The Potter and the Clay I: Formed in the Image of Love
There is no doubt that God has made us to be a great masterpiece. We are works of his hands, lovingly made to be as precious as possible. “As clay in the hand of the potter — for all his ways are as he pleases — so men are in the hand of him who made them, to give them as he decides” (Sirach 33:13). Each person is uniquely crafted and placed into the world; they are given a special role to play in the great drama of world history. From God’s perspective, everyone plays a major part, although no one has a role as important as that played by Christ.
We might not understand the roles we are called to play. The lives people live can remain hidden from public view and seem to exist outside of the main action of world history. But it is often those parts which are played to the side of normal human observation, away from historical analysis, which have the greatest impact. World leaders do not come out of nowhere; they are influenced by the culture they are raised in, and that culture is made up more by those ignored by history than those who seemingly make it. Even Jesus, who is the hero of God’s drama, has most of his life hidden from our view. It would be foolish to say that those years untouched by the Gospels were meaningless. He became the only perfectly realized man in world history. He had to live, as with most of humanity, in relative obscurity; he had to do so to assume and experience life as we normally experience it. If all he did was known and made clear, he would not have been able to assume solidarity with the outcasts of history as he did (and this explains, even more, the golden silence of the Word of God in death; for it was on Holy Saturday that Jesus joined himself into solidarity with the true outcasts of humanity, the forgotten dead).
“In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earthenware, and some for noble use, some for ignoble. If any one purifies himself from what is ignoble, then he will be a vessel for noble use, consecrated and useful to the master of the house, ready for any good work. So shun youthful passions and aim at righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call upon the Lord from a pure heart” (2Tim 2:20-22). We have been placed in the world for a noble mission. To take it up and follow it, we must turn away from our sinful, individualistic ways and open ourselves up to the purifying grace of God’s love. We are all called to a noble purpose. It can only be realized when we cooperate with the Holy Spirit, who, as the Spirit of Christ, unites us with the work of Christ. Our place in history will move God’s drama forward to the final, eschatological end where God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor. 15:28). Will we resist God’s mission for us and sin, or will we embrace it and become all that we are meant to be, a saint?
“One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4). God created us in his own image and likeness to be beautiful just like him. Certainly we must understand this. We are his work, and he imparts upon us a participation in his own beauty. God is not just a God of love, but God is a God of beauty. This is what should be expected. For if God is love then God must be beautiful. His beauty is what attracts us, and our response to it is love. Indeed, God can be called God because he is Beauty, and every kind of beauty, every kind of harmony, participates in his Beauty. “From this beauty comes the existence of everything, each being exhibiting its own way of beauty. For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community. Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things. It is the great causing cause which bestirs the world and holds all things in existence by the longing inside them to have beauty. And there it is ahead of all as Goal, as the Beloved, as the Cause toward which all things move, since it is the longing for beauty which actually brings them into being,” Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. Trans. Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 704A.
God’s beauty should be observable, in analogical sense, in humanity. Our beauty, while it should be attractive and bring people closer to us, must not end up pointing to ourselves but to God who is the source of our being. This is what makes the saints so special. They are those who have manifested their internal beauty, who have cleared enough of the sin and mire to allow that beauty to shine through. But the saints realize that their beauty is participatory and exists through the beauty of Christ; their lives are not for themselves, but for God. By living a life of virtue, by actualizing what Christ wanted out of them, they attract our attention and our love. Their beauty can be seen because of the light of Christ shining through them. Through the guidance of the saints we find our way to Christ. But we must remember that what they have done is not beyond us; it is something we can and should do as well. We are called to follow their example, to become saints ourselves. We are all meant to demonstrate the beauty given to us at our creation, to become living examples of the grace of God, and as such, to demonstrate the greatness of God who is Beauty itself.
Yet we must recognize that instead of love we might attract hate. Indeed, hate is a disturbed, negative variation of love. It is the response of one whose love has been perverted and is no longer pure. Hate is an unjust kind of jealousy; one who hates desires the beauty they find in others for themselves – and only for themselves. Instead of glorifying someone else for the grace they possess, they want to shut it up if it is not their own. And this is why, when confronted with the beauty of holiness, they not only experience hate but also fear, for they see in such holiness a power they do not have in themselves. It is a power they cannot possess. So they feel it threatens their very existence. “Is it not well known that hysterics and the possessed are afraid of the saints?” Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Trans. Boris Jakim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 5. One either loves or hates the saints. Those who hate them fear them. If they can, those filled with such bitter hate will work to destroy the saints, just as such hate led to the death of Christ. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, `A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also” (John 15:18-20).
If God is the potter and we are the clay, God desires to produce a wondrous work in and through us. There is an aspect of this traditional image which we have not looked at and must now turn to. God created humanity in his image; God created humanity to be beautiful even as God is beautiful. But God does more. Although we are but a “piece of clay,” we are “clay” which has been formed in the image and likeness of an artistic creator. We are called to follow his example and be artistic creators in the world. Just as God’s grace brings us freedom, so our action in the world, imitating the artistry of God, is meant to bring freedom to the world. We have been given stewardship over the world. God rules by love and draws us back to himself through his beauty. Our stewardship of the world is meant to reflect that rule of love. “Humanity stands at the center of creation, serving as a bridge and a bond between greatness and lowliness, between sacredness and frailty, between heaven and earth. As such, the human person acts as a mediator,” Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Encountering the Mystery (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 128. We have been given the task to be a mediator between God and creation. As mediators, we are called to draw all things in the world back to God, even as Christ, as our mediator, leads us back to the Father.
If we turn our gaze to the world and to the relationships we can have with the creatures of the world, we can note something amazing. “The ability of animals to enter into communion with man, from almost direct conversation with him to obedience to him, shows that animals participate in the world soul not only in its necessity but also in its creaturely freedom,” Sergius Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb. Trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2002), 103. Animals possess a kind of freedom of their own. As Scripture indicates (in so many ways), they also have a calling and place in God’s drama. A part of our task is to help them to fulfill that task even as Christ helps us to fulfill ours. The freedom which God opens up to us is to be shared with the rest of the world; as we find our greater freedom in God, so too does the rest of the world await for its liberation, for its freedom, to be given to it by God through us in Christ. “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:19 – 23).
How, exactly, are we to be mediators? Once again, we can turn back to that clue given to us by the fact that we are created in the image of God. “We make still by the law in which we’re made,” J.R.R. Tolkien, “Mythopoeia.” Being in the image of God, being in the image of an artistic creator who creates us in a reflection of his beauty to glorify him, we are to be sub-creators, artistically beautifying the world for the glory of God. “Through his ‘artistic creativity’ man appears more than ever ‘in the image of God’, and he accomplishes this task above all in shaping the wondrous ‘material’ of his own humanity and then exercising creative dominion over the universe which surrounds him. With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in his creative power,” Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists (Vatican: April 4, 1999), par.1. This can help us understand why Jesus took on the role of a carpenter when he became man (cf. Mark 6:3). Being a carpenter, he perfectly represented what it meant to be a co-creator with God. A carpenter takes what exists and builds upon it, bringing out what exists in potentiality to actuality. Indeed, looking back to the time of Christ and seeing what exactly a carpenter did then, we can understand this even better. For we see a carpenter could take part in all aspects of construction. Not only did they make building plans (like an engineer), not only did they execute those plans (as to be expected), but they were involved with tasks we don’t normally consider to be the role of a carpenter, such as painting the walls with great works of art (a task we now associate with artists and not carpenters). The carpenter was, during Christ’s time, a universal artisan, and so as a carpenter Christ affirmed the universal calling of humanity to be co-creators with God by taking upon himself a profession which beautified the world with wondrous works of creation.
Obviously there are many ways we can bring beauty into the world. There are as many ways as there are people. We must remember that the fruit of beauty is love, and that all those who work to increase love in the world are partaking of our sub-creative ability. While not all of us are called to be artists in the colloquial sense, we are meant to act with the kind of creativity normally associated with artists when we engage the missions given to us by God. This helps explain why the arts find their proper home in the church. Iconoclasm, the denial of sacred art, can never be Christian because it fundamentally denies an aspect of ourselves which we are called to engage. God is a God of beauty. He has created the world, but he has given us a part in the ongoing process of creation: we are to help bring the world to completion. The seeds of potentiality found throughout the world are, in part, to be actualized by us. And through this the world can give praise to God, fulfilling the dictates of Scripture. “The LORD reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad!” (Psalm 97:1). “Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together” (Psalm 98:7-8). We can help make this possible, but only if we follow through and act as God’s stewards over the earth for the glory of God.
If we take pride in our ability to transform the world and move from doing it for the glory of God to what we can get out of it for our own sake, we will have to face the unforeseen consequences of such an action. The world is interconnected. Selfish use of it will devastate the world and all that is within it. The world can sustain us with its bounty, but only if we lovingly preserve it by following God’s commandments. God’s gifts to us can be misused and this means we can abuse the world. If we do that, the ramifications will be felt by all (although, to be sure, some will experience the consequences of our actions sooner than others). When we use the world only for ourselves and not for the sake of God and his glory, such action becomes idolatrous and can only end in disaster. The way we treat the world shows how we treat one another. Those who justify the exploitation of the earth (instead of its beatification) will quickly use such justifications for the exploitation of others. “Concern, then, for ecological issues is directly related to concern for issues of social justice, and particularly world hunger. A Church that neglects to pray for the natural environment is a Church that refuses to offer food and drink to a suffering humanity. At the same time, a society that ignores the mandate to care for all human beings is a society that mistreats the very creation of God, including the natural environment. It is tantamount to blasphemy,” Patriarch Bartholomew, Encountering the Mystery, 108.
When we ignore our role as mediators of the world and instead become tyrants demanding all of its gifts for ourselves, we slowly eradicate those very gifts from existence. We can, for a time, put off the consequences of our activity, of our crimes against the world, by increasing our abuse of the earth, by forcing it to give to us even more of its precious resources. But if we do this, it will be done at the expense of future generations (and possibly, even our own); people will suffer for how we have treated the world. Such, of course, is unacceptable. We must, before it is too late, turn away from such sinful ways; we must recognize ourselves as God’s servants, and realize that our servitude includes looking after the earth. We are called to give ourselves for the betterment of the world. If we are to be imitators of Christ and his mediatorship with us, then the way we are to live in the world is clear. We are to be loving stewards over creation. What we do to the earth affects us. But if we act as wise stewards, then the world can be as it is meant to be, and at that time we will be able to properly enjoy the bounty of the earth and all it will share with us.
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