The BUngee Cord

Hello,

“God is not going to love you more if you go to church every Sunday, if you go to church just a couple of times a year, or if you never go at all. The fact is that God sent his Son, Jesus, to die for you, what more could God do to love you?”

That quote is not original to me, I heard it years ago said from someone who in turn was quoting someone, but the reason that I have remembered it is because it rings true. How much more could God love us? When God emptied himself of all of his love when His Son hung on the cross, what more love is there for God to give us? No water comes out of an empty pitcher.

So, why go to church? The answer: so that we might be cooked by God’s love. Consider this; it takes heat to cook an egg. Knowing that one might decide to put a plate out in the sun and crack an egg into it. It may be that on the hottest of days, that egg might cook…a little. But if you took an egg and cracked it into a skillet that is being heated by a powerful flame, that egg would cook in short time. It is true that God’s love fills the earth, every corner of it. So, the heat of God’s love certainly can warm God’s love up…in the most loving of places…at least a little. But even in those places, the world has a way of throwing cold water on things (hatred, envy, greed, vengeance, doom, death…..), so the cooking is measured at best.

But when one is where the Word of God is heard free from the splashing of the world’s words, when one is called by a divinely given name from the waters of Baptism and the world’s fragile and often painful names are silenced, and when one comes to the altar and in receiving a piece of bread and a sip of wine communes with Jesus, himself….THERE IS HEAT! Heat to singe the stuff that clings to us and shield us from the transformational heat of the Holy Spirit. Heat to stir up the grace that God has mixed into our lives when he died on the cross and rose from the dead. Heat to be a catalyst of change to the gooey form of who our humanity that the world tries to push around into a solid yolk and white that can nourish the world. Heat to cook you and me into what God sees in us, beloved children.

Regular worship doesn’t make God love you or me any more, but it does heat you and me up to so that love that God has emptied into us might cook. Worship is the place where God’s power is focused, like a laser beam, powerful enough to break through the layers of heavy metal that we carry and create an explosion in our hearts powerful enough to make of us a feast of love.

So, if going to church is accompanied with a finger shaking at you declaring you to be a lazy, free loading, black-slider if you don’t, know this; that is not God’s finger shaking in your face. No, God doesn’t shake a finger at you on Sunday mornings. God opens his arms to you, welcoming you with a warm embrace, an embrace that will heat up the love that God has already cracked into your life.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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