The Bungee Cord. 12-25-23

Hello,

Merry Christmas!

I was sitting in my hot tub on a beautiful, temperate afternoon last week looking out over the horizon and into the sky. There were puffs of clouds dotting the blue sky, and I was looking at them and imagining what they looked like. A running dog. A flying bird. A heart.

A heart! When I saw the heart, it occurred to me, fancifully, that maybe God was saying “I love you” in this cloud-heart. So, I jumped out of my hot tub ran into my mancave grabbed my phone so that I might take a picture of it for this Bungee Cord. But alas, by the time I got back outside, the heart-cloud had morphed into the picture that is with this Bungee Cord. The heart was gone.

I suppose that if I really believed that this cloud-heart was a sign from God, I would have begun to wonder, “Does God love me? Is God’s love for me such that it can vanish in a few moments?” But such is the case so often in life when we look into the world around us for signs of God’s love for us. A baby born. A promotion at work. An acceptance for college. A home run to win a little league game. A cancer turned back.

Now, I am not saying that any of these things, small or great, are not a sign of God’s goodness, but just like clouds, these signs can leave us wondering of God’s love. The baby has severe complications. A pink slip comes with a down-size. College is overwhelming. A strike out to finish the next game. The cancer returns. The world, like a broken mirror, often brings us an unclear vision of God’s love for us. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “For now we see in a mirror dimly.”

But God, whose desire is to love us divinely, and wants us to live our lives in that love and confident in it has given us a sign of his love for us so solid that leaves us with no wonderment, only wonder and awe. God enfleshed God’s love for us. God made that love breath and cry in a manger. God made that love leave footprints on the dirt and heal a blind man with spit and mud. God made that love eat with outcasts and sinners. God made that love hang for three hours in the burning Jerusalem sun with nails pounded into his hands and feet. God made that love walk out of an Easter tomb, eternally crushing everything that might try and separate you and me from him. God spoke that love to us as claiming water splashed over us. God unites that love with us in a holy meal. And this faithful God has promised that the day will come when God will seal that love with the words, “Come into the eternal place that I have prepared for you from the beginning of time….when we will “see each other face to face” (1 Cor. 13).

Does God love me? Does God love you? Does God love your neighbor, near and far? Look into the Bethlehem manger, and the answer is clear and forever certain. Yes!

Have a great week. Merry Christmas!

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord. 12-18-23

Hello,

‘Twas the week before Christmas and all through the world

Flags of ire and hatred had all been unfurled.

In homes where love and compassion aught reign

Words, shot like cannonballs, brought nothing but pain.

And people who’d ne‘er seen the other’s eyes

Were convinced that they lived despicable lives.

Neighbors nearby and neighbors oceans away

Saw pain in each other’s hearts but had nothing to say.

Hungry children all over cried themselves to sleep.

Old folks looked into tomorrow and could do nothing but weep.

Confusion and fear old ideals sand blasted.

Babies with the water were together out cast.

Though wisdom would warn ,“Danger, stay away!”

Love pulled like huskies tied to a runaway sleigh.

Running into the storm with reckless abandon.

A destination to reach with unstoppable passion.

Arrived a born baby in a Bethlehem manger

Divinity, purely Love, birthed no longer a stranger.

Tears from his eyes and cries from his lungs

Flowed into the world from this infant so young.

Flowed into the pain and the and worlds confusion

With a power to heal by a cross bled transfusion.

Giving life to bold hope in every generation,

An infusion of peace in the arm of each nation.

Hope and peace that no might could extinguish,

For it was an explosion of God's infinite wish

A wish and a will that suffering would end

In hearts, in homes, and all creation extend.

An explosion of grace that echoes once more

This Christmas day when we come to adore

The one whose throne was a cattle food trough,

Then a wood cross, and now in glory aloft.

Adore the One whose call is, “Do not fear!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a blessed year!”

Penned by me, Jerry Nuernberger.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord. 12-12-23

Hello,

Let me start this week’s Bungee Cord with a word of thanks. Last week, the book was closed on the life of one who brought a blizzard of love and care to the world, my mom. Now a new book, the book of life as the Bible says, is now opened for her, and thanks be to God for his powerful love that not even death can keep that book shut. Thanks to all of you, too, who gave me the grace of your prayers.

My wife and I attend a small country church not too far from our house. Since Covid the weekly worship attendance has been around 30 people, but on this past Sunday it was over 60. The reason for the increase in attendance was the fact that two baptisms were to take place in the service. A man in his twenties and his infant daughter were be the recipients of God’s transformational grace. The first four pews, which are usually unoccupied as Lutherans tend to not want to get too close to the pastor (lol), were packed full of people sitting shoulder to shoulder. Family from all over the place had come to be part of this day of celebration.

In my tradition adult baptisms are a wonderful experience that doesn’t happen regularly because most are baptized when they are infants, so as to have God’s claiming grace shape their entire life. The daughter was first to be baptized, and as the pastor held her in his hands he poured the promise filled water over her head. Some children respond with crying, she only murmured. Then the pastor had the young man come over to the baptismal font. He reached into the water with a small shell, pulled out some water, and then stretched his arm out high and thrice poured the water on his head, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The young man smiled.

Having been baptized and marked with the cross of Christ, forever, the mother carried her daughter back to the 2nd pew where they had been seated, and the young father followed. And as he passed the first pew, something happened that I have never seen before: the man, who was sitting in the first pew, a relative of similar age, raised his right hand as the young father passed by and gave the newly baptized a “high five” . I couldn’t see the face of the man sitting in the pew, but on the face of the newly baptized was a smile from ear to ear.

I’ve seen “high fives” exchanged between baseball players when someone hits a game winning homerun. I’ve seen “high fives” given between bowlers at a bowling alley at the roll of a strike. I’ve received “high fives” from little kids who are too shy or young to give a handshake. “High fives” are the mark of victory, congratulations, and welcome.

I saw all three of those things in that “high five” that was slapped in church. Far more conclusive than a walk off homerun is the eternal victory that we win when Christ’s words are poured over us and Jesus sends sin and death to their locker room, and locks the door behind them. Jesus, “high five”! Far more exciting is the bowling ball of God’s grace that toppled every pin that stands between God and us and sends them flying inter oblivion. Jesus, “high five”!

Far more heart-binding than any connection between family or friends is the cross bound relationship that God, in Jesus, has made with us as that cross is marked on our foreheads and we are sealed in God’s grace, forever. Jesus, “high five”!

It is my hope that the Bungee Cords break the barrier of space, and they bring us together. So, as you and I pass each other today in this Bungee Cord, see me lifting my right hand high into the air, and let’s give each other a divinely inspired “high five”!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord 12-4-23

Hello,

My mom, Rose Ellis Nuernberger died on Friday in the early afternoon. She had been struggling through life for the last year, and, thankfully, her struggles are now over. God’s grace and peace are now fully hers.

I know that only a few of you knew my mom. I hope that you will indulge me in this Bungee Cord to let you get to know her, not because she was a more saintly person than others, but because as I have written for the cover of her funeral bulletin, “Our mom lived with an undeterrable will to bring joy to people’s lives, and she died having accomplished that mission with great regularity.”

I was one of those who was the object of her mission. Growing up, she made sure that the successes of my life were full of celebration, and likewise she made sure that my struggles did not empty the joy in my life. She would take me on in ping pong in our basement, and she would play Boggle with me on the dining room table. She made scrapbooks that marked the milestones of my youth, and she was the number one fan of my music and sermons. Although she didn’t say it to me, I know that she prayed for me every day.

But the target of her mission was far greater than me. The kids in her school classes were not just students, they were rose buds to bring to bloom. People in nursing homes were not strangers to her, but they were weekly party invitees as she would go from room to room with her small keyboard singing with them and getting them to dance in their wheelchairs and beds. One such person was an elderly woman who was paralyzed from her neck down, and my mom saw her dancing in her smile. My mom naively saw the best in everyone, and she loved the best out of them. She was zealous in her mission, sometimes it would feel a bit overly zealous to me, but if that was her greatest flaw, I know that I would rather be guilty of that than to be guilty of living a life where my zeal could be questioned. No one would ever have questioned my mom’s zeal to bring joy to others’ lives.

And what fueled her life’s mission? Over and over again, she was quick to answer that question from whomever might ask, “The Lord.” She was not one to bang people over the head with Biblical quotes and righteous guidance, instead she would, as Jesus did, look for the “lonely” (as she called them) ones and embraced them in divine friendship. She surrounded people with the God given gift of music, Even in her last months of her life, she would play her keyboard in her room and the piano in the central room, and people would gather around to sing, if not audibly, but in their soul. A fellow nursing home resident who could not speak, named Harvey, would play an air piano when he saw her, which was code, “Let’s go sing.” When others would hesitate for fear of not being “cool”, she would jump into action knowing that being “cool” was not part of the fuel that drove Jesus’ life. Someone once asked, if you were accused of being Christian, would there be enough evidence in your life to convict you? No matter who the jury might be, for my mom, there was only one verdict, “Guilty as charged!”

I write to you about my mom, not to glorify her, for she would not appreciate such from me. But I write about my mom to give you evidence of the power of Christ’s love in someone who history books will probably forget. I suspect that you, like I, sometimes wonder what grace I can bring to a world that is parched of grace. My mom is the answer to that wonder. I have seen how Christ, through her, has brought life, hope, peace and joy to this arid world. I have seen how the pebble of grace that she has tossed into the lake of life has rippled its way far from the shore upon which she has stood. She has given me the proof to tell 8th graders about to be confirmed in their faith, that they might not be the ones to go to Ethiopia and feed the starving, but they just might be the ones who will feed the hungry (both in body and spirit) in their corner of the world, which will ripple its way to the furthest corner of the world.

Jesus tells a parable of three servants who were given talents (it was money then, but interestingly enough that word carries a wider meaning now) from their master to invest in the world. Upon his return, the master says to the servants who trusted in the master’s great ability to “reap where he did not sow and gather where he did not winnow”, and put those talents to work in his absence, “Well done good and faithful servant. Come into the joy of your master.” My eyes have seen the truth in Jesus’ “absentee productivity” (a word description that I penned in a seminary paper I wrote 40 years ago) in the life of my mom. And I hope that it will be as visibly true of me…and you….when you and I have, as the Bible says, “run the race.”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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