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Hespeler, September 7, 2025 © Scott McAndless – Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Jeremiah 18:1-11, Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18, Philemon 1:1-21, Luke 14:25-33
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Come, go down to the AI design studio, and there I will let you hear my words.” And so, Jeremiah went down to the place where the designers sat at their computers and each one was required to come up with hundreds of designs a day.
He watched as one of the workers typed in, “Okay, Midjourney, give me a design for a new style of ceramic pot.” And, while Jeremiah watched, the Artificial Intelligence went to work, surveying a million pictures and designs of various styles of pots from many different cultures and time periods in fractions of a second. It processed them all and projected certain trends and fads to come up with a design that was a homogenized mix of every other pot that had ever been made.
And then the designer looked at the result and declared, “No, I think the colour is a bit off, try again.” And, using vast amounts of electricity and other resources, the Artificial Intelligence program restarted the entire process.
Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying, “Am I not like the Artificial Intelligence designer with my people? But Jeremiah said, “No, no, that is not quite right.”
Ceramics Factory
Then the word came again to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Come, go down to the ceramics factory, and there I will let you hear my words.” And so, Jeremiah went down onto the factory floor and he observed the fabrication lines. He watched as the great machines mixed the clay until it reached a perfect consistency. And then the clay was slip-cast, injection-moulded, or perhaps dry-pressed into perfectly consistent shapes. Then the pieces were dried, glazed and fired in turn.
All along the line, the workers surveyed the process. If there were any pieces that contained any flaws or imperfections or if they diverged from the design in any way, they were removed and thrown in the trash. At the end of the line Jeremiah saw all the pots, bowls and vessels lined up, each one indistinguishable from the next of the same design.
Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying, “Am I not like the ceramics factory with my people? But Jeremiah said, “No, no, that is not quite right either.”
Amazon Retail
Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying, “Okay, why don’t you just go online and order a nice pot from Amazon. And so, Jeremiah went on the website and picked out a pot that looked like it might do. He put it in his online cart and, with one click, requested overnight delivery.
An entire distribution system kicked into high gear with boxes flying through warehouses and pickers, sorters and distributors working long hours with limited breaks and no ability to sit down. The product was loaded onto a truck that went careening through the town and less than 24 hours after it was ordered, it showed up on Jeremiah’s doorstep. He opened the package, decided that it was not quite right and went back to his computer to click return.
Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying, “Am I not like Amazon in my ability to distribute blessings with abundance and speed? But Jeremiah replied, “No, no, that is not right.”
If God Made Pottery Today
No, none of those are right, are they? Those are the ways that most pottery is designed, manufactured and purchased these days. It is mass produced in ways that promote consistency, uniformity and efficiency. It is all done in such a way as to maximize profit, by giving people what they are used to at the best possible prices.
And I can’t help but think that if somebody said that God was like a maker of pottery today, we would be inclined to think of God in such terms. In many ways, I think that we do.
We look at many of the expectations that modern life puts upon us and just assume that God is looking for the same from us. When we look at ourselves, we often measure ourselves against the standards of the larger culture. If I am not beautiful in the way that an AI generator would define beauty – an amalgam of the most beautiful pictures ever taken – well, then I can’t be beautiful. If my life does not look as fulfilling and uplifting as everyone’s pictures on my Instagram feed, well, then my life must suck. And if I just don’t make the cut in that and so many other ways, then how could God value me?
Productivity and Consumerism
The world tells us all the time that our productivity is all that matters – that we are all only as good as the last bit of work that we did. And so, when I look at my accomplishments, I just don’t feel like I am any good. It makes us prioritize doing over being and, once again, we transfer that thinking onto God and assume that we need to earn God’s love with our works.
And, above all, our world is constantly telling us that the way we exercise our freedom and the way that live out our success is by being consumers. The more stuff you own, the more expensive experiences you have enjoyed, the more fulfilled you are supposed to be. That is the constant drumbeat of our world!
And of course, there are so many ways that we turn our God into the patron of that ideal of fulfillment. The Prosperity Gospel, the teaching that God wants to make you rich and fill you up with many material blessings is quite possibly the fastest-growing Christian teaching in our world today. So, yes, we have definitely turned God into some sort of cosmic Amazon network where we purchase whatever we need with one prayer instead of one click.
Jeremiah Wanders into a Pottery Shop
But the Prophet Jeremiah lived in a very different world. And when he was kind of discouraged one day because the people of Judea were being foolish and they wouldn’t listen to him, he didn’t wander into an AI design studio or a factory or a warehouse. He wandered into the local pottery shop.
And after he had watched the potter work away at his wheel for some time, he said, “Aha!” He said, “I didn’t just happen upon this place at random. No, my wandering footsteps had a purpose behind them. God brought me here because God had something to show me. God is like a potter and we are like the clay.”
What did he mean by that? Obviously he didn’t mean it literally. He didn’t mean that we are just mud or that we are spinning around on a foot-powered wheel. He wasn’t saying that God is literally squeezing and pinching us with clay-covered fingers.
No, he was rather saying that God relates to us like a potter relates to the clay. And let’s explore some of the things that that means and that we sometimes miss in our frenzied modern life.
Uniqueness
First of all, let’s look at what it says about your uniqueness. One of the key differences between ancient and modern manufacturing processes is how unique each item that is produced is. The potter may work according to some basic idea while the wheel spins, of course, but since the clay is actually formed by human hands that naturally vary in position and tension, every vessel produced is absolutely unique.
Even more than that, ancient potters were artists and often gave to their vessels unique touches in terms of design. And I think I know a few things about artists. I am no potter, and I can’t draw worth beans, but I do consider myself something of an artist in the art of storytelling. And I have had people ask me which of the stories that I have told is my favourite.
I find it an impossible question to answer – like asking a parent which of their children is their favourite. And the best answer I’ve ever come up with is that my favourite story is almost always the one I am presently working on. That is what makes an artist, I think. It is when you love the work you are doing.
You are God’s favourite Vessel
And I believe that God works the same way with you. You are God’s favourite vessel because God is molding you. God loves every unique bump and twirl and flourish on you – both on your surface and in your inner being. God loves you because God is working on you and because you are unique.
And what a different message that is from the message we are constantly receiving from the world around us that we are only acceptable if we can measure up to some standard and if we don’t deviate from the norm. Never let anyone take away from you the joy in knowing that God delights in the uniqueness of who you are.
Dealing With Flaws
Now, none of that takes away from the truth that we do have flaws. We do often fail to measure up to the potential of who we could be. This is actually a central concern in what Jeremiah observes in the potter’s shop. He observes this as he watches, “The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.”
And I think that says a lot about how God deals with our flaws. Notice how different this is from the ways in which we deal with flaws in modern manufacturing processes. What happens to the bad pot or the cracked vessel on the assembly line? It is removed and unceremoniously dumped in the garbage.
And that is how we tend to deal with flaws and deviations in our world. You show your shortcomings, you get cancelled, rejected, thrown on the trash heap. Our modern and fast-paced world just finds it much more efficient to dispose of you than to give you the chance to improve yourself.
But the potter God that Jeremiah discovers is not like that. God is always going to give you a chance to start over, even to reimagine yourself. God doesn’t lose patience with you and is always ready to put the lump of clay that you are back on the wheel and start molding all over again. That is the promise of the God who is like a potter.
Not Just Personal
But there is one other thing that I do not want you to miss as you think of Jeremiah’s powerful image of God as a potter. The thing that provoked him to see that deep truth was not that he was discouraged about what was going on in his personal life. We are often tempted to make passages like this all about our spiritual journeys as individuals, but Jeremiah wasn’t thinking about that.
He was concerned about what was going wrong with the whole nation of Judah. The thing that he was imagining God balling up and putting back on the wheel was not him or any other individual, it was the Kingdom of Judah as a whole.
So, we should not leave this passage behind today without asking what it is saying to us about who we are together as a church. You may have come here today with an idea of who we are as a congregation. And, if you are like most Christians, you probably have an idea of who we are that is based on what you have experienced of the church in the past.
The Church as Clay in God’s Hands
But Jeremiah would remind you, me and all of us that, when it comes to the church, God is the potter and we are the clay. We imagine the church like clay that has already been hardened and fired. It is rigid, it can only take the form that it has always taken and be used in the ways that it has always been used.
But, in God’s hands, the church always remains the soft block of clay – always ready to be formed anew to face the challenges of a new time, always ready to be put back on the wheel and take a new form that God can use in a new situation.
We want to be the ones who chose our form, who tell the potter who we want to be. But that has never been how God has related to the church, so if we insist on that, we might just end up broken pottery shards lying on the ground.
God is the potter, we are the clay. It is an image that is meant to inspire and encourage us. It is meant to lead us into a deeper understanding of how we are related to the great Creator of the universe.