You Are The Potter, I Am The Clay, Jeremiah 18:1-6

The Spirit-inspired metaphor at the center of this passage from Jeremiah is an important and instructive reflection for our self-centered times, just as it was to the people of Jeremiah’s time. It is a simple story told with simple language. Like all parables, its intention is to teach a moral lesson. It uses a powerful and approachable metaphor to make its point. The central questions are: “Who is the potter and who is the clay? And what is the nature of the “Potter?”

We are told that the prophet, Jeremiah, received a word from the Lord telling him to go to the potter’s house and that he would be given a message there. It seems an odd command. Why the potter’s house? The village potter would not have been anybody special, he would have been of no greater importance than any of the other villagers. We can imagine him to be a common man who simply possessed a skill that was valued by his fellow townsmen. Like most villagers of his day, he would probably have been an uneducated man, certainly not trained in theological matters. Why should the Lord send his prophet to the potter’s house rather than to, say, the local rabbi’s house?

As in all parables, it is not the potter that we are to focus our attention on, but on what he is doing, which becomes the central metaphor of the story. Jeremiah, like a good, obedient prophet, harkens to the word that he has received from the Lord, and goes to the potter’s house. There he simply observes the potter at work. The village potter is busy at his potter’s wheel molding and shaping the raw material of clay into functional, or beautiful objects. “Whenever the object he was making turned out badly in his hand, he tried again, making of the clay another object of whatever sort he pleased” (verse 4).

It is while Jeremiah is watching this that the word of the Lord comes to him again saying: “Can I not do to you, house of Israel, as this potter has done? says the Lord. Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, house of Israel” (verse 6). And there is the center of the target for us. God is the potter and we are the clay. He shaped us in our mother’s womb with attentive, personal love. But in our sinfulness, we do damage to this “clay” often and in countless ways. But the message is that our “Potter” never gives up on us. When in our pride, or in our ignorance, we damage this earthen vessel, He, in his infinite love and mercy, is always ready to forgive us and to mold us back together again. He never gives up on us.

It is faith that brings this metaphor alive for us. Just as Jeremiah listens in faith and responds to the word that came to him from the Lord, so are we to do. This word comes to us here, today, as we encounter this passage from the prophet Jeremiah again. Now, it is up to us to meditate on this message, to understand that it is an intimate invitation offered to each of us by our Creator, our Father, our “Potter.” He is telling us that when we fall, when our sins damage this beautiful work of His hands, our individual souls, uniquely made in his own image and likeness, He will pick us up with his own hands and with infinite and unconditional love, He will mold us back together again, even better than before. It is in a faith that is well formed by the word of God that we can have hope in such unimaginable love. Thanks be to God!