Clay Jars

A quick, one-question quiz: What is usually broken, but priceless because of what it contains? You'll need to read this sermon to find the answer!


Nearly 20 years ago, I went to live in Israel for 5 weeks, as a volunteer on an archaeological dig that was sponsored by Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. My Hebrew professor at United Seminary in Dayton is good friends with the director of that dig; and he encouraged me to join the group. It was a wonderful experience! During those 5 weeks, I learned all sorts of things about archaeology. I was assigned to dig in an area that dated to about 1500 B.C. That’s long ago in the Bronze Age, about 3500 years ago.

Despite what you see in the Indiana Jones movies, what you find on a dig isn’t usually very glamorous. Archaeologists don’t often find gold jewelry, silver scrolls, or pagan idols with emeralds for eyes. No, most of what we found during our five weeks was broken pieces of pottery. And that’s what most archaeologists find when they go digging in the Middle East: lots and lots of broken pottery. There’s a good reason for that. In Bible times, metal cooking pots, cut glass serving dishes, and Corelle dinnerware didn’t exist. Instead, clay pottery was used for almost everything. Water was carried in pottery jugs, food was cooked on pottery bowls, and dinner was eaten on pottery plates. And when grain was set aside at the end of the harvest, it was stored in big pottery containers. Clay pottery was cheap and easy to obtain. Every family had a selection of clay jars for their household use.

The only problem with clay pottery is that it was easily broken. And once it was broken, it was pretty much useless. Broken clay jars were tossed outside – or thrown into a garbage pit if a family was fortunate enough to have one. A broken jar was just like an old cell phone is today. It’s really not much good except to be thrown away. So it’s surprising that Paul should call the members of his congregation “clay jars” (2 Corinthians 4:1, 5-12). Clay jars were destined for the garbage dump after their useful but short life spans. Is that who we are? Are we just clay jars that are destined to be broken and then thrown away? Some people might say that we are. After all, we’re a lot like those clay jars that Paul talked about. We human beings are common, just like clay jars. How many of us are there on planet Earth at last count? Something like 7 billion of us! We’re a dime a dozen! We’re very easily broken, too. If any part of us doesn’t work right, our whole body suffers. And it’s not just our bodies that break. Our minds and our souls are fragile, too. And we’re never too far from the clay that we came from. Ash Wednesday will remind us of that at the end of February. We came from clay and we’ll go back to that clay when our lives are over.

There’s a big difference, though, between us and those fragile clay jars that the ancient Israelites used for so many things. The Spirit of God fills us up; and that treasure that stays within us no matter how broken we are! Paul says as much: “We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” The treasure that fills us is more valuable than food or water or even stored grain. It’s the power of God that keeps us going even when we feel like we’re broken beyond repair. It’s resurrection power that keeps us hoping, even in the most difficult of circumstances. It’s the power of peace and hope and love that God wants us to share with the whole world!

Our model for being filled with that power is none other than Jesus himself. That’s what Paul means when he says, “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” The reality is that we are human, just like Jesus was. And just like Jesus, we will die a physical death one day. Even though we don’t like to admit, our bodies are all in the process of moving towards the grave. The older we get, the more obvious that is. Our sight gets dim. I’m told that everyone develops cataracts after a certain age. As we get older, our hearing starts to fail, too; and we need to wear hearing aids. Our muscles aren’t as strong as they once were; and arthritis makes us creaky (and cranky). But beyond the difficulties that go along with physical aging, we carry all kind of other problems around with us; and these problems can begin long before we get old. Don’t believe me? Take a look at Jesus’ disciples! Peter was a blowhard and a hothead. He was the one who boasted that he would never, ever deny Jesus! Remember how that turned out? Thomas didn’t believe that Jesus had risen from the dead until he saw the evidence for himself. What did he say? “Unless I see the wounds in his hands and put my hand into his side, I won’t believe it!” Even Paul himself was so mistaken about Jesus that he began his career by persecuting the early church and hauling Christians off to prison! Arrogant, doubtful, quick to anger, sure that they were always right: those were Jesus’ disciples. Does it sound familiar? It should. We’re broken pots, just like they were. But despite all that, Paul says, we are filled with life – the life that comes from the mighty power of Jesus’ resurrection. We are like little paper cups that contain the power of a nuclear reactor! We may look ordinary and frail; but we are the channels of resurrection power that Jesus promises to the whole world through the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t matter to Jesus that we’re broken! It matters to Jesus that we let him use us, whatever his purposes are.

About 80 years ago, some pieces of broken pottery were unearthed at an archaeological site in Israel. They had writing on them – writing that turned out to be letters from one Judean commander to another during the time of King Zedekiah. They are windows into a time that we didn’t know much about before. Although they’re just broken pieces of clay jars, they are priceless. Rejoice, fellow clay jars! We’re priceless, too! With the power of Jesus filling us, we offer the grace of God to people who never knew about it before. We may be so broken that we can’t hold water; but with Jesus filling us, we can do amazing things. We can offer a listening ear and a word of encouragement to the lonely and afraid. We can sit with the suffering and show them the compassion that God has shown to us. We can bring love to the unloved and offer hope to the hopeless. Isn’t that amazing! All that from clay jars! Friends, we may be broken, but we’re not worthless! God has chosen us as containers for the Spirit that hovered over the waters at creation, and that still empowers us and guides us. What can we broken clay jars say, but “Thanks be to God!”

Herod

Martin Luther King's legacy is his struggle against Herod who tries over and over again to maintain his own power at the expense of others. If that sounds strange to you, read this sermon. It will make things clear.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way. When the Magi left their homes in the east, they never envisioned the trouble that they ran into at the end of their journey. I’m sure that they were prepared for the problems that everyone encounters along a trip – rivers that must be crossed, roads that are closed for one reason or another, even the need to watch out for bandits – but I doubt if they were prepared for what they found at Herod’s palace: a tyrant who was determined to hold on to his own throne against all comers, especially a child who was no child of his.

The Magi were wise in more ways than one. When Herod asked them to come back and tell him where they found the child so that he, too, might worship this new king, they must have known that worship was the last thing on his mind; and when they avoided Jerusalem on their way back home, they probably hoped that Herod would forget the whole thing. But Herod didn’t forget; and when the Magi didn’t come back, he decided that he would take care of this new King of the Jews in his own way – by murdering all the young boys in the area of Bethlehem who were the right age. That’s what happened in the end: a bloodbath (Matthew 2:13-18).

The world is still full of Herods who don’t care a fig for truth and justice, but are concerned only about their own power. If you don’t believe me, just look at the life and ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King saw the truth that all people are equal in God’s eyes. He saw, too, the injustice that African-Americans were considered by many to be less than human; so he cried out for justice on their behalf. In his day, black men were lynched for daring to even look at a white woman; black children were forced to attend second-rate schools; and all blacks were barred from “whites only” restaurants, hotels, and places of entertainment. Although Dr. King insisted on resisting non-violently, the Herods of his time used all manner of violence to try to stop him. People advocating for voting rights for blacks were killed, or simply disappeared, never to be seen again. Black students insisting on being served at a whites-only lunch counter were dragged off to jail. Peaceful protesters were attacked with police dogs and water from fire hoses. Four innocent young black girls sitting in Sunday school were killed when their Birmingham, Alabama church was bombed on a Sunday morning. Dr. King’s cries for justice cost him his own life on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was supporting black sanitary public works employees in their struggle for higher wages and equal treatment.

All of it was, of course, about power. Herod, just like the Herod of Jesus’ time, was afraid losing the power that he had. Of course, we didn’t call him “Herod” back in Dr. King’s day. We called him “Jim Crow laws.” Those laws sanctioned “separate but equal” school systems that weren’t equal at all, ensuring that blacks had no access to quality education. Those laws enforced voting restrictions, ensuring that blacks couldn’t vote for the candidate of their choice. Those laws enforced the separation of blacks and whites, ensuring that blacks would be kept “in their place.” I’m sorry to say that Herod is still alive and well – not in the form of “Jim Crow” laws (which are now illegal), but in the form of the Ku Klux Klan, and white power organizations like the Aryan Brotherhood. These folks hate not only African-Americans, but Jews and Latinos, too, especially immigrants. Oh, yes, Herod is alive and well in anyone who clings to their own power at the expense of others.

Now, you might be wondering what all this history has to do with us today, and why I am including it in my sermon. You might even be thinking that it doesn’t have anything to do with our lives or our relationship with Jesus. I’ll let Dr. King himself answer that objection. “Any religion,” he said, “that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.” Dr. King’s ministry as he tried to faithfully follow Jesus Christ was his continuing struggle against the Herod that oppressed African-Americans. He often remarked that he would much rather be a local church pastor, comforting the afflicted of a congregation; but he discerned that his calling was to a more difficult ministry of afflicting the comfortable. His non-violent methods of resistance mirrored the teachings of Jesus. And he insisted time and time again that he did not hate those who hated him. “Hate is too great a burden to bear,” he said. “I have decided to love.” In Dr. King’s eyes, the church was the agent of the transformative power of God; and nothing could be achieved without loving as Jesus loved. “Love,” he insisted, “is the only force capable of turning an enemy into a friend.” A few days before his murder, Dr. King talked about how he would like to be remembered. “I’d like someone to mention,” he said, “that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.”

Friends, struggling against Herod is not only the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr; it is also our call as followers of Jesus Christ. Wherever people are oppressed, or marginalized, or kept silent, that is where the church must be: standing in solidarity with them and lifting our voices against Herod, who craves to hang onto his power. And make no mistake, Herod is still around today. Herod exists in the form of hate-mongers who deface the walls of synagogues and mosques, splashing swastikas and hate-filled graffiti where our non-Christian sisters and brothers worship. Herod is anyone who doesn’t care if some people are forced to live in sub-standard housing where the paint is filled with lead and the plaster is filled with mold, as long as their lives are comfortable. Herod doesn’t even care if entire cities drink polluted water, as long as he and his friends can live in penthouse suites, travel on personal jets, and draw inflated salaries. Oh, yes, Herod is still around; and we are called to speak out against him, whoever he may be and wherever he may be found. It may not be easy, and we won’t be popular; but no less than Jesus, one who suffered at the hands of Herod himself, has told us to do it. On this weekend that remembers Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I can think of no finer tribute to him than to rededicate ourselves to the work that he began of freeing the oppressed and bringing hope to the downtrodden. I leave you with a thought from the Mishnah, a part of the Jewish oral tradition: “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” Let’s honor Dr. King this year by helping to complete the work that he began.

Finding the Way

The gospel of Matthew tells us that when the Magi left the Christ child, they went home "by another way." Is this just a historical note, or does it have significance in our own lives?

Anyone who has traveled at all has learned a few things. He has learned that when your wife says that she’s hungry, you stop for lunch. She has learned that when the sign says “Last rest area for 100 miles,” it’s wise to stop and use the restroom. And certainly they have learned that the route they choose is very important to what their experience will be on the trip. If you want to get somewhere quickly and easily, for example, you will probably choose to take the freeway. It’s the easiest route to follow, and your only decision is which exit to take. The freeway can be boring, though, as you put mile after mile behind you while speeding along at 70 miles an hour.

Major side roads like the Dixie Highway or Rt. 40 are a little more difficult to follow. You have to keep your eyes open for signs at the side of the road that tell you to turn right or left at the next intersection. These routes are a lot more interesting, though. As you travel these roads, you might find a wonderful little ice cream parlor with vintage art deco trim; or a great mom and pop diner that serves homemade peanut butter pie! You’ll find everything that you need along the way of an old route – food, gas, and rest stops – but you’ll be able to see the sights up close and personal.

And then there are the back roads, the ones that don’t even have a route number. Back roads are the routes that offer a bit of a risk to travelers. They may not be marked well. You might even end up on a rutted dirt cow path, and you’ll need to turn around and retrace your route. You never know quite where you’ll end up when you take a back road. But those roads can lead you to completely unexpected experiences! You might run across a rustic country store, or an old barn that an artist has turned into a studio for stained glass. On a back road, you can experience the fullness that a journey might offer you.

When the wise men traveled to find the newborn king of the Jews, I imagine that they began by taking the easiest, fastest route available. They probably took the Ancient Middle Eastern equivalent of I-70 all the way from their homes to Jerusalem. There were plenty of places to rest their camels and to buy food along that road. When they got to Jerusalem, they took the exit marked “Herod’s Palace,” and they pulled into the parking lot to get directions. Herod sent them to Bethlehem; and although they may have begun that leg of their journey along a main road, they eventually had to find their way along the back roads. After all, they didn’t really know where they were going! There was no exit sign marked “Newborn king, next exit.” All they knew was that somewhere in Bethlehem was a very important baby; and they were determined to find him.

Find him they did; and he was one of the surprises that seem to be part and parcel of traveling along back roads. He wasn’t in a palace, or even in the mayor’s house; he was in a barn. And he certainly didn’t look like any other baby king that they had ever seen! His parents weren’t wealthy nobles wearing purple silk; they were peasants wearing clothing of coarsely woven fabric. But there was something about this child… When they offered him their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, he looked into their eyes with a wisdom that babies don’t usually possess. This child made them feel unsettled and comforted, all at the same time!

Those wise men didn’t go back to their home the same way that they got there. Matthew tells us that they returned home “by another way.” They didn’t go back to Herod and report where he could find the child. No, they took the bypass, the outer belt all that went all the way around Jerusalem instead of the exit that led to Herod. When they left the manger, they went home by another way.

In this story, when Matthew says “by another way,” he means exactly that. The wise men used a different route out of Judea when they left the country. But it seems to me that there is another meaning, a deeper one, to saying that they went home “by another way.” A former pastor of mine is fond of saying, “No one who visits the manger returns home by the same way that he got there.” That pastor isn’t talking about physical roads, but about the spiritual changes that happen in our lives after we meet the Christ child.

Think about how you first came to the manger. Many roads lead there. Some people were born there. These folks are the lifelong church members. Of course, they’re at the manger. They’ve always been at the manger! Others got there through a revival meeting, or a Billy Graham crusade, or a preacher on TV. They realized one day that they weren’t at the manger; and they got off the couch, got in the car, and drove to the manger. Still others came with a friend; somebody else invited them to the manger. But the route we took to get here doesn’t really matter in the end. What matters is the route we take when we leave.

Taking a different road when we leave the manger presents a bit of a challenge, though. That’s because when we leave the manger, a GPS system won’t do us any good. GPS systems, after all, are centered on us. They take us the way that we want to go. If we’re in a hurry, they direct us to freeways. If we want to see the sights, they direct us to side roads. Some can even direct us around traffic jams! But when we leave the manger, we rely on God to show us where we should go; and God will take us in ways that we would never have taken if the choice were up to us. That’s because God doesn’t lead us to the freeway where the way is easy and the exits are clearly marked. No, God takes us on those back roads that are sometimes very difficult to follow. Sometimes we even wonder if we’re on the road at all! But all the while we are traveling, God is our back-seat driver.

In fact, God not only directs us from the back seat, God comments while we’re driving! When God takes us through a neighborhood where thin, ragged children play in the streets in front of run-down homes with broken windows and parking lots filled with broken glass, God whispers in our ears, “These are your brothers and sisters. How can you help them?” When God guides us to a road that goes past a nursing home, God taps us on the shoulder and suggests, “Let’s stop here for a little while. I’ll bet that someone in there would appreciate a visit.” And when we are tempted to get on a big, eight-lane highway that offers us easy traveling, God insists, “Don’t go that way. That way leads to Herod’s palace; and what you’ll find there is greed, oppression, and violence. You don’t belong on that road.” Oh, yes – our journeys away from the manger will be filled with discoveries and challenges if we allow God to guide us.

We are all headed away from the manger on one road or another. Now, I don’t know what road you are on this morning. I don’t know whether you are on an easy road, or a road that is difficult. I don’t know whether your road is filled with joy, or laden with sorrow. I don’t know if you’re having smooth sailing or running over potholes. And I don’t know how long you’ve been traveling on that road – a few days, a few years, or your entire life. But remember, as we leave the manger behind, we don’t leave the Christ child behind. As we search for the way that we should travel as Christians, Christ is traveling with us. Thanks be to God!

Lights and the Light

Christmas is over, and we Christians enter the season of Epiphany. That's a very churchy-sounding word that means "revealing." What is being revealed? Actually, lots of things, now that the Light of Christ has come into the world. My sermon concentrates on just two of them.

The new year is always a good time to stop, look around, and evaluate what’s going on in our lives. The new year is a new start to the calendar; so it’s natural that we want to make new starts in our lives, too. “What’s good about my life?” we ask ourselves; as well as “What’s not so good about my life?” Those questions set the foundation for the infamous new year’s resolutions that many of us make (and that most of us break). “What’s good about my life?” you ask. You might answer, “I love to take walks in nature, and I haven’t done much of it lately.” Great; I resolve to do more of that this year. “What’s not so good?” you wonder. Oops, you look in the mirror and see that you need to lose a few pounds; so you resolve to exercise more. And if you’re lucky, you can pair what you love to do with what you need to do! Taking those hikes that you love is, fortunately, a good way to exercise and get rid of a few extra pounds.

This kind of “stop, look around, and evaluate” is a good thing to do for our spiritual lives, too, as well as for our physical and emotional lives. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, was famous for asking his friends, “How is it with your soul?” Let’s imagine that he asked you that question right now? What would your answer be? Is your soul full of light; or do you feel like you’re stumbling around in the dark? Is your soul full of life; or are you feeling dead as a doornail? Those answers will affect whether you get out of bed looking forward to each new day; or whether you would rather stay in bed and pull the covers over your head. So, “How is it with your soul?” Regardless of what your answer is, you can improve the condition of your soul by allowing the Light to shine in. I don’t mean physical light (although light energizes many of us); I mean the light of Christ; the light that was with God in the beginning and is still shining right now; the light that no darkness can extinguish. That’s what churches are supposed to be all about. Congregations are groups of people who gather to help one another find the light of Christ and to welcome it into their lives.

Sounds great; but how do we do that? In order for the light of Christ to shine into our lives, we need to make sure that we open the drapes that sometimes hide our souls so that we don’t block out that light. We open those drapes through prayer, meditation, and Bible study. We open the drapes by gathering regularly for worship on Sunday morning (and on other times when worship is scheduled). We even open the drapes when we share fellowship with other Christians, people we can honestly talk with about the struggles that we experience in our lives. Sometimes it may seem like we’re not letting much light in at all; but you might be surprised at how much difference even that little bit of light can make in your life!

Light, after all, is what allows us to see what’s really happening, not only around us, but within us, too. One of the most important questions that we all must answer in our lives, “Who am I?” is a question that we can only answer if we are looking at ourselves with the light of Christ. He will help us to see what is really there. If you want to make a new year’s resolution that I guarantee will make a change in your life, resolve to take a good look at yourself in the light of Christ. While I don’t know the details of what you’ll discover – that’s between you and God – I know in general terms what will happen. You’ll see your abilities in a new light. You’ll discover new gifts that you never knew you had. You’ll be able to accept some parts of yourself that you never really liked. The light of Christ will illuminate even the darkest, most neglected corners of your life; and you might find out that what is lurking there isn’t so scary, after all. You might even find out that the answer to the question “Who am I?” is “I’m a beloved child of God; and if God wants me to change, it’s only so that I can have a richer, fuller life, free from doubt and fear and envy.” That’s what the light of Christ can do in our lives!

But it doesn’t stop there. Christ doesn’t only shine his light on us so that we can discover who we really are; he shines his light around us to show us what we are called to do for him. The light of Christ is like the ocean tide: first it sweeps in, then it sweeps out. When it sweeps in, it invites us to take a good look at who we really are. Those are the times when we concentrate on ourselves, and try to be the complete human beings that God wants us to be. But then the light sweeps out again, inviting us to go out into the world and be lights ourselves. Christ wants us to learn from him first; and then to be like him to others. The story is told of a man who saw all the hurt and pain of the world, and cried out to God, “The world is so broken! Why don’t you send somebody to fix it?” God answered: “I did send somebody. I sent you.”

Moving inward to understand ourselves better and to recommit ourselves to Christ; and moving outward to be the light of Christ in the world. As the old song says about “love and marriage” that “go together like a horse and carriage,” you can’t have one without the other. If we try to concentrate only on ourselves, we risk becoming hermits, isolated from the world and caring only about our own well-being. But if we concentrate only on our mission work, we risk becoming burned out and resentful of what Christ asks us to do. The light moves in and out in an endless cycle of illumination and discovery, sometimes both at the same time! Many people have discovered a vital part of ourselves in the midst of working for the good of others.

This morning, as a new year begins, I pray that the light of Christ will help you discover that you are a beloved child of God with many God-given gifts and graces. I pray that the light of Christ will guide you outside yourself by illuminating something that you can do to help heal this broken world that God loves so much and that Christ came to save. And as you see the light of Christ shining, I pray that you decide to become lights yourselves! What a marvelous beginning to the new year that would be!