But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. – 2 Corinthians 4:7
Dear friends,
This summer our Christian Explorers are going to spend some time with two superheroes from the Bible – Miriam and Lydia. That made me think a little bit about the concept of a superhero.
When my niece, Hannah Nell, was 12 she had a school assignment to write about someone she considered a superhero, and she picked me.
“Why did you pick me?” I asked, surprised and flattered.
“Because I couldn’t spell DeCaprio,” Hannah Nell replied.
The essay was sweet and simple and funny and brought tears to my eyes. I won’t bore you with all of it, but there is a paragraph that I just love. She writes, “I, Hannah Nell, was named after her, and we share something special together, the name Nell, which was my mother’s grandmother’s name. Everyone loved Nell, and she was smart, artistic, loved to cook, and sew, and above all, she was a stubborn Dutchwoman. Karen Nell certainly has all of the qualities, and I hope I have at least some of them and will develop the rest.”
Hannah is now an incredibly accomplished woman in her 30s and did indeed develop into a stubborn Dutchwoman, which is wonderful because I think the world can always use a few more of those! But, a superhero? While I was flattered, it made me a bit nervous. Superhero implies perfection, and Lord knows, I am not that. None of us are.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of How Good Do We Have to Be?, wrote, “The heroes of the Bible are not perfect people. Their great deeds of faith overshadow their mistakes, but they all made their share of mistakes because they are human beings, not mythical models of perfection. Abraham sends his wife and son to starve in the desert and endangers his other wife by lying to her to save himself. But Abraham is called ‘the friend of God.’ Moses repeatedly loses his temper at the people he is supposed to be leading, but Moses is granted an intimacy with God that no other prophet experiences. David commits adultery with a married woman and arranges to have her husband killed, but God loves David as He loves no other figure.”
Kushner continues, “If we are afraid to make a mistake because we have to maintain the pretense of perfection…we will never be brave enough to try anything new or anything challenging. We will only do things that we are guaranteed to turn out right. We will never learn; we will never grow.”
The prophet Jeremiah and the apostle Paul both knew this to be true when they used the metaphor of clay pots in God’s hands to describe our relationship with God. They both knew that we flawed, imperfect, would-be superheroes are much more like lumps of clay in a potter’s hands. God loves us in all our imperfections, molds and shapes us, and, as Paul writes, our flaws are the cracks that let God’s love shine through our lives.
Superheroes and clay pots. This summer, we’ll learn more about superheroes Lydia and Miriam – also strong, likely stubborn, women – who’ll speak to us from the Bible. In a world that so values perfection and superheroes, let’s remember that God used their gifts as well as their flaws, just as God uses ours.
Blessings for summer,
Karen Nell