Hello,
Pete Carroll.
If we were to play a little game of word association, I
wonder what the first thing that would come to your mind if I said the name,
“Pete Carroll”?
I would venture to guess that it if you watched the Super
Bowl last night you would say the “rotten” call at the end of the game when he
went for a pass, that was intercepted, rather than run the ball which would
have certainly (really?) scored the winning Touchdown.
I know when I turned on Mike and Mike, ESPN, this morning
that is almost completely what the discussion was all about. Person after person came on to say that
Pete Carroll’s decision to pass rather than run was hard to understand and
close to idiotic. “What was he
thinking?” said guest after guest.
It seems quite possible that this blunder (?) by Pete Carroll with be
the one thing that will be remembered about Super Bowl 49 for years and years
to come.
Just goes to show how easy our failures, our foibles, our
faults and our fractures can become the thing that we are known for, not just
in football games, but also in life.
Benedict Arnold…traitor.
Richard Nixon….Watergate.
Bill Clinton….Monica Lewinski.
Lance Armstrong….liar.
Michael Phelps…DUI.
You…? Me…?
Maybe this phenomenon is the reason why we so fear
failure. Maybe it is the reason
that we work so hard to hide our foibles.
Maybe it is the reason that we feel the drive to be faultless. Maybe it is the reason that we don’t
let people know how fractured and broken we really are.
Thing is, though, even if no one else knows these things
about us, we know them, and we see them every time we look into a mirror. We know what losers we are. We know how foolish we are. We know how painfully imperfect we
are. We know how messed up we are.
It is in this knowledge that I find the deepest relevance of
the Christian faith. The Christian
faith is founded on a God who knows what we know about ourselves….a God who
knows and cares about the pain that these things bring to our lives and to the
world…a God who sends his Son to silence the claim of these things on us and
claims us as his own…a God who is at work in us shaping us with divine love and
mercy. The Christian faith is
about a God who does not remember us according to our sins, but according to
what he has done to overcome our sin.
That is the magnet that draws me into faith, into worship, and even into
life.
So, when you have blown it, like Pete Carroll blew it (at
least the world thinks he did), let me invite you to come to be among a bunch
of people who are well aware of their tendency to blow it…to church…and find
out that there’s a place for people who have failed, people with foibles,
people who have faults, and people who are fractured. A place where you will be embraced with God’s grace and be
enlivened by the way that God remembers you….as his beloved child.
1 John 3:1 “See
what love the Father has given us, that we should be called Children of God,
and that (not our failures, our foibles, our faults, our fractures) is what
we are.”
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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