Remade for this Time
As we continue our journey on a disciple’s path, we turn our attention to the sixth marker – A disciple participates in God’s suffering and transformation of the world.
Well, that doesn’t necessarily sound like a fun part of the adventure.
How many of us would respond to a job listing that includes something along the lines of, “Suffering is a thing. Expect it. Know it will happen. Push through. It is part of the journey.”
But I also suspect that if we take a look at our lives, we see that this is real and true. That suffering is indeed a thing that is part of our journey. That we have experienced it, and that our suffering has something to do with our transformation too.
I want to separate suffering and transformation a bit – and I want to focus our attention today on transformation specifically. Maybe my hope is that it makes the next discussion about suffering easier somehow.
But probably not.
In today’s passage from the prophet Jeremiah we get a glimpse of God directing God’s prophet to speak into the exile people. These are people who have turned away from God, displacing God from the center of their lives, pursuing political power and economic strength. Now they have been defeated time and time again by human armies and ruling parties. They have been driven away from the things that they knew and identified with. They have been driven away from their core identity. And God is calling Jeremiah to remind them that God is indeed the potter and they are but clay in the potter’s hands.
God draws Jeremiah to the potter’s house. And there the prophet watches a potter rework a piece of clay after it has been “spoiled” on the wheel once. Taking the same raw material, the spoiled vessel, the potter is able to keep working to create another vessel.
The clay doesn’t get tossed out. The clay does not get buried in the earth for all time. The clay is not burned to ash. The vessel is reformed, rebuilt, as something more useful, whole.
Isn’t that a resilient image? That God can transform a basic thing to make it useful and timely. Valuable for a purpose in a moment. But changeable.
Now using that image, God gives Jeremiah a message for the people – Judah has betrayed me. The people of Jerusalem forgot their God. Repent, return to God. And I will reform you.
God is calling the people toward transformation. Toward becoming closer again to God. Toward caring for the widow and the orphan.
As we hold on to that image of God being able to reform and remake a whole people, let’s look too at the familiar story of Saul.
Saul hated everything Jesus and his movement represented. He didn’t get their protesting in the streets to make a point about misplaced power, he didn’t get their radical inclusivity, he didn’t get their insistence on breaking Sabbath rules to be sure that they ate or people got healed. There were rules, there were ways of being, and these Jesus followers were Out. Of. Line.
We are talking about hissing and spitting anger. Anger that fueled a full bore critique of Jesus’ followers. An anger that caused Saul to pursue those Jesus followers after the crucifixion. A sneering anger that he carried with him, that drenched his soul and defined his time and his work.
And yet, Jesus showed up to Saul. Got his attention. And asked him why he was so angry and harsh. And offered him a chance to turn back. To have his sight return – physically and spiritually. To become a new thing. To become a new thing represented by taking on a new name. A new identity. To become Paul. To become Paul who would take the message of Jesus throughout the Mediterranean and into Asia. To become a useful vessel.
Saul was not destroyed, he was remade.
As we have been working our way through these points along the path of discipleship, I have been listening to Father Richard Rohr explore the themes of alternative orthodoxy in the Franciscan tradition. For me, they align pretty closely with the things we’ve been discussing week by week. This week, after a long day I headed out on a walk with my headphones to listen to a new episode.
And it started this way – The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.
Why yes. I can see that in my own life.
How about you?
This theme from the Franciscans helped me connect to this idea that we are called to join God’s suffering and transformation. Not for the sake of martyrdom or anything like that. And in fact, to be clear, I don’t think we are called to seek out suffering for transformation. But suffering finds us. It just does. This is life.
So are we able to look at the hard things of our life with eyes that see them as something other than failure?
Are we able to release ourselves from the societal expectation that only ascent is acceptable?
Are we able to be vulnerable and sit with the discomfort of hard things while God reforms us?
Are we able to hear that perhaps we have participated, perhaps unwittingly, in the suffering of others. And instead of rejecting that idea because it makes us uncomfortable, might we be vulnerable enough to sit with it, feel it? Let it work on us?
Across the reading from Jeremiah and the reading from Acts, we have two different examples that are important – the prophet is confronting a people group – a whole community. And Jesus is speaking directly into Saul’s singular life. But the impact of both is a transformation with potential ripple affects.
So as we sit in an uncomfortable season, what transformation is taking place? As You and I sit in our varying discomfort, what is being changed within us? And together as a community, as we wrestle with difficult things – things like not being together in our familiar building for worship, things like disagreeing about whether to wear a mask or not wear a mask – what is shifting?
And if you find yourself defensive about the suggestion that you might be wrestling with something right now, or that you might be uncomfortable about the state of things that surround you, I ask that you take a moment to sit with that. Are you willing to be vulnerable enough to feel the discomfort and let it work on you?
We don’t choose our suffering. Or rather, we’re not called to choose suffering. Sometimes our circumstances are chosen by events around us. Sometimes our choices cause suffering. And not all suffering is transformative. Suffering is part of the human condition. To try to glorify it would be misguided.
But as we sit in a season of hard things, I wonder if we might be transformed.
I wonder if we might join the work by letting ourselves be reformed on the potter’s wheel.
I wonder if we might be recast as a strong useful vessel for this time.
May it be so.
Amen.
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