God Does Love the Pots

God Does Love the Pots

Romans 9:6-33

First Presbyterian Church Clarksville

Harmony Presbyterian Church

July 5, 2012

Ordinary 15

The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Of the many burdens God has laid on me in my life, being popular in high school was certainly not one.  In fact, I was about as far from popular as you could get.

            I worked on the literary magazine, not the school paper.

            I was captain of the debate team, not the football team.

            I actually liked Latin.

            I was, to put it simply, a nerd.  My friends were equally nerdy and we were just young enough not to realize that it is in fact the nerds that end up running the world!  Just ask Bill Gates.

            At the time, that would have been cold comfort.  Walking the halls of Central High for three years, I felt like I was wearing a sign that read, “I am a high school child of Esau.”  I was not in the club; I was not one of the chosen tribe; I was not predestined to the popular life of the Jacobs in our midst.

            If you ask people outside the church- hell, if you ask most people inside the church- what predestination means, you will likely get an answer that includes one of two things.  Either that predestination means that we have no free will OR that predestination determines who is going to heaven and who is going to hell.

            In truth, neither of these is an unfaithful reading of this passage from Paul.  They are faithful and orthodox readings.  Tucked into the words of this short passage is a lot of powerful and influential theological language.  In fact, these few words of Paul’s have caused a great deal of consternation in the church world.   It would be bordering on hyperbole to say that Calvin’s WHOLE understanding of predestination is based on his reading of Romans 9.  But it would not be wholly untrue to say it either.  Calvin’s reading or, as I am going to claim this morning his misreading, of Romans 9 is a text yearning for a new reading for a new era in the life of the church.

            How though do we go about reading anew without just forcing the text to say what we hope it will say?

            Fortunately for us Paul gives us some clues about how to read his writing.  As we have seen throughout this summer,  Paul can be a complicated enigmatic writer with hidden meanings and agendas around every corner in the text.  In reality though, Paul can be pretty straight forward when he wants to be.   And he is in at least part of our text today.

            The particular verses in question, 19-23, recall the imagery of Isaiah of a potter and a lump of clay.  The potter forms the clay in her hands and, according to Paul’s words here, who are we to argue with the potter if she wants to use some of the clay for a beautiful new vessel and some to toss on the trash heap.   Some pots are worth keeping, others get tossed on the trash heap.  It is a short trip from clay pots to heaven and hell when the text is viewed through Calvin’s interpretive lenses. 

            Like Augustine, Calvin often fell back on metaphor as a way to explain and interpret the narrative twists and turns in scripture.  So in his eyes, it made complete sense to equate pretty pots with the favored and ugly pots with disfavored.  It made complete sense to assume that just as the potter decides which are pretty and which are ugly- which are worth keeping and which ought to be thrown away…to hell…for eternity, the same would be true for God and the creation of God’s hands.  Just as God chose Jacob over Esau, God chooses some of us over others.  Forever.

            With theology like that, it is a wonder our pews are not more empty!

            Now I am pretty darn Reformed.  I tend to dwell pretty close to my brother Calvin on many things, but on this one I just can’t do it.  I just can’t reconcile a notion of God that requires the belief that God tosses God’s work on the eternal trash heap with the fullness of the witness of Jesus Christ.

            I question whether Calvin’s or even Luther’s reading of Romans is the only one.  Could there be a different perspective, a new way of approaching this old text that builds on both the perspectives and deep needs of the church today?

            What, I wonder, would a new perspective on Romans 9 look like? 

            The question posed in Romans 9 is a question of inclusion in God’s new community and the promised kingdom.  As we know from the book of Acts, many Jews joined the early Jesus movement that would become the Christian church.  Gentiles joined them and together they began to grow.   This new community begged the question; what happens now to that portion of the Jewish community that has not become part of the new Christian community?   Now that the covenant is fulfilled in Christ resurrected what happens to who is left outside the church?  And where does the God of history fit into the whole equation?

            It is in answer to these questions that Paul uses the metaphor of the pots and the potter that so distracted Calvin.  He poses his questions in a series of what-ifs.

            What if God makes some pots for special purposes and other pots for the garbage heap?

            What if God is patient with the pots made for the garbage heap, for wrath and destruction, so God would have a way “to show his wrath and to make his power known?”

            What if God did all of this to make his mercy and grace even clearer?

            In other words, what if God sacrificed a few so the rest that are made for special purpose might learn the lesson and get the message?

            What if….

            Paul pulls a pretty swift rhetorical trick on us here.  He asks all of these what-ifs but rather than do his usual rhetorical switch and offer an unexpected answer to his own questions, he leaves the answers to us!  At no point does Paul say, “Yes.  That is exactly what God does- some pots for keeping and some pots for heaping.”

            Paul let’s God’s word answer the question of inclusion and exclusion by quoting from the book of the prophet Hosea:

I will call “my people” those

Who are not my people,

And the one who isn’t well loved,

I will call loved.

By God’s own words, those who are chosen are not rejected but those who are rejected are in fact chosen.  God the potter will gather up all the broken pieces destined for the garbage heap and the sum of God’s wrath upon them will be to call them God’s own and call them loved.

            Hardly the picture of the harsh predestining deity we have become accustomed to laying at Paul’s feet.

            What I find to be the most elegant and persuasive part of this reading of Paul is that far from drawing boundary lines that include some and exclude others as though the kingdom of God were little more than a middle school playground with cool kids and uncool kids, this new reading uncovers an image of God that gathers up the broken and makes them whole.  An image that is, to be sure, far closer to that of the Good Shepherd who does not rest as long as one is missing from the flock.

            By taking off the lenses of preconception and letting Paul stand on his own theological legs, texts that have been held captive for generations are allowed to breathe again and inspire a new generation of the church.   And boy is it just in time.

            For more than a generation, American Christianity has been dominated by a mindset that there are good pots and garbage pots and though they may all be made by the hands of God, only the pretty pots, the popular pots, the unbroken pots will be spared the garbage heap of eternity.  Far too much of the public witness of the broader church today is focused on which pots God will cast out and condemn and damn.  It is the picture of a harsh, uncaring, unfeeling God and hardly worthy of the gentle potter who takes the time and care to make and mold each and every soul from scratch.

            Friends, not only is that an outdated reading of what Paul has to say to us, I believe it is in truth heresy.   Yes, I just declared something to be heresy.  I realize that I have absolutely no authority to draw lines between what is and is not orthodox and I do not wish to put myself in the place of the whole church, but still I say again…a theology that ignores God’s love in and through Jesus Christ for the weak, the broken, the outcast- in other words the broken pots- is heresy!

            From the words of Paul in this small part of his letter to Rome to the fullness of the biblical witness, a portrait is drawn of a God who yearns to make us whole- to mend our broken places and to say otherwise is, well, you heard me the first three times!  To say that God can so casually cast off the creation of God’s own hands is a witness inconsistent with the witness of scripture.

            I admit that part of my motivation here is to keep myself off the garbage heap.  Because, if I am remotely honest with myself, my God and you I have to admit that I am something of a cracked pot (yes that was cracked pot not crackpot!)  I believe that God has a purpose for my life that goes beyond making me an object lesson in what it means to be hated by God.  I may be broken and chipped around the edges, but Jesus Christ fills in the broken places and makes me whole just as he does for you, and for THEM and for every one of the unique creations of the creator’s hands.

            The late theologian Lewis Smedes, ironically himself a Calvinist, has perhaps the best perspective on a text like this.  Smedes wrote that we are all earthen vessels, wonderfully made to hold the Spirit of God poured out on us, and thankfully God has a market for cracked pots. 

            And it is a good thing, because friends, that is what we are.  We are the potter’s work, lovingly made, flaws, cracks, broken pieces and all.  And what does Paul say God will do about the broken pots…

             “I will call ‘my people’ those who are not my people, and the one who is not well loved, I will love.’” 

            Pulling back the curtain we see that this harsh and intimidating fear inducing image of God is little more than the sleight of hand of flawed human beings.  The real image, the one that emerges from the fullness of scripture is not of a scattering deity but of a gathering savior.  There are no more favored pots and trashed pots any more than there are favored Jacobs or rejected Esaus. 

            Stepping back and seeing this text from a new perspective, we see a creating God who loves and cherishes everything that comes from God’s molding and shaping hands.

            Now, if I can just get a new perspective on high school!

            Sola Deo Gloria!  To God alone be the glory!  Amen.