Writings: God Is Our Potter

By: Dr. Gregory S. Neal

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. (Isaiah 61:6-8)

In Advent we have the start of something new. For the Church and its patterns of worship, we have the beginning of a new liturgical year. If you follow the lectionary, which is a 3-year cycle of scripture readings for use in public worship, we begin Advent by looking forward to the return of Christ. Then, at the midway point of this season, we transition to looking back to the first coming of Christ at his incarnation and birth. Advent is a time in the church for beginning again, for fresh starts, for recognizing where we’ve been, the problems we’ve faced, the joys we’ve celebrated, and the sorrows over which we’ve wept. It’s a time when we give thanks for God’s presence with us on our journey, and for God continuing to lead us now as we reach out to grasp a fresh, new beginning.

At the start of the Coronavirus emergency, we had only just come through Ash Wednesday and were into our second week of Lent – a time for pausing to pray and consider our own culpability in the betrayal and arrest, trial and conviction, crucifixion and death of Jesus. Since then, we have passed through Lent, proclaimed our Lord’s resurrection at Easter, announced the birth of the Church at Pentecost, followed Jesus throughout his earthly ministry, and delved into what it means for us to live by the Spirit as part of the Family of God. Today, we have come to another moment of pause – the four Sundays of Advent, where we are called to cast our focus not so much upon our own needs, hopes, and desires, but upon Christ and Christ’s love, grace, peace, and presence in our midst. In Lent, we recognized that it was because of our rebelliousness that Christ died; in Advent, we realize that it was because of our lostness that God came to dwell among us as the baby Jesus. And, as is true of the birth of a baby, so also it is true for us: Advent, and the coming Christmas celebration, is a time for New Beginnings.

New beginnings are often a struggle; new beginnings can be a challenge, especially amidst difficult times. That’s what the prophet was reflecting upon in Isaiah 61. Isaiah was a prophet to the Southern Kingdom of Judah during the 8th Century BCE. This means that he was an advisor to the King, offering the guidance and criticism which he believed reflected God’s will at that time. We often think of prophets as being soothsayers of future events – and they were often that – but their primary role was to provide cultural and political insight to the King. Sadly, their advice wasn’t always taken, and that resulted in the prophet having to offer a subsequent word of doom and gloom, something no one ever wants to hear. For example, when the Assyrians destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the 700s BCE, King Hezekiah was tempted to enter into a mutual defense alliance with Egypt. Isaiah warned against that alliance, illustrating its folly by living naked in the streets of Jerusalem! Initially, Hezekiah heeded Isaiah’s advice, but in 705 BCE he changed his mind and committed Judah to allying with the Egyptians. This resulted in the Assyrians attacking Jerusalem, a disaster that was only overcome by God’s intervention ... but that’s a story for a different time.

Long after the period of time in which Isaiah wrote, from almost the very beginning of the Church, the early Christians saw in Isaiah’s writings, and especially in his Suffering Servant motifs, a way of understanding Jesus. As such, the Book of Isaiah quickly became important for Christians; that’s particularly true in the season of Advent, where our struggle against sin and wrong and the need for the incarnation of God in our midst becomes clearly felt.

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. (Isaiah 61:6)

That’s an incredibly visual image. Any and everything we try to do turns up as trash, and we are so unclean that no amount of detergent can ever scrub off the dirt. Looking outside at the falling leaves this past week, I can see this very image playing out. “Fading like a leaf,” our sins blow us away like the winds blow the leaves away on the cold, hard ground. What a powerful image of helplessness: there’s nothing that we can do.

There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. (Isaiah 61:7)

We are, indeed, helpless. Because of what we have done and left undone, we are lost. Isaiah described our quandary with biting honesty: “There is no one who calls on your name.” Oh, we might think we do, but we really don’t. Our trust is rarely placed in God; rather, like Hezekiah, we place our trust in our “alliances with the world.” We trust in ourselves, our institutions, our governments, and our own understandings, all of which wither and die and are blown away like leaves in the Autumn winds. “For you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.” We are our own undoing; what happens to us usually comes from the hand of our own iniquity. We are tempted to blame circumstances, others, or fate, but in the end, we are to blame.

God’s amazing grace is made known to us in that we are never just left in the depths of our own iniquity. We might deserve to be abandoned, but God doesn’t dump us. Rather, in God’s love we are offered a new way of life, a new relationship, a new opportunity to begin again ... a new Advent.

Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. (Isaiah 61:8)

Have you ever watched a potter at work on her wheel? I have, and the artistry and skill that is required to fashion a pot, a jar, or some other clay vessel is just incredible. Were I to try and make something on a potter’s wheel, it would be an abject failure: I can be all thumbs when it comes to artsy-stuff, and just one careless touch of a spinning lump of clay can destroy it all! But not for God. God, like a highly skilled artisan on the potter’s wheel, can fashion an incredible work of art out of a messy, spinning lump a clay. And that’s what we are: God is the potter, we are the clay. I love Adelaide Pollard’s beautiful old Hymn: “Have Thine Own Way,” where the first verse reads:

Have Thine own way Lord!
Have Thine own way!
Thou art the Potter, I am the clay!
Mold me a make me after Thy will,
While I am waiting, yielded and still.

These are true words for us today. As we move into the Season of Advent, I want to encourage us all to allow the Potter’s hands to mold us amidst the spinning whirligig of life, fashioning from our lumpy mounds of clay beautiful vessels for the grace of God to use.

© 2020, Dr. Gregory S. Neal
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