The Bungee Cord 10-10-23
Hello,
Have you ever asked yourself, “Why is forgiveness of sins so important?”
In my travels from Davenport to Denver, I stopped for an overnight stay In Lincoln, Nebraska. Lincoln, as any college football fan would know is the home of the University of Nebraska, Cornhuskers. I was born in Nebraska, Wayne, Nebraska, and both of my folks grew up in Eastern Nebraska. That meant, that when I grew up in Illinois, when there was a Big Red (Cornhusker Game) on T.V., we watched it. The Cornhuskers, in my growing up years, were a perennial powerhouse, and since there was no other big team to root for in Nebraska, the stadium was sold out every game. The fans were rabid fans!
In these past years, the Cornhuskers have fallen on some hard football times. But even though the team is not a powerhouse anymore, the fan base is as ruckus and loyal as before. The reason that I know that they are as ruckus as before is by the hotel that I stayed in on my way to Denver. As it turned out, the hotel was not too far from the Stadium. It was a national chain hotel, and from the outside, it looked like every other hotel of this name in which I had stayed. But on the inside, it was quite different! My room was set up in the same configuration as the rest, but, to put it softly, it was rather beat up. The wall paper was coming off the top corners of the walls. The carpet had clearly had its share of beer spilled on it. The desk and dresser wore the bruises of many drunken knicks. The bathroom shower was a bit more than a trickle, and the bed headboards looked like they had received their share of wrestlers tumbling into them.
It was clear to me that this hotel had been the stomping ground for many a Nebraska football game, and the hotel chain had decided that it wasn’t worth their money to keep it up to the standards of the brand. I am sure that they found out that if something was repaired or updated, it was soon broken and scarred. It was a football hotel where the sins of the occupants were not removed, but were piled on top of each other with every use of the room.
Why is the forgiveness of sins so important? This hotel tells us why: unforgiven sins effect the lives of those who come in contact with those sins. They mar up the world with dents and scrapes. They leave behind sour beer and vomit that others have to walk on. They plug up showerheads so no cleansing water can come out. Like a football hotel that the owners have given up on, lives that do not receive a thorough cleansing of sin degrade the lives of all those who encounter them.
That is why forgiveness of sins is so important, and that is why God’s daily promise of forgiveness is so important. In my tradition of Christianity, we remember that Martin Luther said that every day, Christians can wake up, mark the sign of the cross on their chest and remember God’s promise that each day begins with a clean slate of forgiveness. Even though we are like Nebraska football fans, messing up our lives like hotel rooms, God does not give up on us. To God, it is worth it to renew and update our broken lives over and over again. So worth it is it to God that God paid the ultimate price of the death of Jesus, his son, to make sure that the sins of our lives are completely washed away….every day….no matter what. So clean does Jesus’ forgiveness make our lives that you and I can begin each day with God’s declaration that our lives have passed “the white glove test.”
Those of us who have travelled know that a clean, neat room gives an ambiance for a refreshing rest and a invigorating spirit, but a messy and marred room just keeps sapping the energy and the life right out of you. God knows that too. So today, hear from the mouth of one hanging on a Golgotha cross, the mouth of one who trampled to death every sin that creeps on the earth when he walked out of the grave, the mouth of the one who spoke his word unmistakably to you in baptism, and the mouth of the one who unites himself with you in the bread and wine of Communion…… “Your sins are forgiven…removed…take up your pallet and walk!”
Have a great week,
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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