The Bungee Cord 9-13-21
Hello,
I, like I suspect every one of you, remember exactly where I was when the news of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers happened. I was sitting in my office at church when someone came and told me that a plane had crashed into the Tower. I remember that my initial reaction was to think that some small Cessna-like plane had flown off course. Not true. Far worse than that. When I saw the second plane crash into the other tower, I was caught up in shock. That is when my memory gets blurry about that day. Shock has a way of overloading a person and details get lost. I know that I was glued to my TV, but I don’t remember much of what I heard and saw. Overwhelmed.
Yesterday evening I was watching 60 Minutes, and the whole show was about work of the fire department and other rescuers. Maybe you saw it, too. The interviews with some of those who survived the Tower fires and collapse were heart gripping. The bravery, compassion, conviction, and sacrifice that those firefighters showed was humbling to me. To know that such people are at the helm of my safety is a blessing that I know that I don’t deserve.
But another emotion started percolating in my soul as I watched, and that was sad astonishment. How sad it is that hatred can boil so strong in people’s hearts that such an attack would be planned and carried out. Now, I am not naïve to the reality of such hatred and such attacks, they catch the news with too much regularity. But sitting in front of my TV last night, listening to the stories of those who survived the attack and those who did not, I was sadly astonished that anyone could harbor so much hatred that they would consider those who worked in those buildings and who tried to save them…would consider them to only be pawns in their hate driven pursuits.
This sad astonishment shed a new shadow on another event of hatred, the crucifixion of Jesus. Maybe it is because I know the story so well that the feeling of sad astonishment has tended to slip by my soul when I hear the Good Friday story. But today, I feel it in my bones. How sad it is that a person could be so hated, that he would find himself nailed to a cross by those whose hatred drove their deeds.
Hatred is, and always has been, a fierce and deadly monster, and when we measure its might and our tiny muscles we might easily fall into despair, and throw up our hands, and say, “It’s just too big of a thing. I guess that there’s nothing we can do about it.”
But that is not true. There is something that we can do about the hatred that prowls in our world. There is something we can do about it because someone whose love and power is greater than anything and everything in the universe, Jesus, the Son of God, has thrown up his hands on a deadly cross, gathered in all the hatred that the world can muster, and all that hatred breathed its last breath when Jesus breathed his and yelled, “It is finished!”
And on Easter Sunday morning, when Jesus walked out of that tomb, he was the only one to walk out of that tomb. All those things which he took to death with him on the cross stayed dead. Hatred did not live…. Jesus did.
And although hatred may regularly rise up in this world, its rise will wither and fall, because its defeat has already taken place. Hatred will not win, because Jesus’ love already has. And Jesus’ love has made its home in your hearts and mine. And although our hearts may be small, and our arms and hands be weak, they are the vessels of Jesus’ infinite and unmatched love. So, when we love with our hearts, and care with our hands it is nothing less than Jesus’ victorious mercy at work in the world.
When teenagers are confirmed in my church, they are asked, among other things, if they will strive for peace and justice in the whole world. Quite a task for a 13-year-old to take on. So, I tell them that in setting their sights to do this, they needn’t look too far. “What if you strove for peace and justice in your corner of the world….in your home, at your school, with your friends, or in your neighborhood? And although it might be like throwing a stone in the ocean, every stone makes a wave, and if everyone tossed their stone in that ocean, what a difference that would make.”
You and I just might be joyfully astonished at the difference we can make.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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