The Bungee Cord 10-31-16

Hello,

     It is tic season in Western Pennsylvania!

     Yesterday, I took my dog, Duncan, for a walk around our property, and when we got back home he sat down next to me on the couch.  As I reached over to pet him, I felt a little speck-like thing in his hair by his ears.  I latched onto it with my fingernails and pulled it off of him.  A tic!  But that was just the beginning of our tic harvest.  Over the course of the next couple of hours we continued to find tics.  The final count was over 50!

     Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, I never experienced the tyranny of tics.  But here, they are all over the place.  They are pesky things.  They can be smaller than your eye can see, but most often they are big enough that if you look carefully you can spot them.  Some are black.  Some are black and red.  But they all have one purpose in life: to suck your blood.

     They crawl up your legs in search of a nice place to drill their head into your skin, and once attached they start to suction your blood into their ever-swelling bodies.  If you don’t get to them when they start, they can balloon themselves up into the size of a kidney bean.  Their drilling is an abrasive attack, and so your body responds with itching.  Some of them can make you really sick, lymes disease, but mostly they are just a real pain in the …..well…. wherever they attach.

     Seems to me that as we walk through the field of life we more often find ourselves dealing with attack of tics. Every once in a while we run into a large preditor, a tragedy that knocks us down and tries to tear us apart.  More often though we find ourselves the target of tics: anger that leads us to say biting things, mistakes that put us on the defense and produce white lies, thoughts that demean or create jealousy.  The fields of life are full of tics that have a way of latching onto us and gorge themselves on our blood.

     The sooner you deal with the real tics that creep and crawl on you, the less damage they do.  It is the same way with the tics that latch onto us from the fields of life.  The sooner you deal with them, the less damage they do.  With either kind of tic, real or metaphorical, if they are left alone they can really become an expanding problem, and some of them can make you really sick.

     That is why one of the main disciplines of the Christian faith is confession.  In my church we begin every worship service with corporate confession and forgiveness.  When we gather in the light of Jesus’ love and mercy, we can see those little creepy, crawly things that aren’t as visible in the dim light of the world, and with gentle  but precise hands of grace, Jesus plucks those blood sucking, joy sapping, life irritating, peace aggravating, and potentially hope threatening tics from our lives.  Once plucked from our lives, we can worry about bigger things: the starvation that is attacking our neighbors, the violence that is shattering our world, the confusion that is spinning people around in nausea, the tragedies that obliterate the light.

     So, if you feel little creepy, crawly things in your life, let me invite you to come to church where in the light of Jesus’ forgiveness those tics can’t hide.  Let me invite you to come and have them plucked from your life before they drill themselves and embed themselves in your life. Let me invite you to come and take care of those tics so that you can care about what is really important in life.

     Come….come every week….and find out what a great feeling it is to be tic-free!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,(ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 10-24-16

Hello,

     Is it ok to wrestle with God?

     Is it ok when you find yourself flat on your back having been flipped over tragedy’s shoulder to lock horns with God and cry out, “God, I thought you loved me.  How could you let this happen to me?!”

     Is it ok when you have been spun around and around in life’s confusion to take ahold of God with full-nelson grip and cry out, “God, are you really here?  Are you even real?”

     Is it ok when your talents and accomplishments seem to be enough to light your way through life without God to initiate an escape move and try and get away from God?

     Is it ok to wrestle with God?

     One of the biggest tricks of the other side is to spread the message that it is NOT ok to wrestle with God.  The message says that when life is tough, when life is confusing, when you feel like you don’t need God……you just have to have faith.  Don’t ask questions.  Don’t question.  Just have faith.

     That’s not the message that I hear coming from the Bible.  One of the main characters in the Old Testament, Jacob, finds himself wrestling with God, a wrestling match that God blessed by giving him a new name, Israel (which means “he wrestles with God”).  And Jesus, himself, tells the story of a woman who gets a callous judge to wrestle with her, and says that if such a judge will finally wrestling with a pestering woman, won’t God quickly jump into the ring when someone for whom he gave his Son has something with which to grapple with God?

     As a matter of fact, Jesus raises the stakes so high about how important it is to wrestle with God that Jesus says that if people stop wrestling with God, when he returns he won’t find any faith (Luke 18:8).  Wrestling with God doesn’t destroy faith.  It strengthens it.  Actually, it is when one stops wrestling with God…stops asking questions....stops questioning….either because one believes one shouldn’t question or that no question will stand up to reasonable thinking…that is when faith is destroyed and one is pinned down by the world gripped in the scrawny hope and the frail joy that the world can give.

     If you have something with which to grapple with God (AND WHO DOESN’T!), know this: it is perfectly ok to wrestle with God!  Take ahold of God with your anger, your fear, your frustration, your doubts, your confusion, your disbelief.  There may be churches that when you walk into them you see signs saying, “No wrestling allowed.”   But not in my church….not in a lot of churches.  As a matter of fact, every Sunday in my church Jesus invites us to his table….to commune with us…to take ahold of us…to grab us with his grace…to wrestle with us.

     Is it ok to wrestle with God?  You bet it is…..so…..ready….wrestle!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,(ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord 10-17-16

Hello,

     As my hair thins out….or should I say, as it has thinned out….I think that it looks better when I keep it cut short.  My ever rising forehead with its desert-like hair coverage stands out less when the sidewalls of my head are trimmed.  So, it happened that I looked in the mirror and I said to myself, “I really need to get my hair cut.”

     A while ago I wrote in the Bungee Cord about my barber who not only is graceful with her scissors, but is a vessel of God’s grace to the regulars who sit in her chair.  Showing them unconditional kindness.  Listening with a patient and careful ear.  Speaking words of encouragement and guidance.  Her one-chair barber shop is far more than just a place to get a good hair cut.

     So, on the way to make a hospital call, I thought I would stop by and get my ears lowered.  As I neared her shop, I noticed that there weren’t any cars parked in front of it, and I thought to myself, “You’re in luck today.”  Unfortunately, my hopes were premature, because as I came up to her shop there was a hand written sign on the door, “Closed Today”.  No wonder there were no cars.  I drove past, deciding to come back next week.

     This past week next week came, and as I drove up to her shop, no cars again.  Also, again, a professionally printed sign in the window, “Closed for a couple of weeks due to illness.”  Hope she’s okay.

     I looked in my rearview mirror and concluded that although I needed my hair to be cut, it could wait.  Sure, there are plenty of other places in town that I could get my hair cut, but I have become familiar with my barber.  She knows how I like my hair, and she does a good job in spite of the fact that she has very little to work with.  Disappointed, I drove on.

     If you wake up on Sunday morning and the thought pops into your head, “Should I go to church today?”, have you ever considered one of the answers to be, “Yes, someone may need me to be there for them.”  Have you ever thought yourself to be akin to my barber, a person who can snip through the tangled mats of a person’s life like no one else.  Someone, like none other, that they have come to trust.  Someone, like none other, that they respect and admire.

     Sure, there’s lots of other wonderful people who will be in church on any given Sunday.  Sure, the pastor will be there, but the truth is that there are those with whom each of us makes a uniquely deep connection….and maybe it will be that someone will come to church, hoping to find you there.

     Knowing my barber, I am sure that she is anxiously awaiting the day that she can get back to the scissors.  She knows that people are hoping to find her in her shop, and not just to have their hair cut.

     I know that there are lots of good reasons for you to respond affirmatively to yourself when you ask, “Should I go to church this morning.”  (To have your life shaped by God’s grace and mercy.  To go to the Lord’s table and feast on his life giving grace.  To be empowered to face the week ahead with hope and peace.  To gain a greater understanding of the depth of God’s love for you.)  To all those great reasons, there is another: someone might be hoping to find you there.

     Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord 10-10-16

Hello,

     Yesterday at 6:45 when I drove down our ½ mile lane to reach the main road, I encountered an unusual number of animals.  At the top of the hill a fox ran across my path and dodged into the tall grass, the eyes of a herd of a dozen deer caught my lights, and at the bottom of our hill another fox scurried to cover.  I suspect that these neighbors of mine are there every morning, but it wasn’t until the later autumn dawn that their lives intersected with mine.

     Truth is, I am sure, that for a variety of reasons there are a lot of people whose lives rarely intersect with mine.  People who live in the pre-dawn darkness of poverty.  People who have fallen into deep holes – some of their own making, and some that just happen to be in their paths.   People for whom the weariness of life has left them in prisons of exhaustion and fear.

     I was asked to offer an invocation at last month’s county commissioner’s meeting.  I have been asked to do so before, but because of conflicting schedules, this was the first time that I was able to do so.  The invitation to bring the invocation came about a week ahead of time, and for about a week I pondered what I should offer.   Realizing that I live in a diverse community, I was cognizant that many who would attend that meeting (turned out to be over 50) might not share my faith convictions, so this was my prayer:

Gracious God,

As we gather at this meeting

open our eyes to that which is difficult to see,

open our ears to the voices that are hard to hear,

open our minds with wisdom and compassion for those who are often forgotten,

and open our hands to reach out to those who have slipped through the cracks.

Amen

     Although this was the first time that I offered that prayer at a commissioners meeting, it isn’t the first time that that prayer has come across my lips.  The words may not have been exactly the same, but the substance of its petitions are part of prayers that I pray over and over again in my church.  The reason that I pray this prayer in my church is that I see that Jesus did what my prayer asks for God to do in us.  Jesus did not turn away from the things that are difficult to see, difficult because they are hidden, or difficult because they are revolting.  Jesus did not close his ears to those who were hard to hear, hard to hear because of the softness of their voices, or the obnoxiousness of their tone.  He kept his mind open to those whom the world had prejudged and discarded.  Jesus took up in his arms those who had slipped through the fingers of the world.

     I know how powerful are the hands of the world at work to shape and mold.  That is why I pray that God would use his power to shape and mold with the grace that was exhibited in Jesus.  Christians, after all, are the ones who bear the name of Christ into the world.  So, I pray that my county is one that all people are remembered, seen, heard and helped, but even more so I hope that is true for my church.  So, I pray this prayer over and over again amongst the people of God that I serve, in order that if you are one of whom this prayer speaks, you will find in us a place where you are treated with Christ-like care.

Have a great day.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord 10-3-16

Hello, If you are coming to Western Pennsylvania, let me forewarn you that the stinkbugs have arrived.

Previous to moving here, I had never experienced stinkbugs and their fall-time population explosion. They are a bug about the size of a nickel with spindly legs and protruding antennae. As far as I can tell, they really don’t do any damage to things, other than leave occasional markings on walls. But when they arrive, they are everywhere! Everywhere outside, and somehow everywhere inside. Sitting on the couch, you will suddenly hear a slight fluttering, then feel something land on your shoulder or head, and soon you will feel it start to crawl on you.

But be careful! They don’t bite or sting, but if they get startled or frightened they put out a smell that is best described as “stinky”. The smell gets on your hands if you cup them in your hands, it wafts through the air of you smack them with your hands, and it permeates the room if by chance you smash them. They seem to have no purpose in the cycle of nature, and apparently their stink makes them the desire of no predator.

Some falls are worse than others as stink bugs go. A couple of falls ago they were so numerous that hundreds of them would crawl on window screens, almost as thick as scales on a fish. That particular year they discovered the air vent to our shower light so that when you took a shower and turned on the light it got dimmer and dimmer as the fall went on because of the growing number of stinkbugs piling up in the glass.

Who knows what this fall’s stinkbug encounter will be, maybe sparsely few or spectacularly overwhelming. Either way, they will be a pest.

In my life’s encounter, many of the “stinky” things in life are like stinkbugs. Certainly, there are those things that are more wasp-like in their attack on us, but a lot of the things that infiltrate our lives are less vicious yet more prevalent and more unrelenting. Smaller, day-to-day sort of things that have a way of crawling bothersomely, but harmlessly on you and me. And like stinkbugs, the dread they bring to life comes only if we react harshly and severely to them.

I give thanks to God for God’s grace to me, one who is often a creepy and crawly stinkbug lighting obnoxiously upon his efforts of love and mercy in this world. I give thanks to God for his grace that neither gently flicks me off of him or mightily crushes me, but instead finds me as one who is the focus of unfathomable love.

In western Pennsylvania, there’s no getting rid of stinkbugs, and in life there’s no getting rid of them, either. But I do know this, that as I live in the grace of God who has no desire to get rid of me, I am finding that I am being transformed by that grace to deal with life’s stinkbug encounters with similar grace and mercy….and in doing so, life isn’t quite so “stinky”.

Thank you, God, for your transformational grace.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger