Gods Handicrafts

People who have known me for any length of time have probably noticed that I frequently make use of analogies when trying to explain something. At various times I’ve described my job of managing master data for my company as being “like trying to herd cats” and I frequently relate business documents call “Bills of Material” to cooking recipes.   I find analogies to be useful communication tools because they provide a link between the familiar and the unfamiliar.  In researching and writing this mediation, I found that my reliance on analogies puts me in pretty good company.  Analogies are frequently used in the Bible.   In several instances, Jesus is quoted as saying that “the Kingdom of God is like…” something, the mustard seed in one well-known passage.  The Apostle Paul uses the human body as an analogy to explain how the different members of the church are all linked to become the Body of Christ.   Our Old Testament Bible verse this morning speaks of God as being like a potter.  Isaiah says “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”  In fact, we might even consider that God had this in mind, when he made Adam for we’ve been told that Adam was made “from the dust of the earth.”  Recently, this allowed God to take a few prideful scientists down a peg.  It seems that several bio-physicists walked up to God and said “God, we’ve now reached the point where we can clone people and do many things that formerly would have been considered miraculous, so we’ve decided that we no longer need the concept of a Creator. 

God listened with patience and kindness, and then said “Very well, how about this: Let’s you and me have us a man-making contest.”  To which the scientists replied “OK! Great!”  But God added, “Now we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old days, with Adam.”

The scientists said, “Sure, that’s not a problem” and one of them bent down and grabbed himself a big handful of dirt.  God said “Oh, no.  You go make your own dirt!”

All of the illustrations I’ve mentioned refer to everyday things, well known to most of us, helping the listener relate to new, perhaps unfamiliar concepts  by comparing them to familiar things.  But in thinking about the concept of God as a potter, it seemed to me that while this is a valid analogy, it may not offer the best way of thinking about how we relate to God in every situation.  The problem I have with it is that it appears to treat us only as individuals, not as “the people of God.”  Now I doubt that Isaiah intended to suggest such a limitation.  And I certainly would never suggest that we can’t relate to God as individuals, in fact, we must. But the comparison that only considers that relationship does not help us understand what we experience when we become a Christian and join others in “being the church.”  Paul’s use of the body as a model may also cause us, at times, to overlook the element of community in our Christian relationships.  If we think in terms of the old song, “The ankle bone connected to the shin bone, the shin bone connect to the knee bone…” and so on, then it appears that each part of the body can only relate directly to one or two other parts.  Paul encourages us to see the interrelationship within the body by noting that one part of the body may affect all of the other parts but perhaps there is still another  way to illustrate this truth.

So, in addition to the potter or the human body as an analogy, can I offer any other analogy to make things clear?  What other concept might demonstrate how God relates to His people?  Given all of the handicraft work that has been going on at our house lately, I would suggest that we might think of God as being “like a quilter.”  You see, when making a patchwork quilt, each piece must be prepared individually, then the various bits are assembled into the quilt.  But, unlike a jigsaw puzzle, which will only fit together in one way, the individual pieces of a quilt can be assembled in a number of different ways to produce different final designs.  This means that the relationship of each piece of fabric to all of the other pieces becomes critically important and that the beauty and functionality of the final product is much more than the sum of the individual parts.  One of the things that amazes me about the “art” of quilting is the way that materials can be combined to produce differing designs.  Change a color, change the orientation of shapes, change the how colors or the printed pattern line up or are offset...any one or any combination of these changes will result in a totally different quilt being created.

In the church, in our relationship to other members and to God, we see this same effect.  While individually we may have much to offer, it is the joining of our skills and talents in ministry that the church reaches its best potential, and has the greatest opportunity to impress and attract those that see us as a church.  It is in all of the ways that we relate to the other members of our church family that the character of the church is formed. 

 Let me go off on a bit of a tangent to examine my proposed analogy a bit further… I recently read a book by Thomas Cahill called “Desire of the Everlasting Hills”.  Cahill’s purpose in this book is to examine the question “Did he (Jesus) make a difference?”  To you and to me that is about the silliest question imaginable.  But the author doesn’t disagree with us.  In fact, he sets out to make the case that Jesus DID make a difference.  Cahill does this by describing, “The World Before and After Jesus” and that is the book’s sub-title. 

Through an examination of each of the Gospels, Cahill offers his thoughts on how these particular writings became part of the New Testament. In doing this he offers what I found to be some very interesting insights.  One in particular stood out in my reading.  Many conservative Christians will point to Paul’s letters as justification for denying women the right to hold leadership roles in the church.  But Cahill points to passages that seem to cast serious doubts on such interpretations.  Citing Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, Cahill points to chapter 11, verses 11 and 12 -- “Nevertheless, in the Lord [and here Cahill notes that Paul means from the Christian point of view] woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man (because Eve came from Adam’s side), so man is now born of woman -- and all things are from God”.  Cahill goes on to say that equality ”is Paul’s subject: what he is doing here is take the Genesis account of the Creation, which was the…Jewish (justification for the) inequality of women, and turning it on its head by subtly reminding his readers that even the Messiah needed a mother.”  This, Cahill states, is perhaps the strongest “affirmation of sexual equality in the whole of the Bible”.

Cahill also points to Paul’s letter to the Galatian church, writing of chapter 6, verses 27 to 29 “…the cosmic Christ, whose glory knocked Paul from his horse on the road to Damascus, who sums up in himself the whole of the created universe, eventually leads Paul to thoughts that no one has ever had before – thoughts about the equality of all human beings before God.  In this ancient world of masters and slaves, conquerors and conquered, a world that articulates at every turn, precisely and publicly, who’s on top, who’s on the bottom, Paul writes the unthinkable to (the) Galatians, who may just have been goofy enough to receive it: ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’” How close were you listening?  Did you notice how Paul breaks the pattern of “x OR y” to say “male AND female”?  Cahill suggests that this is intentional on Paul’s part.  He believes that Paul means to refer once again to the Creation account in Genesis where the Bible says “Male and female created He them” and to contradict the interpretation that this not only identifies men and women as different but says that women are naturally and necessarily subordinate to men.

OK, I called this little book review a tangent to my original discussion.  So how do I tie it back to the beginning, to my discussion of analogy?  My answer is that in the two passages I mentioned, it is Paul’s intention to identify EVERYONE who believes in Christ as a member of the Body of Christ.  No one is excluded because of language. No one is excluded because of economic status. No one is excluded because of education.  No one is excluded because of the religion of his or her parents.  And no one is excluded because of gender.  As each person confesses their faith in Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, they become a new person and a new part of the Body of Christ.  It is then up to each Christian to find out where and how they will fit into God’s Patchwork Quilt.  Will they be that brightly-colored square that draws the eye to the quilt but makes the viewer take particular notice of just that one bright block?  Or will they be part of the “field”, quietly providing strength and substance to the whole?  Will they act as a patch of new cloth, sewn to old fabric, causing the whole to fray and tear?  Or will they happily become one with the old fabric, perhaps part of the border, holding the body together so that the quilt will not fray?  Will they seek to change the rest of the quilt to better fit their desires.    Will they seek to limit other members in regard to the roles they feel these others should take?  Or, will they try to discern God’s plan, to understand how He wants each person to fit into the quilt that His plan will create. In fact, we can consider that, in our new analogy, God has several “quilts” in production all of the time.  At one moment He may wish us to be among the bright colors of His quilt, perhaps at the center of the design.  In another time, or in another place, He may plan for us to be part of a strong background, supporting the pieces of the quilt that He moves to the center of the design. 

Now, each of us can choose to accept the role that God has laid out for us or we can try to define our own role.  But in the Bible, Isaiah tells us how that will turn out. In chapter 45 verse 9 he says ‘‘Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker... Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ “  In a contest between our own will and God’s, I think we all realize that God may allow us to win the battles, but that only means that we will ultimately lose the war.   I encourage you to prayerfully find your place in God’s quilt.  God has a role, a ministry, for each of us in the Patchwork Quilt that He is making; the quilt we call the church.

The title of Cahill’s book is taken from a verse in Genesis where Jacob blesses his son Joseph.  “The blessings of your father are stronger than the blessings of the eternal mountains, the desires of the everlasting hills; may they be on the head of Joseph, on the brow of him who was set apart from his brothers.”