The Bungee Cord 12-20-21

Hello,

Passion drives people to do some crazy things. Crazy things like going to a Steelers football game in the middle of December, with winds blowing and temperatures flirting with the freezing mark. I, who am not nearly as passionate about the Pittsburgh Steelers, joined all those passionate people in watching the game, but I watched in the comfort of my warm home. No need for snowmobile suits, multiple layers of blankets, mittens fitted with hand warmers, and scarfs pulled up over my face. But there was nothing keeping those passionate fans from going to that game. Passion drives people to do some crazy things.

But not people only. Passion drove God to do a crazy thing. As incredible as it may be to comprehend, God – the one whose watch stretches the universe, the one whose potters hand shapes every piece of matter in the cosmos, the one who power and might holds it all together – is so passionate about each and every human being that he will not let anything keep him from embracing them in his love forever. So deeply determined that those who were created in his image would abide with him eternally, God broke the barriers of the eternal and took his place in a manger, shared in the struggles and fears of finitude, and silenced the claim that anything else might utter when he brought them to an end on the cross. God was not going to let anything get in his way or turn him away. God is passionate about human beings…..about you and me…and God’s passion drove God to do what many would dub a crazy thing.

And that is why we, at the church where I am the pastor, is going to do a crazy thing. Engulfed in God’s passion for us, we are going to gather in thanks and praise to God on the day we celebrate the eternal God’s inhabiting flesh and blood, and nothing is going to stop us! Not the weather, no matter how cold it is. Not our unwanted houseguest, Covid 19, no matter that it keeps us from gathering inside. Not our busy schedules, no matter what the world tells us we need to do to keep up with things. We are the product of God’s passion, passion that changes who we are and how we live our lives, and as crazy as many might think we are, we are going to be outside on Christmas Eve, fueled and full of passion.

No matter who you are, mighty or small. No matter what you have done, tremendous or terrible. No matter the depth of your faith, microscopic or monumental. No matter the holes you have fallen into, self-dug or pushed into. No matter the reputation that you carry, abysmal or astronomical. Nomatterwhat! Nomatterwhat God’s passion includes you, and the passion of Christmas Eve envelops you, too. So, if you are in the Ligonier area come and join us as we gather outside at 5:00 NOMATTERWHAT. And if the drive might be a little bit far for you, and you don’t own a jet, take some time to read the story of Jesus’ birth found in the first part of the books of Matthew and Luke….and if there’s a safe place to gather with others who are likewise driven by God’s passion, go and join them in thanks and praise when they gather on Friday (Christmas Ever) or Saturday (Christmas Day).

Passion drives God to do crazy things…..and God’s passion makes people do crazy things, too!

Have a wonder-full Christmas!

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord 12-13-21

Hello,

Today’s Bungee Cord is my sermon from yesterday based on Philippians 4:4-7. Seems Bungee-able to me.

We hear this advice all the time:

Don’t worry, be happy.

Don’t worry, everything happens for a purpose.

Don’t worry, there’s nothing to worry about.

Don’t worry, President Schmoe is in charge now.

Don’t worry, you’re so strong.

Don’t worry, it’s all going to come to an end someday, anyway.

And today we hear the apostle Paul say to the people of Philippi and to us, “Don’t worry about anything.”

I don’t know about you, but when I find myself in a precarious or even frighten situation, to be told, “Don’t worry,” is like being on a steep black diamond ski slope, skies pointed down, my momentum and gravity taking hold of me and being told, “Don’t ski down that hill.” I know that I am well aware of my human limitations, and likewise the limitations of other humans, so I find myself easily prone to worrying.

Are you worried?

Have you watched the news and have seen how wobbly our world is spinning? We are told of rumblings in China, deception in Russia, unrest in the Middle East, and violence in South America. It seems like everywhere things are way out of balance and at any moment everything might spin out of control. Are you worried?

Have you looked at the Covid statistics in our country? Cases are still rising, with more cases now that there were last year at this time. Have you seen that Westmoreland County is considered to have a very high Covid infection rate. Have you heard of the latest in what seems to be a never-ending birthing of mutations, the Omicron mutation? Are you worried?

Have you taken a look at your checking balance lately? Gas prices going up. Food bills on the rise. Electric bills climbing. Medical procedures on the horizon.. The car is getting old and needs repairs. Income isn’t keeping up with expenses. Are you worried?

It is easy to fall into a snake pit of worry, filled with snakes slithering with the venomous poisons of impatience, fear, anger, panic, short tempers, despair. Worrying is exhausting. Worrying is life sapping. Worrying is corrosive. From my perspective I can see the turmoil that worry is causing all around the world, in our country, in our towns, in our homes, in this church, and in our hearts.

And today, we hear the Bible tell us, “Don’t worry about anything.” Right. As is said on the internet, “LOL”.

But in truth, the Apostle Paul’s word to the Philippians and to us, does not begin with the admonition not to worry. Immediately before those words, the Apostle Paul writes this, “The Lord is near.” The Lord God….the one who created all that exists, the one who holds it all in the palm of his hands, the one who cares about a single sparrow that falls from a tree, the one who knows the number of hairs on your head, the one who loves you so much that he took his place on a cross, the one who wrestled death to the ground and death breathed its last breath, the one who on Easter Sunday walked over every power that would try and wrestle you and me from him as if they were merely pesky ants….that one is near. The Lord is near….as near as the breath that fills your lungs….as near as the blood that flows through your veins….as near as the thoughts that churn in your mind….and in a few moments…as near as the molecules that make up every cell in your body when he comes to you in his body and blood. The Lord is near.

Before Paul tells us not to worry about anything, he sets our eyes on the one who is near to us: the Lord. “Look and see,” says Paul, “Look and see who is near to us. The Lord!”

I wrote once in one of my Bungee Cords about my cat, Miss Nicklebee. She and her buddy, Attaboy, are outdoor cats that live in their hutch in our garage. Miss Nicklebee is shy, preferring to spend much of her day hiding in the hutch, but every once in a while she’ll be sitting on a shelf, out of reach of our dog, but within my reach to pick her up. When she was young, my previous dog chased her down and had her in his jowls when we came to her rescue. She knows the danger of a dog, but she has also come to know the safety of our care. Anyway it so happened that one day when I came home and pulled into the garage, there she was on the shelf. So I went over to her, picked her up in my arms and started petting her, then suddenly from around the corner of the garage my current dog, who also likes to chase the cats, came bounding and barking.

She didn’t even flinch. She just stayed completely relaxed and purring. I was near…..she wasn’t worried about anything.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, here’s the thing that God would have us know today, that God would have us take into our hearts today, that God would have us rest in today…..the Lord is near. AMEN.

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 The Bungee Cord 12-6-21

Hello,

Has this happened to any of you? You are on a trip, and you are staying in a hotel. When you wake up in the morning, you are looking forward to a nice refreshing shower. You walk into the bathroom and see three small tubes sitting on the counter top by the sink. You know that one of them is shampoo, another is conditioner, and the third is body lotion. You pick one of them up to find out which is which. Unfortunately, you have left your glasses on the bedside table and the print on the tubes is so small that you can’t make out the words? Then decision time comes: should you go back and get your glasses so that you can see the words, or should you squint really hard and try to pick out the shampoo?

I’ve done both. Of course, the safest thing to do is to go get your glasses, but if there are people in the room….well, at least I wouldn’t go out into the room in my birthday suit. Of course, the moral of the story is: whenever you are in a hotel, wear your glasses into the bathroom.

When I was younger and my eyes were much better, I never encountered this problem. But as the years aged my eyes, I have gone from mildly needing glasses to I can’t read a thing without them. For me, at my stage of life, I need to put my glasses on before I go into a hotel room bathroom.

With this happening in mind, it seems to me that it is also a corollary to our life of Christian faith.

When a person is young, it is quite easy for a person to see God at work through the eyes of faith. Clearly, it is God who puts food on our tables, so why wouldn’t we pray before we eat? Clearly it is God who watches over us in the night, so why wouldn’t we pray before we go to sleep? Clearly, it is God who gives us friends and neighbors, so why wouldn’t we include them in our prayers every day?

But as time goes on, as with our eyes, what was clearly seen in our youth by our eyes of faith get blurry and hard to see. The lenses of our eyes of faith get stiffened by the coarseness of the world that we live in and we can’t pull God’s love into our focus. We get cataracts from exposing our eyes of faith to the suffering around us and it is harder to see the goodness of God. Just like with the eyes that lie on either side of our nose, so it is with the eyes of faith that lie on either side of our heart, the older a person gets, the harder it is to see.

One solution to the problem with our eyes of faith is to have large print to read. Why doesn’t God just make his working in the world bigger? Well, how much bigger do we need it to be? He has already made it life-sized. If we can’t see something that is life-sized, surely the day will come when we can’t see something that is printed larger.

The other solution is to wear glasses, glasses that fight the vision decay that happens as we age. And the good news is that God has given you and me such glasses. That is what Sunday morning worship is, glasses to put on so that we may see God’s presence more clearly. That is what prayer and Bible exploration is all about, glasses to put on so that we might have better focus to see God at work in our lives. That is what prayer is all about, glasses to put on that bend the light of Christ so that it isn’t blurry anymore.

So, learning from my hotel experience, I think there’s a greater moral of the story to be heard, whenever you are in this life, put on the glasses that God has given you before you step out into the world.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord 11-29-21

Hello,

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We did! My oldest son and his wife from Denver spent 7 days with us. My middle son from Charlotte came for 4. And my youngest son with his wife, 7 month old son, mother-in-law, and dog came for 6 days. With everyone living at a distance from each other, the times that we can all get together are few. Of course, the commotion and motion of life is enormously amplified when these times happen, but in my mind it is all worth it to get together.

Fortunately, we narrowly escaped a sad shrouding event that would have dampened our joy like an elephant stepping on a flower. Late Friday afternoon, my youngest son was out playing ball with my dog, McMahon and his dog, Mendel (the dog on the right in the picture). We have a large mowed area behind our house where McMahon expects to play ball daily, if not multiple times each day. So, he delights when his friends, Mendel being one of them, is there to play ball with him.

Mendel is a black and white, Heinz 57 that is about Beagle size. Since he lives in a 2 bedroom New York apartment, he loves coming to our open place. As a matter of fact, when the car turns off the turnpike, 4 miles south of my house, Mendel starts to jostle around in the car with joy, because he knows where he is going. As soon as he gets out of the car he is ready to do what he can’t do in New York city, romp!

We have an underground fence that encircles several acres of our yard. McMahon knows the boundary so well that we often don’t put his shock collar on him, but Mendel, in his exuberance is not so aware of his boundaries. So, before we let him romp, we put a shock collar on him, and he becomes quite aware of the limit of his romping.

Well, it was, as I said, late afternoon on Friday. Dusk was turning into night when suddenly Mendel bolted across the yard and right through the shock in chase of something that he saw in the field. My son, wearing his work boots, took off in chase, a chase in which he was left far behind. Across one field, and another, and another until he came across some woods where the underbrush was covered in briars. Calling for Mendel as he ran, hoping that he would stop, but as he reached the woods he could go no further and stood there calling out Mendel’s name.

He called and called, and no return of Mendel. With each unanswered call, the thought began to solidify in my son’s mind that maybe he would never see Mendel again. But after what I am sure seemed ages of time, a little dark object emerged in the deepening dusk from the woods. Mendel!

Absolutely exhausted, feeling a mixture of great delight in Mendel’s finally answering his calls, and absolute anger that Mendel took off from his marked boundary, he called me to ask me to come and pick him up. So, I got into our SUV, and when I arrived across the field, I could barely see his shadow walking up the hill. He and Mendel (and my wife who had followed less rapidly at a distance) got into the car and came back to our home.

Everyone was so glad that Mendel came back. I found myself pondering how terrible we all would have felt to have to had to come back home without him. Wondering if he would be ok. Wondering if he would ever be found. Wondering if we would ever see him again. It was an incredible black to let my mind wonder into.

Fortunately, Mendel came back.

This whole event put a new light on Jesus words “that there is more joy in heaven when one sinner repents”, and “he will leave the ninety-nine to find the one that is lost.” The relief in my heart and the joy in my soul at the return of Mendel, I am sure, is overwhelmed by the same in Jesus when he carries us home on his shoulder.

Have a great day.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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