The Bungee Cord  3-12-18

Hello,

     Another thing that I learned on my 3 week trip to China from which I have just returned: when you go out to eat, the first thing that you do is wash your dishes.  Everyone gets a small saucer, a bowl, a cup (without a handle), and chopsticks.  Everywhere we went, the dishes seemed clean, but nonetheless, they got a washing.  On the table was a pot of hot water into which one makes hot tea, then that tea is poured into everyone’s bowl, and in that tea filled bowl you wash your chopsticks, bowl, and plate.  When the washing is done, everyone dumps the tea in a large bowl that is in the middle of the table, and with that completed, eating begins!

     Since we are in the season of Lent, a time of personal reflection and washing, let me offer this “parable” that I wrote some time ago about dish washing.

     Imagine this, you have gone out to eat and when you sit down, you notice that the glass of water that sits in front of you must have 30 mouse turds floating in it.

     You summon the server over and say, “Pardon me, but there are a bunch of mouse turds in my water.”

     “Oh,” the server says in with a rather flat affect.  Next thing you know, the server picks up the glass of water, sticks his fingers in the water and pulls out a handful of mouse turds, and then sits the water glass back down in front of you, several mouse turds still afloat.

     Incredulously, you say to the server,  “Excuse me, but there are still mouse turds in my glass of water.”

     With a look of sort of being put off by your concern, he reaches down and picks up the glass again, sticks his fingers into the water again, swirls the water around and gathers in the rest of the mouse turds, and sets it down in front of you, again.

     A little miffed and amazed, you say to the server, “Hey, I can’t drink that water.”

     The server says back, “Why not?”

     “There were mouse turds in that water!”

     “There aren’t any more,” he impatiently responds.

     “But there was!  I can’t drink that water!”

     So, the waiter, with a huff under his breath, picks up the glass and pours the water out of it into a bowl, spits into the glass, “cleans” the inside of the glass with a cloth napkin, pours some new water in it from the pitcher, and says, “Here.  All clean,” and turns to walk away.

     “Hey, I can’t drink that water!”

     “Now what’s wrong?”

     “There were mouse turds in that glass, and you can’t call what you did ‘cleaning’!”

     “You know,” he says, his words dripping with condescendence, “We always get a couple of you fussy guys.”  So he walks away, and comes back with a bottle of dish soap, and a pot of steaming water.  He squirts a couple of drops of soap into the glass, pours in some boiling water, and with rubber gloves on his hands he sticks a clean rag into the glass and washes it out.  He dumps the soapy water out into a bowl, fills the glass full of boiling water again, swirls it around, dumps that water out, takes the pitcher of cold water, fills the glass, sets it in front of you, and says, “Hope that satisfies you!”

     Even though you have the memory of those mouse turds in that glass, you are able to convince yourself that the glass is clean, and worthy of drinking out of…..and so you drink the water.

     Sometimes, we Christians can fall into the trap of that server, thinking that it’s a matter how many mouse turds we have in our lives, making some of us worse than others in the eyes of God.  And continuing that trap, we think that even if we can get them all our, that we can with our own devises make our lives worthy of God’s delight, so we do all sorts of things to clean our lives up.  But fact of the matter is, we can’t do it.  We need boiling water….and that is what God gives us.  Boiling water, bubbling out of the Easter tomb with the grace of God, swirling around in our lives, making us clean.

     So, here’s the point of it all.  If you have mouse turds in your life, a glass full of them, a hand full of them, a couple of them,  or ever had (and don’t we all, dumping mouse turds into our lives every day), God is at work doing what needs to be done to make us presentable as vessels for his habitation.  Maybe you never thought of a church as a dish washer before, but that is what it is, and God doesn’t care how dirty the dishes are.  They all need to be washed.  So see you there next Sunday when God loads up his dishwasher and cleans his dishes….completely cleans them!

Have a great week,

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger