RENOUNCING AND REPENTING, September 5, 2010

Jeremiah 18:1-12
Luke 14: 25-35
Yesterday, in the midst of all the Labor Day Weekend Festivities, the Skinnyman Triathalon, we celebrated Two Weddings, doing everything possible to make the Bride and Groom feel as though this was their day. 20 minutes before the second wedding was to begin, my cell phone rang, and my brother bore the news that our Mom, who was 89 years, who had borne the death of her husband a year ago, had breathed her last. Do you suddenly cancel the wedding? Do you say to the Bride and Groom, I am sorry, I know this is the happiest day of your life, but as the pastor I cannot officiate, I cannot offer blessings, because I am filled with grief? No, this is what is meant by “hating your father and mother and brothers and sisters and even your own life compared to being a disciple.” Pastors are not hired. This is not a job. A Calling is intentional acceptance of responsibility, no matter what.

Of all the passages of Scripture, this is one which often is questioned. The Savior being born in a Stable and dying on a Cross, we get. The Parable of The Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, we understand. But why would Jesus, who is the Divine embodiment, the incarnation of love, so emphatically state that we should HATE our Mothers and Fathers, Brothers and Sisters, even our own Life? Because that, is not what this is about. This is Hyperbole, contrasting one thing with another to emphasize just how great is to be our commitment to the cross. Over our years together, we have spoken a great deal about relationship, commitment and trust. Hyperbole is comparing one relationship, one commitment against another, and by comparison that which we know and have spent a lifetime working to build is as nothing compared to the relationship with God.

In some ways, I think we have made an artform of the many ways there are to Hate. There are what 50 Ways to leave your Lover? Increasingly, through the internet, we have created ways to be more anonymous in our attacks. All the Viruses and Worms on Computers are not naturally incurring events, each has been written and perfected by persons so filled with hate, they are trying to destroy others. These are not what Jesus meant. In Aramaic, to Hate as the opposite of Love, simply meant Apathy, to turn your back, to strive for something else, far more important, instead.

I remember a few years ago, there were two women who were very close friends in this village. Their commitment and friendship was closer than sisters. They had lived next door to one another for decades, had raised their children together, they read the same books, bought Halloween treats together and at Junior Prom and Graduation they had celebrated as part of one another's life. The daughter of the one had been planning her wedding, and the two had gone dress shopping together, they had thrown the Bridal Shower at the friend's house, everything was being planned for the afternoon of the wedding. But a few days before the wedding, the father of the friend, suddenly died. And on that Saturday morning, the two friends sat together in the family pew, holding hands and weeping tears of mourning; while that afternoon, the same two friends sat in the same pew for family, as they shared tears for their daughter walking up the aisle. Their commitment to one another was greater, even than the loss of the one, and the joy of the other.

By RENOUNCING, what we are describing is re-assessing our priorities. Naming everything that has a claim on us, and realizing where we are going the motions, what we are part of simply because it was expected, and what we are committed to be. The instantaneous nature of information in our culture has meant that we respond to “The Cause de Celeb”. Not to commitments that define us, but circumstances which touch our hearts for a moment. This last week on the Emmy Awards, George Clooney accepting the Humanitarian of the year award, described that we hear of earthquakes, fires and floods and we are moved, we respond. But who responds 6 months or 7 years later?When Jesus addressed the crowds, huge numbers were moved, hundreds began following to listen. This description in Luke is a challenge that Faith Cannot be Fickle, we cannot be a little bit committed, because people are in need. As serious as building a Watch Tower, or entering into War, is the commitment of faith.
We tend to remember The Prophet Jeremiah as a prophet of Doom, forecasting the Exile. The Calling he received before birth was to pluck up, and break down, to destroy and to overthrow, and only then to Build and to Plant. But compared to all the Apocalyptic ends, and the horrific judgements of evil we have conjured in our minds, the Potter's Shed is the Image of Judgement God gave to Jeremiah.

Before going to College, I worked for a Potter. Of all the Artforms and media, this is one of the most rhythmic and sensual. Before you can begin, the potter takes clay in their hands, to work it and knead it and by touch the clay becomes more elastic. Not simply a matter of touching, kneading clay is working it like the toughest most sticky bread dough. Folding over and over again, pushing the clay into itself where it would not have gone otherwise, working this substance from the earth until there are no differentiated parts more soft or more wet or more hard, but all one. Then, the potter sits down at the wheel. Before anything else, the potter center's themselves, taking a series of deep and cleansing breaths. You kick the wheel, your motion disturbing the inertia of the base, establishing an orbit a perpetual revolution, causing the table wheel to move and spin. You kick and kick, becoming one with the speed, then with hands moistened to allow the clay to flow, you lean against the lump of clay. The spinning revolution of the wheel coming into constant contact with your leaning against, moves the clay into center. If the clay is not thoroughly kneaded, if the clay is not centered, nothing good can come, you may as well stop, take everything off the wheel and go back to kneading again. But if the clay is prepared and centered and everything moving together. Then the slightest rubbing can open the mound, or raise walls up against gravity. But an imperfection, or a jerky movement and the pot is easily spoilt.

Yet, when the pot is spoilt, be it on the wheel, or days later after it has dried if it should crack, even after a pot has been fired in the long slow heat of the kiln, it is not thrown away. The potter takes the spoiled, and the broken, that have not been fired and puts them all in a waste can for another time, saturating the mess with a flood of water. The fired and brittle bisque pieces, the potter kneads with a rock, pulverizing into grit and powder. Days and Nights go by as the spoiled dissolves all the brokenness beneath the waters. Then one day, the potter scoops out all the liquified clay from the waste and places the muck in a plaster mold, dusting it with the grit from previous pots, sealing it beneath a skin of plastic. Days later, the potter uses their hands to take from the mound of clay and begin the work of kneading all over again.

Where in our minds we have conjured all kinds of images of Punishment and Judgement, of a day of Ending, according to the image given Jeremiah, The Judgement of God, the Punishment from God, is to be cut off as spoiled and set aside in order to be reworked, touched and kneaded by the potter, until we are able to be fashioned into something quite useful. It is intriguing that according to Scripture we Can change the mind of God, we can change God's Plan, when Jonah spoke the People of Ninevah repented and God forgave them; when Amos found God crafting Grasshoppers to destroy, and fire to scorch, the Son of Man asked for forgiveness and God in love relented. But while God is able to change, and move from punishment to forgiveness, there is no evidence of God acting in love suddenly going the opposite way.

The irony of Jesus' words about counting the cost of discipleship is that any who have have run away, as did all the disciples. The commitment God extends to us is more than we are prepared for. Yet, even those who ran away, were forgiven. Too casually do we claim “Bearing the Cross of Jesus” as Family Obligations, a Chronic Illness, and Difficult time in Marriage, or at work. These are not Bearing Jesus' Cross, but choosing intentionally to live your life to serve others, recognizing the costs and renouncing them, repenting of everything else save being there for others, for God.