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The Potter and Confession
In Nikos Kazantzakis' novel Christ Recrucified, there is a scene in which four men from the village confess their sins to one another in the presence of the pope. One of the men, Michelis, cries out, "How can God let us live on the earth? Why doesn't he kill us to purify creation?"
"Because, Michelis," the pope answers, "God is a potter; he works in mud."
Confession is a paradox. We want to be strong, yet the gospel tells us that God's power works best in weakness. The word humility means "from the earth." Humility has a way of knocking us down a peg and making us more earthy, more ordinary, more real - all in order to build us up.
Frederick Buechner, a Presbyterian minister and author, put it this way:
"The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from."
In faith,
Pastor Tim
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