The Bungee Cord  11-26-19

Hello,

     As the airwaves and shopping centers fill the air with songs of the season (actually, for us Christians, the season is Advent…not Christmas), I thought that I would try something new with the Bungee Cord, and fill the internet with different songs of the season…..Psalms.  The book of Psalms was the hymnal for the people of God.  Each of the Psalms has a specific focus and purpose.  People knew them, knew them by heart.  So well did they know them that when the first line was said/sung, that was as good as saying/singing the whole thing.  An ancient “Name That Tune” sort of thing.

In the branch of the church of which I am a Pastor, a specific Psalm is designated to be part of the worship service, and so during Advent (the four weeks before Christmas), I thought that I would “sing” the designated Psalm each week in my Bungee Cord, and fill the internet with the songs of the season.

Week 1 of Advent: Psalm 122

I was glad when they said to me,
   ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ 
Our feet are standing
   within your gates, O Jerusalem. 

Jerusalem—built as a city
   that is bound firmly together. 
To it the tribes go up,
   the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
   to give thanks to the name of the Lord. 
For there the thrones for judgement were set up,
   the thrones of the house of David. 

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
   ‘May they prosper who love you. 
Peace be within your walls,
   and security within your towers.’ 
For the sake of my relatives and friends
   I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’ 
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
   I will seek your good.

There is one line in this Psalm that as a kid, I just could not understand, “I was glad when they said unto me, “Let us go into the house of the Lord.”  As a kid, going to church every Sunday morning was not the highlight of my week. Getting up early on Sunday morning (we always, and I mean always, attended the 8:30 service instead of the 11:00), was an unwanted wakeup time.  Going to church and spending time with a bunch of old people when I could have been watching cartoons was a pain.  Having to listen to what seemed like an hour of a droning sermon was torture.  Trying to sit still and not fall asleep was nearly impossible.  I was not glad when my folks said unto me every Sunday morning, “Let us go into the house of the Lord.”

Something obviously changed, after all, I am a Pastor, one who calls people into the house of the Lord Sunday after Sunday, and what changed was this: as I continued to go to church, I came to see something that drew me there, drew me there like a super-magnet.  Jesus was there.  In a more profound way than his presence with me every day, I experienced the presence of Jesus in church and worship.  

I think of the Bethlehem shepherds who were told that in a stable they would encounter the one who would change their lives forever….literally, forever.  And so they “made haste” to go to that place.  When I invite people to church, I, likewise am inviting people to come to a place where they will encounter someone who will change their lives forever….literally forever.  A pastor friend of mine said this, “If people believed that Jesus was really there in church/worship every Sunday morning, who wouldn’t come!”

“I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.’”

Have a great week,

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord   11-19-19

Hello,

With no scientific backing, but only personal observation over the years of being a Pastor, it seems to me that as people live out their lives, they find themselves falling somewhere between being a tree climber and a hole digger.  Here’s what I mean.

Some folks tend to live their lives climbing to higher and higher levels of accomplishment.  They gain greater and greater amounts of respect and acclaim.  People look up to them, and they often are awarded for their deeds.  “World’s Greatest Dad”, “Mother of the year”, “Employee of the month”, “Student of the week”, the sibling you can always count on, the kindest person I have ever met, the pillar of the community, the living example of the Christian faith.  Thing about tree climbers, though, is the higher you go, the more precarious the perch, and the further it is to fall.   It can be a scary thing being a tree climber.  One slip and you can lose it all.  For some tree climbers, the world delights in their tumbling.  For others, the world tends to abandon them in shunning disappointment.

The other end of the spectrum are hole diggers.  They are folks that just don’t seem to be able to live without a shovel in their hands, digging themselves into deeper and deeper holes.  People look at them, too, and stick labels on them.  Loser, black sheep, good for nothing, fool, dregs of society, bottom feeders, deadwood.  Thing about hole diggers is the more holes you dig, the easier it is to fall into them, and the deeper you dig the harder it is to get out of them. People tire of dealing with hole diggers, and so often the world tries not to look into the holes that they come upon in order to not have to deal with what they may find in them

Interestingly enough, the Bible tells us that Jesus had a heart for both tree climbers and hole diggers….and everyone in between.  There was an expert tree climber that Jesus came across one day, Zacchaeus.  He had worked hard to become one of the wealthiest men in town, and the was at the top of his trade, tax collecting. Unfortunately for him, it was lonely at the top and the people could hardly wait for him to come tumbling down.  Interestingly, he was high in a Sycamore tree when Jesus spotted him, and while the crowds laughed at him for his tree climbing, Jesus opened his heart to him, telling him to come on down from that precarious tree, so that Jesus could set him high on a unwavering tree, the tree of God’s love for him.  So loved was Zacchaeus, that Jesus, the Son of God was going to take his place in Zacchaeus’ house.  That is a higher stoop than Zacchaeus’ could have ever climbed himself, and it was a stoop from which Zacchaeus would never fall.

And then the hole diggers….. Once a group of people brought to Jesus a woman who was caught in adultery, apparently to put it gently, caught in the act.  We don’t know how it all happened…what led to the adultery…how they were discovered, but we do know this: the law prescribed that the woman be stoned to death.  All the good people were to gather around her and pelt her with large stones that would crack her skull, break her bones, and fatally injure her.  Caught in a deep, deep pit, the people gathered around her and as they were looking for stones to wield upon her, Jesus looked at something else. He looked at her.  And making every stone too heavy with guilt to lift up, he shielded her with his grace and mercy.  Then he lifted her up out of the hole she had dug, and like a prisoner released from jail said, “Go, you are free.”

If my sociological/theological observations are correct, each of you who are reading this Bungee Cord lie somewhere on the climber-digger continuum.  So, I hope that by reading this, you have discovered that no matter where you are on this continuum, there is one who is neither hoping for your fall or preparing to throw dirt upon you in your hole.  Instead he comes to you to lift you up – up in his grace, grace from which you will never fall, and grace that will overwhelm any hole that might try and swallow you up.  That is what happens every Sunday morning when we gather in church, so let me invite you to join the rest of us tree climbers and hole diggers whom Jesus is lifting up.

Have a great week,

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord
11-10-19

Hello,

     TODAY IS A HAPPY DAY.  YOU ARE IN A HAPPY PLACE.

     Any guesses where I spotted these sentences?

     I spotted them, as I was enthroned, on the interior door of the bathroom of the hotel in which I stayed this past week when I was on vacation (thus the reason for the lack of a Bungee Cord last week.)  They covered the entire door, and they tapped my funny bone when I saw them.

     I snickered at their size, their location, and their content. So big were they that they felt like an order being issued by a marine drill seargent, “You will be happy!”  Located on the interior side of the bathroom door made me think of my time in that room in a way I had not thought of before, and the message they gave seemed an unusual one for a hotel to plaster on a bathroom door.

     TODAY IS A HAPPY DAY.  YOU ARE IN A HAPPY PLACE.

     As I have talked to folks, it seems to me that maybe these words might be expected  somewhere else, too: on the front wall of the church.  I say that because many operate with the impression that Christianity is all about being happy.   Somehow folks have gotten the message that you need to be happy in order to come to church, you need to have a happy face when you’re there, and when you leave you should leave with a smile on your face.  True enough, a great place to bring one’s happiness is to the place from where all blessings flow.  And true enough, who can help from smiling when good news is announced, especially the good news of Jesus Christ.  And true enough, a skip in your step comes quite naturally after dining on a foretaste of the feast to come.  But I am not too sure that happiness is the measure of the worth of having come to church, nor the measure of the depth of a person’s faith.

     I say that because in the Bible happiness isn’t always the result of an encounter with Jesus.  Just think about how the disciples must have felt when Jesus ate his last meal with them, a meal that carried the shadow of his death.  Or, how about what the disciples felt when they gathered in the post-Easter room, hiding for their lives.  Or how about when the Apostle Paul was imprisoned for his faith.

     Likewise, there are times in life where happiness is hard to find….when a loved one dies, when your life has fallen apart because of what you have done, when hopes and dreams evaporate and crumble.

     Clearly, Jesus didn’t come to bring sprinkles to life so that we might be happy, that would make his presence pretty trivial and very fleeting.  Jesus came to bring something far more essential and substantial for life: hope.  As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8, “I am convinced that …… nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Sometimes life is hard.  Sometimes life is sad.  Sometimes life is wearisome.  When we read scripture we find that Jesus, like insects to a light at night, is drawn to those times.  And when Jesus inhabits those times, Jesus doesn’t say, “don’t worry, be happy.”… or, “you have to look on the bright side of things”…. Or, “it’s not that bad, just think about what other people are going through”.  No, what Jesus says is this, “I am with you.”  And if Jesus, the embodiment of God’s power and love, is with you, there is hope.

     With that in mind, maybe there is a message that should be emblazoned on the front wall of every church, a message that can’t be missed when a person sits down on their pew, a message that declares with Christianity and Jesus is really all about:

     TODAY IS A HOPEFUL DAY.  YOU ARE IN A HOPEFUL PLACE.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger