Jesus Loves the Cracked Pots, Part II
I begin my homily this (evening, morning) in what might seem a strange way. I would like to tell you about a Hindu fable. Fortunately, I think I can get away with it because our Church does teach that insights into the revelation of God can come from non-Christian sources.
There was a poor peasant in India, who lived in a small hut with no water. He frequently had to travel for several miles with two twenty-gallon clay pots fixed on a stand that went over his shoulders. The pots leaked and so each trip to the river did not yield forty gallons of water. But the poor peasant could not afford new clay pots so he did the best he could under the circumstances.
One day to his surprise, he discovered that his cracked pots were magical. They could speak and they did to him on this day. But the cracked pots were very sad and depressed. They poured out their sorrows to him, apologizing to him that if they were not so leaky, the peasant’s life would not be so hard.
But the peasant loved the cracked pots. He told them that they accomplished much more than they realized. For the peasant had decided to plant flowers on the dirt road to the river. Each time he fetched water, the leaky pots watered the flowers and made them beautiful. So even cracked pots, he said, could bring joy and beauty.
This Hindu fable captures the essence of today’s Gospel according to Matthew. For Jesus also loved, and indeed loves in a figurative sense, the cracked pots; all of us, even some of us crackpots. The Gospel this weekend is about the calling of Matthew as an apostle. Matthew was a tax collector. To say that tax collectors in the time of the human Jesus were despised is to put it mildly. In fact, they were regarded as traitors to the Jewish nation.
In the time of Jesus, laws and regulations did not bind tax collectors as tax collectors are today. Tax collecting was a mafia-style protection racket. Tax collectors were paid very little by the Romans, but could collect more if they gouged the public, keeping the difference between the levies of the empire and what the tax collectors actually charged ordinary people. The Pharisees, despite their protestations in today’s Gospel, shared in this protection racket; Roman taxes also supported the Jewish temple, in exchange for preaching a docile faith that protected the Roman public order;
In spite of this, Jesus liked to hang out with the despised; not because he approved of their lifestyle, but because, as He said, he came to call sinners, the cracked pots if you will. He did not want to give up on anybody, and he came to call everybody, particularly those in most of need of God’s mercy. As the reading from the prophet Hosea says this morning, God seeks our love and love of one another more than he does ritual sacrifices or pomp and circumstance.
Sinners like Matthew who were drawn to Jesus obviously sensed something. He was offering them a happiness and inner peace that their own exploitive lifestyles were not offering them. As our second reading, the letter of St. Paul to the Romans stresses, life in Jesus brings not financial credit, but the far superior credit that comes when we love God and others.
To bear out this teaching, I offer you a short personal witness given to me by an old friend. At the base of a mountain in Tennessee, there was a boy born to an unwed mother. He had a hard time growing up, because every place he
went, he was always asked the same question, ‘Hey boy, who’s your daddy?’
Whether he was at school, in the grocery store or drug store, people would ask the same question, ‘Who’s your daddy?’ He would hide at recess and lunchtime from other students. He would avoid going into stores because that question hurt him so bad.
When he was about 12 years old, a new preacher came to his church. He would always go in late and slip out early to avoid hearing the question, ‘Who’s your daddy?’
But one day, the new preacher said the benediction so fast that he
got caught and had to walk out with the crowd. Just about the time he got to the back do or, the new preacher, not knowing anything about him, put his hand on his shoulder and asked him, ‘Son who’s your daddy?’
The whole church got deathly quiet. He could feel every eye in the
church looking at him. Now everyone would finally know the answer to the
question, Who’s your daddy?’
This new preacher, though, sensed the situation around him and using
discernment that only the Holy Spirit could give, said the following
to that scared little boy.. ‘Wait a minute! I know who you are! I see the
family resemblance now; You are a child of God.
With that he patted the boy on his shoulder and said, ‘Boy, you’ve
got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.’ With that, the boy smiled for the first time in a long time and walked out the door a changed person. He was never the same again. Whenever anybody asked him, ‘Who’s your Daddy?’ he’d just tell them , ‘I’m a Child of
God.”
Now one could say that if that preacher hadn’t told the boy that he was one of God’s children, he probably never would have amounted to anything. The boy in question was
Ben Hooper, who eventually came one of the most revered governors in the history of the state of Tennessee.
The boy in this story was not by human standards special. But that is really the point; Jesus works with the cracked pots of every age. He works with ordinary people to bring about extraordinary things. The creation of a two thousand year old Church was brought about through Jesus working with ordinary fishermen, tax collectors, and other despised members of the society of his day.
Today as well, Jesus never gives up on any of us. He wants us to move ever closer to him through the model of his life: service-based love of God and one another. He calls us to holiness, to be with him now and in the next life. So even though you are a cracked pot, give of yourself. Dig deeper to support the many services the Church provides to thousands of cracked pots out there. Comfort a friend who in trouble, forgive someone you said you would never forgive, go back and try to heal a relationship that has been broken.
Jesus wants all of us to be with him. By working with him, He is the glue by which are cracks our sealed. We become new and improved vessels of grace, which can be poured out in service to God and others.
Yes, Jesus loves the cracked pots. If we work with him, we too can produce beautiful flowers.