“Shape-Shifters All Are We”

A meditation based on Jeremiah 18:1-11; Philemon 1-21; and Luke 14:25-33

September 9, 2007

Redlands United Church of Christ

Sharon R. Graff

Do you remember the shape-shifters from the old “Star Trek” series?  They were beings who made occasional appearances throughout the decades-long saga of space-adventure stories.  Sometimes the shape-shifters would shift into shapes familiar to one or more of the regular characters.  Other times they would be new and unfamiliar, and sometimes one being would shift into several different shapes throughout the course of a single episode.  Their purposes were as varied as their shapes, from manipulative to coercive to persuasive to desirable to altruistic.  Always, at least for me as a casual watcher of the Star Trek series and movies, always these shape-shifters were surprising, unpredictable, acting in a way that caused characters and viewers to change their own perspectives or to rethink their usual responses.

This morning, we’ve already both heard and experienced the concept of shape-shifting right here in worship.  A seminary student now shifting into a new role as intern, shifting from student to congregational leader…a former mayor shifting into insightful worship leader…summer vacationers, donning robes, and shifting into inspiring choral musicians…and each of you: parents, partners, students, teachers, administrators, retirees, children, youth…shifting into individual worshipers who gently shift into one congregation which lovingly shifts into a safe place of compassionate community.  Shape-shifters, all are we!

Turn to the scriptures we’ve heard today, and shape-shifting is occurring throughout.  In the passage from Jeremiah, a lump of clay shifts from its useless lumpiness into a productive vessel.  A Divine potter shifts from frustration to creatively loving.  In the Christian scriptures, the Apostle Paul invites Onesimus to shift from slave to former slave to brother in Christ.  Subsequently, Paul also asks his friend and partner in the gospel, Philemon, to shift from former slave-owner to one who can accept his former slave Onesimus as an equal, as a companion in faith.  Then there is Jesus in the gospel reading from Luke, using rather dramatic language, harshly haranguing his would-be disciples.  “Want to follow me?” asks Jesus.  “Then hate all that you now love, including family, friends, possessions, lifestyle…or else you cannot be my disciple…” 

Process theologian and UCC pastor, The Rev. Rick Marshall writes of this gospel passage,

“Wow!  Pretty harsh language… It would be easy to take the word ‘hate’ at face value, then ignore [it] and move on to easier texts… Of course, given the context of [the passage which is] commitment to the cause of the Kingdom of God , Jesus is suggesting what he more explicitly says at the end of the text.  ‘So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that you have cannot be my disciple.’  Well, put that way, it makes more theological sense,” continues Marshall .  “Hate, then, is not an emotional word, but a decision to renounce all that one has.  We can follow that line of thought to an end other than hatred and revenge… Jesus is calling for a whole new orientation to life, where one’s life is seen not in one’s possessions or accomplishments, nor in family connections, but in emptying ones’ self to be filled with God’s power and purpose.  This line of reasoning will lead us eastward and we might meet Buddha on the road somewhere.  Jesus is calling his hearers to soberly consider the implications of what he is asking them to do by making this commitment to a whole new way of living in the world.” 

I think that my friend Rick would agree that Jesus is asking us to become “shape-shifters.”  By self-defining in ways other than the traditional or expected, that is, as parents, partners, spouses, employees, retirees, etc., Jesus is calling each and every one of us to rethink our role and shape within the broader Realm of the Divine.  Perhaps that shape into which you will shift will be as prophet or preacher or storyteller or healer or teacher or learner or cook or server or greeter or singer or player or dancer or reader or who knows what?  Step out of your own self-defined box into a bigger role with me, invites Jesus.

But rather than being appreciated as delightful invitations, these passages, especially the potter’s house story from Jeremiah and Jesus’ harsh teaching from Luke, are often used as battering rams to beat down doors of resistance.  The result of such harsh treatment of potentially harsh passages is despair or worse.  If I must hate others in order to be a disciple of Jesus, posits the logical person, then I’ll have nothing of that kind of gospel.  Or if God is going to destroy me when I dare to hold an opinion different than that of the Divine, or if, as Jeremiah declares, God exacts vengeance on anyone who makes one misstep on the apparently precarious journey of faith, then I’ll be walking the other way to get as far away as possible from that vengeful God.  Hence the droves of former believers throughout the world now shape-shifting into people who sleep in on Sunday mornings!  We can read their thoughts written all over their faces, “If this Christianity is about an angry, demanding, vindictive, fear-inducing Being, then I’m shape-shifting right out of here!”

Is there a way to reclaim these difficult passages from their easy interpretations which are too harsh to handle?  I think so.  But it requires a little shape-shifting of our own.  Again, Rick Marshall encourages us to re-look at the language of the text from Jeremiah.  At various points, it affirms human will, human decision and freedom in determining the future.  It affirms that human freedom actually imposes limits on Divine action, while also affirming the possibility that God will change God’s mind, depending upon the response of the creatures.  There is a lot of give-and-take in this text between human will and Divine will, as both respond in dynamic relation to the other.

To put it more directly, when we shift our perspective of this particular potter and clay text, we see that we are not simply a lump of lifeless clay to be molded in the hands of the potter.  We can determine how often and in what ways God’s hands shape us.  We can listen or ignore God’s guidance.  We can, to use the words of scripture, do evil or do good, and God will always respect our right to choose.  Scripture also makes clear that our choices will be accompanied by natural consequences.  To ancient peoples, these consequences may very well have felt like Divine retribution…but not to us, not with the benefit of 21st century knowledge and wisdom.  Jeremiah reaches across the ages to invite us to see that God is waiting with willing hands to guide us, to lovingly shift our shape into something productive, something beautiful, something of even greater value in the Realm of God. 

Rev. Marshall further nudges us to see that, “There is more going on in the text than a simple matter of hands on clay.  The limited point of the story is in verse 4: ‘And the vessel the potter was making was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and the potter reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to do.’  The point of the story is not the passivity of the clay, but the Divine hands that are working to shape and reshape in a constant, dynamic, process, to make something more lovely out of that clay.  The potter is working and reworking the clay to a purpose that is good and that is intended by the potter.  The image here is of the hands of the Divine working with and reworking and working again and again toward some good purpose [with each one of us.]  What a powerful image of a dynamic relationship between the Divine will and the human will!”

Are you shifting the shape of your understanding of God yet?  The prophet Jeremiah invites you to see that God is active and working, always, every moment of every day, not negatively peering into our lives for the purpose of vengefully smiting us.  Rather, God is stooped, as an artisan over the quickly-moving wheel, laboring, fashioning, creating with us in a dynamic relationship for the purpose of bringing even more justice and compassion to the world through us.  So, instead of the story being a metaphor for Divine coercive power, we can shift the shape of our own theology, and in so doing, be amazed to discover that the story of the potter and the clay is about the dynamic relationship between two parties—you and God—two parties who are in a relationship and who are adjusting yourselves to one another as your relationship unfolds. 

These passages offer yet another “aha” – the relationship between God and humans, (to take it one more personal step) the dynamic relationship between God and you, is one in which the world will be shape-shifted as well!  The question posed to Philemon by the Apostle Paul could just as easily be directed to each of us: “Will you welcome and honor another person who is different than you, over whom you once held power, will you now see them as an equal?”  This question is one of deep significance with far-reaching tentacles.  For it will cost us, as it cost Philemon, not just in monetary terms but in his sense of place and in his relationship with this person, who will hold a new place in his life…Onesimus will no longer be a slave but a beloved brother in the faith.  This radical change in relationship eliminates privilege and advantage, even as it dramatically shifts deeply-imbedded assumptions and sense of position, both in daily life and in the global context.  By your shifting personal assumptions about place and title and privilege into a more Christ-like shape of equality and equanimity, the world around you inevitably experiences a change of shape. 

This line of thinking invites us to revisit our country’s place in the global family in light of the approaching anniversary of September 11th.  It is no longer considered conspiracy theory to understand the terrorists’ attacks on us as acts of desperation, reactions, really, to the kind of oppressive domination that our country has been flaunting for the past few decades.  With increasing globalization and market-driven decisions, we have been asserting our way and demanding that others follow along.  In China alone, whole communities have been destroyed and farmlands flooded in the pursuit of a higher rate of return on our investments.  As progressive Christians, it might behoove us to lead the way in a collective ritual of repentance, asking the world to forgive us our greed, our haughtiness, and our pride.  Instead of continuing to defend ourselves as Americans, perhaps it would be better for this small but mighty nucleus of God’s Kingdom right here in Redlands, to determine here and now to shape-shift from Americans first into compassionate Christian citizens of this world community.  As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King once quipped, “…the church should be the headlights, not the taillights, for the world.”  By shining your own special shape-shifted light in your particular corner of this community, you act as creative and loving potter with yet another piece of beautiful clay.

The image of the Divine working and reworking the clay through your own hands says something about the willingness of God to engage in a process of molding and breaking, molding and breaking.  There is a rhythm about that image that is profound.  Each moment arises out of the wreckage of the past, it arises to a point of decision and clarity about its existence in that moment.  It then fades and becomes part of the past that the next moment will shape into its own becoming.  Clarity and honesty shape-shift into repentance and humility, which shift into creative transformation of a new and more just world.  In this shape-shifting is the process of the unfolding of life.  In this creativity laced with love and compassion, are we invited by God to become shape-shifters, all!

Sermon Archives