The Bungee Cord 7-22-19

Hello,

It is summer in Western Pennsylvania.  Hot. Humid.

Yesterday we had an outdoor worship service at the church that I am serving.  Good planning!  The church building is not air conditioned (I remember that most church buildings were not air conditioned when I was a kid.), and so on hot, humid days it gets quite stuffy inside.

On these hot summer days, I have taken to not wearing my robe, and I lead the worship service wearing my clergy shirt….you know the black thing with the white tongue depressor in the collar.  But even downdressed, I find that I sweat buckets up front.  Between the nervous sweat that comes from being up front, the sweat that comes from keeping my brain going, and the sweat that comes from the heat from the extra lights on the altar….by the time that worship is over, I am soaked.  And I suspect that even though I prepare myself with a generous application of deodorant, I stink.

But, of course, I don’t think that I was aromatically alone in church.  By the flurry of waving, fanning bulletins, and the sharing of stuffy space, I am sure that there were many engaged in sweating on those hot and humid days.  We all stank. At least a bit.

In some ways, though, having a church-full of stinking people is a good reminder to us about why we gather every Sunday morning, and that is, there is a stink to each of our lives that fouls our lives and the world.  A stink that only the shower of God’s grace and mercy can eliminate.

The stink of our lives, of course, does not come from sweating.  It comes from sin, and the stink from sin is far different from the stink of sweating.  The stink of sin is the stink that comes from rot and decay.  It is the smell that permeates the air when you drive by a deer that has been hit by a car and has been lying there for several days.  It is a smell that is nose curdling.  It is the stink that comes for the pain and agony of harsh and stabbing words.  It is the stink that comes from the pain from a child’s belly who hasn’t eaten in days. It is the stink of the pain that comes from betrayal and neglect.  It is the stink of rot and decay.  A stink that no amount of deodorant can eliminate.

But the good news is this:  Jesus did not come as a divine deodorant.  Jesus came as a death killing death-a-cide.  He didn’t come just to wipe on some sweet smelling salve.  He came to wipe out death.  “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”2 Corinthians 5.17

That is what every Sunday is all about.  We who stink…not from sweat…but from the rot of the decay in our lives….we come to have that rot and stink taken away.  We come to have Jesus do to us that which only Jesus can do….wipe out death with life, his life..  We come a’ stinkin’….we leave a’ livin’.  It is true that death’s rot takes ahold of us as we walk back into the world, but it is also, or even more true, that Christ’s life spreads more fully into our lives every time we are re-invigorated by his grace and mercy.  Every time we walk out of worship and back into the world, we bring with us a sweet, sweet aroma of hope, peace, forgiveness, and love until the day when the stench of sin and death will be overwhelmed.

So, if you’re in the area (Ligonier, Pa), let me invite you to come and sweat with us, and don’t worry that you might sweat too much, or stink too badly.  Truth is, we all stink….and that is why we are there.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger