On Making Pots

Old Testament Lesson for 04 September 2022: Jeremiah 18:1-11

Jeremiah received the Lord’s word: Go down to the potter’s house, and I’ll give you instructions about what to do there. So I went down to the potter’s house; he was working on the potter’s wheel. But the piece he was making was flawed while still in his hands, so the potter started on another, as seemed best to him. Then the Lord’s word came to me: House of Israel, can’t I deal with you like this potter, declares the Lord? Like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in mine, house of Israel! At any time I may announce that I will dig up, pull down, and destroy a nation or kingdom; but if that nation I warned turns from its evil, then I’ll relent and not carry out the harm I intended for it. At the same time, I may announce that I will build and plant a nation or kingdom; but if that nation displeases and disobeys me, then I’ll relent and not carry out the good I intended for it. Now say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem: This is what the Lord says: I am a potter preparing a disaster for you; I’m working out a plan against you. So each one of you, turn from your evil ways; reform your ways and your actions.

Jeremiah 18:1-11 CEB

In technology we use metaphor frequently as we are engaged in abstract concepts and endeavors and frequently need support and approval from those ensconced in the more real, less abstract world. We talk about how developing software is like constructing a building, or growing a crop. Sometimes software with hostile intent is a virus, or a tapeworm, depending on how it behaves. Information security is regularly compared to home security. In fact I think we rely less on metaphor in technology these days, as the workforce now has never known a world in which technology and its attendant development and maintenance is not a part of everyday life [1].

The role of the metaphor is to make the abstract more accessible by employing familiar terms. In Jeremiah, the potter/clay metaphor is invoked to help God’s dazed, disheartened, and doubting Chosen People, exiled to Babylon, understand how and why this terrible thing could happen to them [2]. If the clay fails to become a beautiful pot, it can be a do-over. Likewise for the Judeans.

The clay and the potter is a popular metaphor in the Bible; you can see it plainly in Isaiah 68 and Romans 9, and see it suggested in other places as well. In 2 Corinthians 4:7, Paul famously refers to our earthly bodies “earthen vessels” or “clay pots”, entrusted in containing our true selves. Pottery was the concrete image for Biblical communicators and, perhaps as a consequence, there are scads of sermon illustrations involving, just like in Jeremiah, the potter and the clay.

One such illustration that has stuck with me over the years imagines the clay and the potter together with the potter’s wheel, just as in Jeremiah. To make the pot rise to life from the inert, spinning clay, the potter applies pressure from the outside of the nascent vessel, and pressure from the inside as well, in order to form up the walls and make beauty. Both pressures must be present and balanced, otherwise the clay will not respond. Pressure from the outside balanced by pressure from the inside. A vessel emerges.

I don’t know if life is harder today than it was in times past, but I’m pretty confident it is faster. Challenges and demands for our attention arrive constantly through our various devices. News no longer arrives in cycles, but constantly. Our favorite diversions, available at our fingertips, call to us. These pressures from the outside need to be met with pressures from the inside. We could insist on device-free periods. We can keep our commitment to date night. We can resist meaningless demands on our time that take us away from family, and remember that in the end, we really are in charge of what we do and don’t do.

And the vessel of our lives will emerge.

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• [1] Linguistically I think “virus”, for example, along with “hub” and “gateway”, cease at some point to be metaphors and become instead additional true implementations of the term. Code that co-opts other code to make instances of itself really is a virus of sorts.
• [2] This is again the theodicy question as Krishna discussed in a recent sermon.