Jars of Clay

"Jars of Clay" No Costumes Allowed 2 Corinthians 4:1-18 Sunday AM, October 4, 2020 Booneville First UMC Scripture Text: 2 Corinthians 4:1-18 1 Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2 Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. 6 For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," t made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. 13 It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken." Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, 14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. 15 All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. 16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. Introduction to the series Today we begin studying a sermon series through the month of October. October is that kind of month that a lot of us enjoy experiencing decorating for Halloween, taking our kids, and dressing them up in costumes, and, I suspect, there are even some adults that like to dress up in costumes. But what I want to talk about in this sermon series is that as Christians, we should put aside the pretense of wearing costumes in our spiritual lives. During our last sermon series Us vs Them, I talked about the problem of hypocrisy. It's a word that the world is very familiar with and is ready to apply to all of us who were followers of Jesus. And there was a sense that I think we all feel this pressure of not wanting to a hypocrite because we think we as Christians are supposed to be flawless. We think that we should never suffer from problems and that we should always be successful. And so we hide our weaknesses not only to ourselves but to each other. We hide our sins. We hide our difficulties behind a facade. We work to create the illusion that we have it all together in our lives. But these are just costumes that we are putting on and pretending to be something that we are not. This past week the children of our preschool got to enjoy fairytale day. And so a number the children dressed up. We had a number of princesses at our church and let me say that they were dressed up in costumes and every single one of them was exactly what they were they were dressed to be. But it doesn't work like that in our Christian Life. I know we are in the month of October and will start to see costumes for sale on Halloween for children as well. As well as for those that haven't quite given up wearing Halloween costumes as adults. But what I want us to do this month, spiritually speaking, is to move away from pretense. I believe that honesty to ourselves and to each other builds up our community and that our vulnerability makes us stronger and shockingly gives glory to God. My intent is for us to become a community that adopts a policy of no costumes allowed where we can love and encourage each other in much more powerful ways. Jars of Clay Looking at our scripture text, we see that this Paul describes us as Jars of Clay in verse 7. And that is a very interesting image for us to play around with. In fact, I spent the better part of the week just seeing what other pastors and what other commentators had to say about jar of clay and why Paul might have used this image of jar of clay to describe us. After study and reflecting on what it means to be jars of clay, I realized a couple of things about jars of clay. What does Paul mean by referring to us as jars of clay? We get a hint in verse 7. 2 Corinthians 4: (NIV): 7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. I realized that jars of clay need to be filled and that they are fragile. So let's play with this image this morning of jars of clay how they are made to be filled and how they are also very fragile. Filled and Fragile Now, I tried to imagine across the thousands of years ago when human beings first discovered how to make pottery. And so here's what I kind of imagined happened. It was a practice of everybody walking around on Earth at that time before pottery was created that everybody would hold stuff in their hands that they wanted to hold on to. Well, as you can imagine you get very many things in your hand and it becomes very difficult to hold them. And so I can imagine that there was some bright man or woman just hanging out in the yard probably watching the kids playing in the mud. And they look over at Young Eddie and Eddie's doing like he always does in the mud. He's making himself a long hot dog. And then he or she looks over to Sweet Susie and sees her make a flat piece of clay and deciding to make a crown out of it spreads it on top of her head and when she pulls it off and has the kind of a curve on it that suddenly eureka hits at that moment and realization hit that clay could hold something. And after experimenting with it a bit realizes that the clay has to be dry. And now they have something that will hold all of his stuff. All one has to do is make a jar and it can be filled up with stuff. But I'm sure they found out quite quickly how fragile clay is so some intrepid entrepreneur decides to build a barn in town and starts manufacturing pottery to replace all those broken pots. And that is also how Pottery Barn was born. I'm being silly of course, but isn't it true that pottery was made to hold things? So when Paul calls us jars of clay he immediately tells us what we are holding. And what we are holding on to is the all surpassing power of God. And so what we need to hear and understand I think in this image is that we are filled and that we are fragile and those two words are not disconnected in any way but in fact a reminder of how weak we are but yet how powerful we are. The Biblical paradox of when I am weak then I am strong, because of the power of God. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10) Reliant And I think that's where we go astray. Is that we forget that our strength in fact is not found in ourselves. Our strength is found in fact in the truth that we have the treasure of God in us and that treasure is in fact God's all surpassing power. And what's more? Is that God has created us in such a way that we are completely reliant on God's power. We are completely reliant on God's power and this is by design. This is something that God designed and wanted us to experience in our lives is knowing that we are utterly dependent upon Him. Paul says elsewhere it is so that God may be glorified not us. Later in this letter in 2 Corinthians 12:9 he says, 9 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. (2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV) So even though weak, God created us to be that reliant on God's power. Renewed And yet there was a further truth that we need to hear from this passage as well. We actually read it two times in the passage and they bookend our passage. It starts in verse 1: Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. And then again in verse 16: 16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. God promises to us that even though we are fragile. He promises to renew us. And the interesting thing about that is is that is what in fact makes us powerful and makes us beautiful. It's what makes our lives special in the Lord because of what God is doing in the process of renewing us. Kintsugi Several years ago why I became aware of a Japanese art form of kintsugi. It's a very interesting one you perhaps may have heard of it before it is the Japanese art form of kintsugi Kintsugi is the combination of two words "kin" which means "golden" and "tsugi" which means joinery. So kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold. Or some other precious metal like silver or platinum. And it reflects a philosophy to repair rather than discard and treat the breakage and repair as a part of the history of the object rather than something to disguise. I have a couple of John Wesley bobbleheads in my office and I'm bad to accidentally knock him over even though they are very fragile. And one of my bobbleheads I turned over and broke and threw him away and came back over the weekend and found that Dana had pulled him out of the trash. She had fixed him up and she put a sign saying you can't keep a good man down. Well, when it comes to pottery that same principle is present in kintsugi. And I just want to share with you some images of pottery that was broken and repaired using this process. First of all, we have a beautiful bowl and you can see the cracks in it have been filled with gold and it's become almost an abstract kind of artwork on it. The way the cracks look here is another bowl that we see that it too has been prepared that chip in the upper left-hand corner. It has been filled in with gold and has become quite beautiful. Here is another piece of pottery made into a heart. There's something quite poetic about a heartbroken and yet this has been repaired and so we get a sense of through this Japanese art form exactly what God is doing in us that we need to not run or flee from our scars or our weaknesses or our failures, but we need to embrace and glorify God for how he is lifted us up and restored us and made us whole again in a way that in this world allows us even more effectively to glorify God to allow us to share a testimony of restoration and hope. Know also that this process of perfection: we will one day be completed and we will be not as we are, broken vessels, but we will be the created children of God that Jesus Christ intended for us to be. The kind of people of God that we can become because he laid down his life and took his scars which really belong to us and took our sin, and rose again victorious through the resurrection. Paul includes this image of the death of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of Jesus Christ that we read about white strongly In this passage. A Question. So, dear friend, I want to invite you to ponder for just a moment. Are you tired of wearing that facade and pretending that you have everything together? Are you tired of wearing this costume? I mean we come by this honestly. I know when I was growing up I was raised that when I came to the church I would wear all my best clothes I even had shoes that were called Sunday shoes. You didn't wear them any other day of the week except on Sunday. We were taught to have our hair combed and I can slip down and to smell nice and to talk nice and not too loud and to be very Pious and respectful in all that we do and for the most part, I did that almost all my life except for that time that Craig Bain and I decided during evening worship decided to sneak from one side of the church to the other by crawling through the baptistery. And unfortunately, we were a little loud and got caught by a man in the choir who looked over his shoulder and saw us crawling there on our knees. But we want to talk about moving from putting on our best face to putting on an honest face for church. After all, the church is a hospital for the sick. It is after all the place that the broken come to be repaired and to be filled by God's surpassing power in our lives. So dear friend, are you ready to know the peace and that power in your life? If so, then I ask that you would pray with me.