Written and Delivered by The Rev. Canon Paul S. Nancarrow

Today we begin with the children. Invite the children up front. Produce a piece of modeling clay and begin to work it into the shape of a little person.

God told Jeremiah to go to the potter's house, where the potter was working on some clay. But the pot the potter was making went wrong. Now the great thing about clay is that when you're making something, and it goes wrong, that's not the end of the world, it's not all over. Like I'm making a person here--kind of a self-portrait of me--but I think I made him too tall. I don't look that tall, do I? But that's not the end of the world. I can just squeeze all the clay into a ball and start all over again. If I make a mistake, if it goes wrong, that doesn't mean I'm all done. I can start again and re-create what I was making.

And Jeremiah says that's what God can do with us. When we make mistakes, when we try to do something good and it doesn't turn out right, when we want to be nice to someone but we end up somehow being mean instead, when we know what's the right thing to do but it all goes wrong--then that's not the end of the world. God can help us take that mistake we've made, or that relationship we've hurt, and God can help us work on it and try it again and make it new. Just like taking the clay and re-creating a little statue, God helps us take ourselves and re-create being good and just and loving, the way God wants us to be.

God promises to help us make ourselves new. Pretty cool, huh?

Then let the children go back to their parents.

Now grown-ups, that object lesson about the clay and the creating is meant for us, too. Chances are that we, more than the kids, are aware of mistakes we've made, relationships we've hurt, opportunities for growth we've been too afraid to take, new possibilities we've failed to engage--chances are all of us are aware of things in our lives we'd like to remold and reshape and re-create. And the Good News Jeremiah proclaims to us is that God gives us grace to do precisely that. We usually read this passage--"God is the potter; we are the clay"--as if it implies that we are totally passive, completely inert--well, clay, after all--and it is God who does all the work in creating us. But I think we need to look a little deeper: Jeremiah hears God say "If a nation, if people, turn from evil, then I will not punish, but I will build them and plant them." God responds to how we "turn." And that turning from evil is not just a passive thing: turning from evil is an active choice, it is a creative work--and God responds to that creative work by re-creating, as a potter re-creates a vessel. I think this passage invites us to see that we form our lives by co-creating with God all those moments of choice, the moments of good, the works of love, the relationships of justice and peace, that make us who we are. And if we co-create our lives with God, then God gives us grace to be like that potter, who makes a mistake, but isn't defeated by it--who takes the clay and reshapes it and reworks it and re-creates it into something new and strong and good.

Taking a relationship that's broken and re-creating it into something even better is also what our second reading today is all about. The Epistle to Philemon was written when Paul was living under house arrest in Rome. Philemon was a convert of Paul's and good friend, and he's become the leader of a house church in a different city. Philemon owns a slave named Onesimus. But Onesimus has run away from Philemon and gone to be with Paul, because Onesimus wants to serve Paul and to assist in the work of the Gospel. Now Roman law was very specific and very strict about how to treat runaway slaves. Because Paul is living under house arrest and is being carefully watched by Roman authorities, Onesimus is at risk every day he stays with Paul. So, for Onesimus's own safety, Paul is sending him back to Philemon, along with this letter urging Philemon to show mercy to his formerly runaway slave.

But if you look deeper, Paul is asking Philemon to do considerably more than just show mercy. Paul is asking him to take Onesimus back "not as a slave but more than a slave--a beloved brother." Paul is reminding Philemon that he and Onesimus are both Christians--and that, while the outer arrangements of Roman law might make them master and slave, inwardly, in Christ, they are brothers, equals, both of them called to mutual love, both of them called to active compassion, both of them called to effective faith--faith that effect a difference in the way they live.

As it stands, Philemon and Onesimus have a broken relationship, a relationship gone pretty badly wrong. Maybe the relationship was spoiled when Onesimus ran away. Maybe the relationship was spoiled when Philemon did not treat Onesimus well. Maybe the relationship was spoiled from the beginning, by the very social structures of slavery. But whatever the reason is, their relationship has gone wrong, and they have to decide what to do about it. In the ordinary course of things, Roman law would take over, and the relationship as master and slave would disintegrate in punishment and beating and even the threat of the death penalty for Onesimus. But Paul is calling these two to go beyond the ordinary course of things, to do an extraordinary thing, to take that broken relationship and to let God's grace give them strength to reshape and rework and re-create that relationship into something new.

And what fascinates me about this story of Philemon and Onesimus is the way it invites us to look at our social arrangements, our public relationships--not as masters and slaves, of course, not in our time--but our arrangements of consumers and producers, workers and employers, haves and have-nots, who's in and who's out--the story invites us to look at our social arrangements and ask how we might live into them differently, how we might take those outward forms and transform them with a vision of equality and mutuality and right relationship in Christ. Philemon and Onesimus challenge us to think how we might live in society and yet change society by re-creating the very most basic relationships in which we live every day.

And I think the key to that transformation is given to us in the Gospel reading today. Jesus says, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple." Jesus says, "Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."

Now at first that seems awfully harsh--how could Jesus, who always taught about God's love, be calling his disciples to hate? Well, it may help to know that Luke is depicting Jesus here as using a figure of speech, a rhetorical device, that was common enough in the Aramaic of Jesus' time, but which sounds a little strange to speakers of American English today. In Aramaic, if you wanted to emphasize the importance of a choice, you didn't just recommend your preference, you outright rejected its opposite. You didn't just say "Prefer x"; you said "Hate y."

And that is precisely what Jesus is doing here. Jesus isn't really telling us that we must feel a deep and settled hatred against our families, that we must have anger and antipathy towards possessions, that we must heap contempt and vilification upon our own lives, if we want to be his disciples. What he is saying is that the relationship of being a disciple comes first, and that all the other relationships we have in life--relationships with family, relationships with possessions, relationships in society, relationship with ourselves--all the other relationships we have in life must be made in the light of that first relationship with Jesus and his Way.

Now at first that may seem terribly exclusive--Jesus first, and everything else a distant second. But in the wonderful paradox of grace, putting relationship with Jesus first becomes expandingly inclusive. The unexpected good news of this Gospel is that when we choose discipleship first, when we put relationship with Jesus before every other relationship, then God gives every relationship back to us--but God gives them in a new way. Just as Philemon received Onesimus not as a slave but as a brother, so Jesus' disciples receive family, possessions, even life, not as ends in themselves, but as occasions and instruments and ways to show God's love. It is when we put our relationship with God in Christ first that we begin to see the dimensions of Christ's love and compassion and action in relationships we have in trying to offer guidance to teenage children, or in caring for aging parents, or in spending our money on goods and services that bring dignity to the workers and caring to the earth, or in dealing with an annoying co-worker, or in taking action to redress injustices in our communities, or in finding a way through grief or depression, or in giving to churches and charities, or in showing love in whatever way we know love needs to be shown right now. The good news for us today is that God gives us grace to take our broken relationships and heal them--to take our good relationships and make them better--by reforming and reshaping and re-creating them in the image and the power of God's own love for us.

And that is what we're all about today. On this Rally Sunday, as we start up a whole new year of doing all our regular churchy stuff, we are reminded that it is all about the relationships: how our relationship with Jesus renews and restores and re-creates our relationship with everything else. So let's be in relationship, to make this a year when we can all be shaped and formed and growing in God!