Hello,
It’s Sunday morning, and I am at home. There’s been an intestinal bug that has
been making its rounds around here, and it’s rounded its way to me. Ugh.
I am one of those folks that have found myself in a church
nearly every Sunday of my life. As
a matter of fact, I think that if I used my fingers and toes to count the
number of Sundays that I have not been in church, I would have digits to
spare. That may not come as any
surprise to you, after all, I am a pastor, and Sunday mornings pastors spend
their time in a church. However,
when my kids were younger and they would contend that we were in church every
Sunday because I was a pastor, my response to them always was, “No, we’d be in
church every Sunday whether I was a pastor or not.”
Hard to prove the truth of that statement as I have always
been a pastor, but as I look around the congregations that I have served, I
have seen many people whose faith leads them to church every Sunday, and they
are not pastors. Truth is, I find
myself more motivated to go to church on those Sundays that I am off my job. It is nice to not be responsible for
the worship experience, but simply worship instead. That is not to say that when I am “pastoring”, I am not
edified by the worship. The hymns,
the scriptures lessons, the Lord’s Supper, and the sermon (every sermon I
preach, I also preach to me) all shape my life, too. But it is nice to have those times when the time I spend in
worship simply soaks into my life like butter on warm bread.
For you Bungee Cord readers, I suspect that you lie all
across the continuum of those who are rarely in a church on Sunday morning, and
those who would not even need your toes to count the Sundays that you have not
been in church. No guilt intended
upon you where ever you find yourself, reason being that I do not believe that
a person goes to church to please God.
After all, before you ever took a step in life, God had sent his Son to
die and rise for you. Whether you
step into church once a year or once a week, it is not going to get God to love
you any more or any less. He’s
already loved you as much as he can, he has loved you with his Son!
And I don’t believe that a person goes to church because
they are a believer. If that were
the case most of us would be very sporadic worshipper, because there are days
and weeks in our lives when life can hit us in ways that make it hard to
believe. For all of us, the
existence and presence of God in our life can sometimes, if not often, be as
visible as a fish in murky waters.
I know that for myself, I go to church for one reason, and
one reason alone. God has invited
me to come. God has extended me
his invitation because God wants me to believe in him, not just in his
existence, but in his unimaginable love for me. After all, he has given his Son for me (wow!), and lest that
deed be inconsequential in my life, God throws open the doors of his church and
says, “Let’s spend some time together so my love for you might shape your
life.”
The world around us is pretty good at telling us so many
things that likewise can shape our lives…”all we are is dust in the
wind”….”three strikes and you’re out”…. “whoever dies with the most toys
wins”….”look out for number one because no one else is”….”winning isn’t
everything, it’s the only thing”….”someone is the MVP”. It may be that these words of the
world can spur us on, but in my mind their spur feels like the spur of a boot;
inflicting fear, pain, pressure, and resentfulness.
Even though it is only one hour a week that I find myself at
worship in the church, compared to the 24x7-1 hours that I find myself a-swim
in the world, I find the experience of that one hour to have the power to shape
and mold me with hope, to motivate me to do my best because God has given me
his best, and to free me to look beyond myself having been the object of God’s self-giving gaze. Week after week in church I experience “see what love the Father
has given us, that we should be called, “Children of God. And that is what we are.”, an
experience that helps me ward off what the world want to call me, good to
inflate my ego or bad to crush my soul.
Sunday morning, when I am in church, I experience an embrace of God’s
grace.
I am looking forward to this upcoming Sunday, when God will
throw open the doors of his church, and (stomach bug abated) I’ll be there!
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace,
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
No comments:
Post a Comment