Hello,
The summer after my junior year of high school, I and three of my friends became entrepreneurs and started up a lawn mowing company. WumpKripBergerBuns Precision Lawn Care. We found an old rickety trailer to tote around our family’s lawn boy mowers, had our parents put a hitch on each of our family cars, and we spent the summer roving around our suburban Chicago towns of Hinsdale, Oak Brook, and Clarendon Hills mowing about 50 yards per week. To say that we were highly disciplined workers would be a bit of a stretch. One of my friends, Bill, was always late, and so if we started by 10:00 in the morning when he was driving we were lucky. Two of us played baseball, so it was a bit tricky getting all of our lawns mowed in the spring, and often we were mowing until 10:00 at night, in the pitch black, not able to see rocks and stakes that banged up our mower blades But all in all, it was a great way to spend the summer with my friends, and earn enough spending money to carry me through my senior year.
That was the middle ‘70’s, and if any of you remember those days, those days were the days of short cut offs, long hair, getting a great tan from never wearing a shirt…….and this is the most important thing, wearing tennis shoes with no socks. And that is what all four of us did all summer long. Mowed lawns wearing tennis shoes with no socks. On hot steamy days with our feet sweating as much as our brows, on damp early morning dew covered lawns, on days when it was raining but the grass was tall…..50 lawns a week…..from spring to fall, each of us wore the same tennis shoes with no socks. My pair of shoes was a pair of suede converse all-stars that I had worn during the basketball season. Not canvas, but suede. They were cool on the court, but I am not sure that cool is the right word as lawn moving shoes, because they were hot. They amplified the sweat. They soaked up the dew, and they never did quite completely dry out. And so…they stunk! They stunk so badly that my mom demanded that I take them off before I came into the house, and leave them out on the back porch. They stunk so badly that after a day’s work, the car that we had all been riding in was un-ridable for a couple of hours. They stunk so badly that I could leave them safely outside overnight, for no critter would ever think about gnawing on them.
Bout mid-summer, my mom decreed that I needed to get something to deal with their stink, because it was wafting its way into our house from the back porch. So, I went to the grocery store and got some Dr. Scholl’s shoe spray. I liberally sprayed the shoes, and set them out in the sun to dry, but the relief of the smell was only temporary. The spray didn’t take the smell away, it just tried to overwhelm the stink with a fresher scent. The stink always won.
Have you taken a whiff of your life lately? Although it may not smell as rank as those suede Converse All Stars that I wore when mowing lawns, but I bet it doesn’t smell like roses. Anger at someone that keeps on festering. Greed that is deeply ground into your heart. The mess that you have made of your life. The stench of betrayal that clings so deeply. The lack of care for those who are suffering. Take a whiff and see if you don’t smell a bit like fermenting cut grass. Everyone does.
And people, since grass has been cut, have tried to deal with the stench of their lives the same way that I tried to deal with the stench of my shoes. We try and spray them with sweet smelling spray, hoping that the sweet smell will overwhelm the rancid smell, and the spray that we use is a can of Dr. Scholl’s of being good and being right. It’s not a bad product, this Dr. Scholl’s can of being good and being right. The help we give to our neighbor….the donations to the food bank….the visit to the hospital of a friend who is sick…the willingness to give the shirt off of our backs. All good and good smelling.
But when patience gets thin….when money gets short….when fear grabs ahold of your heart…when you’re lost and confused…when your defenses weaken and your hopes diminish….the stench comes back. We find out that that Dr. Scholl’s spray of being good and being right just covers up the rancid smell. The smelly stuff is so deeply engrained, so completely absorbed, and so baked into our lives that the sweet smelling spray doesn’t take away the smell. It just covers it up….for a while. The stink always wins.
Now, some 50 years later, I understand that Dr. Scholl’s has a shoe spray and inserts that do more than just try and sweetly cover the stink of smelly shoes up. Their product is dubbed, “Odor Eaters”. Supposedly, this new product doesn’t just cover up the stink. It eats it up. When the rotting grass and infused sweat start to smell, supposedly this new product….these odor eaters….actually takes the stink out of the air by eating it up. Supposedly these odor eaters have an appetite for stench that is never satisfied, and that which was smelly no longer is. I don’t know if it would have worked for my Converse All Stars.
But I do know this, that when it comes to the stench in our lives, God goes one step further than Dr. Scholl’s. God doesn’t just give us a can of Being Good and Being Right spray. God doesn’t even give us a can or inserts that eat up the smell that the molding grass of our lives is making. God gives us one, the Lamb of God, who takes away…who takes away….the sin of the world. God doesn’t just deal with the smell….God deals with the cause of the smell…the stuff that is rotten, the stuff that is rancid, the stuff that … well…the stuff that stinks….and he takes it away.
When God sent Jesus into this world, Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He takes it away. Removes it from our lives. Gathers it upon himself. On the cross takes it into the incinerator of death. And turns it into ashes. Ashes that stink no more. Ashes that we wear on Ash Wednesday that tell us the powerlessness of our sins. Ashes made in the sign of a cross that tell us the power of Jesus’ love. Ashes marked on our foreheads where a cross was made when you and I were Baptized when you were washed in the waters of new life, fresh and clean life.
Here’s the good news for you and me…and the good news for the world. When it comes to people with smelly lives….God doesn’t just cover up the smell….God doesn’t just eat up the smell….God gets rid of the stuff that makes the smell. “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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