the subtlety and depth of Psalm 139 seems much more helpful than the splat/start-over threat/promises of Jeremiah 18.  So again, how does it feel to hear that God knows everything about you?  God knows your strengths and your weaknesses. God knows how sometimes your strengths are your weaknesses.  God knows your accomplishments and your bad habits.  God knows how you like to be in control, or how you like to hand over responsibility, or how you prefer to just avoid dealing with stuff that’s hard. God knows how you’re trying, even when your efforts are invisible to others, and God knows when you’re not trying. God knows what you’ve been through and how it shaped you and all that you’ve overcome.  God knows what you’re going to say and what you’re going to want to say but leave unsaid.  God knows when you’re going to feel like giving up and running away.  And God knows when you’re going to dig in and refuse to budge.

As the psalmist says, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.”  Or as the commentator in my study Bible puts it, “the intimacy is at once glorious and almost unbearable.”  If you tilt your head the right way, the description in verses 7-12 of the omnipresence of God can sound like the complaint of a teenager: “You never leave me alone!  Why do you always have to be everywhere?”  But the underlying relief of knowing we’re not on our own shines through as well, whether we’re fourteen or 40 or 84.  We are not alone.  God knows us more deeply than we know ourselves and loves us more completely than we can even comprehend.  And none of that means that we don’t have choices to make and responsibility to take for our own lives.

Some scholars have suggested that this psalm is written from the perspective of someone who feels unjustly accused of wrongdoing. “Search me, O God, and know my heart,” it says in verse 25.  ‘I don’t want to do evil, but if I have, please help me see it. I know you can see my life more honestly than I can, so please show me the error of my ways, if there is any.’ Such emotional courage can only come from the kind of trust reflected in those earlier verses, where the psalmist confesses the understanding that there is nothing they can do to remove themselves from the presence of God.  “Even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.”  Where is “even there” for you?  Has there been a place in your life that felt like as far away from God as you could possibly get?  Did you realize when you were there that God was, in fact, still holding you tight, ever so firmly and gently?  Were you able to open yourself up to the leading God’s hand was providing?

I saw a meme on Facebook the other day that said something like “What if God isn’t trying to use our talents and strengths, but our weaknesses and vulnerabilities?”  And like any human being, I recoiled at the thought.  But then I remembered Jesus and the central teaching of our faith: God did what God did through Jesus by means of Jesus’ biggest vulnerability, namely, being human. If that’s how God operated with Jesus, why would we think we’re any different?  And yet, we spend so much energy trying to avoid revealing our weaknesses and showing any vulnerability.  We are indeed “fearfully and wonderfully made” but we pretend sometimes that our weak spots are bugs and not features.  We prefer to focus on the wonderful parts and conceal the fearful ones.

What if, instead, we are called to live with the faithfulness of the psalmist, who is so convinced of God’s presence that they can dare to ask God to search their heart? Rather than demanding that God squish us up and start us over like we’re just lumps of clay, Psalm 139 is inviting us to work with God, to trust God enough to dare to make efforts ourselves at reforming our hearts closer to the shape of Christ.  The prospect is a little overwhelming, but not more so than the power of God’s love.  If we trust in God enough, we will gain the courage to look squarely at our weak spots and see them the way God sees them, as openings for God’s compassion and mercy to flow through.  If we can work up the courage to go there, we will discover that God is already there. Even there, especially there, God’s right hand will hold us fast.  Alleluia and Amen.