Biography
Dr. Thomas Groome is Senior Professor of Theology and Religious Education at Boston College and a recognized authority on Christian religious education. A native of Ireland, Dr. Groome was educated at St. Patrick's Seminary, Fordham University, Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University in New York City.  He is a Roman Catholic layman and the author of a number of  books on religious education. Dr. Groome has lectured widely throughout the United States and abroad. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"All Cracked Pots"
"You, O Yahweh - you're the Potter, we are the clay. We are all the work of your hands."

I invite you to imagine yourself as a clay pot. Yes, a clay pot - sitting on a shelf in a potter's workroom, surrounded by rows and rows of other clay pots. The light is dim, but enough to see yourself. Take a look. What size are you? What kind of a pot are you? A cup, a mug, a bowl, something else? What shape, what color of pot are you? Are you useful or more of an ornament? As you gaze on yourself, what are some of your feelings about this clay pot?

Now your eyes are becoming accustomed to the dim light. You begin to make out the other pots around you. Take a look at them! What do you see? What do they look like? Let your imagination take flight!

Maybe you give them a smile - say hello - wave? What are your thoughts, your feelings, about these other pots? About the Potter who made you all?

Now, you look back at yourself again, more closely this time, and, to your horror, you notice it - a crack - Omygod a crack - you didn't see it the first time, but right down the middle. Thank God it's only a hairline crack - I mean you're still functional - but will it get bigger?

Do you have a name for this crack? How did it start. Can you even remember?

What can you do about it? Cover it over maybe? Or fix it yourself - now there's an idea! How disappointed are you that you're not a perfect pot? Who told you that you should be perfect in the first place?

Now, you begin to look nervously back at the other pots around you. Oh, but to your great relief now you can see them clearly. Hey they're all cracked - every bloomin' one of them. Yeah! And their cracks are so obvious, so much bigger than yours - you could see some of them from a mile away!

But just in case they haven't noticed their cracks, you have a growing sense of responsibility to point that out to them. It could be a good strategy - prevent them from noticing yours.

How do you feel about yourself now - as a cracked pot? About the other pots around you? How do you feel now about the Potter who made you all? Who is the Potter around here, anyhow?

Now, remember I'm right there on that shelf alongside you, and I don't know about you, but I like to call a spade a spade! So while you're thinking about my questions, I blurt it out, "What kind of a crazy potter would make nothing but cracked pots? Clearly one that doesn't know their trade!" Well, that causes a bit of a stir among the other pots. A real babble breaks out.

Then an old dusty pot steps forward, clears his husky voice, and says, "My name is Isaiah. I know how you feel, Tom. I asked that very question myself onetime, well at least implicitly. I asked if the Potter might not be a fool? But eventually I heard back from my own heart, from my people, from my faith, these words:

"I, Yahweh, I am the potter, you are the clay, you are all the work of my hands."

And with that, Isaiah recedes.

"But," I protest after him, "a fat lot of good it is to be made by Yahweh, if this Potter made me a cracked pot. Now, of course, for myself, my crack is only very slight, but I just feel sorry for these other big cracked pots around me!"

With that, a very beautiful pot steps forward, and she says, "I am a Psalmist. I too know how you feel, Tom. I asked similar questions many times. But then I found a response deep inside of me - yes, moving and kicking inside of me - during a pregnancy. And after my child was born, I wrote this Psalm: 'You, O Yahweh, your works are wonderful. You knit us together in our mother's womb; we are fearfully, wonderfully made.'" (Ps. 139:13)

Now, I'm impressed with this. I say o.k., o.k., so I'm wonderfully made. Yes, I do amaze myself at times, but doesn't this mean that I can be a perfect pot. If I just try a little harder I can fix the crack! Maybe I can mend all these other cracked pots too - be their Messiah - they certainly need one!

With this I hear another pot talking to me quite sternly, "No, no, no, Tom. You're still missing the point. My name is Paul - Paul the Cracked Pot - and I have figured this out and can explain it to everybody. On this point I echo the great prophet Jeremiah. He is the cracked pot there in the corner, but Jeremiah is always a bit insecure about his lack of eloquence. The explanation is that the Potter put this crack in you precisely so that the Potter could show mercy to you; could remake you to God's glory."

Paul recedes, seeming very pleased with himself.

But, I think to myself, "Oh Yuck! What a miserable explanation. Paul, how saccharin and pious can you get?" I was just about to shout after him, "Paul, that's a crock," but I figure he might not get the pun!

Then, this beautiful, radiant pot suddenly appears; I don't know from where, though not from the outside in, more as if rising up out of all the other cracked pots. This is a totally new pot - all made over - translucent, radiant, and full of life. And this one says to me - and to all of us there, "I am Jesus, the Risen Cracked Pot. The Potter and I, we are as One. I became a cracked pot like you, like you in all things, except I refused to be held bound by the crack. I refused to settle for it, as if it should have the last word, and I don't want you to be held bound by it either.

"Look, the fact that I became a real cracked pot with you, that should tell you a lot about yourself. How good all you pots must truly be - or I couldn't become one of you. I became a cracked pot with you to heal the crack, the crack between you and God, the cracks among you, the crack within you. Ah, but I heal the crack from within - from the inside out. This is why the scar remains.

"If you want to, of course, you can reopen it like any old wound. But you don't need to simply wallow in being a cracked pot. That's not what to emphasize about yourself. I have healed your brokenness enough that you may have life, and have it to the full, here and hereafter."

"But," I ask, only in feeble protest now, "how am I to accept and live this new life?"

"Well," says the Risen Cracked Pot, "ask any pot who knows how really cracked they are but they are living into new life. For example, a recovering alcoholic or drug addict - they will tell you how to have life as a cracked pot. First, you have to recognize and admit the crack, rather than denying it or trying to cover it over. Second, you must accept the fact that you need help, rather than trying to fix it all by yourself. And third, you must turn to God, to the Potter, who looks upon you in all your crackedness with great love, and is longing to heal you for fullness of life.

"Oh not that God or myself will do things for you, but we will do great things with you. And since you've already begun being healed from the inside, then with our help you will be able to respond, to participate, with us. Most often, of course, you will receive our healing and help through other cracked pots. That's how we usually work - through cracked pots, helping to heal each other. And, you know something? Your own crack - that can be your greatest source of new life, especially for other pots.

"Yes, you can be like a 'wounded healer!' In fact, I share my healing ministry only with cracked pots. But I caution you, Tom, just as you can help to heal others, you need to be open to their healing ministry toward you. You see, you can't heal yourself by yourself. None of us can. As the mockers said to jeer me, but said it in truth, at the foot of my own cross, they looked up and said, 'Ha, Ha! He saved others but he cannot save himself.' All of us can save others, but we cannot save ourselves. All of us need an Other to save us, to heal us. You, too!"

With that, the beautiful cracked pot - the Risen One - disappeared again, not as in leaving me behind, but more like returning again into the midst of all of us cracked pots.

Now what will I do ? What will you do? Because, remember, we are all there together. Will I go on pretending that "I have no crack," and distracting others by pointing out theirs first? Will I continue trying to heal it myself - ah just try a little harder, pull myself up by my own bootstraps? Be my own Savior? Or will I take the third possibility: Recognize the crack and the scar it leaves, but know that I don't have to settle for it, I don't need to be held bound by it.

In fact, I know that I'm being healed from the inside. And the very scar that remains - why that can be a special source, an outlet, as it were, for God's grace of New Life, from within me to others and to the world! And not in spite of, but because of my crack, can I say it now, and mean it, and know how true it is, "You, O Yahweh, you are the Potter, we are the clay. We are all the work of your hands - wonderfully made."

Cracks and all!

Interview with Thomas Groome
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Tom, you have stretched the biblical metaphor - God is the Potter, we are the clay - in some directions that cover enormous theological territory. What inspired you to develop that text from Isaiah?

Thomas Groome: Ah, that's a very good question. I've been working with it for a while, Lydia, and I think it was putting it and juxtaposing it with many of the other texts that are of the potter and the clay and so on, and then bringing them on into the New Testament, and then I suppose just my own theological and spiritual conviction that there is this reality of the crack and I suppose denying it or trying to fudge it or make believe it's not there, spiritually is ill-advised.

Talbot: Your own spiritual conviction now. You are a prominent Roman Catholic educator. You're a popular lecturer. You're born in Ireland. What was that spiritual journey for you all about?

Groome: Oh, my goodness. I think it was a journey into realizing - I suppose if I was to play on the theme of the sermon - it was a journey into realizing and embracing my own finitude, my own limits, my own crackedness and brokenness and yet beginning to recognize that God could work through the inadequacies, the limitations, the faults, the failings and, in a sense, it's the whole gospel notion of the reversal that the cross becomes the source of new life, and in our own lives, our crosses, our short comings, our crackedness, as it were, can indeed be the source through which God's grace can most readily work, especially for other people because then, you see, I need another cracked pot to do the same thing for me.

Talbot: Now, Tom, you are Professor of Theology at Boston College. What is the mood among students these days? What turns them on? What are they thinking about? How is religion a part of it?

Groome: I think at a sub-conscious level, perhaps at a second level of reflection, it is genuinely a part of their lives and is a deep interest because, you see, the hunger never goes away, which is another way of saying that God's desire for us never ceases and God's desire is as active toward these young people as toward any one of us, and so there will always be the appetite.

Talbot: Thank you so much, Thomas Groome.