Because I attend Eden Theological Seminary, I am able to spell Walter Brueggemann's name without looking it up, without second-guessing all the doubled consonants, and without wondering if he's the right person to cite. Let's face it, Brueggemann's always got something to say about something churchy, and it's almost always pretty brilliant. So yeah. I was pretty excited to hear his message this morning.
He used three texts: Jeremiah 18: 1-12, Isaiah 45: 9-10, and 2 Corinthians 4: 7-15, all focusing on the metaphor of the potter and clay, of clay pots and their contents. Now, if I know anything about Brueggemann, it's that he is a master craftsman when it comes to words. And not just words, but streams, with stories, with texts. And so, as he began this sermon with these three strands of text in his fingers, I could seem him braiding them as intricately and as delicately as a mother braiding her daughter's hair. Lovingly, carefully, and effortlessly at once.
"Have you ever known a preacher who had a good idea, then looked for a text to fit it?" Brueggemann started his message. And we all laughed, thinking of ourselves. But Brueggemann had an exegetical purpose in mind. He painted the scene of Paul, preparing a message for the people of Corinth, as he's searching for a text to speak to these people. And through Brueggemann's imagining, he brilliantly exegeted each text, pointing out context here, repetition here, thematic concerns here. Paul, he says, out-imagined Jeremiah and Isaiah with his Corinthian correspondence, by turning the metaphor of potter and clay into the clay pots and their contents, and asked us, "You won't mind if I out-imagine Paul, then?" No, Walter...we don't mind.
Brueggemann's task was clear: to instruct us on the treasure we have in the changeable form of the clay pot; to exhort us not to be confused about whether the pots or their contents were more valuable (it's the contents...duh); not to take the vessel too seriously; and to be sure that we understand the extraordinary power of reshaping the vessel belongs to God and not us.
For us gathered, the message was one about the vessel of the church and its contents of the gospel message. In a time when our pot is showing its cracks, is breaking in new ways, is crumbling around us in many ways, it's easy to be concerned about the vessel. But Brueggemann is insistent that Paul is telling us that the vessel isn't important. It's the gospel that's important.
"More is going on than us. A buoyant fidelity sustains us. And I warn us not to be talked out of the treasure of the gospel for the sake of the vessels that carry it."
"We have a moment of stunning attentiveness that the pot is being reshaped before our eyes because the form is no longer pleasing to the potter."
Boom. Brueggemann's celebration was that the church isn't in need of all the trappings of church as it is today. He stripped it down for us, saying, "We have a book, a towel, a table, and a cup, and we're back in business." These are the indispensable vessels, the ones that can carry the message.
Brueggemann's message wasn't just a good sermon. It was a sermon that taught how to write a sermon, with Paul as the every-preacher, struggling to find a good word for his church. It was a sermon that spoke to the church about the task of preaching, about God's work in and through the fragile vessels of the preacher and hearers. It was a sermon about the contents of the gospel as the contents of the message: hospitality, unity, justice, and the old, old story of God's vulnerable, self-giving love. It was a message so brimming with the content that the vessel was overflowed.
But it was also a prophetic word about a time when many don't want to give up the vessels that have become the church. And Brueggemann, owning and using his privilege as an old, white, tenured American man told us that the treasure is not the church. It's time for a new pot.
There was so much about this message to learn from: from the craft, to his accessible and humorous style, to his deftness with the biblical text. My hope is that I could cultivate a smidgen of his biblical aptitude. And so...back to the text I must go.
Wanted to include the call to worship we opened with: "Fashion us, O God, with divine imagination, mold us with sacred intention. Change us with your compassion. Transform us with joy. Birth us again, anew. Live through us today, always."
For the record, as a Christian preacher, don't ever, ever, ever use the phrase "Shut your Jewish mouth" in a sermon - even if you're Walter Brueggemann.
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