Anyone here own an animal? A pet? Or let me put that better than “pet owner:” Any pet parents here? Pet partners?
[Give people time to answer.]
True pet lovers know that animals have a kind of freaky sense about people. They seem not only to sense if someone is afraid of them or not (they smell fear, we say). They can also instinctively sense a person’s spirit –whether that person is friend or foe, approachable or not, even happy or sad. Have you ever noticed how cats like to cuddle up to those strangers or visitors who don’t like cats? That’s SO cat!
Some people just attract animals. When a person with a kind and loving spirit approaches an animal, that animal instinctively knows that this person is a gentle, amiable human being, non-threatening, and loving.
How does the animal know this?
Is it scent? Some would say it is. Or is it intuition? Others would say it is definitely that. Or is it a combination of both? Perhaps scent and intuition are somehow bound within the complexity of our sensory bodies and intuitive minds.
Of course, we all know the power of scent. Even as well-developed as we are as human beings, we still have a keen sense of smell that provokes in us not just like or dislike of one scent or another. Smell stirs memory. Smell influences mood. So, when we approach someone and get an uncomfortable, unexplainable feeling….are we sensing something about that person’s emotions? That person’s spirit? Are we “smelling” danger?
Perhaps we’ll never be sure if it’s the nose that knows or our intuitive skill. But for sure, we can sense a person’s spirit, almost as if that person exudes some kind of fragrant aroma that either attracts or repels.
We also give off a kind of odorous spirit, especially when we pray. And God can sense the kind of spirit we are exuding no matter how far we think we’ve wandered.
Do you have a sweet, sweet spirit? Or what about us? Ever wonder what kind of scent this congregation is giving off today?
Come on, you all know the song: “There’s a sweet, sweet spirit in this place….” Sing along. There you go.
The Jewish people believed so much in the power of scent that incense became a very important part of Temple life. In fact, when you smelled that sweet incense, it was supposed to represent the kind of prayers that were rising up to God from inside that place.
So, you could say, the more prayers, the sweeter the spirit that rose from that place, or another!
In the Catholic church, there’s yet another smell-exuding object you can frequently find, besides incense, that has to do with prayer and smell. Anyone know what it is?
[See if anyone knows.]
I happen to have one of them here. [Hold it up.]
It’s a rosary, yes.
Anyone know how a rosary is made? A real rosary, that is!
It’s made with dried rose petals (or other dried flowers).
You take rose petals (often from a funeral or wedding), and you would mash them up and roll them between your fingers, until you had created tiny little balls. These would harden and become the “beads” of the rosary. But it’s organic material! So, every time your fingers massage the rosary beads in prayer, they release the scent of roses.
The living scent of roses emerges from the dead flowers, just as though they were still alive. And they remind us not only of our prayers, but of the promise of life with Jesus. Each rosary bead represents a momentous event in the life of that person praying “the rosary,” and so as the smell is released, we remember that wedding or funeral or festival or romance.
The more we pray and release that pungent smell of roses, the more our spirit begins to smell sweet and pleasing to God.
Prayer is the smell of life in Jesus.
Just as our hands lovingly embrace the rosary in prayer to God, so too have God’s divine fingers formed us in God’s own image. We are the work of God’s hands. We are that dry, dead dust that God scooped up from the created earth, and formed us into something called human. We are the beloved, revived by God’s own breath, sweetened with God’s own spirit, and called good. We are God’s form-ation. God’s adorn-ation.
When I was visiting West Virginia, I came across a pottery shop, in which each piece of pottery carried this tag: “Formed by the Potter’s Loving Hand.” Each and every piece was personally signed and lovingly made.
We too are formed by the Potter’s loving hand. Made in God’s image. Our lives are signed by the Holy Spirit upon our birth, and re-signed each and every time we pray.
When our lives start becoming dull and dry and dead, God revives us again, molding us, kneading us, re-forming us into that beautiful image, all the while releasing the sweetness of God’s original breath.
For when we are formed by God, when we allow God to mold us and remake us, we exude the sweetness of God’s holy spirit within us.
What does that kind of sweet, sweet spirit look like? Sound like?
You. And you. And you. And you.
It sounds like a people in prayer.
Today, as you come forward to the altar, receive the anointing of the Rose of Sharon. The Rose of Sharon is named for the Song of Solomon, Chapter 2:1, in which the speaker declares, “I am the rose of Sharon.” And in Isaiah, who says, “The desert shall bloom like the rose.” (Isaiah 65:10).
This is the beauty of Jesus –who can bring drink from the desert, water from the driest well, and life from death.
Like the rosary….the Divine Potter molds us into a prayer that reflects the beauty of God, not just the kind of prayer you say, but the kind of prayer you live, so that when people meet you today, tomorrow, and every day, they’ll look at you and say, “What a sweet spirit!”
What an awesome God!
Based on the Story Lectionary
Major Text
The Potter and the Clay (Jeremiah 18)
Jesus’ Healing of a Man Born Blind with Clay and Saliva (John 8:56-10:21)
Minor Text
Creation by the Hand of God from Dirt and Water and the Breath of the Holy Spirit (Genesis 1,2)
Moses and the Tent of Meeting During the Exodus (Exodus 33)
The Hallel Psalms: 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118
Psalm 40: From Out of the Mud
Psalm 103: He Remembers, We Are Dust
Psalm 139: You Formed Me in the Womb
The Potter (Isaiah 29:16)
The Cleansing of the Heart by God (Ezekiel 36:24-27)
Jesus’ Healing of a Blind Man (Mark 8)
Paul’s Eyes are Blinded and Then Opened on the Damascus Road (Acts 9)
The Potter and the Clay (Paul’s Letter to the Romans 9)
The Potter and the Clay (Jeremiah)
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
Image Exegesis: Dust and Water, Prayer and Spirit
The image of the Potter is a beautiful one. We see God as divine Potter for the first time in Genesis 2, and that image is repeated many times in scripture, including in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Paul, and also with Jesus, as He heals a blind man with a poultice of clay.
In the Jewish tradition, a mass formed of clay is a golem. After it is inbreathed, it becomes something more. For us, we exude a sweetened spirit, when we are renewed with the sweet breath of God!
The best way to understand the metaphor of the potter is to examine clay (unbaked). When clay is moist, it is moldable. And no matter how dry it gets, if you add water to it, it will be malleable yet again.
If it hardens too much, it cracks and breaks. But the moment you moisten it….it revives and can be reshaped. It also gives us a signature clay smell.
Smell is released by the handling of the clay.
In the case of the rosary, it is the potter redux. But this time, the one handling is us –our prayers are a way of allowing God to revive us. As we massage the beads, God massages our soul. As the smell of roses envelopes us, we are reminded of the smell of Life surrounding us by the One True God.
A true rosary is made of entirely organic material –rose petals, rolled and pressed.
What other metaphors can you think of to describe the actions of the Potter? Of Prayer.