We had a fabulous weekend with our community. Sunday was spent studying the Word, celebrating communion over a meal, and breaking a pot. Breaking a pot? you might ask. Our community uses a pot breaking ceremony to signify our brokenness and dependence on God. It’s based on Paul’s metaphor in 2 Corinthians 4:5-9,

“For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

Our ceremony includes the reading of Bonhoeffer’s quote on community (at the bottom of the post) and then we break the pot as an acknowledgement of our individual and shared brokenness.

New family members then write a prayer on a broken shard. We barbequed and mended the pot. It’s always fun to see how people handle the mending of a broken pot, a pot that will never look perfect – just like any church. God uses our limping pot-metaphor to write new creation stories. He’s great in doing that!

“He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, not withstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final breakthrough to fellowship do not occur because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everyone must conceal his sin from himself and from their fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners! Bonhoeffer.