The BUngee Cord

Hello,

This upcoming Sunday is All Saints Day. It is the day in the life of the Christian Church that we rejoice with those who have found out that death is not the last word, but that, “Here in my Father’s house are many rooms….and this one is yours,” (John 14) will fall upon our ears after we die.

When I consider this promise that Jesus gives us as I live on this side of the grave, for me, it is a hard thing to imagine. What will this “house” be like? What will eternity be like? What will it be like to see God “face to face” (1 Cor. 13)? Truthfully, these are things that I cannot even imagine.

A lot of folks spend a lot of time trying to describe what heaven will be like. Even Jesus faced such questions when he was asked whose wife would a woman be in the resurrection after she had married a number of times in this life. In trying to develop a picture of what heaven will be like, they find what they consider clues in the Bible. Pearly gates. Golden streets. Angels soaring around. However, for me, these pictures of heaven create more confusion and misunderstanding than something upon which to calm my wonderings.

Some years ago, I visited an older man (someone who was my current age) who was dying of cancer. As I spoke with him, he told me of the wonders of his life….his family being foremost. And then he said to me, “I am scared to die. Tell me about heaven.”

It was so long ago that I don’t remember all that I said. I am sure that I spoke of the promise that tears and suffering will be no more, and that we will live in God’s unhidden presence for eternity, but beyond that I really couldn’t tell him much more than that. And then I told him that for me promise of life after death was a mystery….or more aptly an adventure. I told him that when I think about what is to come after this life, it is like an unborn infant trying to imagine what life would be after birth. There in the warmth of my mother’s womb, how could I even imagine what living would be like. I suspect that if I would have had the choice, I would have rather just stayed there. But as with death, so is birth. Neither can be avoided. We are thrust into them.

When I find myself facing an adventure of unknown trails, I know that I am most comforted when at the trail head I am greeted by one who knows the way. In birth, it was my parents, but now that I am a parent I realize that when I held my children in my arms after they were born, I was far from a skilled and solid guide….likewise were my parents. That is why it was a welcomed blessing that when I was baptized a couple of months after my birth, Jesus said to me as the water splashed over my head, “I am the Good Shepherd. I know the way. I have laid down my life for you. Follow me.”

Now, in the nearly seventy years of this life, I am thankful for the guiding presence of Jesus in each and every day. I am thankful for the rest that has come when I have walked along still waters and green pasture, and I am thankful for the courage and hope that has come as I have walked “through the valley of the shadow of death.” I. am thankful because all the while has been the beckoning call of Jesus, my guide, “Follow me.”

It is the promise that that call awaits me at the threshold of death that stills my fears. Although I cannot imagine what awaits me when this life is over, I am convinced that the one who has shown me self-sacrificing love will certainly do the same after I die. If God has so loved me in this life, I can wait with exhilarating expectation of what that love will be like when death is behind me.

So, I’ll be singing this Sunday, “For all the saints, who from their labors rest… Alleluia! Alleluia!”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord

Hello,

If God is all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), all-present (omnipresent) and all-loving (is there an “omni” word for this?) why do children die from bike accidents? Why do nations fling bombs at each other? Why do floods wipe neighborhoods away? Why do diseases snuff life out? Why is there suffering? Why is there evil?

Some ask these questions and answer that there must be no God.

I, however, find myself drawn to a different answer, an answer given by Martin Luther over 500 years ago. Martin Luther said that the perplexity that comes from these questions comes from the “Omni’s”….omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omniloving (if that is a word). As humans, who are not “onmi” anything, and therefore it is impossible for us to conceive of what an “omni” might entail. Even though we might have learned to control the power in an atom, we are still limited in our power. Even though we might grow more and more in knowledge to the point that we have created AI, there is much that is beyond our mental grasp. Even though we might be able to be in two places at one time thanks to cell phones and other technologies, we still can’t throw our arms around a dear friend and wipe the tears off a grieving mother on the other side of the globe. And even though we might be able to love those who have been gracious and merciful to us, we still aim rockets and guns at those who seek to destroy us.

So, when we seek to understand God through all the “omni’s”, we find ourselves running on a never-ending hamster wheel. That is why Martin Luther called these “omni’s” “God’s masks”. They are like masks that hide us from knowing God, understanding God, and even believing in God. They leave us with unanswerable why’s. They leave us in unshatter-able darkness. They leave us with unreasonable faith. Masks.

However, said Martin Luther, God has taken off all of those masks when he sent his Son, Jesus, to dwell among us. In Jesus, God took off his masks and said, “Look at me.” In Jesus, God incarnate, God gives us a glimpse of who God is, a glimpse that we can relate to, comprehend, and understand. We discover that God is one who cries at the tomb of one of his best friends, Lazarus. We discover that God is one that cares about the hungry as Jesus fed 5000 people on a plain. We discover that God is one who grieves the death of those who consider God their enemy, the Roman soldier whose daughter had died. We discover that God is one who puts children on his lap and embraces them. On and on I could go, but the long and the short of it is, if you want to know what God is really like, don’t look to the “omni’s”. Look to Jesus.

And maybe if you find yourself getting caught up in one of the biggest questions, “Why would the one who has created all that is, seen and unseen, care at all about you who are less than a speck of dust in the scheme of everything and the struggles that you have?”….look at Jesus….look at Jesus who was nailed to the cross out of divine care for you, who spent three days dead in a grave to wrestle every evil in a battle to the death for you, and rose the triumphant victor and opened the gates of eternal life for you…..look to Jesus, and you’ll find the answer.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 Hello,

In this world full of words, now nearly 500 years ago, Martin Luther discovered something about words. Some words, he said, were live words, and some words were dead words. Some words did something to you when they hit your ears, live words. And some words carried no power in them as they were spoken, dead words. Often times they were the exact same word, but how they were used mattered to make them dead or alive. And some of them were far more powerful than others.

Take, for example, the word “love”. When said, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love,” the word “love” doesn’t pack much of a punch when it strikes our ears. However, when someone says to you, “I love you,” that word, “love”, has the power to change the hearer’s life

This distinction of words is what Jesus is all about. When God sent his Son, Jesus, to the world, God wasn’t singing a song talking about love. No, God was speaking his Word to us saying, “I love you.” If we compare it to present day communication, when Jesus suffered on the cross, died, and rose again, God was saying, “I LOVE YOU!” (All caps, bold faced, and underlined) And when we consider who was saying this living word to us, these words have the power to change who we are, how we look at ourselves, and how we treat those around us.

The one who says, “I LOVE YOU,” is the same one who Genesis 1 says spoke and everything seen and unseen was made. It is the same one who breathed life into dust and life began. It is the same one who put explosive energy in an atom and who started an explosion of energy in the sun. There is power in God’s word…universal power!

When God looks at you and says, “I LOVE YOU,” God is gathering up all that power and like a laser beam turning it directly on you. It is a laser beam so powerful that it can pierce the layers of hurt and pain that the world has inflicted on you. It is a laser beam so powerful that it can disintegrate the sins that cling to you and turn them into lifeless dust. It is a laser beam so powerful that it can slice through the thickest darkness that you can find yourself in and be a “lamp unto your feet, and a light unto your path.” (Amy Grant, “Thy Word”)

Take note, that when God speaks his Word, Jesus, he doesn’t say, “I like you,” as if God was a pimply teenager who isn’t really sure about how he or she feels about you. When God says, “I LOVE YOU,” God jumps in as if diving off a diving board with all he has to give, holding nothing back, making his proclamation irreversible. In Jesus, God says that he has fallen in love with you, and just like falling off a cliff that is something that cannot be taken back.

It is my hope that when you receive this Bungee Cord, you are hearing the living word of God saying to you, “I LOVE YOU!”, and as God’s living word falls on your ears and reaches your heart that you are so filled with joy, hope, and peace that you are just about to explode with love.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 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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 The Bungee Cord

Hello,

The Bible tells a story in Mark 4 when Jesus went with his disciples in a boat to cross to the other side of the Sea of Galilee after he had spent the day teaching crowds of people who had gathered at the seashore.

Some years ago, I went on a trip to the Holy Land that was actually a course offered by one of the Lutheran seminaries. As part of the trip, we spent some time around the Sea of Galilee, which in my mind is a misnomer. To call it a sea is a bit of an exaggeration. It is only 7-8 miles wide and 14 miles long. It sits in a valley of sorts, so when you look across it, you can see the other side. Also, because it is in a valley, it finds itself in a natural wind tunnel where storms can hit without much notice, and the fury of the wind is magnified.

On this trip we also got to see a boat from the days of Jesus that had been unearthed in 1986 near the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Because it had been covered in soil, it had remained a good deal intact. It was around 27 feet long, 7 feet wide, and about 4 feet deep. The mast for the sail would have been in the middle of the boat, and the boat was steered by a rudder in the back. Steering was difficult because there was no keel on the underside of the boat.

Seeing this boat, and seeing the Sea of Galilee, I had a deeper appreciation for what the disciples were feeling that night when they left one shore to cross over to the other. The waters must have been relatively still when they set sail, but turned vicious as a storm sprang up. The Bible tells us that this was no small storm, but rather the boat was taking in water and was starting to sink. Without a keel the boat was at the mercy of the wind, taking it where the wind blew and rocking it mercilessly. No wonder the disciples panicked.

And no wonder they were astonished to find Jesus asleep. Why wasn’t he helping them? How could he not see the danger that was exploding around them? Didn’t he see what was happening to them? And so, they awoke him and said to him, “Do you not care that we are perishing?”

Recently, I have shared the anxiety of the disciples. Although not out on a small, keel-less boat on the Sea of Galilee, when I listen to the news that is sweeping down upon me, I get a sinking feeling….warnings about AI’s potential lethality, the war in Iran, the teetering of our economy, the cost of essentials, the blind braggadocio from leaders, the pommeling of storms and fires, sabers being rattled between countries…I find myself being chilled by the frigid, stormy water that my emotional boat is taking in, and on my knees, I find myself crying out, “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?”

And that is when I realize something that both the disciples and I had forgotten, and that is that Jesus was in the boat with them, and likewise he is in the boat with us. Jesus wasn’t standing on the seashore either completely unaware of the travail his disciples were experiencing or simply a spectator to the battle that was going on. No, he was in the boat with them….their fate would be his fate. He was included in the “we”.

That is also the case with us as we find ourselves tossed and turned in the storms of our lives. God does not stand on the shores of heaven in complete oblivion, or as a distant spectator. In Jesus, God hopped into this life with us, feet first, taking on the storms that we endure, and just as he did from the Galilean boat, he stilled the worst storm of all, death, when the walked out of the earth-hewn tomb.

So, it is not a pollyannic platitude to say that Jesus cares when the storms hit. He has shown us that he cares, cares with his very life. When the storms brew to boiling around us and cause us to fear…look and see…see that Jesus is with us…see how Jesus commands the storms…and feel faith and hope settle in you….as Jesus shows you…shows you…. that he cares!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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