Jeremiah 18: 1-11 - Sunday, August 31, 2025

I was thirteen years old the first time a clay object fashioned by my hands was glazed and fired.  Throughout elementary school, we’d worked with clay, but with no kiln we couldn’t make much more than sculptures; but now, in high school we got to make something beautiful, functional and durable. I was very excited at this possibility.

Knowing that my big brother liked his tea, but had only a small three-cup teapot, I decided to make him a larger one. I wish I had a photo to share with you, to compare the beautiful object I had planned with the gargantuan monstrosity I made.  Roughly the size and weight of a medicine ball, holding a gallon of tea if not for all the leaks, it was so obviously not going to function as a teapot that our art teacher just glazed the lid to the pot, and to add insult to injury chose an ugly brown glaze with green accents. My brother graciously received my gift, and for decades it made a dandy doorstop in his home, strong enough to hold even the heaviest doors in place.

What I should have known at the time, is that one of the great advantages of clay, is its ability to be broken down and made into something else if plan A isn’t working out.  Although my brother was quite happy with his doorstop, it didn’t have to be that way, for as long as you keep it moist and supple as you’re working with clay, you can break it down, and start again. Clay allows multiple attempts at the same object, or to rethink the project and fashion something completely different, and nobody will see the difference.

In going to a potter’s house, and observing clay being worked in the skilled hands of an artisan, Jeremiah dips into something that was already ancient and universal, even in his day, to engage God’s desires for the world. The oldest known pottery, found in China, is 20,000 years old, and by 6,000 or perhaps even 8,000 years ago, there is evidence of potters’ wheels in the middle east.  Jeremiah used this powerful metaphor – ancient, yet still relatable even now - to illustrate to the people of Judah that their present way of being would lead to ruin, and to plead with the people and their leaders to let God work with them to make things right.  God was willing to start over if they were willing to let things be broken down and re-formed.  Things were not good but they were not beyond redemption, and the metaphor of a potter working at a wheel, breaking down the clay and making something new and needed, was both a call to change and a ray of hope.

There’s a funny issue with the Hebrew in this text; it’s hard to tell if Jeremiah is talking about things simply not working out with the clay at the potter’s wheel, or if he was suggesting that the clay had a mind of its own and was being difficult or obstinate, resisting the potter’s efforts.  Thinking back to my ugly teapot, I would happily blame the clay, though I think that one was on me. But however the Hebrew works out, Jeremiah’s potter takes action, just as Jeremiah says God was ready to start over with the nation of Judah. Seeing this plight, the prophet urges the nation to let go of their faithless ways and yield once more to the God who made them in the first place.  Carrying through with the metaphor, the broken-down clay, if still supple enough to change, will not get condemned and tossed away; for God, the loving creator of all, is all-in with any person or people who seek a new start.

I say “person or people” here, because while Jeremiah’s main target is the entirety of his kinfolk, the people of Judah, he also calls each person to be a faithful follower of God. There is a back-and-forth in the reading we heard this morning, as the prophet cannot quite make up his mind between God’s invitation to change, and God’s saying, “enough is enough.”  He also suggests, rather powerfully, that God can change God’s mind, and move off what had initially been a good plan but is no longer serving those with greatest needs. Entering into Jeremiah’s wonderings can help us clarify what WE think about God, and how we think God interacts with us when things are troubled, or at a low ebb.

For far too many people, life’s hardest circumstances get interpreted as the actions of a wrathful and punitive God; and if that is their image of God, the image of the potter at the wheel might be scary or arbitrary, as an interventionist God angrily starts over.  But the God who has been made known to us in the power of creation and in the sufferings of Christ Jesus, is not detached or angry; re-formation is out of necessity and a desire for life anew.  God is present to us in our times of loss, challenge, and suffering; God is there, in our hardest times, to work with us to clean things up, restore and rebuild, help us move on.  I know this from my own experience twenty-five years ago, of recovering from a year lost to depression, and I know it from the experiences of countless friends, colleagues and parishioners who have hit rock bottom due to addictions, in order for a new path to emerge.  There is new life to be found when one becomes vulnerable enough to invite the God of forgiveness, grace and resurrection to help them start again.

Admittedly, there are times when things go wrong for a person or a group or a nation, and the responsibility rests firmly in their lap and no-one else’s, and the only way out is to fold it down and start over.  But – and this runs somewhat contrary to Jeremiah’s message – there are also so many times when there is no blame to be assigned, and life’s hardest moments – accidents, disasters, illnesses – just happen.  Sometimes clay just kind of flops and needs a helping hand – not because it is being disobedient, not because the potter messed up, but because that just happens sometimes with clay.  And when things do flop in our lives, or threaten to sling us off the edge of the fast-spinning wheel, the key thing to know is that the potter is there to catch us, and shape us, and guide us into wholeness.  

That presence, power and loving intent of our creator God is good news for us, in a week when horrific things have happened in the world, and happened with intent.  As I wrote the first draft of this sermon this past Wednesday (Aug 27), there had just been a shooting in Minneapolis, with two children dying while attending opening worship for their school year.  The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, spoke powerfully in the moment, encouraging his citizens to let this impact them personally, to let it draw them together in loving support, and spoke directly to people of faith, calling them away from the usual platitude of “thoughts and prayers.”  There is such brokenness in a society, when the leading cause of death of children, is being shot.

On that same day (Aug 27) details of truly evil and indefensible attacks in Gaza came to light, killing over twenty people including five journalists.  Described as a “double tap” strike, the first hit caused some fatalities, but it was the second strike, after medical personnel rushed to provide aid, that was most deadly.  And again, this sustained, inhumane, targeted horror is brokenness at its worst.

In the presence of such terrible happenings, in all the ways that planet earth itself is challenged, we are invited not to recoil or feel helpless, but to restate our faith in the God of transformative love.  I invite you to join me in this moment, to bring to our mind’s eye Jeremiah’s vision, of God, acting as a potter would act, embracing the brokenness and sorrow of life, and reshaping it all.  Bring to mind, a God impacted by this, who takes the cries of sorrow and outrage of the world, against such violence, and uses that energy to urge change in the hearts and tactics and goals of those who are used to winning by force.  Bring to mind the words we heard last Sunday as God called Jeremiah, a call which included both tearing down and building up; bring to mind also the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, whose promised realm is free from the powers that crucify. 

The potter’s wheel, while rhythmic, soothing, even mesmerizing, is also incredibly powerful, especially as we envision God as the potter. We acknowledge our need for God, the one who restores and makes new, a God of whose presence with us as co-creator of the new realm can get the world past its brokenness.   And, acknowledging how deeply invested God is in your well-being, I invite you to go deep in your story with God, and our shared story as a community of faith, as well as understanding God’s deep engagement with the totality of life on this planet.

If there are places in your life where you can need God to accompany you at  the potter’s wheel of your life, I encourage you to embrace that metaphor and find its healthiest application for you.  If you have experienced infirmity of any sort, I encourage you to trust in God’s support as you find health, and I hope that this congregation can be a resource to that as well. If you see big changes that need to happen in your life, I encourage you to take the steps needed, with the necessary supports, knowing that God wants you to live a new life in abundance.  If you sense that the hardships of your life are a form of holy punishment, I encourage you to find a new narrative, one that understands God as a divine companion, rather than a punitive scorekeeper. And if you have been judged by others, or if you live with an inner critic selling you the lie that you’re not good enough, don’t you believe it – that isn’t how the passionate, skilled, loving shaper of our lives sees you, not at all.  God, who loves all people and all of creation completely and without reserve, wants you to embrace your life as a thing of beauty.  Because it is.  

I love the way that this lived parable, of Jeremiah going down to a potter’s house, is not just conceptual or theoretical.  It’s tangible, real, hands-on, we can see it and feel it. We, with Jeremiah, can easily imagine moist clay in skilled hands being drawn up into something beautiful, or collapsed down so the potter can try again.  It’s an image that combines artistry and power in a way we need right now.   We are called, with God, to be people of new ways, people who resist hopelessness, people who choose to live entirely by love, even when hatred or tries to have the upper hand.  With eyes wide open to the hard realities, we invite the presence and purpose and power of God, within us and between us and beyond us, to bring transformation and new life, a fresh beginning in the hands of the potter.   With thanksgiving we pray that this be so: Amen.  

Resources consulted:

Bright, John.  Anchor Bible: Jeremiah.  NYC: Doubleday, 1965.  and
Clements, Ronald.  Interpretation Commentary: Jeremiah.  Atlanta: John Knox, 1992.

https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0628/World-s-oldest-known-pottery-discovered-in-China

https://deneenpottery.com/pottery/ 

https://www.esv.org/resources/esv-global-study-bible/introduction-to-jeremiah/

Frey, Jacob (Mayor of Minneapolis). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpdpA8DlZBY

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-remain-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-and-teens

Salman, Abeer, et al. https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/27/middleeast/gaza-nasser-hospital-israel-attack-three-strikes-intl

 

© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.

Jeremiah 1: 4-10 - Sunday, August 24, 2025

 

Before us are two images: a devotional painting of a bright-eyed young Jeremiah, receiving his call to ministry; and an image from the Sistine Chapel, of a much older Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was perhaps 17 or 18 years old when God called him to a life of service.  For him, as for many when called to a life of service, the first response was to feel unworthy, unprepared, and ill-suited… especially at such a young age.   But God made it clear that this call was not mistaken or misplaced.  Jeremiah would be given both the words and the authority to bring God’s message in turbulent times.

Imagine being 17 or 18, maybe even younger, and having something so big thrust upon you.  On the one hand, there would be a strong sense of purpose and divine partnership, propelled forward by the energy of youth.  One the other hand, Jeremiah expresses his humility and his unpreparedness at such a young age to be chosen for this calling.  While he could not possibly have known everything that God had in mind for him, he would have known that it was A LOT.

Fast forward, perhaps fifty years, to Michelangelo’s image of Jeremiah from the Sistine Chapel, not as a teenager receiving his call, but as an old fella: world-weary, pensive, even remorseful.  Art critics over the ages have noted that Michelangelo’s Jeremiah seems to be deep in thought about the meaning of it all, and is not looking back on his career with nostalgia; the taste on his lips is not sweet or even bittersweet.   This Jeremiah looks back on his calling as a young man, not with a sense of joy at what a great ride it’s been, but with regret or even resentment.

Michelangelo wasn’t just imagining things when he portrayed Jeremiah in this way.  Jeremiah is widely known as “the weeping prophet” and for good reason.  Professor Gary Yates speaks of how deeply Jeremiah, throughout his career, felt the pain of his surroundings: he embodies the tears of a God who is just heartbroken over the people’s faithlessness, he cries the tears of his people as they suffer humiliating defeats at the hands of other nations, and he cries his own tears of anguish and anger - at how ill-treated he is by his own people, and how abandoned he feels by God.  Even at the moment he is called to be a prophet we get a sense that this is not going to be an easy road for Jeremiah, for after God says to him, “Now I have put my words in your mouth” God gives him the details: “See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”  (Jeremiah 1: 9-10).  That was a lot to put in front of such a young person, and as a wise elder, Jeremiah must have wondered about the fairness of such a heavy calling on such a young person. God promised Jeremiah that it’s not going to be easy, and God wasn’t kidding.

By the time he was in his senior years, Jeremiah had seen so much, personally and politically and spiritually.  He had seen faithfulness amongst his people, and a lack of faithfulness.  He had seen what it was like to be overrun by another nation, and how one holds on to faith in the hard times. And he had been specifically chosen by God, to name to the people where the light of God was to be found amid the shadows. As we imagine Jeremiah, old and young, where might we see points of connection of that life journey with our life’s journey?

One personal connection for me, as someone who is about the same age as old Jeremiah, is the fatigue of living in a time when things just aren’t unfolding in the way I’d imagined when I was a young pup. In our year 2025, I hear a common lament, that the world is getting more mean-spirited, and things we used to count on, like civility, empathy, inclusivity and human kindness are put down as if they are bad and, according to some political regimes, should be outlawed.  I’ve even encountered theological treatises describing empathy itself as sinful, an argument that could not be more wrong.  Amidst all that nonsense, seeds of malevolence being intentionally sown by the world’s most powerful regimes, the difficult call that God placed on Jeremiah does not feel very far away.  Living in a time of advancing totalitarianism, the calling of Jeremiah, thousands of years before us, hundreds of years before Jesus, sounds newly contemporary and relevant.  

And so we are called, as local congregations discerning what it means to follow the call of Christ to love our neighbours, and as a national Church of Deep Spirituality, Bold Discipleship, and Daring Justice, to keep on keeping on. I admit that there are days that I look in the mirror and see downcast, old Jeremiah looking back at me.  There are times when my candle flickers, as the day’s headlines assault me and I compare Church life when I was just starting in ministry and Church life now. But when I get too caught up in that, I need to remember that there are still youthful Jeremiahs, youth and young adults of all genders being called to service even now in this United Church of ours, and some of the heaviness dissipates. 

For years, Churches have talked about children and youth being “the Church of tomorrow” and children and youth have pushed back, saying “no, we are not the Church of tomorrow, we are the church of today!”  We witnessed that again at General Council, with a huge presence of youth forum delegates and youth commissioners.  And time after time, young people, at the microphones on the floor of Council, and in a very pointed presentation up on the stage, spoke powerfully of what it felt like to be invited in to Church life, but only part-way in; invited to join in table discussions at Council, or local Church committees, but then patronized as “not knowing any better” because of their youth.  I was proud of the way they spoke up and I got the sense that their words really were landing.  I pray that their pleas were being taken to heart, that the well-seasoned adults of the Church will have heard these words as an opportunity to reset, and truly embrace the faith lives of our youngest members and youngest neighbours.

As I heard the plea of those youth and young adults in Calgary, things got even more up close and personal for me, as sixty-five-year-old me remembered what it was to be a sixteen year old walking into Westminster United Church in Regina.  I had recently left my suburban congregation, sensing that there really wasn’t a place for me there, and was seeking a new place to call home.  I can still recall what it felt like in my heart, to have a couple of 85 year olds spot me, wave me over, and pat the seat beside them with a very clear invitation to sit with them and feel at home.  Within three years of every-Sunday attendance, I was invited to serve on their Church Session, to be an Elder in a congregation filled with experienced Christians four and five times my age.  Through her experiences in Sunday School, Junior and Senior Choir, and service on her congregation’s Board of Stewards by the time she was fifteen years old, Shannon similarly had an experience of her growing faith and her contribution being welcomed and nurtured at First United Church in Melville, SK. We have seen similar types of welcome in congregations we have served, and, unfortunately, we have also seen the other kind of response: the quick, sharp, unintentional but immediate look of judgment when a child is being noisy in the sanctuary, or the smirks and chuckles when a teenager has spoken heartfelt but perhaps naive words of faith, a response that devalues and silences that budding faith.  I’ve not experienced that here, thankfully, but it’s so easy to forget what it is like to be the new person – the new parent, trying to bring a child to Church, the teenager, hearing God in new ways and testing it out, or simply the new person in the pew, wondering if this is a place for them.  To cast it in a positive light: never underestimate the power of intentional acts of welcome.

And the final point I wish to make this morning, is to remember what it is to be called by God, at any and every point of our life’s journey.  Scripture gives us a good road map of this. Jeremiah is dumbfounded that God would call him at such a young age, young Samuel was confused when God called him by name, young David was shockingly chosen over his older brothers.  But in our faith history we also see people like Abram and Sarai, called to leave home in their 90s to start a fresh venture with God.  We recall a persecutor of the Church well into his adult years, transformed from Saul the persecutor of the Church to Paul, its great apostle.  We think of Jesus and his disciples, women and men in their twenties and thirties called away from whatever it was that they had planned, into a new life that God had planned.  At every stage of our journey as individuals and every stage in the lift cycle of these congregations, God perceives qualities in us, individually or together, that can be put to good use in addressing the needs around us.  That might be a matter of doing the things we have always enjoyed doing, and do well, or God may well be challenging us to try out some new ways of being.

Young Jeremiah had a challenging calling, and old Jeremiah had seen some things.  May these coming months together be a time when God’s calling to these communities of faith, and this pastoral charge, fills us with purpose as well.  In Christ we pray, Amen.

For further reading and exploration:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jeremiah-Hebrew-prophet/Prophetic-vocation-and-message 

Driver, Cory. https://enterthebible.org/courses/jeremiah/lessons/bible-in-the-world-jeremiah

Foster, Dan. https://medium.com/backyard-theology/why-the-sin-of-empathy-is-a-completely-toxic-christian-belief-fd2b9a30f155

Jenista, Meg. https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2025-08-18/jeremiah14-10-2025/

https://www.michelangelo.org/jeremiah.jsp

Yates, Gary http://www.biblestudytools.com/video/why-is-jeremiah-called-the-weeping-prophet.html

 

© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.

 

 

Psalm 102 and Matthew 5: 1-12 - Sunday, August 17, 2025

 One week ago, Shannon and I had the privilege of volunteering at the 45^th General Council of the United Church of Canada, held in Calgary from August 7 to 11.  Since Shannon is not here today, I won’t attempt a comprehensive “report from General Council”, but I will share one aspect that stood out for me.  I was so pleased to see that The United Church of Canada, even though we are much smaller than we used to be, still has an important place in the overall body of “Churches of the world.”  GC 45 had official observers from over a dozen Christian denominations from around the world, as well as Jewish and Muslim interfaith observers, and although it was our national council it had the feel of a global gathering.   In day-to-day parish ministry, it’s easy to lose track of that international, ecumenical sense of who we are as a denomination.

The week of GC45 was the 80^th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9), and worship at Council on August 9^th was a time of deep lament. We lamented the annihilation of the Japanese people when the bombs were dropped eighty years ago, and the military actions of today that devastate the people of Gaza. In worship, then, we heard two Palestinian speakers who were with us in person: Shadia Qubti, reflecting on Psalm 102, and Muna Nassar, reflecting on the beatitudes from the 5^th chapter of Matthew.

Although the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been ongoing for months, I have struggled to find the right words to speak of it on Sundays, in part because antisemitism is a real thing, and so easy to slip into when addressing actions of the state of Israel.  However, the horrors of the holocaust, and enduring bigotry toward the Jewish people does not give the Israeli military carte blanche, and there is an urgency for people of faith to speak truth to power right now about Gaza. For the next seven minutes, then, we will hear (video recordings) from Shadia, a Palestinian member of the United Church of Canada, then a twenty second pause, then six minutes from Muna, the Executive Secretary for Mission and Advocacy of the World Council of Reformed Churches.

WATCH https://youtu.be/Xnhqb3trXHE?list=PLQDu-SgFb3Rhok2eOrSyj3XOW73EIWBkd

Shadia’s presentation starts 26:11 at and Muna’s at 39:49

In the same way that the ancient Psalmist cried to God, wondering aloud if God noticed their suffering while at the same time expressing praise, Shadia draws us into the lament she brings to God. In particular, these words stay with me: “I wish I knew every name and every story of those who sift through the sand to find lentils or hummus that fell from torn aid bags, trying to separate grain from dirt with trembling fingers”, along with her reminder that Arabic was one of the languages heard at the first Christian Pentecost.

Muna speaks of Jesus’ affirmation in the beatitudes, “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” but as she sees the images out of Gaza, of her people “being starved, literally being hungry and thirsty” she states, “blessed wouldn’t be the word that comes to my mind.”  She goes on to confront that “Churches have normalized or romanticized the suffering of the Palestinian people” and states that for her, “an apathetic Christian is a contradiction in terms” – inaction is, in essence, “a betrayal of Jesus”.  She calls us away from that Theology of Empire, to a Theology of Hope founded in justice.

May the words and lives of these two women find a home in our hearts, in our calls and commitments, and most of all, in our actions: as believers, as a nation, and as the Church.  Amen.

© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge. 
Linked video files are the property of The United Church of Canada.