Our Legacy
2 Corinthians 4:5-12
October 26, 2014
Mark S. Bollwinkel
[This sermon is delivered while the preacher makes
pottery on a potter’s wheel]...
The apostle Paul is in a bit of a quandary when he
writes his second letter to the young church at Corinth. Other Jesus preachers have come into town
while he was away and taught a very different gospel. This has divided members of the church into
camps of followers, some liking one preacher’s teachings, some liking Paul’s
their founder.
Corinth was a challenging place for
a church to begin. A cosmopolitan city
with a busy harbor, it attracted all sorts of people from all over the known
world. It was also the home of a famous
Greek religious worship center with its Temple to Apollo and an active Dionysus
wine cult. The early church included
folk who would have never gotten along in the secular world; Jews, Greeks,
slaves, free, men and women all worshipping together but with very different
backgrounds and expectations.
Paul spends much of his second
letter to the Corinth church justifying his claim to be considered an apostle
of Jesus. Paul warns the young
Christians of false teachings that could lead them astray. To justify his apostolic status Paul reminds
them of the price he has paid to spread the word of God’s love in Christ; “We
are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to
despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed”.*
While he argues for his authority as
an apostle, he honestly admits to the limits of his humanity; “….but we have
this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be clear that this extraordinary
power belongs to God and does not come from us.”
“Clay jars”. The metaphor reminds us immediately of the
second creation story in Genesis (2:4b-25) during which God takes a hand full
of “dust of the ground” (“dirt”, “clay”) and breathes divine spirit into it to
form the first human being. “Ashes to
ashes, dust to dust” we say at the burial site to remind us not only of our fragile
nature but to celebrate that even in death our spirits are liberated returning
to its divine source.
We humans are “clay jars” to be
sure; fragile, cheap, all-too-vulnerable to failure. Yet God chooses us to be containers of “treasure”,
the spirit of the divine itself.
These are words that make complete sense to a
potter.
Clay is mainly made up of alumni and
silica, two of the most common elements on earth, traces of which are found in
every human body. Clay deposits are
found on every continent and have been used by potters for millennium. Pottery is an ancient art and craft practiced
throughout the world. Archeologists have
discovered intact clay vessels and ceramic objects dating back to 9,000
BCE. The development of ceramic utensils
for cooking, food storage and decoration is universal.
Pottery can be made using hands
only, by pressing clay into molds, rolling coils of clay and shaping them with
tools, or as is very common spun on the base of a potter’s wheel. Once dried it is fired at high temperatures
to vitrify the silica in the clay, thus making it waterproof and bonding the
strength of the vessel.
I have been a potter for over 44
years, longer than I have known Bonnie Bollwinkel! Seeking an easy 4 units in my first semester
at the University of the Pacific, I took Pottery 101 with the football players
and fell in love. I’ve taught,
exhibited and sold my pottery ever since then.
For me ceramic art is a spiritual and therapeutic practice in my
life. Over and over again it is a
reminder that from something as common and inconsequential as clay can come
beauty and function and creativity. From
something as common and inconsequential as a human life can come a lasting
legacy of good.
Consider the Dead Sea Scrolls as an example.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered between 1947 –
1956 in 11 caves on the northwest corner of the Dead Sea, about 13 miles from
Jerusalem. The Scrolls are the libraries
of a Jewish sect that hide them around the time of the Jewish-Roman war of the
first century (66-70CE).
This sect, located near the caves in what is now
called the Qumran community, has been most identified with the Essenes. They were a radical group, who yearning for
purity took to the desert to await an apocalyptic war between good and evil,
the end of the world and coming of the new messiah. Although an important and influential
movement contemporary to Jesus’ times, the New Testament doesn’t mention them
by name. A number of scholars suggest
that John the Baptist could have been a member of the group because of his
desert mystic ways such as wearing animal skins and eating wild honey and
locust (Mark 1:1-8). He certainly
preached about the end of the world, as did the Essenes. So did Jesus in some very significant
ways. Jesus having prepared himself for ministry in
the desert may have known the group as well.
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain over
900 documents, at least fragments of all of the books of the Hebrew Scriptures,
except Ester. There is a complete
manuscript of the prophet Isaiah. Their
discovery was enormously important for biblical scholarship because these texts
were 1,000 years older than any other previous copies of the Bible. The library also contained volumes of other
works describing Biblical commentary, apocalyptic expectation and a “Manuel of
Discipleship” detailing the life of the Qumran community. Scholars are still learning from them and
debating amongst themselves their meaning.
The Scrolls survived the 1,900 years
in the caves wrapped in fine linen and stored in clay storage jars. They ranged in size, some as tall as
22”. The owner would often seal the lid
with wax or animal fats. Recent analysis
suggests that the Dead Sea Scroll jars were formed out of a special clay
formula, created specifically for this purpose.
When the Essenes of the Qumran community made these
special pots they were preparing for disaster.
It came in the form of Roman legions that would destroy Israel and burn
the Temple of Jerusalem to the ground in 70 CE.
To prepare for disaster they stored their most precious possessions,
their library of sacred writings and placed them in caves hoping to leave the
future a legacy of their faithfulness and hope. The contribution to us from those ancient,
pious, desert mystics and the potters they used to store the scrolls is
priceless.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says:
‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up
for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and
where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your
heart will be also.
The Qumran community put their
treasure where their hearts were. How
about us?
In a consumer society such as ours
we save little and spend much on instant gratification. We go out to eat in a moment’s notice. We purchase stuff to be delivered to our
doors with a click of a computer mouse.
Our closets are full of clothes we haven’t worn for months. Our garages are full of boxed material we no
longer need. We are certainly putting
our treasure in the clutter of our lives.
Is that where our hearts are to be found?
In his book Enough: Discovering
Joy through Simplicity and Generosity (Abingdon 2009) Rev. Adam Hamilton
reminds us that our passion for acquisition and accomplishment can come at a
dear spiritual price. It’s possible for
us to gain the whole world and still lose our souls in the process (Mark 8:36). When the archeologists dig out our world
thousands of years from now what will they discover in the “estimated 1.9 billion sq. feet of
rental self-storage space” in America (Hamilton, p. 16). Will the clutter of our lives be the legacy we
leave?
Each one of us is given a measure of
time, talent, health and wealth.
Whether we live 19 or 99 years, each day we are given the opportunity to
spend that treasure with purpose. As we
do so we build the legacy of our lives.
Audrey Butcher was a dear friend, a
farmer, teacher, passionate Methodist and a potter. When she died at 92 her family invited me to
“take whatever I wanted” from her dusty studio.
We found treasures that only a fellow potter can appreciate including
two handmade clay puffins, her favorite bird, which she had never fired and the
family allowed to fire and glaze.
Audrey and her husband Bob farmed a
stone fruit orchard in the Santa Clara Valley during World War II and were
horrified as they watched their Japanese-American neighbors rounded up for
internment in April of 1942. Our nation
has finally recognized the injustice caused by the fears and prejudice that can
overwhelm us in times of stress; a lesson still to be re-learned today!
At DeAnza Junior College in the
Santa Cara Valley on February 19th this year, the anniversary of
Executive Order 9066, the California History Center announced and celebrated
the “Audrey Edna Butcher Civil Liberties Education Initiative”. Through a very generous gift to the College
from the Butcher family in memory of their mother and her passion for civil
rights, the History Center will be able to expand its programming and faculty
to educate our community’s students about the foundations of freedom inherent
in the US Constitution.
Audrey Butcher generously shared her
treasures of time, talent and wealth with her family, church and community and
in so doing left a legacy of friendship, Christian discipleship and devoted
citizenship. She would be the first to tell you of her limitations and failures
along the way of life, that this treasure is kept in clay jars. But that truth never stopped her from doing
her best with passion and faith.
The
passion of the Qumran community for the promises of God’s future inspired them
to leave us a legacy of their sacred writings thousands of years ago; thanks be
to God for the potter’s that made it happen!
From
something as common and inconsequential as clay can come beauty and function
and creativity. Kind of like our lives,
isn’t? We who are “treasures in clay
jars.”
Amen.
*
In the eleventh chapter he lists his hardships;
“Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three
times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was
shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in
danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from
Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger
from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless
night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked.” (2 Cor
11:24-28)
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