“A Hand Across Time”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Text: Jeremiah 18:1-12, Romans 9:1-12
One by one, the bodies rose from the abyss of the Atacama in Chile. Those who came to the surface came with hugs and prayers and joy and exaltation. Those around them, with all those in the world who watched, praised and gave thanks. This was a memorable occasion last week. But, as I watched those people come up one-by-one, my mind flashed back to five years ago, when I visited Santiago.
At that time, I was invited to meet with the Archbishop of Santiago, Monsignor, Sergio Valech. He had been one of the founders of the organization that was very well known, called the Vicaria de la Solidaridad, an organization created by the church to help people during the Pinochet regime. I met with Sergio for an hour. At the end of our conversation, he said, “Would you like to go with me to the archives of the Vicariate next door?”
So we went to this small building. He took me up a flight of stairs and he showed me all around the memorabilia of what the Vicariate had done during persecution and difficult times. He then took me to a filing cabinet. He unlocked the top drawer. It was entitled in Spanish “The Missing.” He showed me the files with photographs of very young men and some young women who had disappeared. He said to me, with a tear in his eye, “Andrew, these people were buried in an unused mine shaft, never to be found again.”
As these miners came to the surface on that glorious day last week, my mind went to the photographs of those who were in the top drawer in the archives of the Vicariate, and I understood what President Pinera meant when he said, “This is a day of redemption for Chile. This is the day to set straight the wrongs of the past.” Out of the ashes of mines came the new life, the restored life, the saved life. Thousands of Chileans would have understood that symbolism. They would have known and appreciated that this was an important moment in their history, not just the salvation of some lives, but a form of redemption and restoration for a wonderful nation.
What really struck me was that when the miners finally came to the surface, we discovered more than ever before the faith that they had when they were in the pit deep in the ground. It was because of a preacher, Jose Henrique, an evangelist who kept their spirits high, they believed unflinchingly that they would be saved, and that God's providence was with them. It was captured on the cover of MacLean's a couple of days ago with the headline “God Was With Us!” In a time of difficulty, in a time of tragedy, they believed in the providence of God, and God blessed them for their faith was vindicated.
I think Jeremiah, in today's passage, was trying to capture that very same sense of God's providence over the people of Israel. He knew that his nation was in trouble, that the reforms that King Josiah had long passed, and that the people were following other kings who were leading them astray. So much so that in his prophesy Jeremiah cries out, “Do people want other Gods?” In other words, are they turning their backs on the God who had been their source of salvation, identity and covenant? He was struggling with what he saw as an impending doom, with the Babylonians emerging as the new power on the horizon. He questions whether his people will respond to God in faith.
Then, in a prophetic moment that has been woven throughout prophesies for many years, God took Jeremiah to a potter's house where he saw a potter doing what potters do, taking some clay on a wheel and moulding it into something beautiful and useful. But, he noticed that as it was being shaped, it deformed, and that the actual clay was not conforming to the will of the potter. But, the potter persisted, and restored the piece and made it into a beautiful thing. Then, there are the immortal words, where God says to Jeremiah, “Like the clay in the hands of the potter, so are you in my hands, Oh Israel.” Providence!
Jeremiah knew that God would not give up on his nation. He knew that God would not give up on the covenant, and that God would be faithful. But, just like a piece of clay, they needed to be formed into something beautiful, and in the process, had to be broken down and started again, remoulded and remade into something great - the Providence of God.
In the memorial service for Timothy Eaton in 1907, Dr. Burwash made a similar comment about Timothy Eaton. This man was born in County Antrim in Ireland, the youngest of nine children, and grew up during the Potato Famine in Ireland in 1846 and 1847, was weaned by a Presbyterian mother, who loved God and loved the Bible and inculcated in young Timothy a sense of God's grace. At the age of 21, he joined two of his brothers in the new land of Canada.
When Timothy came here, it didn't take him long to find a Christian community, so much so that under the preaching of the Reverend Alex Campbell, he committed his life to Jesus Christ. He made a public confession of faith. He joined the Methodist Church and embraced the tenets of Methodism. He wanted to live those out in his life. And Dr. Burwash, in what must have been a magnificent sermon in 1907, said, “...and Providence met Timothy Eaton.” This sense that Timothy had, and I am not deifying him, I am just simply saying he was a man who had faith in that providence. He had a belief in God's hand guiding him.
Oh, he was ambitious. He was a business person. He was shrewd and clever. But, notwithstanding all the business acumen that he might have had, he was someone who believed in the providence of God, that God was guiding him, leading him, shaping him, that God was his potter and he was the clay. Then, in 1910, a group of Christians of Methodist persuasion gathered in the name of the Methodist Church to create a new congregation in memory of this man.
Isn't it amazing that in the past 100 years many lives and souls have been moulded and shaped and changed by the potter's hand? Isn't it incredible that the City of Toronto has been blessed by the ministry of this congregation, and peoples' lives have been changed and enriched and nourished as a result of the ministry of this church in his name? Isn't it incredible that our congregation eventually joined the United Church of Canada in 1925, and has been informed by, has had ordination services, and has covenant services in this very building that has been shaped by this glorious and magnificent church?
Timothy, who believed in God's providence, had a church that was erected in his name that believed in that providence. Today, we honour those who 100 years ago believed in that providence: that the potter was able to shape the clay. But where do we go now? We might celebrate the glories of the past, the magnificence of the building, and sing “Great Timothy!” Two marvellous things, but what should we believe and what should we be, as clay in the hands of the potter? Well, for Jeremiah, the thing that Israel needed more than anything else was to trust the potter's hands.
When I first came to Canada, in 1974 to New Brunswick, I brought with me a great love of the game of cricket. I had been a half-decent cricketer in England and in Bermuda. When I came here, I thought it would be wise to introduce people to this extremely simple game played by people who were in a hurry. But I couldn't get anybody to play cricket with me. I was lonely. So, I joined the local baseball team in New Brunswick.
I thought, “I'll try hitting the ball before it lands.” Well, I tried, and I was useless. More hot air came from my swing than from my sermons! I missed more balls than you can imagine! But the coach thought that maybe I could pitch, and I had a pitch that nobody else had! I had “The Googly.” The Googly, those who play cricket knows, when you throw the ball out of one part of your hand and it comes out of the other, and completely disorients the batsman. So, I tried the Googly without letting it hit the ground. Nobody could hit the ball! I struck out everybody! I was the local hero!
When we came to play the neighbouring high school team in central New Brunswick I was assigned the job of pitching. In the days between my great success and that day I thought I had better learn some other pitches: fastballs, sliders, curve balls - so I wasn't one dimensional, but sophisticated… Canadian! I got up there and I pitched a fastball that came from the depths of the earth. It got hit out of the park!
By the seventh inning we were down nine to nothing. The coach, realizing there was no other pitcher he could call on, came up to me on the mound and said these memorable words, which I have never forgotten: “Limey, go with the one that brung you here.” The Almighty Googly! Well, nobody scored any more runs, but neither did our team and it went down in the annals of history as the humiliating day when the British Empire came to an end!
“Go with the one who brung you here.” Isn't that what Jeremiah said in the potter's house? “Never mind your gods and all the other things that you worship. They are as nothing compared with the power of Yahweh, the God of Gods and the Lord of Lords. He is the one who moulds you and shapes you.” So often we haven't learned that lesson. We turn our backs on that very truth of that central place of providence.
James S. Stuart, that great Scottish teacher, made the analogy of someone going up to a great painting, like a Rembrandt, or an A. Y. Jackson, staring at it and saying, “Isn't that a marvellous painting that I have made.” He said that is what we do with God. It is as if we take credit for the potter's work when we are the clay, but sometimes we believe that because we have lost our faith. It is because we look at providence and do not see it unfolding in the way that we think it ought, and we are confused and worried about it.
In the passage from the Book of Romans, the Apostle Paul is addressing that very point. He says in Romans 9 the following words:
One of you will say to me 'Then why does God still blame us, for who resists his will but you, you Oh man, to talk back to God?' Shall what is formed say to him who formed it: 'Why did you make me this way?' Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?
Paul was addressing an age-old problem: People doubt the providence of God, because they doubt God. They do not trust. I can't imagine what it is like to be down in the earth in the Atacama, and to continue to trust God and his providence as those underground did. They knew of what Paul spoke: that it is not up to the clay to say back to the potter, “Why have you made things this way?” but to trust the potter.
We need to be open to the potter as well. The clay cannot resist the potter in the end. The clay will be moulded into what the potter wishes. We can however, resist, but only for a while. We can say, “This is what we are going to do. We will follow our path” but God in the end will have God's way. For God always brings forth witnesses to his goodness and grace. This is at the heart of providence. And this is at the heart of the history of this great church that I love so much.
In 1914, when this building was originally erected and the congregation had their home, it was built in the crucible of World War I, when Canada became a nation in many ways, such as the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The Word of God was the word of hope to a nation that was uncertain, and it went forth with power to a new congregation that built something new amidst a war, for God was the potter and we were the clay.
During the terrible Depression of the early 1930s, when Torontonians lost 44 per cent of their income, when western Canada suffered a terrible drought, the Eaton family gave $50,000 to help the poor in this city. This congregation raised $4,000 to help the western farmers. Two hundred- and-fifty gallons of milk a month went downtown to the Yonge Street Mission and to the homeless. Coal bills were paid, and Dr. Davies preached a message of compassion, and God was the potter and we were the clay.
During World War II, when the world seemed dark, we brought in those who needed to pray: young airmen, young women, who on their knees gathered in this place, and David MacLennan gave a word of hope and blessing and encouragement and prayers for peace, when God was the potter and we were the clay.
In the post-war era, an era with the rise of Communism, the era of the Cuban missile crisis, a time of uncertainty for the world, yet a time of growth for the church, Andy Lawson packed people into this place to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ and above all else to maintain hope and forgiveness: God was the potter and we were the clay.
During the moral revolution that followed, trying to make sense of it all in an intelligent and informative way, Stan Lucyk preached insightful sermons enabling people to work ethically through the challenges before them, when God was the potter and we were the clay.
And, during the materialism of the '80s and '90s, when there was hedonism and love of money at the expense of people, Doug Lobb spoke a word of compassion and understanding, when God was the potter and we were the clay.
On September 11, 2001, Dr. Hunnisett and Reverend Harries provided a place for people to pray when they had no idea what the world was going to become, when God was the potter and we were the clay.
God always has his witnesses. God always speaks the Word in season if people will open themselves and listen.
But, there is one last thing, and that is that God wanted to mould something that would be beautiful. The Apostle Paul had an advantage over Jeremiah. He had witnessed the life and the death and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. He had been encountered by the Living Lord. He believed in the providence of God no longer as an idea spoken by prophets and priests and kings, but manifested incarnate in the Son.
He believed that the covenant was now to go to the Gentile world as well, that the word of God must go forward, and that providence must touch the hearts and minds of ordinary people. For Paul, the potter had shown his hands in Jesus of Nazareth, and this Jesus of Nazareth would mould and shape and form his people.
He will form us if we will let him. We do not know what will happen in our city with its growing diversity, and with the excitement that is occurring in our place with its growth. We have no idea what the environment is going to do to our world. We have no idea what empires will rise and fall in the next 100 years. We have no idea where the church will be in the pantheon of the gods of a society that has a tendency towards idolatry.
We do not know what the future will bring. You and I, and the children that gathered here this morning, do not know any more than Jeremiah knew with the arrival of the Babylonians, any more than those men who were in the ground in the Atacama, knew of their destiny any more than the Apostle Paul, who when facing persecution, knew of his future. But they knew one thing, and that is that the potter is always faithful. Jeremiah, if he was in this pulpit today, and Paul standing right beside him, would say, “Timothy Eaton, your future is as follows: God is the potter, you are the clay. ” Amen.