Bungee Cord 11-30-15

Hello,

Today, I write the Bungee Cord having just spent the last week with my three adult sons in Denver.  Two of them live there.  The other flew in from New York City.  It is a different Turkey Table now a days in many ways, but traces of Thanksgiving tables when we didn’t have to travel to be together still appear.  Sitting around the table with them and spending the week with them is a delight that this parent treasures and takes in with thanks.

But I’m back now; back in the familiar settings of my own home, surrounded by the relative silence of the empty nest.  There’s a difference, though, as I sit upon the couch today from my sitting here a week ago, and the difference is a soul settled sense of peace.  One might conjecture that this peace has taken hold of my heart because of the contrast of the frenetic energy that stirs when I’m back with my kids.  There is an increased stirring that matches the highest level of a kitchen mixer when all three of them lower themselves into the bowl of our life.  But I don’t think that is where the peace that I feel today comes from.

I believe that the peace that has taken hold of my soul has come from having been snatched away for a week by the things that matter deepest in my life.  Far too easily do the semi-important, mildly important, and truthfully really unimportant things have a way of tethering themselves to me, tangling me up in them like yards and yards of kite string.  To have my kids tease me about my aged foolishness, to hear them banter with one another, to see them taking on lives of their own, to be invited to share in their dreams and aspirations….well, it was like scissors slicing me free from life-sapping entanglements.  That is not to say that their lives are perfect and unfettered with difficulties, but even sharing their struggles has a way of freeing me from the lesser important things in life to be engaged in the what is far more important.

I don’t think that I am alone in being snagged by life’s tangling strings.  As a matter of fact, I know that I am not.  Getting tangled up in the omnipresent trip-cords of life is impossible not to do.  Everyone needs to have table time, like I have just had,  to snip them free from all those things that entangle us to death so we might be able to take a deep breath of all those things that are full of life and give us life.

I hope that is what Sunday morning around the Thanksgiving table of the Lord is all about.  (Interestingly enough, one of the words that we use for this weekly meal is “The Eucharist”, whose Greek root word is “Thanksgiving”.)  I hope that when folks gather around this table where the bread of life and the cup of salvation are shared people experience the grace of the Lord snatching them away from all the things that are suffocatingly entangling them and freeing them to be engaged in life, life abundant in hope, joy and peace.

I know that that what happens to me.  Although it may seem to be only piece of bread and a sip of wine, my ears are captured by the promise that it is more, God’s promise that his presence is tangibly entangled therein. And in a profound way that words and reason cannot capture, I can feel the snipping of all that the world had tethered me in entanglement, and my lungs freed to take in a soul cleansing breath that enlivens when I dine at the Lord’s table.

The peace that I wallow in today from my week with my kids will soon fall prey to the world’s entanglements, and so I look forward to the table time that we will have again.  Likewise, the peace that soothes me from dining at the Lord’s table is always soon snagged by the trip-cords of life, and so I look forward to the Lord’s table time that I will also have again.

I hope that your Thanksgiving table time brought the refreshment that mine did, and know this: there is a standing invitation at the Lord’s Thanksgiving (Eucharist) table every Sunday in which the Lord seeks to exponentially greater refresh your life with his divine mercy and grace.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord 11-24-15

Hello,

The Greensburg Holliday Parade rolled past our church on Saturday.  As always, it was led by the local color guard slicing the air with the red, white and blue hoisted high.  Behind them came the Greensburg Volunteer Fire Department stepping out in their cream colored parade uniforms.  Intermingled there after were several bands, old cars, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, fire engines, local business floats, alpacas, and politicians.  A mandatory entrance fee for parade participants must have been several bags of candy which were to be thrown to the children who lined the route as if they were hunting dogs at point.  At the end of the 2 ½ hour parade , Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus rode into town in a hay wagon pulled by draft horses.

It was a beautiful day for the parade: sunny and in the 50’s.  The weather on the last several years was not as welcoming, thus the reason for the thin crowd for those parades..  This year’s crowd , however, filled the sidewalks and edged into the streets.

As the crowd began to gather, I became worried. 

As a sign of the Grace of God, we have, the past few years, given out hot dogs and hot chocolate during parade time: free.  No cost to any one, after all, that is what  the Grace of God is all about: no cost to anyone  (except Jesus, that is).  My worries, you see, came about as I saw the crowd balloon and our supply of hot dogs remain stable.  Three hundred and fifty hot dogs was what we bought, and that was all that we had.  The flyers that we passed out to the parade goers were drawing in a steady stream of hot dog hunters. 

I had stationed myself in front of the church, clerically clad for recognition, greeting people as they walked by and welcoming them to their free hot dogs.  As the parade went on, I was glad to see that people were exiting the church with sour kraut laden hot dogs.  As the parade neared its second hour, I, who had not eaten but a piece of toast for breakfast felt the urge for a hot dog……too late.  They had just run out.  I suppose we could have given more away, but 350 was just about the right number.

Even though I didn’t get my hot dog, I did get something.  I found out that many people would not take our hot dogs for free.  They “demanded” we take their money.  So, a plate was put out with no instructions, and when the parade was over the count was $120.00…..which I will suggest will go to our effort to send 231 (that’s how old our church is) school bags to needy students around the world.

As I consider the $120.00 that was given for our free hot dogs, it seems to me that it might be thought of in a couple of ways.  One way to look at that $120.00 is to say that bears out the fact that grace is rather hard to receive.  Even as we stand before God, there’s a tendency for us to think we have to do something to receive God’s grace, and that get’s us in trouble because then we begin to wonder if we have done enough for the amazing grace that we receive.  But on the other hand, maybe that $120.00 is a sign of thanks, a response to grace.  That is what my offering is every Sunday morning, an offering of thanks that I give with no strings attached on how it is to be used.  So, if those hot dog recipients were giving their money in thanks, and not in payment …… well then, that would have been a wonderful thing.

I do know that many of those who got their free hot dogs were very thankful, because as they passed me with their hot dogs in their hands many said, “This was awful  nice of you.”

“Glad we could do it,” I would say back.

And to those who said nothing to me as they carried their hotdogs parade-side, I said grace-fully, “Have a great day!”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord  11-16-15

Hello,

There are events in the world so vile and incomprehensible that they cast a pall over every nation and land.  Such was the case with the events of Friday night in Paris.

My Friday night plan was to sit down, turn off my brain, turn on my TV, and watch some football.  That did not happen.  Instead of watching what is meant to be a diversion from the rigors of life, sports, I found myself watching life at its worst.  The feelings that rolled through my soul were like bowling balls knocking down pin after pin of hope and peace and joy.

When things like this happen, they who know about international politics are called upon to bring some analysis of such horrific chaos.  So, I will leave such discussion to them.  Even though there are countless theologians far wiser and deeper in thought than I, the darkness of these things has cast a shadow over my pen, a shadow that I humbly hope God will use the words of this minor league theologian to dissipate at least a bit.

Those who perpetrated the horror of last Friday night did so for a flurry of reasons, but it seems to me that a primary motivation is to create a tsunami of fear.  They intend to cause such a tidal wave of fear that people will run away from life, rather than live in the blessing of each day of life.  They hope that fear will so chill people’s hearts that earthquakes of hatred will rumble under every nation.  They hope that fear will so loom over people that a crest of suspicion will crash down upon neighborhoods and towns.  They hope that fear will rise to the level that compassion for those who suffer will be drowned.  They act in terrorizing ways, it seems to me, with the hopes that we will be inundated with fear.

This, of course, is nothing new.  The same was the case in the days when Jesus walked this earth.  The act of crucifixion was not just a means that the Romans used to carry out their brand of punishment; it was far more a weapon used by the Romans to keep the people bathed in fear.  Crucifixions, as you might recall, were not done behind high walls and in prison courtyards.  They were done out in the open.  In the middle of the day.  The Romans wanted to make sure that everyone knew they were going on, and that everyone could see what was going on.  They were meant to be a government-sanctioned act of terror.

The cross, which oddly for some has become merely a pretty piece of jewelry for many, is not so for me.  It is not so because I know the story of God’s encounter with the cross, the story of the one who was God incarnate that hung on that Golgotha cross and died….and the continuation of that story that took place three days later when that same one, Jesus, walked out of that Easter tomb.  When Jesus walked out of that tomb, everything that that Good Friday cross intended to bring down upon the world…..fear, guilt, terror, hatred, and even death….was crushed under his feet.  For me, the cross is the ultimate reminder, not of the terrifying powers of the world, but of the unbeatable power of God.

I, when I was baptized, was marked “with the cross of Christ forever”, and as a Christian I gather with all those who are so marked under the cross every Sunday.  And when I mark myself with the sign of the cross, I hear the words of Romans 8 ringing with unquestionable clarity, “There is nothing in ………. life or in death that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So, as one who lives under the cross, I need not, and I will not live in fear.  I will live with appropriate care, but I will not succumb to fear.  I will not hole myself away from life.  I will not regard every person who does not look like me with suspicion.  I will not brush large groups of people with hatred.  And I will not stop joining my brothers and sisters every week around the table of the Lord.

The cross is the supreme evidence to me that the grace and love of God is far more powerful than the evil that some are determined to ignite.  So, marked with the cross of Christ and living under it, I hope to show that power to the world so that the world’s gaze might be captured by it rather than by those who act with mistaken bravado.

“Fear not,” says the Lord, “I am with you always!”

Have a great week,

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 11-10-15

Hello,

The chickens are no more.

Those of you who have been Bungee Cord readers for the last couple of years know that my wife ventured us into chicken farmers, on a small scale.  Over the course of our chickening, we had eight chickens (6 at one time at our peak), multiple eggs every day, and apparently prey for the natural wildlife around our house and for the imported wildlife (i.e.Duncan, our dog who brought two of the chickens to their demise).

Well, as it is with chickens, after a couple of years, our chickens’ egg production slowed down to a trickle at best.  Added to that the difficulty of trying to keep them alive and egg producing during the winter, the decision about diminishing returns came to the fore.  The chickens lost.

So, yesterday, my wife and my piano-playing, piano tuning son from NYC who was visiting us put on their executioner garb and prepared to transform our chickens from egg-layers to stew meat.  Neither had previously played such a role in the life of a chicken;  my wife’s chicken execution instruction coming from several forays into the internet, and my son’s coming from his musical instruction at NYU.  The first chicken that met its demise was our most un-favorite, and it paid a bit of a price for its role as it’s executioners’ first.  The second and third chicken found their fate to be a bit more precise in its execution.

     In the end, our three remaining chickens will no longer be wobbling full of feathers around our yard, but will one day find themselves bathing featherless in a pot of boiling water, softening them up for a good bowl of chicken stew.

     Unfortunately, in the world in which we live, chickens are not the only creatures that find themselves facing the judgment of worthlessness when they are no longer able to do what they once were.  People find themselves likewise judged, too.  Consider what happens to those have done something that renders them less trustworthy.  Consider what happens to those who have done something that renders them less loveable.  Consider what happens to those who have done something that renders them less desirable to be around.

     The fate of such humans may not be as graphic as that of our chickens, but it is no less severe.  Such people are often shunned, often considered toss-aways, and regularly ignored.

     Interestingly enough, the one who Christians follow was one who was treated in such a way: shunned, tossed away, ignored and ultimately executed.  But that treatment was not the last act of his story.  The last act belonged to God who took he who was shunned and embraced him, who took he who was tossed away opened up the gates of eternal life to him, who took he who was ignored and gave him the name at which every knee will bow, and who took the one who was executed and in raising him destroyed death forever.

     So, if you ever hear a voice coming from inside of you or from the world around you declaring you worthless by virtue of something that you have done, know this: that voice is not Jesus’ voice.  Jesus took that voice to the cross and walked all over it on Easter Sunday morning.  If however you hear a voice that says, ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’  (Matthew 11), that is Jesus’ voice…..listen to it!

     Yoke, that is….not yolk….hahahaha.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 11-2-15

Hello,

     I don’t know if last week’s news of the run away blimp reached your news station, but since it happened over us in Pennsylvania, it was the news de jour one day last week. 

     For reasons still unknown a 250 foot long blimp that was stationed in northern Maryland broke away from its moorings.  Turns out that this particular blimp is a very sophisticated military surveillance device whose job was to keep its eye out for threats to Washington D.C.  Last week it was doing its job at 6000 feet when it tether broke, and off it went on a run away journey.  Since it is an unmanned blimp with no motors or steering there was no controlling its path or destination.

     When its tether severed, air force jets were immediately launched to track it down.  There was some concern that it might wander over a populated area and descend upon it, but the bigger concern was that this blimp had “sensitive instruments and data” that the military didn’t want to get into the hands of those who shouldn’t have it.  Not only did this blimp cost nearly $200,000,000.00 (yes….it was no simple hot air balloon), but because of its payload it was extreme value.  And yet, somehow the tether that held this blimp to the earth somehow broke.

     Sometimes I find myself joining the Psalmist as I look at the star sprinkled sky, “What are mortals that you should be mindful of them?”  In the vast domain of the universe, it really is quite unreasonable that God almighty would even remotely  be concerned about the likes of me.  If I, like that multimillion dollar blimp, were to set off on a run away journey from God, would God even notice?

    And yet what seems logical and reasonable to me as I scope the universe, is not the way that God thinks about me and values me.  God, for reasons that are beyond my understanding, thinks of me so dearly that God has tethered me to his very self by taking hold of me with divine power and might.  Jesus, God incarnate, staked himself in my life in the waters of Baptism, and when that happened, God gave me God’s name, a name that is worth far more than sensitive instruments and data held in a surveillance blimp, for to give me his name, it cost the life of his Son.

     And even more than that, when God tethered me to himself, he said this, “I will never let you go.”  Romans 8 says it this way, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Wow!      

     Who knows why the tether of that multi-million dollar blimp broke…a fierce wind?  a weakening from daily stress? an enemy’s cutter? a flaw in its make-up?…but this I know, the tether with which God holds me will not likewise fail.  No matter what I do….no matter what happens to me….no matter how rebellious the storm that I create or is created around me….God has taken hold of me with the same power with which he created the universe and holds it together. 

     So, as I look at the vastness of that star sprinkled sky and hear that God has taken hold of my life with an unyielding grip….well, I guess that it must be true …so true that I can live each day in trust of that truth….the truth that nothing will ever be able to separate me from him….likewise the same for you!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger