"The Perpetual Pot"
Luke 14: 25-33; Jeremiah 18: 1-11
July 8, 2006 A Summer Rerun of
September 9, 2001

How many times do I have to tell you? How many times do I have to remind you? Put the top back on the toothpaste. It's your turn to do the dishes, take out the trash, mow the lawn, set up the chairs, do coffee hour, the deadline is the first Thursday of every month, your stereo is too loud, your report is due. How many times do I have to tell you?

.........Funny thing about these warnings....they represent the tension between frustration and love....you could say burn out and desire. It's not that we want to punish or blame, it's we want love to work. It's a true tension and it happens in everyday life, whether it's with a child, a spouse, or a sister or brother or a ministry member, or a church community....the tension happens because you're trying the best you can "to love" and it isn't working the way it's suppose to work.

If we feel this way, how much more intensely must God feel.....how much more intense must God's frustration be when we choose to ignore all the promptings around us, even our own experiences. How frustrating to God when we choose to ignore the wisdom and guidance of love. Unlike us, no matter how frustrated, God never gives up on any one of us.....God remains at the potters wheel....day in and day out, year after year. Yet, we do have a role to play in the spinning of our new life.

Luke speaks of the price of discipleship. There is a true cost....if we are to find our way to the joy the kindom offers. What is the cost? The cost is the courage to give up or stop doing things the way you usually do them. What is the cost? The willingness to be changed...be different. Without our courageous willingness...even if God is trying to reshape us...we will retain the old shape. How we resist!

Add in 2006…I’ve learned we often mistake loyalty for love…we think we’re being loving but instead we’re being loyal…a loyalty may not be deserved, may be more a habit than anything else, may not serve us well…may be a failure of nerve, an inability to think…

Once you've taken yourself off the wheel of God's possibilities and desires for you, once the pot's been fired, in order to change, you have to break from your usual ways. Break. Perhaps the cost of discipleship Jesus speaks about is ultimately our willingness to be reformed, reshaped....to make different choices....a change that will have a ripple effect on everyone around us....oh, and then we'll have a cost to pay in that as well. The cost is bearable because God is still at the potter's wheel....and God is not only with you but with those around you. God gives honor to the cost and provides a new shape for you....for each of us.

God wants you to know, if you have really messed up your life somewhere and you think you're in your final shape....if you think you have been terribly sinful (acted out against people, made destructive choices, blamed others, gossiped instead of confronting....whatever it may be for any one of us).....if you really messed up, there is hope in the fact God is reshaping you even as we speak...you are a perpetual pot...and you are not a waste. God will take all of you, waste nothing, and use it for your good. God can take this vessel I am and reform me. God can take the vessel you are and reform you.....and can reform us as Tippecanoe.

And this brings us to a good question. Why...even when we know we are changing...is it so difficult for us to see others as a work in progress...perpetual pot? Is it because if they are different, it impacts us...the ripple effect? We might just might have to be different too....and there is a cost in that....and often we don't want to pay it and so we don't honor the changes happening in others.

You know, if your spouse starts a diet, you may have to eat differently too. If your friend is trying to change how they handle their anger, you may have to start responding to them differently. If your child wants to claim a new
time to do homework because he/she wants your support, will you change your schedule to support them? If the one who usually sets up fellowship hall rescuing Sunday mornings changes his pattern, will you change yours......it just might mean you have to set up chairs. A change reaction!

You see, in Luke Jesus is saying.....and in Jeremiah, God is saying.....It's your decision. There are certain costs to finding a more joyful, just life and it's your decision. God did give us free choice. We have the choice to make decisions in our lives....what shape we will be in.

It applies to community, too. If you want to become a member of this community of faith, there's a cost in joining us. And I'm not talking money. I'm talking about being called to make new choices....letting go of pride, giving over your power to the greater good...and some of your time, listening to each other, showing up, not being lazy, letting go of assumptions. These are some of the costs of being Christian.

We all make choices. Every choice has a cost. And we often blame someone else for the consequences...we often blame God for the consequences of our choices--our own choices. Jesus told his disciples he didn't want anyone following him without counting the cost. He didn't want anyone blaming God, later. Sometimes the cost feels high.....sometimes it means doing the hard thing, not being "too nice for your own good", the cost may be trusting someone else, redefining what it means to lead....to follow, the cost always includes being accountable for what you say and do....what you don't say and don't do. There is a cost. But freinds, sometimes the cost for not changing is greater than the cost for changing. Jesus says....get conscious!

Aaahhh.....the potter's wheel. Have you ever watched a potter at work? They spin and spin, adding water over and over again to keep the clay moist and palatable, never stopping the spin, never taking their hands from the clay, never giving up on any shape as it forms, reforming and reforming. That's us you know. Presbyterians. Reformed and Reforming....realizing we are never done, never know it all, never understand completely, always to be learning, led by the spirit. It is not easy being Presbyterian. You're never in your final shape.....thank God! There's always hope.