The Bungee Cord. 3-20-23

Hello,

We’re in the middle of March Madness. 64/68 college basketball teams all hoping to win their way to the top of the hill; to be king of the hill. (There’s a women’s tournament going on at the same time, but for some reason it hasn’t captured the attention that the men’s has.). Over twenty million people filled out an ESPN bracket (I was one), and who knows how many people filled one out in an office pool or women’s bridge club!

I don’t know who came up with the name, “March Madness”, but the name sure fits at least on a number of levels. The roller coaster ride of excitement that each game provides is crazily exciting. The rise and fall of giants and pee-wee’s causes many a blood pressure surge. The bank accounts of fans take a big dent from airline tickets, hotel accommodations, meals and bets. It is madness!

And all for what? To watch 10 players running around trying to put a ball through a hoop. To look at this through the eyes of some alien who has landed on our planet, it sure must seem like madness for such a trivial thing of putting a ball through a hoop to generate such excitement and enthusiasm.

But maybe even a visiting alien can see the amazing display of athleticism, grace, hard work of the players. I know that I am amazed at many of the shots that go in, blocks that are made, and the defense that is played. Personally, I find it helpful to have something that doesn’t really make any difference in the world to provide a distraction from all the madness that goes on that really does make a difference. I find rooting for the University of Illinois, win or lose, a cathartic exhale of emotion and energy that enables me to fill my lungs and heart with a renewed determination to engage the real struggles of life.

Of course, it is easy to get so enmeshed with penultimately important things that they are more than restorative distractions, but they become blinders and pain killers to that which is of ultimate concern. The first time I saw what happens at every University of Iowa home football game, I felt those blinders being torn from my vision. At the end of the first quarter of every game, the entire crowd, every one of the nearly 70,000 people turn their attention from the football game and face the children’s hospital that stands next to it, and they wave to the children who are hooked up to tubes and monitors, whose heads are covered with bandages, and whose lives are hanging in balance. And they do that, I believe, not just for show or to be nice, but to tell those children and their families that they are of ultimate importance, far more important than football.

When I am sitting in my pew in church on Sunday morning, I experience something of what those hospitalized children at the University of Iowa experience. I who limp my way through life, broken by the plague of my sins, tethered to monitors that tell me of my guilt and shame, overwhelmed by the pressure the world places on my shoulders, with my life hanging in balance….I see God pause in all the important things which God is about in the universe and wave at me. God waves to me from the cross and his wave tells me of the ultimate place I hold in his heart, and that all the other things that occupy his time and thoughts are only penultimate. After all, God did the ultimate thing for me (and for you). God died for me (and you). The spinning of the planets, the lighting of the stars, the application of the universal laws of physics all take second place to you and me for whom Jesus, the Son of God, died so that when heaven and earth pass away he will still have his hold on us.

That may seem like madness on God’s part, to have such focus on the minute particles of the universe that you and I are, but in the wave of Jesus from the cross, I see a God who is madly in love with those who bear his image. That is why I have stood out on the street on Sunday mornings waving at those who drive by, passing on the wave from the cross so that they, too, may also see how ultimately important they are in the heart of God.

This year, Easter falls in April….but sometimes it falls in March….and in my mind that is a March Madness that measures up to the thrill of its name!

(By the way….I had Indiana going all the way….wrong, like usual.)

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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