Sermon:
January 12, 2003
All Services

Scripture:
Jeremiah 18:1-11

Several years ago, I told you about the lady who brought home a wall plaque that read “PRAYER CHANGES THINGS” and hung it in the kitchen. Upon seeing it hours later, her husband took it down. Thinking that location was the problem, she put it back up in another room. Surprised to find it resurrected elsewhere, he took it back down. So she asked him point blank: “Don’t you like prayer?” To which he said: “Sure, I like prayer. But I don’t like change.” 

Well, some of us do and some of us don’t. For most of us, it’s a matter of control. Is change a “within” thing or a “without” thing? Does it happen in us or at us? Do we get to decide? Or is the decision made elsewhere? 

If you believe conventional wisdom, the arrival of a new year is the appointed time for self-initiated change. We hang the new calendar and resolve to lead new lives. Eat less. Jog more. Go to church twice as often. But conventional wisdom also tells us that few of us who start, finish. Or even continue. Meaning that it’s not about how strongly we start, but how quickly we revert. If we are honest, the words “same old, same old” are less descriptive of our surroundings than of ourselves. Dr. Harold Brack (Drew University) once suggested that the measure of life’s satisfaction does not so much depend on whether we are struggling with problems, but whether they are the same problems we were struggling with last year and the year before that. 

One of the things I do exceptionally well is help engaged couples get in touch with the marital scripts that have been written for them by their parents….given that virtually everything young people know about marriage, they learn from watching their parents be married. Or married, then not married. Or married, then not married, then remarried (or multiply married). I have developed an hour-long process which will enable them to rewind and revisit 20 or 30 years of marital history as they watched it being lived….in their presence….by their parents….before their very eyes. And in the subsection of that “rewind” that I call “Conflict,” I invite them to remember not simply how their parents argued, but what their parents argued about. I tell them that most couples can solve most things. But every couple has one or two things they can’t solve….issues that thread their way through years and years of marriage….nagging issues that can, for short periods, be back-burnered on life’s stove, but are still simmering and will spill over in time (given that it’s just a matter of time). I’m talking about the one issue that, upon its reemergence, will lead everyone within earshot to say: “Here we go again.” 

Then I tell these starry-eyed romantics: “Once you figure out what that issue was for your parents, you need to figure out why that was the thing that kept tripping them up, given their ability to avoid so many other explosives in the marital minefields.” 

Several years ago, some of you heard me say: “The older I get, the less correctable I find life to be.” But I would amend that in your hearing to read: “The older I get, the less correctable I find me to be.” 

So how do people change for the better….assuming that they want to change for the better….and assuming that the use of the word “better” grows out of an honest recognition that, as life is currently being lived, it feels “worse?” 

Well, one thing that motivates change is pain. “I am hurting. I am tired of hurting. I’d like to stop hurting. And though change (itself) might hurt, it can’t be worse than this hurt. So I’ll try.” The problem is, it takes a long time for the pain process to work. That’s because we are so skillful at ignoring pain or deadening pain. I am always amazed when one person in a marriage finally says: “I’ve had it. I’m fed up with it. I don’t want it. Which is why, just yesterday, I filed to get out of it. So deal with it.” And the partner is dumbfounded. Doesn’t have a clue. Missed the signs. Misinterpreted the signs. Isn’t even sure there were signs. Obviously, those spouses had very different pain thresholds. 

Then there’s the addict whose craving for something (drugs, alcohol, food, sex, power, recognition) is ruining his life. You think he’d see it. Heck, you think he’d feel it. The pain, I mean. Because everybody else can feel it. And then some therapist says: “They haven’t fallen far enough yet….sunk low enough yet….been hurt badly enough yet.” Sure, pain instructs. But some of us keep repeating the course. And even then, we can’t pass the final. 

There is a rule of thumb used by people who study churches that runs something like this. Any church (or any collection of churches) will quietly adapt itself to an annual loss of one and a half percent in any statistical category (members on the rolls, people in the pews, money in the plate, singers in the choir) in return for an unspoken agreement to keep things as they are….maintain the status quo….make no change…..even if that one and a half percent loss continues and compounds, year after year, for a number of years. 

In other words, it takes a long time before pain motivates a church. And pain may never motivate a church. Which only proves that while “same old, same old” may be boring….may be hurting….may even be disabling (in personal life, marital life, or institutional life), “same old, same old” may also be comforting. Which is why the school of pain has relatively few graduates. Or alumni. 

Which brings me to a different curriculum, not so much based on pain, but upon possibility….taught by people who can help us see life’s possibilities by showing us places to go, ways to go and means to go. If “pain” is the stick, “possibility” is the carrot. And there’s often more than one carrot. But most of us need help in seeing the carrots. Meaning that where change is concerned, we need outside help. 

No doubt you have noticed that this morning’s sermon title is uncommonly short. It contains but one word, that word being “Makeover.” It’s a word that is suddenly very “in”….replacing two words, “self-help,” that are on their way to being very much “out.” Not that they won’t come back. They will. It’s a pendulum thing. But the words “self-help” are not in vogue now. The word “makeover” is in vogue now. And makeovers involve outsiders. 

As some of you know, I have long preferred letting Mike the barber cut my hair. Mike is predictable. Mike is quick. Mike is cheap. Mike is full of local gossip. But Mike is also in Elk Rapids (227 miles away), where I go less and less. 

Which explains why my wife and daughter sent me to Jill, the stylist. Who I see, not at a barber shop, but at a salon….where it takes three times the time….costs three times the money (which explains why I go half as often)….and where I am given “hair goals.” What’s more, there isn’t a Field and Stream or Popular Mechanics anywhere to be found. The place is called Virtuoso, and it is billed as “an elemental salon.” I don’t have the foggiest idea what that means. But Jill is good. And she keeps trying to show me how I could look if I could get out of my boring, comb-over rut. But I find myself balking whenever she uses the word “spiky.” Still, one of these days…. 

Actually, what got me started on the word “makeover” was a show on TLC (which used to be called “The Learning Channel”). Loved by my wife and daughter, the show is called Trading Spaces. It seems as if it’s on all the time (at least seven or eight times a week). The premise is simple. Two neighbors redesign a room in each other’s house. Each gets $1,000, the advice of a professional designer, and the assistance of a paid carpenter. In short, you move out. Your friends or neighbors move in. The cameras start rolling. And the whole thing has to be done in 48 hours. 

Does it work? Surprisingly, quite often. Is anybody watching? Would you believe over 9 million weekly? What’s more, the audience is growing and includes tons of college students who, for reasons that escape me, have abandoned the soaps and SportsCenter to see whether, 48 hours and $1,000 later, the returning homeowners will actually like the fact that their master bedroom has been converted into a medieval castle. The show’s magic is not in its decorating tips, but in its suspense. “Will they like what we’ve done when they see what we’ve done?” And most seem to. That’s because their designer and their neighbors saw possibilities that would stretch them, fit them, and therefore please them….possibilities they could not see for themselves. Personally, I think some of the makeovers are terrible. But then, it’s not my room, my designer, my friends or my neighbors, opening up options and alternatives for me. 

I could go on to tell you about TLC’s other daily show, the one entitled Makeover Story. Or I could tell you about ABC’s periodic special, Extreme Makeover, which includes nose jobs, implants, vision correction, liposuction, even dental work (in addition to hair, makeup and wardrobe corrections). Ironically, the promo for Extreme Makeover suggests that “the work that is done will transform lives and ultimately redirect destinies.” 

Which kicks things into a much higher gear, does it not? A religious gear, if you will. For today’s text would seem to suggest that God is in the makeover business. At least, as I read it, it suggests that God is in the makeover business. 

Jeremiah takes us to the potter’s house where we are invited to watch the potter work the clay. The potter’s house was probably literal as well as figurative, given that Old Jerusalem once had in its city wall “a potsherd gate.” So picture a wheel (turned by foot)….clay on the wheel…. hands on the clay….turning….wetting….molding….shaping. I even gave half a thought to hiring a potter to do all of the above, right here in the chancel. But potters cost money and I’d already sprung for this morning’s donuts. 

Everything is in the hands of the potter. That’s because, by common scholarly agreement, this is a parable about God’s sovereignty. Except that the clay, which (at the outset) is resilient, turns resistant….even rebellious. Ask any potter and they will tell you that clay (at times) has a mind of its own….a bent of its own….a “push-back” of its own….a will and way of its own. On one level (the level of physical properties), I don’t understand that at all and think it’s stupid. On another level (the level of spiritual realities), I understand it completely and find it brilliant. 

So when the clay resists (or rebels), what does the potter do then? The text is quite clear. He takes the clay that was spoiled in his hand (interesting, isn’t it, that even in the hand of the potter….without ever leaving the hand of the potter….the clay can become “spoiled”), and he “reworks it into another vessel, as it seems good for the potter to do.” Same clay. Same hands. Different outcome. Yet very much within the imagination of the potter. 

People sometimes ask me: “Bill, do you think that God has designed our lives so that there is only one right call for us to answer…..one right college for us to attend….one right career for us to choose….one right person for us to marry….one right home for the living, church for the going, and destiny for the finding?” And I say: “No.” Because I think that such a philosophy limits both the potential in the clay and the imagination in the potter. Go back to the text. Even in the hand of God, stuff spoils…..life spoils….best laid plans spoil…..best made people spoil…. because in that wonderful dance between potter and clay that we call creation, stuff sometimes goes awry. 

So does the potter scrap the effort? No. Does the potter scrap the clay? No. Does the potter scrap the original design? Maybe. Is that because life is full of possibilities or because God is full of surprises? Yes. 

My wife, who really doesn’t watch any more television than I do, tells me that the there is a new home-makeover show coming. Not one where a designer (or a neighbor) buys or builds you a bunch of new stuff, but where somebody takes your existing stuff….your old stuff (like tables, chairs, pictures, lamps) and shows you things to do with your stuff you never dreamed possible. So I said to my wife: “You know, Krissy, I’m a preacher. People expect my television viewing to be dictated by my holy calling. So is the show you’re describing a religious one?” 

“It could be,” she said. “It could be.”