The Bungee Cord. 11-17-21

Hello,

At those times in your life when your world is falling apart, what are you going to hold onto to get you through? Or even a bigger question, when the world is falling apart, what are you going to hold onto to get you through?

I know that when I was diagnosed with cancer four years ago, the first question was not hypothetical for me. And when I listen to the news coming across the T.V., newspapers, and the radio, the second question is one that it seems a wise person should start asking.

So, what’s the answer?

Listen to the voices around you and they will tell you to hold onto the things that you have built with your hands: your reputation, your friendships, your bank account, your job or job skills. But as Jesus told his disciples in Luke 21 as they were standing next to one of the most amazing things that they had built with their hands, the temple, that even that temple would one day crash to the ground. (And it did in 70 AD, when the Romans demolished it leaving no stone standing on another.). Bad idea to hold onto the things we have made with our hands.

Others tell us to hold onto the powerful, the wise, and the mighty. Politicians promise us that they can and will save us. Scientists and philosophers tell us that their knowledge will solve our problems. Admirals and Generals tell us that they can clear the way for us. But, as Jesus told his disciples in Luke 21, no matter how powerful, wise or mighty they may be wars continue to wage, earthquakes continue to rumble, and governments continue to fail. Bad idea to hold onto the words of the powerful, the wise and the mighty.

Others tell us to hold onto the things nearest and dearest to us, like family and faith. But we have all seen how families, even the strongest of families, can find themselves being washed away like sandcastles on the beach when the storm waves crash in. And when the world is spinning around like a fast playground merry-go-round, eventually the centripetal force of doubt and pain can peel our hands, even the strongest ones, off the bars of faith to which we cling. Bad idea to hold onto the things nearest and dearest to us.

So…..what is there to hold onto? In Luke 21 Jesus answers that question by telling us that these questions are ones that we need not ask….what should I hold onto when the world is falling apart?....and we need not ask them because Jesus says to us, “I have ahold of you!” Jesus, whose hands, the Gospel of John tells us, created the universe(s) has ahold of you. Jesus, the living Word of God, has staked his claim on you with his life, and he’s not about to release it to anyone or anything in life or death, has ahold of you. Jesus, who sees you as the apple of his eye and values even the hairs on your head, has ahold of you. When your world is falling apart, or when the world, itself, is falling apart and you reach for something to hold onto, Jesus is bellowing out above the din of destruction and turmoil, “I’ve got ahold of you!”

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

Havde a great week….resting in Jesus’ grasp.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

 The Bungee Cord. 11-10-25

Hello,

How big is God?

In my mind, Christians often tell the world that God is quite small. They tell folks that the God who sent his Son, Jesus, into this world is only big enough to be understood through one lens of thought. Ever since the beginning of Christianity, Christians have argued out loud as to who is right and who is wrong, and God is only big enough to love those who are “right”. That seems to make God pretty small.

When the Bible took its shape, there were lots of writings that claimed to speak the truth of God’s revelation to us, but just like witnesses to an accident or crime in our day, some of those writings were deemed not as reliable as others. Faithful people sought to provide a clearer picture of the truth. So, they “canonized” Scripture into a yardstick….not a point. “Canon’s” etymology lies in the meaning of “yardstick”. For a variety of reasons, certain things fell outside of the yardstick, and so they were left out of the Bible. But that which was “used by everyone everywhere” (at least as far as the New Testament is concerned) was included. It doesn’t take a very careful reading of the Bible to see that the contents of the Bible speak its message through a variety of perspectives. It is, after all, a yardstick, and not a point.

Keeping this in mind, we begin to see how big God really is. God is big enough to embrace a whole variety of people whose life experiences have given them different lenses through which to see God. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans and many more find their spots within the yardstick length of the Bible. As God has embraced this grand variety of temperaments, of personalities, and of talents, God has brought together an orchestra of praise to fill the world with the unmatched beauty of the music of God’s love. Trumpeters, violinists, clarinetists, drummers, players of the trombone, flutists, tuba players, and all the rest of the unique instrumentalists have a place in God’s orchestra. And as with any orchestra, its music is most beautiful when each musician plays their instrument with maximum accuracy and quality of tone. And because God is big enough to conduct an orchestra full of instruments, there is a place for you and me in God’s concert of mercy, whatever instrument we find ourselves gifted to play.

Because of how big God is and the fact that Scripture is a yardstick, it doesn’t surprise me that as different people read their music, they find themselves playing different notes when it comes to addressing some of the most complex issues of our time. It just may be that the score calls us to play different notes at the same time.

So, as you add to the concert of God’s grace in Jesus Christ this week, do so with gusto and delight, keeping you eyes affixed both on the music and the conductor in front of you. The sound we will make together is a tune that can transform the world onto the symphony that God intends it to be. It’s a BIG SOUND!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

 The Bungee Cord 11-3-25

Hello,

One of the most helpful parts of Scripture that I find when it comes to understanding the life of the Christian faith is Romans 6. At the end of chapter five, the Apostle Paul, who wrote Romans, says that God addresses every sin with God’s grace. Then as he begins the sixth chapter he asks, “Well, if grace is a good thing, maybe we should sin all the more so that we can receive more grace from God.”

And to that somewhat “creative” way of thinking, Paul says, “How can we who have died to sin continue to live in it?” Then Paul goes on to say that when God takes ahold of us, God doesn’t just refurbish our broken selves, instead God makes us into something new. Paul said it this way in 2 Cor. 5:17, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being!”

I begin this Bungee Cord with this short Bible study because it has led me to be a little more careful with my words when it comes to living the Christian faith. I hear many Christian folk speak of being “called” to do something, and there is certainly truth in their words. Pastors in my tradition often speak of their “calling” to be a pastor. As a matter of fact, the word “vocation” comes from the Latin word that means “calling”. Jesus gathered his disciples by “calling out” to them, “Follow me.” And so, when Christians say that we, as Christians, are called to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, care for the sick, cloth the naked and visit the imprisoned (Matthew 25), there is truth to their words.

But as I consider Romans 6, I think there is a deeper truth behind the Christian faith, and that is to say that we whom God has gotten ahold of are “made” to do what Jesus says the Christian life is meant to be. In my way of thinking, when one is “called”, one can ignore that specific calling and follow some other calling voice, but when one is “made” in a certain way, if one acts in such a way that one is not made, life is clumsy, if not painful, at best. So, although we might be born as creatures consumed with ourselves (some theologians say that is the crux of sin), and we all are, when God gets ahold of us in Christ, we are reborn, new creatures filled with the self-giving love of God. We are more than “called” to live lives of self-giving, we are “made” to do so.

When I understand my Christian life, I see God as a divine mechanical engineer. Just as mechanical engineers design things to do a specific task, just so, God has done so with you and me as Christ has taken hold of our lives. As I look at this world that is so full of hatred, violence and fear, and I wonder if there is anything that I can do about it, I find myself hopeful rather than helpless. I am hopeful because Scripture tells me that God, the divine mechanical engineer, has designed and made me to do something about the deadly mess we find ourselves in. God has made me, as St. Francis penned in his prayer (Google it!) a channel of God’s peace, and since I am God’s handiwork, I have the confidence that God has made me with his best. I am no antique wash board that cannot meet the challenges of today, instead I am a high-tech, divinely powered industrial washing machine of God’s grace….and so are you!

So, join with me and be of good courage as you and I face this world that stains all people with hatred, fear, and violence (just to name a few), because in Christ, God has made (not just called) us to be brand new instruments of God’s cleansing grace….”scrubbing bubbles” of grace!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

 The Bungee Cord. 10-26-25

Hello,

Just got back from spending a week with some friends at the Outer Banks of North Carolina. They had rented a house on the beach and invited us to come down and enjoy it with them. What a treat!

It is about 8-9 hours from our house to the house in which we stayed. Last Sunday, we left after church, so we broke the trip in half. On the way home we tackled the trip in drive. Normally, when Kate and I go on vacation, I do most of the driving as I don’t entertain myself very well as a passenger. However, since we did not take our car, but travelled in a friend’ car, I was assigned to the back seat for the entirety of the trip. It was reminiscent of childhood car trips back to see my grandparents in Wayne, Nebraska. Oblivious to the amount of road that we had travelled and the road yet to travel, I, on several occasions mimicked to the front seat my childhood wonderings, “How much longer?”

This upcoming Sunday is All Saints Sunday in churches that follow a liturgical calendar. On All Saints Sunday we commemorate those who have been Baptized this year and have begun their journey of faith, and we commemorate those who have reached faith’s end and rest in God’s eternal care. For those of us in between these two groups, we are like back seat riders, not knowing how far we have yet to go, and with the wonderment of a back seat child we might find ourselves asking, “How much longer?”

Of course, the ride is not the same for all of us travelers. Personally, I have had legs of this life’s trip that have been so darkly shrouded in depression, that my back seat question comes with eager anticipation. “How much longer?” I have been with people for whom the trip seems to lack any purpose, and they find themselves asking their back seat question out of abject boredom. “How much longer?” For most people that I have ridden with in this life’s trip, the trip in and of itself is so filled with wonder, joy, and awe that their back seat question hopes for an answer that carries much time with it. “How much longer?”

“Twenty minutes.” That was the designated answer that came from the driver’s seat of the car in which my wife and her siblings traveled. “Twenty minutes.” As you have probably guessed, in reality, it never was twenty minutes, but it gave the unbuckled travelers in the back seat and in the travelers in the “way back” of the station wagon the message that they needed to find something with which to occupy themselves. I remember that we would play “Alphabet Find”, where we would search for sequential letters of the alphabet as we traveled along, and once someone found a letter, no one else could use that sign, license plate, or advertisement to procure the letter they were on. “Q’s” were a challenge to find!

“Twenty minutes.” That might be a good answer for all of us as we turn the corner on this year’s All Saints Day. As much as All Saints Day is a day to commemorate new and deceased travelers, it is also a day to poke our heads out the window and use this time constructively: feed the poor, attend to the sick, visit the imprisoned, lift up the widow and orphan, welcome the stranger, love one’s neighbor….. “Twenty minutes.”

Who knows how long “twenty minutes’’ is going to be, but of this we can be certain: because of who the driver is (Jesus), we’ll get there! And when we get there, we’ll all say with glee, “It was worth the trip!”

Have a great week,

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

 The Bungee Cord 10-21-25

Hello,

In a world that would turn us to hopelessness, I hope that the Bungee Cord brings you hope on which you can firmly set your feet.

This week, I saw something that was hope crushing. I turned on the news and there was a report on the cease fire that is teetering in the Mid-East. As part of this report, and maybe you saw it, too, there was a half-dozen men on their knees with blindfolds on, and behind each of them was a man with a masked face pointing a gun at each of the kneeling men’s heads. The news anchor stopped the video and said that if the video was to continue, we would see each of the guns fired and each of the kneeling men fall face-down on the ground.

When I saw this, I literally gasped. How could anyone do such a thing? The amount of hatred in the shooters’ hearts is unfathomable to me. Or maybe it wasn’t hatred. Maybe it was complete lack of seeing any humanity in those who were kneeling? Maybe those shooters looked at those kneeling and saw them as less than cockroaches.

You may recall the time in the Bible when a bunch of men brought a woman caught in adultery to Jesus. (I wonder where the man was who was likewise caught in the act.). Those who caught the woman expected Jesus to condemn her and lead the accusers in pelting her with stones until she died. After all, that was the rule.

But Jesus did not do as they had hoped. When Jesus saw her, he did not see her as those men did. He did not see someone whose deed had transformed her into something less than a cockroach. Jesus saw a person kneeling in front of him, someone that God almighty held in such value that God sent Jesus, his Son, so that she might be held in the love of God every day of her life, and every day when her days in this life were to be no more. The Bible doesn’t say that Jesus looked upon her and loved her, but his response to her indictment was unmistakably one of divine love. “Let the one who has no sin throw the first stone,” Jesus said.

No one picked up a stone. When her accusers left with their tails between their legs, and maybe their eyes opened to the common humanity they held with that woman, a humanity that is stained with pain, Jesus said to her, “Go and sin no more.” Jesus words to that woman were an invitation of grace, the same invitation of grace that might be said to a rabbit caught in a trap, “You are free. Go, and hop away.”

By this treatment of that woman, Jesus would have us know that God treats us in the same way. Even though we, like that woman, do things that bring pain to others and ourselves, God does not see us by the evil we do. No, God sees us by the grace in his heart, grace that leads God to name us God’s children, children that God would give God’s own life for….which God did!

And if we listen carefully, we might hear God’s voice speak upon those who we encounter that carry an indictment that begins to well up hatred and demean in our hearts….that we might hear God say, “I died for this one, a child of mine, too.” And with that whisper in our ears, instead of gathering up stones to throw, we can reach out our hands in mercy and help others to their feet.

Is there hope for the world? Is there hope for you or me? Indeed! There is great hope, hope that is found in you and me, as Christ opens the traps this world has set for us and in which we have been caught, and he says, taking hold of our hands, “I hear lots of people caught in traps and crying for help. Let’s go and open up those traps!”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

 The Bungee Cord 10-13-25

Hello,

I heard someone say that if you want to know what unconditional love is, accidentally lock your spouse and your dog in the trunk of the car and see which one is glad to see you when you open it up. It is hard to imagine even the most patient and understanding spouse emerging with a smile on their face. Far more likely it would be that darts would be shooting from their eyes with the rapidity of a machine gun, and shouts of, “You idiot!” exploding from their mount. But next to that eruption of anger and rage, there would certainly be the excited wagging of a tail, the twinkle of joy in the eyes, and a slobbery kiss, and the bark of resolute happiness coming from your dog.

The Bible tells us that on Easter evening when the disciples were hidden away in a locked room, fearing that they might find themselves hanging on a cross, suddenly another was with them who greeted them with the words, “Peace be with you.” Then he showed them the nail wounds in his hands and the spear wound in his side, and they realized it was Jesus. Jesus the one whom they all abandoned when the soldiers came to take him away….Jesus the one whom Peter had denied to even knowing him….Jesus whom they watched being locked tighter than a car’s trunk in a tomb. Jesus, when the tomb was opened and he encountered his fickle disciples in that room said to them, “Peace be with you.”

Notice, he didn’t say, “You cowards! How could have you let this happen to me!?” Nor did he say, “You backstabbers! How could have you denied me when I was facing torture and disgrace?!” Nor did he say, “With friends like you, who needs enemies!” No. When the tomb was opened and Jesus laid his eyes on his disciples he said as if wagging a tail, “Peace be with you.” Unconditional love.

It is that Easter evening encounter of Jesus’ disciples with Jesus that gives me absolute assurance that when I slam the trunk door on Jesus, and I do with a regularity of which I am not proud, when the trunk is opened, I will be greeted in a way far more resembling my dog than my spouse. When I give into the idolatry the world sets before me, an idolatry that leaves me holding an empty bag, and I open the trunk where I have stuffed Jesus, I know that I will hear the words from him, “Peace be with you.” When I cowardly deny Jesus by my selfish and heatless actions, and I open the trunk where I have stuffed Jesus, I know that I will hear the words from him, “Peace be with you.” And I know that when God opens my grave and I am looking right into the eyes of Jesus, even though I have left a trail of pain in my life’s wake, I will hear the words coming from him, “Peace be with you.”

As true as it is that I intentionally and accidentally lock Jesus in the trunk of my life’s care, I need not fear when I open it up,for I have come to know that grace and mercy are at the core of Jesus’ relationship with me. I will not be struck by darts of anger and disgust. I will receive the greeting akin to my dog’s. “Peace be with you.” Unconditional love.

Likewise, will you!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

 The Bungee Cord. 10-6-25

Hello,

I returned yesterday from a trip to Hinsdale, Illinois for my 50th high school reunion. I have kept in light contact with a handful of my classmates over the years, but for the most part our paths have not crossed for a half a century. As one would expect, the town has drastically changed, and our high school is hardly recognizable in its current state of high technology and creature comforts. Most of the people had transformed into folks that didn’t look a great deal like the graduation picture that was on their nametag. Not knowing what to expect as I traveled there, I was extremely surprised how monumental an event it was for me.

I was touched by the generous welcome by people with whom I ran around in high school, and those who I hardly knew (there were 600+ in our class). Our conversations were deeply engaging. Our remembrances were heartwarming. The boundaries of cliques that divided in our high school days were erased, and there was a commonality of bumps and bruises that we shared as we shared our divergent journeys.

I was given the honor of reading the names of those who have died from our class (55 of them), to offer a prayer for them, to offer another prayer for the struggles that we all carry, and (most importantly) say grace before the meal. I was asked to say something before the reading of the names, which I have decided to share with my Bungee Cord readers. It went something like this:

“The world in which we live tells us that our worth is based on what we have done. The more successful our deeds or the more important our deeds, the more worth we hold. It is one of those fun things that we get to do at reunions like this, to share the peaks of our journeys. But I have come to understand that there is something far more substantial that establishes our worth than what we have done, successes and failures, and that is who we are. The verse in the Bible that has become the focus of my faith is 1 John 3:1. “See what love the Father has given us, that we might be called children of God, and that is what we are.”

We are children of God. That is what God has declared us to be, and what could make us of any greater worth than that. As we spend this time together, maybe that is the greatest gift that we can share, to see the immeasurable gift that we are to each other as Children of God. And as we remember those who are no longer among us, we count them as treasures who have adorned our lives, not because of what they have done in life, but rather because who that have been in life. Children of God. Treasures.”

And in the following minutes I slowly spoke their names, giving time between each name for people to silently raise up memories of these beloved of God. A pin drop could have been heard.

I’ve returned from my 50th reunion with my sight adjusted, adjusted to see the treasures that I encounter every day. People of unmeasured worth….not because of what they have or have not done, but because of who they are: Children of God.

“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called “Children of God”, and that is what we are.”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger