The Bungee Cord 3-25-24

Hello,

Last week, I spent a couple of days in Florida watching the Pirates in pre-season games. Although the Pirates did not fare too well, the weather was 80 degrees and sunny compared to the 15 degrees and cloudy in Pennsylvania. It was a good trade-off.

In the game against the Toronto Blue Jays, the seats in front of us were occupied by three boys that I would guess were 5th or 6th graders. One boy was all decked out in a Blue Jays shirt bearing the name of a player, another was wearing black and gold and a Pirates hat, and the third was showing no team loyalties. All three of them had their gloves, prepped to catch a foul ball. If you have ever seen the movie “Sandlot”, these three looked like they came right out of the cast. Throughout the game they cheered for their team, but more often they were looking things up on their phones.

When it came to the 6 inning or so, they all left their seats to go and get something to eat. About an inning went by and they returned to their seats with their food. The Blue Jays fan had a hamburger and fries, the Pittsburg fan had fries and chicken tenders, and the unaffiliated fan just had fries. Perfect baseball food!

They sat down and were just about to dive into their food when the Pittsburgh fan said, “Wait guys, we gotta pray.”

“No, we don’t,” the Toronto fan said. “We’re at a baseball game.”

“Yes, we do,” the Pirate clad kid said sternly. “We gotta pray.” And with that he leaned toward his buddies, bowed his head , as did the others, and he said a quick spontaneous prayer. I was impressed.

Was he right? Do you have to pray before you eat, even at a ballpark? What happens if you don’t. Will God make your team lose? That would have been a difficult outcome as both teams were represented among these boys. Will God strike the food with some bacteria, and they would all get sick? Given that the food was ballpark food, the likelihood of bacteria in the food was already great. Will God get angry and bring tragedy to them after they leave the field? Would God be offended and put them on the naughty list?

So often, it seems the reason that we Christians do things, like praying, is in order to avoid something bad happening to us. You know, keep God buttered up so God will treat us well. But that sort of reasoning seems quite backward to me.

Personally, I do things…like pray, like help others, like give an offering, like give to World Hunger….not to keep out of trouble with God, but rather because God has rescued me from trouble. When Jesus died on the cross, Jesus brought with him anything and everything that might cause God’s wrath to fall upon me, and all those things died when Jesus died. They no longer had my name. And when Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus left all those things behind in the grave, and he walked out and opened his arms in eternal love…love that embraced me when the waters of Baptism splashed upon me, and God said, “Jerry Nuernberger, you are mine…..forever!”

I pray at mealtime because I am thankful that God’s love for me extends to my table, and my prayers of thank spur me on to make sure I work to bring food to other people’s table. I help others because I am thankful that God has jumped into the holes that I have dug for myself and lifted me out. I give an offering to my church, not to pay dues or my share of the budget, but because I am thankful for the divine love that I receive there and emanates out to the world. I live out my life, not out of fear, but out of thanks and praise.

So, the kid was right, in my mind. We gotta pray (something that I confess I did not do).

We gotta pray….pray not out of fear, but rather out of relieving the pressure of thanks that is building inside of us. You just can’t hold thanks and praise in forever. It will eventually burst out and change everything. It may be that the time of that bursting is when Jesus grabs you out of your tomb and says, “Come home to the place that I have prepared for you.”, but why wait that long? Pop the bubble of sin and pride every day….every meal…and see what a spectacular life you will have living embraced in thanks and praise to Jesus!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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