Treasures in Earthen Vessels or Porcelain?

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
Like a coating of glaze over earthenware are fervent lips with an evil heart. Proverbs 26: 23

For we have this treasure in earthen vessels [jars of clay] 2 Cor. 4:7

What is this "treasure?" Verse 6: "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."

The "treasure" is God's light, eternal, which is in temporal, fragile clay vessels. (οστρακινοις -- ostrakinos). So why keep a treasure in earthenware? Perhaps to make sure our focus remains on the treasure and not the vessel holding it.

Of course, clay vessels are underrated because they are common, and used for humble purposes, but where would we be without them. Most people could not afford expensive metal vessels--or porcelain.

Dehua, four hours north of Xiamen in Quanzhou, was one of China's four ancient portelain centers, and I've visited it many times. Some of their blanc de Chine (white porcelain) is in museums all over the world. I marvel at its delicacy--transparent, almost like crystal. I even have some Dehua porcelain that has been given to me. But I never use it; it stays on a shelf, behind glass, where it cannot be broken.

Centuries ago, some European kings literally bankrupted their nations in their quest to find the secret of porcelain production (while Chinese used chopsticks and ethereal porcelain dishes, Europeans used their fingers and wooden trenchers). Kings even locked alchemists in dungeons, telling them they would be freed only when they learned how to transform earth to porcelain (akin to the quest of transforming lead to gold). Many alchemists live and died in their dungeons seeking this secret.

Porcelain is beautiful but earthen vessels are more useful, even if common and cheap. But place a treasure within that clay vessel and it too becomes valuable--but only because of the treasure (God's light) within. Should the clay vessel, however, delude itself into thinking that its value lies in itself and not in the treasure, it has become like the glazed earthenware in Proverbs 26:23.

From the Garden on we have tended to think the treasure is us, rather than Who is in us. We are the clay, not the potter, and our value lies not in us (we're just a few pounds of minerals and a few gallons of water), but in what we hold--and in what we do. Earthen vessels were made for a purpose, and when they fulfill that purpose they are of more value, at least at that moment, than a palace of pretty but useless porcelain.

And perhaps that is why He made us earthen vessels instead of porcelain---that we might be less tempted to spend our lives admiring ourselves in the mirror or placing ourselves on a porcelain pedestal, and instead seeking to share that treasure within us.


"A Passion for Porcelain" (Excerpted from "Mystic Quanzhou")
While it is true that Westerners sold opium, for centuries the but Chinese trafficked in porcelain, which for the royalty of Europe was more addictive than any poppy product. Thin as eggshells, translucent in sunlight, ringing like a bell when struck, porcelain captured the imagination of Westerners like nothing since Cleopatra’s Chinese silk negligees, and was so seductive in its allure that Europeans used “China” as a euphemism for “sex.”

Janet Gleeson, author of “The Arcanum,”i an absorbing account of the Europeans’ pursuit of porcelain, notes that in Wycherley’s 1675 play, “The Country Wife,” an admirer sees Mr. Horner with Lady Fiddler and begs, “…don’t think to give other people china, and me none; come in with me too.” After Lady Fiddler comments, “… we women of quality never think we have china enough,” the exhausted Mr. Horner says, “Do not take ill, I cannot make china for you all…”

European monarchs gleefully bankrupted national treasuries to satisfy their passion for porcelain. And like monarchs who a millennia earlier were obsessed with spying out the secrets of silk, so Europe’s kings were driven to fathom the secret behind porcelain, which like silk was worth more than its weight in gold. Countless potters and scientists were imprisoned until they either produced porcelain or rotted in the attempt. Most rotted. But Quanzhou had the answer....

i “The Arcanum—The Extraordinary True Story,” by Janet Gleeson, reads better than a mystery or thriller as Janet Gleeson recounts the incredible lengths to which Europeans went to discover the “Arcanum” (the secret of porcelain production), and the extremes they went too to preserve the Arcanum once they discovered it. The European’s passion for porcelain created an entire industry for corporate espionage, and counter-espionage.