Last Thursday about 4:00 p.m., I stepped into the Fellowship Hall, otherwise known as AmeriCliff Field, to catch a ball game.  One of the young ladies from Christ for the Nations was teaching the After School Ministry kids how to play baseball.  To ease your mind, it was a rubber bat and the balls were Styrofoam.  Even a homerun slam wouldn’t have flown further than about three feet the other side of where the piano normally stands.  There were three chairs marking the bases and a home plate of sorts.  The playing field was a remarkably green polyester for this late in the summer. 

The teacher was the pitcher for both teams, evenly divided between the kids.  The first young man stepped up to the plate and when the teacher tossed the very first pitch of the game he caught it late in his swing, whacking it hard, straight down the third base line.  That is also where he ran, straight down the third base line.  Everyone was screaming while the pitcher killed time by acting like she was having a hard time getting ready to throw him out.  At the same time she pointed at first base and told him to run there, which he did, straight across the pitcher’s mound.  It was pretty cool. 

Then, the cutest little girl got her turn at bat and three times in a row swung at the air as the ball crossed the plate.  By now, it was obvious to the teacher that she was working with some 1^st – 3^rd graders who’d never held a ball, glove or a bat much less played even one game of baseball in their lives.  So, she stopped the game, and very patiently and graciously (read: non-condescendingly) explained the rules, “You run to first, then second, then third and then home.”  Then, she resumed the game with these remarkable words.  With the little girl, her first strikeout of the game, still standing at home plate, not knowing she’d used up her three chances already, the pitcher-teacher yelled to everyone, “Let’s give her one more chance.”  And, on the fourth pitch, the one she shouldn’t have gotten if the teacher had played strictly by the rules, the little girl slammed the ball hard, made it to first and helped load all the bases.  It was pretty cool at AmericaCliff Field last Thursday.

I rarely get emotional about baseball.  There are very few things in life that don’t make me emotional but baseball is one of them.  I spent my entire Little League career in left field bored to tears because no one was big enough to hit a ball that far.  Somewhere back up the line, baseball and I had an unceremonious parting of the ways and I’ve saved my emotions for other things where I actually get up at bat now and then.  Last Thursday though, I stood there with this toad-sized lump in my throat as I realized I had just witnessed the most remarkable parable of grace.  The teacher didn’t suspend the rules, mind you.  She didn’t say the rules didn’t matter.  In fact, she made certain to stop the game because the rules were so important.  She also seemed to rule by this standard, that the people playing the game were at least as important as the rules of the game.  So, she said, “Let’s give her one more chance.” 

One more chance.  Where would be without those people who gave us, and still do give us, one more chance?  Where would we be without a God who gave us, and still gives us, one more chance?  And, where would we be without a God who stopped the game long enough to explain the way things work, even before we realized we’d already had our three strikes?

So, God says to Jeremiah, “‘go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words.’”  Let’s stop the game and revisit the rules, Jeremiah.  If I’m hearing this story well, I think I hear God about to give Israel one more chance.  He’s going to announce it through his player-coach, Jeremiah.  It’s not that the rules don’t matter.  Rules matter because they define the boundaries of true relationships.  Eventually, no rules, no relationship.  But, because relationships are about people and, in this case, people and their God, it’s important to stop the game long enough to explain the basics.

That’s why we say to our children when we discipline them, “This is going to hurt me far more than it’s going to hurt you.”  When we’re on the receiving end, that rates about as high with us as our dad saying to us, somewhere during the fourteenth hour of a sixteen hour vacation drive on a long, hot summer day, long before advantage miles and McDonald’s every other mile and with the backsides of our sweaty legs glued to the rubber seat covers, “if you two don’t stop screaming back there I’ll stop this car and give you something to scream about!”  We never believed our parents when they tried to tell us how our pain would rate compared to theirs.  But, it was true, wasn’t it?  We know that now as parents and our children will know it when they are parents.  It hurts because we care.  It hurts because we are putting our hand to the backside of someone we love enough to die for.  And, we don’t want them to die just because they didn’t know the rules. 

This pottery lesson is pretty graphic imagery.  I don’t know how emotional Jeremiah got.  But, going down to see the potter work his clay on the wheel wasn’t exactly like a trip to an arts and crafts fair on the square in Santa Fe in early October with aspen turning yellow in the cool breeze and the smell of fresh tortillas baking nearby.  God is saying to Jeremiah, “I want you to get a good visual of how I can and will deal with Israel if they don’t start paying attention to the rules that were made, in the first place, to keep them in the game.” 

So, what were the rules?  It might surprise you.  It might surprise all of us.  If you read through the prophets you get this picture.  It seems that what had God most concerned was not that the children of Israel weren’t making it to church often enough or turning in their tithe on the fifth instead of the first, or even that they were finding ways to work a this-isn’t-personal-it’s-just-business deal under the table at work before they sat at the table at Deacons’ meeting. 

As significant as any matter of infidelity might be, those issues, like any moral issues, were merely symptoms of a greater illness.  What was really troubling to God was that the children of Israel had stopped depending on God for “protection and prosperity.  The nation chose to form unholy alliances with foreign powers and worship foreign gods.  The result was a breakdown of society as a whole.  The people became insecure and anxious about their future.  The violated the boundaries God had established for moral order and general welfare.  They failed to do justice, to love mercy and walk humbly with God,” as the prophet Micah would say (George Mason, “Shaping Up,” The Wilshire Pulpit, Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, TX, Sunday, September 13, 1998). 

Is that really possible?  Possible for a nation to turn from God?  We all know it’s possible for a person, an individual, to turn from God.  But, a whole nation?  Can an entire nation come to the place where it is more reliant on its own wit and prowess and its politicians and its relationship with other nations to achieve its moral or political agenda than it is on God?  So much so that, no matter what percentage of its population attends worship services at least three out of every four Sundays, it has forgotten how much it needs and God and becomes totally self-reliant, for all practical purposes, a pagan nation?  How does that work?  Does it have to do with whom they elect as President? 

Oops!  How’d we get into politics?  My job is dangerous enough because I talk about religion all the time.  Religion and politics?  Should we go there?  Well, truth is, looks like we’re going to be dragged there whether we want to go there or not.  So, since we’re already there, well, let’s have the conversation.

One very prominent Baptist preacher says that, “‘It is the responsibility of every political conservative and every Christian . . . to get serious about re-electing President Bush’” (Robert Marus, “Christian leaders denounce Falwell, Robertson in New York Times ad,” Associated Baptist Press News, August 31, 2004).  Is he saying that you can’t be Christian and vote for anyone but a Republican and that, if anyone but a Republican is in office we are less than a Christian nation?  Then, there are those who say that the moral issues of racial and sexual equality and poverty and taxation and war and anyone’s life being just as valuable as the life of the unborn, that those issues matter every bit as much as any others.  So, which is it?  Is God a Republican or a Democrat?  We’ll get back to that. 

First, let’s be sure we understand what God was saying to Israel through the potter and his wheel to Jeremiah and then through Jeremiah to Israel.  These two things at least.  First, just as the potter can do what he wants with the clay, so God can do what God wants with any nation.  God is sovereign.  God has the final say in nation building.  “‘Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the LORD.  Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.’”

I can’t imagine anyone, at least not anyone here in this room, arguing with God over that one.  If hurricanes the size of Texas don’t remind us of anything, they remind us that we’re not in charge.  That we’re all just leasing space at bargain basement prices and that the lease will run out.  That God is sovereign, which means that he gets to make the rules and decide whether we run to first base first instead of third base first should be somewhat self-evident. 

And, God can use anything, anytime, anywhere to shape his people.  If we live by the rules, we benefit from living by the rules.  If we don’t live by the rules, we pay the penalty.  If we smoke six packs a day and we get emphysema and have to wear a portable oxygen pack to our weekly chemotherapy sessions because you also have lung cancer, honesty demands that we have to ask ourselves if we are not where we are, not because God doesn’t love us, but because God defined the rules of molecular structure that allow for the corrosive affect of nicotine on lung tissue and we chose not to live by the rules.  God is sovereign and if we choose to live outside the boundaries, then we have to also live, or die, with the penalty of living outside the boundaries.  And, I can say the same thing about obesity and sexuality and unhealthy work habits and alcohol and, well, you fill in the blank.  Some of what we call God’s punishment is nothing more than the natural consequence of our choice to live outside the boundaries.  God is sovereign.  He gets to make the rules.

God was also asking Jeremiah to watch the way the potter took the clay that had fallen apart on the wheel and made something else out of it.  Even after we’ve broken the rules, God still rules.  So that, “‘if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it.’”  God wanted Jeremiah to remind the people about who gets to make the rules.  God’s also wanted Jeremiah to tell the people that they were more than just a lump of clay and he was going to give them a second chance.

A lump of clay has no say in what it becomes, any more than the ocean swells have no choice which way the winds push them.  But, we are not just lumps of clay.  We are God’s people.  We have the choice to participate with God in his purposes for us.  We are not just at the mercy of who runs for office and who gets elected.  It is not true that you can only vote for one person and still claim to be a Christian.  In fact, if we want to talk about politics, then this is what I would say.  The most Christian thing you can do is vote.  Go to the polls and express your Christian conscience.  Then, do more.  Participate in the process.  Speak truth to power and authority and give witness to your higher authority.  Then, trust God, love your neighbor and wherever you have power work for justice.

We are responsible for participating with God in his purpose for our lives.  A good place to begin with that participation, in fact, the only place to begin is with what the Bible calls repentance.  “‘Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.’”  We can keep running outside the base lines, and running to third base first instead of first base first if we choose.  God is sovereign and in his sovereignty he has chosen to give us the most sacred of all rights, the right to choose.  But, because we don’t make the rules, we also don’t control the consequences of our choices, if we choose evil.  Repentance is nothing less than a choice to stop being a god unto ourselves, and to choose to let God be our God.  And, if you’re wondering where to start with that, again, the prophet Micah has some good words of advice.  God “has showed you, O man, what is good.  And what does the LORD require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).