The Work of God’s Hands
“The Work of God’s Hands” by Pastor Rosanna McFadden
Good morning! It is, as you know, Labor Day weekend. I had Lynne read one of my favorite biblical texts from the prophet Isaiah. I have lettered this text and used it in retreat settings, and it is a personal favorite for a number of reasons, especially the imagery of clay. I like stoneware and clay vessels and have a number of handmade pieces in my home. A few are only decorative, but most are functional, as well. I like that they are useful, but I also like that many of them have a story. I can remember the setting — this one was from our trip to Canada in May — and often have met the artist who made the piece — this Canadian artist was away from his studio and left a note to tell customers to take what they wanted and leave money. We had no Canadian currency, so we took a few pieces, left a check for American dollars, and contacted the artist by email. I like knowing a little history of how something was made and who made it.
Another reason I like other artists’ clay pieces is because I have tried to do pottery on a wheel, and I was not very good at it. I didn’t dedicate years of practice, I audited a course for a semester, but there was a significant gap between what I hoped to create and what I could actually accomplish. Pottery is not a process where one gets immediate results. An experienced potter can take a lump of clay, work air bubbles out, center it on the wheel, and apply the right pressure to make it grow into something fluid and graceful — all in a few minutes. My pots were wobbly and chunky, and each took 3 or 4 tries. And then once the pot is thrown, it has to dry, be trimmed or incised for decoration, go through a low temperature bisque firing, be glazed, and then go through a high temperature firing.
This whole process was entirely familiar to the author of Isaiah and the audience of Isaiah. The fossil record tells us that the earliest pottery was made between 18 and 20,000 years ago, and pottery was being formed on a wheel, starting the in the Middle East, 4 to 6,000 years ago. Clay is a great image for spiritual formation and is an image which has been used by Isaiah, Daniel Iverson in his 1929 text of “Spirit of the Living God,” which we sang today, and of course, by me.
Here are a couple things I like about this verse from Isaiah chapter 64, and some other Isaiah references, and why I think they are appropriate for Labor Day and for considering the relationship between God’s work and our work. Here’s a bit more context: Isaiah 64 opens with the attention-getting demand for God to tear open the heavens and come down: to make mountains quake and fires burn and water boil. This a request for God to get down here and make things happen. And then the prophets acknowledges that God was angry and we sinned, and we are all like a filthy cloth; we wither and are blown away with the wind. We have not tried to follow God, and God has delivered us into our own iniquity. And then here is verse 8: Yet — even so, despite all of that — Yet, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
This verse is not so much about work as it is about identity. God is our Father who protects and cares for us, and God is the potter who shaped and formed us, the artist who took dust and made it into human beings. It is this relationship between the pot and potter which illustrates the hierarchy of creature and Creator. It also provides some comedic relief — at least in my reading — from some of the pretty heavy stuff in Isaiah. Clay may have its own character, but it typically doesn’t talk back to the potter. Isaiah 29:16 says, “Does the thing made say of its maker, ‘He did not make me,’ or the thing formed say of the one who formed it, ‘He has no understanding.’” It is just ridiculous to deny that we have a relationship to God when we are made in God’s image, or for us to act like God couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to be human.
My favorite iteration of the conversation between the pot and the potter is in Isaiah 45:9, where this mouthy lump of clay says to the potter, “What are you making? Your work has no handles.” Can we get some handles here? If we are going to be shaped by the potter, we have to trust that the potter knows what he’s doing. There may be pots who fight with their Creator: the clay does not win that fight. Those are the pots which end up broken and unable to function the way the potter intended.
Labor Day is an opportunity to remember the work which we and that others do. It is a fine time to celebrate, as we did in the Blessing of the Hands, that there are many many kinds of work, and no one is able to do every job which needs to be done. The most important work we do is not necessarily the work for which we are paid, or paid the most, to do. In fact, the most important thing we can do is to understand the relationship to God as our Father and the potter who shapes us, because once we get that right, we can be shaped and formed into something functional and beautiful. Until we figure that out, we will be spinning off-center on the wheel, never quite properly formed. It is entirely correct for us to offer our work — whatever that is — to God, but first, we have to understand the we are the work of God.
I was shaped by a family, maybe some of you were too, where my worthiness was measured by my accomplishments. Not so much by how much money I made (thank goodness — there were plenty of years when it was hardly anything), but how much I got done, how good my grades were, how many hours I spent doing whatever. Those aren’t bad things, of course, but that is different than Christian identity. Christian identity is not about how much we do, it’s about who we are, or whose we are. It’s about knowing we are children of God, even when we haven’t behaved very well, even when we look more like a filthy cloth than a functional pot. It’s about understanding that God has baked in the gifts which we have, and it’s just silly to say things like, God doesn’t understand how difficult this is, or how come I don’t have any handles like that pot over there? Every pot has a purpose it can be used for, and every pot has limitations: you can’t bake a casserole in a coffee mug — but it would be pretty silly to try to drink out of a casserole dish, too.
I love how this passage releases me to think of my purpose differently, and to stop comparing my purpose to someone else’s purpose. We are all the work of God’s hands. God is way too creative to make every pot identical. When I accept these difference as part of the plan, I am more able to celebrate the different gifts that I have and that other people have, and maybe I can even do my work more creatively. I heard a pioneering woman educator describe herself as “someone who had both the ability to dream and the capacity to work hard.” That seems like a winning combination to me: for us to be vessels which have edges and boundaries and limits, but which also enclose space. Capacity is not only what we have the ability to do, it is the measure of the amount of space which is open to hold things: ideas, prayers, dreams. This, too, is a gift from the potter.
So this Labor Day — this beautiful sabbath weekend — I invite you to make some space around you and within you to consider what God needs you to hold right now. Maybe it’s something you’d rather not have — loss, or pain or uncertainty for yourself or someone dear to you. Maybe you have crammed that space full of stuff — busi-ness, noise, activity, so that you can’t put in one more thing, or you’re afraid that if you examine what’s inside it will all come spilling out and make a big mess. Our Creator understands this. Maybe you feel like that space is just empty and unused: might there be a place for some dreams there? Dreams for a hope and a future for you, for other people, maybe even for this church?Know that our identity already belongs to God: God is our Father and Creator. May we also dedicate our capacity — both our work and our dreaming — to God as well. God bless you. Amen.