Bungee Cord 5-30-16

Hello,

This past week I have been having a love/hate relationship with a pair of swallows.

I actually like having swallows around because they snap up the bugs that are flying around in the air, especially mosquitoes.  As a matter of fact, my wife has constructed several bird houses that stand at some distance from our house to encourage their habitation.  Several pairs of swallows have done just what we have hoped they would do, nesting on those bird houses.  So, I like having swallows around.

But I do not want them nesting on my house!  They are messy nesters.  They drop mud when they are building their nests, and they drop something else when they nest in their nests.  I have given them a place to nest, but there is a pair of swallows that has decided that they don’t want to nest in the birdhouses that I have given them.  They have chosen to nest on my house!

I noticed them sweeping in and out beneath our deck which covers a patio constructed next to sliding doors out of our basement.  After many flights I decided that I would take a look-see, and sure enough, they had begun to build a nest atop a vent.  I pulled out a hose and water blasted the nest from the side of my house figuring they would get the message that their nest was not wanted there.  Not so.  As  I was rolling up the hose I saw them resume their sorties under my deck carrying nesting material in their beaks.  So, I unrolled my hose and blasted their work again.  Three times I did that, and three times they continued their construction.

So, I decided to discourage them in a different way.  I put a wire brush atop the vent, which worked for a while.  But they were relentless in their housing choice, and started to build their nest on the handle of the brush. 

My next idea was to block off the area above the vent with blocks of wood…..and that worked for a while.  But they were unmoved in their choice, and they started building a nest by plastering mud next to my blocks of wood.

Even as I write this Bungee Cord in my basement family room, they are outside my sliding glass door, swooping in and swooping out.  I have resorted to placing a hoe under my deck which I have had to use a couple of times to scrape off their nest construction. 

I WILL win this battle.  My choice not to have them nest on my house will overrule their choice to build it there….after all, I am bigger, and it is my house!.

Swallows are not the only thing with which I have a love/hate relationship.  I also have one with God.  That may sound like a strange thing for a pastor to say, but it is the truth.  I love having God in my life because God snaps up all my failures, my failings, and my sins so that I can live my life in peace.  But there is part of me that is fine with having God around my life, living in a distant built birdhouse, but I don’t want him nesting on my heart.  God has a way of messing up my desire for vengeance, my blindness to my faults, my need to be right, my preoccupation with the faults of others.  I have, on more than one occasion, tried to blast him out of my life….But God does not give up.  I have, on more than one occasion, bristled against God and built blockades to keep him out of my life….but God does not give up.  I have even tried to scrape God out of my life….but God does not give up.

God has chosen to nest in my life…and with swallow determination, God will not give up on his choice.  God keeps on swooping into my life, and unlike the swallows who continue to swoop onto my house, God….not me….will win….after all…. God is bigger than me!  And in truth, that swallow-like determination of God is ultimately the foundation of my faith.

I may have a love/hate relationship with God, but God has shown me that he has a love…and love only relationship with me.  Likewise with you.  Thank God!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 5-23-16

Hello,

    I will always remember the first time that I read Romans 5:1-5.  It was my sophomore year in college.

     College, for me, was a well agitated mixture of delight and drudgery.  As I spread my wings on my maiden voyage into adulthood there were times that I felt myself soaring, and there were times that I found myself flapping away and going nowhere, loosing altitude fast.

     It was on one such altitude plunging days that I was sitting at my desk in my fraternity (Beta Sigma Psi….a national fraternity for Lutheran gentlemen).  Don’t know what it was that caused the drop, probably nothing uncommon to the average college experience.

     A knock on my door.  It was Vince, a fraternity friend that was known for being one of few words.  He walked into my room and said, “Read this,” and he set a torn corner of a piece of paper on my desk with “Romans 5:1-5” written on it.

     A little biography of Vince.  Vince was a year older than me.  He had the stocky and muscular build of a high school fullback.  He had perfect hair for those days, a huge natural “fro” of blond hair.  He had grown up in Rockford, Illinois, ninety miles away from the Chicago suburb in which I grew up.  In one of those blessings that college can bring, our lives travelled the same rails for two years.  As I got to know Vince, I learned that the rails he rode before college were tough, far tougher than mine, as he lost both of his parents while he was in high school to heart attacks.  His older brother, who was a couple years older than he, became his shepherd and guide.

     It was out of that history that Vince stepped into my blue funk room.  “Read this,” he said, and placed that piece of paper on my desk with “Romans 5:1-5” on it.

     I read it, Romans 5:1-5, and from that day, those verses from Scripture have been holy words to which I have turned when life has become heavy upon my shoulders.  Although the verses on that piece of paper have stuck with me, I have to say that I have lost track of Vince.  Haven’t heard from him since college.  Don’t know where he is living.  Don’t know if he still has that envied “fro”.

     But I thank God for Vince who worked as an angel of the Lord (angel, by the way, comes from the Greek word for “messenger”).  With his few words, God’s grace took hold of me and my wings.  He was there when I needed the wisdom which he was could give with singular authority.  Who knows when you or I will find us, likewise, in Vince’s angelic shoes?

When Romans 5:1-5 was read yesterday in church, the echo of Vince’s words rang in my ears, “Read this.”

“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:1-5)

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 5-15-16

Hello,

     I witnessed the Lord at work this week.  She had scissors in her hand.

     As my hair lessens, I feel a need to get it cut more often, and that is why I was at my barber’s this week.  I think that she would be ok with me calling her a barber.  She has a one chair shop, with metal legged chairs to sit in as you wait your turn, an old cash register, and she offers you a hot neck shave when she’s done cutting your hair…a cut whose cost is less than $10.00.

     I go to her because when I came to town I asked one of my parishoners whose head held more hair than mine and it was always well kept if he could suggest someone to cut my hair.  He recommended the gal who I now call my barber, and interestingly enough, his recommendation was not based upon her hair cutting ability, but “if you want to be around regular people, she’s the one to go to.”

     So, I went to her and found out right away that she is a busy barber.  Of all the times that I have had her cut my hair, only once did I walk in to find an empty barber’s chair.  There is always a shop full of people.  College kids with flowing hair.  Retired guys with far less hair than I who get it cut every week.  State policemen  and army guys who like their hair cut short and tight.  Middle aged guys of all shapes and sizes.  Attorneys and factory workers.  It is quite a crew.  I think that I am one of her newer customers.

     This week as I walked into her shop there was a younger guy in the chair and two older guys waiting on the “comfortable” steel legged chairs.  Sometimes when it is that busy, I stick my nose in the door and say that I’ll come back another time.  But this time, I wasn’t in a huge hurry, so I took my place on a metal legged chair.  A conversation was going on between the barber and the young man in the chair, a conversation in which the other two guys were also participating.  These conversations go on all the time in her barber shop, but as new-be, I tend to just listen and smile every once in a while.

     Like I said, as I sat there listening to the conversation and the clicking of the scissors, I witnessed the Lord at work….at work through my barber.  Every time that I have been there I have witnessed her ability to strike up a conversation with her clients….always asking about their lives, their families, their vacations, their hobbies…  It is amazing.  It is always supportive and caring….but this time it seemed even more so.  As she talked with the young man and one of the older guys, the conversation turned toward difficulties that they were having in their lives.  The difficulties were magnified by phrases that I don’t hear in my church.  When they left the shop, she invited the oldest guy onto her chair and talked with him about his aging life and the bumps and bruises he was undergoing.  With all three, she listened intently while snipping her scissors, and offered gentle encouragement, words of care, and positive approaches to life.

     It was amazing. 

     So, when she offered me a seat in her chair, her shop had emptied and so I said to her, “You have quite a counseling office here.”

     She humbly snickered and told me how these guys had been coming to her shop for years, and she filled me in on her worries and concerns for these guys.

     “Well,” I, who knows a little about counseling, said to her, “you did a great job in helping those guys out!  They are lucky to have you as their barber.”  It was obvious that those guys were not just some heads of hair to her.

     I told her that she, like everyone who is not a pastor, actually is able to reach more people than I can with God’s grace.  As a matter of fact, in my Christian tradition the Christian faith is meant to be lived out in love and service to the neighbor (Sunday morning is meant to fuel daily life.). 

     So, if you are not a pastor, and I don’t think that many of you are, I hope that you know how much of a difference that you can make in your daily life as you care about people with the grace and care that God has shown you.  I saw the difference that my barber made in the life of those three guys…I saw the Lord at work.  She had scissors in her hand.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Hello,

     I spent some time closer to God this past week.  Not really.  I did, however, spend some time lofted above the clouds in the sky flying to Denver and back.

     In truth, Christians  (or I should say the Christians to whom I preach) do not believe that God is “up there”, or that God is “the man upstairs.”    We do believe that God’s power, wisdom, love and glory is greater, or above ours.  So, when we speak of God coming “down” to us, we are not speaking spatially but qualitatively in all the things of which God is greater than us.

     So, where is God when you have made a mess of your life and the stench of it is like that of a cesspool?  Where is God when you have accomplished a life long goal, and you are acclaimed by all around you?  Where is God when you are lost and don’t know which way to go?  Where is God when you are confident, and maybe even a bit arrogant?

     The answer: right with you.

Psalm  139:7-12

Where can I go from your spirit?

   Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning

   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,

   and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,

   and the light around me become night’,

even the darkness is not dark to you;

   the night is as bright as the day,

   for darkness is as light to you.

I wrote a song based on this verse.  Take a listen.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Hello,

     Those of us Christians who worship and live according to a liturgical calendar celebrate Easter for 50 days, at which we turn our attention to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives to shape us in faith.  Six weeks ago, on Easter, the choir processed to the front of the church, a la Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, carrying balloons….silver and gold balloons, three feet tall, in the shape of letters  spelling out the word “ALLELUIA”.  Ultimately, the balloons took their rest in the front of the church, held to the ground by fishing line and flying in the shape of an arc that matched the arc of the stained glass window.

     On Easter, my hope was that the “ALLELUIA” balloons would stay afloat through the 50 days of Easter, and thus far my hopes have held up.  Thing is, little by little, the helium is seeping out of them leaving them less and less inflated with their buoyant gas.  I’ve been checking on them every day, fearing that they might begin to sink…but so far despite their partial deflation, they are still flying high.

     As I have watched them deflate, it has occurred to me that what is happening to them is the same thing that happens to us, the people of God.  On Easter Sunday, the day when Jesus’ resurrection changed all of creation for all time, we pull out all the stops when we gather for worship.  The volume of the organ shakes the walls echoing the power of God that brought life out of death in that Jerusalem tomb.  Trumpets, joining the trumpets of heaven, blare out into the universe the victory that Jesus has won.  Our lungs which have been damped throughout the 40 days of lent, explode in unfettered resurrection joy with shouts of Alleluia!  Easter is a day, as Hans and Franz of Saturday Night Live would say, “pumps you up!”

     But no sooner than we walk out of the doors of the church on Easter, the pressure of the world takes aim on our Alleluia!  Failures … roadblocks … judgments … temptations … expectations … the world can be quite a pressure cooker, squeezing the joy, hope, peace, and Alleluia right out of us.  We, too, can begin to sink and be brought down to the ground.  It happens to all of us.  All of us need to be “Pumped back up.” (including Hans and Franz)

     That is what every Sunday morning is all about.  When Christians decided when they would gather for worship, they chose Sunday to weekly mark the day of God’s greatest victory.  Every Sunday is meant to be a “mini-Easter”, and every Sunday is meant to be a day when God’s resurrection power re-inflates our lives.

     When people ask me why it is important to worship every Sunday, it is not in order to keep God loving us, but rather to keep us soaring in God’s love.  That is why if you come to worship with us we begin every Sunday by patching things up with confession and forgiveness, and then when every thing is patched up we make sure to re-inflate you with God’s grace….with a sermon that proclaims the truth that no matter how low you might have sunk, God doesn’t expect you to somehow try and float back up to him, but instead he finds you where you are and takes hold of you…with the tangible grip of God’s grace at his table filling you with resurrection life….and sealing you in a blessing of God’s presence that will go with you no matter where the wind might take you.  When you come to worship with us, we don’t promise that every Sunday will be as exciting as Easter, but it will be full of Easter.

     We only have 8 more days for my “ALLELUIA” balloons to keep soaring in our church….but we have a lifetime ahead for ALLELUIA to keep us soaring in life.  See you Sunday and together we will all “get pumped up”!

Have a great week!

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger