Sunday, September 7, 2025
Proper 18C, 2025
Jeremiah 18:1-11
Luke 14:25-33
Everyone at the clergy gathering cringed when we read this gospel lesson together last week. I enjoyed my first attendance at the bi-weekly gathering of the conference clergy which they call Pericope. (Pericope is a fancy Greek word for a passage of scripture to be studied.)
We do bible study as well as support each other in our work. So, when we got to this reading I actually heard several people groan and complain that we just did this a couple of weeks ago. I concurred.
If you remember, my first Sunday here at Redeemer presented me with the challenge of preaching on a passage from Luke 12 (49-56) when Jesus said, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” And then he went on with a similar list to this one about “father against son, and mother against daughter,” etcetera.
To be clear, Jesus said then that there would be internal conflict within the community. Here he is talking to the individual follower who will be required to sever family ties and whatever social status you may have in order to follow him. In reflection on both passages, scholars and preachers are all talking about the cost of discipleship (Bonhoeffer). And I guess that makes us groan.
However, don’t think I’m trying to dodge the challenges of this passage when I choose to focus on Jeremiah. It all comes to the same meaning in the end.
In our reading from Jeremiah today we hear the lovely story of when the prophet was led by the Lord to the potter’s house where he saw the potter working on a pot. As often happens on pottery wheels, the pot didn’t turn out right. So the potter threw the clay back into a ball and got more water and started over and formed the pot in a better way.
This is a metaphor for God fixing us. It is also a metaphor for repentance. The Lord says to the people through Jeremiah, “Turn now, all of you from your evil ways, and amend your ways and your doings.” To turn around is the basic definition of the word repent. Yahweh is calling for repentance. Jesus is calling for repentance too by telling us to turn away from even our families and our fortunes and take a step further toward, not just salvation in him, but the work of the kingdom.
As in every move, I had some items turn up broken when I unpacked them. I was upset at first. But I stopped myself short of throwing out the broken bits. Instead, I cleaned and dried the pieces and put them away in a box with some other broken ceramics from other china sets which I had set away hoping to possibly mend. You see, I have a collection of broken china pieces. I have been collecting them for years with the silly notion that when I’ve collected enough, I’ll make a mosaic for a table top or garden ornament or something like that. I have a vision of this collection of misfit pieces of broken china. Maybe they will keep my memories of all the dinner parties or just everyday dining with family and friends. I hope that somehow just hanging on to those broken pieces will cause me to feel whole.
You may have noticed that I like to come in early on Sunday mornings and, since we’re not doing a procession at this point, enjoy some quiet time for centering and prayer before the service. I miss the procession, but am loving this perk. As I sit here I sometimes look around at the stained glass and accoutrements and I’ve noticed a couple of things about this sanctuary, I wonder if these details are often unnoticed. One thing I noticed was that, from a certain angle and lighting, I could see scratches and stains on the ceiling. Another was a couple of places where there are what looks like burn marks on the backs of the pews or stains along the window sills. I wonder if some candles went awry. And we’ve been discussing the carpet in here which some feel is outdated or worn but I love because it is the original and in really great shape.
Now, you might think I would criticize or call a council meeting to complain or investigate repair options. But, no, I instead delight in these minor flaws. The normal wear and tear on this building reminds me of all the many happy moments through the years at coffee hours and receptions and bible studies and prayer groups and music. I imagined the years of laughter, joy, running children, embracing the bereaved, deep thinking and deep prayer that has gone on in this place through those years.
These are scars. They may be minor and easily overlooked, but like the scars on our bodies they indicate a memory of good times and bad times, happy Christmases of yore or the sadness of funerals or the many struggles this church building has endured for nearly 50 years.
And this made me think of the brokenness of the human condition.
We long for perfection, we long for everything to go right all the time, we long for our vision of what we should be or what this parish should be. We long for things to settle on the good times, for happiness to set in and stay there. But we know that’s impossible and we inevitably are disappointed, hurt, angry, and grieve over the losses along the way. I’m talking about what happens in life to every person, to every family, to every organization, and to every church.
We are scared.
We are broken.
And we need each other.
And we need Jesus.
But in Jeremiah God is represented as threatening the destruction of entire nations. God inflicts, prepares, and devises disaster.
We don’t like that part in this passage from Jeremiah about God planning evil against God’s people and we especially don’t like that part about God changing God’s mind. So let me clear that up for you.
What gets lost in translation here is the context of that repentance stuff. Yaweh is saying to Jeremiah, and to the people of Israel through Jeremiah, that God will meet us there, God will meet us at that turning around place. God is saying, “Repent, turn around and I will turn around too.” God will repent too. This is not suggesting that God is not omnipotent, that God sins, or that God wants evil to come to us. Rather, this is the Lord seeking for the people of God to turn and come back to the Creator. And God will turn too and meet us there. God will meet us wherever we turn, whenever we repent.
And if we want to get past this seeming contradiction or confusion from the prophet, and certainly we do, then the image of clay is key.
If we allow ourselves to be pliable enough to be formed by God, then we can become as God created us to be, as God longs for us to be. But if we are stubborn and self centered and refuse the potter’s hands then we will dry up like clay - stuck in our ways. And old dried up clay pots break beyond repair.
So there are two message here: become like clay and surrender your will and your life to God or, if you feel it’s too late for that, recognize your brokenness and remember that the love of God is actually alive within the broken places of your life.
Just like my broken dishes, I am broken too. We are all broken. We are fallible. We are all human and we make mistakes and we do the best we can and we struggle to make ends meet, and we struggle to get along, and we struggle to understand each other, to forgive each other. And we struggle to love our neighbors.
Life is difficult.
But, as Christians we enjoy the benefit of repentance, reconciliation and healing. We can always turn things around. There is always help from a brother or sister in Christ. God always meets us there. God always meets us where we turn. God always meets us where we forgive and where we love each other.
In this story from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is asking his disciples to consider the long term commitment of becoming a Christian. He cautions against these enthusiastic newcomers who erroneously think they are joining a parade to freedom without the cross. And we don’t like some of what Jesus says here any more than we like Yahweh telling Jeremiah that God plans what seems like evil against us.
Jesus tells his followers to hate! Hate your family. Hate your self. Hate your life!
Jesus turns to the large crowds following him and proclaims, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple”
No one considers hate a fruit of the Spirit. Hate is usually viewed as the antithesis of love. Hate is bad, right?
The key to understanding this teaching is the word hate itself, however. This is the ancient Jewish way of expressing detachment, of turning away from bad things.
To hate something or someone meant to turn away from that thing or person or behavior. It was about turning away from temptation and sin. It was not about degrading that person or destroying that thing.
The use of this word in the time this story took place is not that of the emotion-filled word we experience in today’s scream, “I hate you!” Were that the case, this lesson would shatter all the biblical calls to love, to understand, to forgive, to care for others, especially one’s own family. Hating one’s own life is not a call to self-loathing, to throw one’s self across the doorway and beg the world to trample on it as though it were a doormat. Rather, what Jesus is calling for is that those who follow him understand that loyalty to him can and will create tensions within the self and between oneself and those one loves. And in such a conflict of loyalties, Jesus requires primary allegiance. (Fred Craddock)
We are not called to fix each other, we are called to love each other, we are called to follow Jesus. And following Jesus means living into our brokenness, just as he was broken on the cross.
There is an old story about a novice monk whose chore was to carry water. Each day he would place a large pot on each end of a pole and carry both pots with the pole across his shoulders. The water source was at the bottom of a long hill. After filling these earthen vessels, he would slowly walk back up the path to where he would fill the cistern.
But there was a crack in one of the pots. So, each morning, when he finally reached the summit this pot would be nearly empty and he would have to return to the bottom of the hill for more water. In fact this caused him to have to work twice as much to complete his chores.
He complained to the abbot and asked for the broken pot to be replaced. The abbot denied his request arguing this was not good stewardship. The novice argued the extra work kept him from more time praying. The abbot argued that the work was also good for him.
In the end, the novice obeyed and returned to his routine.
As the seasons changed and Spring came to the monastery, many beautiful flowers grew along the path on one side. There had been no flowers there before. The extra time spent carrying water in a broken vessel had brought beauty to the path because the water that dripped all along the path as he carried it nurtured an unseen need. This delighted both the novice and the abbot.
This story reminds me that at times our brokenness carries out the beauty of the Kingdom of God in surprising ways.
We are all broken in some way. Our little church here is broken in some ways too. We long for God to fill those broken places. But this is not the best way to seek the Kingdom because the Kingdom is more about community than our individual wounds.
We may not have to hate our parents, or our spouse or our children and siblings, especially if we are all on the same path, following Jesus.
And as we begin a new era together in this part of the Kingdom, let’s remember to allow our brokenness to act as a window for the love of Christ. Let us share the work, share the healing and share in our delight of God’s creation and action in the world. I believe that if we open ourselves in this way, both as individuals and as the community that is Redeemer, that we will grow anew into a surprising beauty like that of the flowers on one side of the monk’s path.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly