The Bungee Cord. 2-27-23

Hello,

Meet my dog, McMahon. He is a 6 ½ year Gordon Setter, who has been part of our life since he was a puppy. We got him when our previous Gordon Setter, Duncan, was getting old. So, for a couple of years we had two dogs, but we have discovered that one dog is plenty for us. As you can see in the picture, one of his favorite things to do is to chase a ball. We have several acres enclosed in an underground fence, so he has lots of room to run. He’ll chase after a ball for quite a while, and unlike Duncan, McMahon actually brings the ball back to be thrown again, and again, and again….

The one thing that he enjoys more than chasing a thrown ball is chasing leaves. So, when we are playing ball and he feels a breeze, his interest in retrieving the ball is overcome by his interest in chasing a leaf, which he wants me to toss in the air and then he’ll go after it as the wind bounces it around above his head. He seems to find the leaves tasty, so after he snatches one from the air he lays down, puts the leaf between his front paws, and chews it up. After which, he bounces back from the ground ready for another leaf. In the meantime, he has lost track of his ball which I have thrown. So, when he’s chewed on enough leaves, he wants to resume playing ball.

“Find your ball,” I say to him. He responds by turning in the direction that I threw the ball, puts his nose to the ground and starts making sig-sags in search of the ball. He is a true scent dog, hunting for the ball with his nose. As a matter of fact, he is such a scent dog that he will come within a couple of feet of the ball and run right past it. Only if he happens to run right over it will he find it. If he can’t smell it, he can’t find it. And because the ball seems to have no scent, he won’t find it unless it hits him in the nose as he runs with his nose sniffing just above the grass.

I find myself sharing this trait with McMahon…well, not exactly. You see, I can easily get distracted from God’s presence in my life, by the good things in life and by the tough things in life, and I find myself saying, “God, where are you?”. I, like McMahon, start sig-sagging with my eyes in search of God with little luck in finding him in the deep grass of life. I am sure that there are many times when God has been within inches of my search, but I don’t detect him. I am too locked in on how I hope to find him. In thunderous events. In a downpour of blessings. In prayers answered in the way that I expect. In times of great joy and happiness. And when those things are absent, my sig-sagging is as unproductive as McMahon’s. “Where are you God?”

I have discovered, however, that when my sig-sagging takes me to the communion rail, it is as if I have run right over that for which I am searching. God’s presence hits me in my face….literally. “Take and eat, this is my body. Take and drink, this is my blood.”

The tall grass of the world does a pretty good job of hiding God’s presence from us, and often times God’s presence make no sense (scents). But God refuses to be hidden from us, and so Sunday after Sunday, God makes God’s self known to us in a way that we cannot miss God in the wonder of Holy Communion. “I am right here,” God says as God opens our eyes to God’s presence through all of our senses: taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight.

So, if you, like I, and like McMahon, can get so distracted by other things in life and you start sig-sagging in search of God’s presence, let me invite you to follow your nose to the communion rail this Sunday and experience the delight of hearing, tasting, smelling, touching and seeing God’s presence. “This is my body…this is my blood…for you! I am here with you, and always will be with you.”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord. 3-20-23

Hello,

We’re in the middle of March Madness. 64/68 college basketball teams all hoping to win their way to the top of the hill; to be king of the hill. (There’s a women’s tournament going on at the same time, but for some reason it hasn’t captured the attention that the men’s has.). Over twenty million people filled out an ESPN bracket (I was one), and who knows how many people filled one out in an office pool or women’s bridge club!

I don’t know who came up with the name, “March Madness”, but the name sure fits at least on a number of levels. The roller coaster ride of excitement that each game provides is crazily exciting. The rise and fall of giants and pee-wee’s causes many a blood pressure surge. The bank accounts of fans take a big dent from airline tickets, hotel accommodations, meals and bets. It is madness!

And all for what? To watch 10 players running around trying to put a ball through a hoop. To look at this through the eyes of some alien who has landed on our planet, it sure must seem like madness for such a trivial thing of putting a ball through a hoop to generate such excitement and enthusiasm.

But maybe even a visiting alien can see the amazing display of athleticism, grace, hard work of the players. I know that I am amazed at many of the shots that go in, blocks that are made, and the defense that is played. Personally, I find it helpful to have something that doesn’t really make any difference in the world to provide a distraction from all the madness that goes on that really does make a difference. I find rooting for the University of Illinois, win or lose, a cathartic exhale of emotion and energy that enables me to fill my lungs and heart with a renewed determination to engage the real struggles of life.

Of course, it is easy to get so enmeshed with penultimately important things that they are more than restorative distractions, but they become blinders and pain killers to that which is of ultimate concern. The first time I saw what happens at every University of Iowa home football game, I felt those blinders being torn from my vision. At the end of the first quarter of every game, the entire crowd, every one of the nearly 70,000 people turn their attention from the football game and face the children’s hospital that stands next to it, and they wave to the children who are hooked up to tubes and monitors, whose heads are covered with bandages, and whose lives are hanging in balance. And they do that, I believe, not just for show or to be nice, but to tell those children and their families that they are of ultimate importance, far more important than football.

When I am sitting in my pew in church on Sunday morning, I experience something of what those hospitalized children at the University of Iowa experience. I who limp my way through life, broken by the plague of my sins, tethered to monitors that tell me of my guilt and shame, overwhelmed by the pressure the world places on my shoulders, with my life hanging in balance….I see God pause in all the important things which God is about in the universe and wave at me. God waves to me from the cross and his wave tells me of the ultimate place I hold in his heart, and that all the other things that occupy his time and thoughts are only penultimate. After all, God did the ultimate thing for me (and for you). God died for me (and you). The spinning of the planets, the lighting of the stars, the application of the universal laws of physics all take second place to you and me for whom Jesus, the Son of God, died so that when heaven and earth pass away he will still have his hold on us.

That may seem like madness on God’s part, to have such focus on the minute particles of the universe that you and I are, but in the wave of Jesus from the cross, I see a God who is madly in love with those who bear his image. That is why I have stood out on the street on Sunday mornings waving at those who drive by, passing on the wave from the cross so that they, too, may also see how ultimately important they are in the heart of God.

This year, Easter falls in April….but sometimes it falls in March….and in my mind that is a March Madness that measures up to the thrill of its name!

(By the way….I had Indiana going all the way….wrong, like usual.)

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord 3-13-23

Hello,

For the first four days of last week, I couldn’t hear out of my right ear….not a thing. I thought that I might have caught a cold and it settled in my Eustachian tubes. There was this clogged up feeling that seemed like a hairball in a kitchen sink. When people talked to me, I had to turn my head to my right so that my good ear might catch their words, and when I was in the gym (which is hard to hear in with two good ears) playing pickleball, all I could pick up was echoes over lapping echoes. I tried battling it with decongestants and antihistamines, but neither made a dent in my deafness at all. So, after four days of saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” I decided to go see my doctor.

The doctor asked me a bunch of doctor questions, and then he pulled out the flashlight thing with a small funnel on the end and said, “Let’s take a look.” Within seconds of sticking it in my ear, he said, “I see the problem. You have a wall of wax covering your eardrum. I’ll have the nurse clean it out for you and that should solve the problem.”

He left and the nurse came in holding a plastic jar about a pint in size that had a small hose with a nozzle on the end of it. She covered my shoulder with a towel and put a contoured small tub under my ear and said, “Now you hold this.” She then stuck the nozzle in my ear and started squeezing a handle on the jar which squirted water in my ear. I could feel the water blasting away at the wall of wax, and then all of the sudden as if someone had turned the volume switch on, I could hear again! Instantaneous. Although I wouldn’t call it miraculous, I got a sense of what those who were deaf that had their hearing restored by Jesus experienced. When one can’t hear, and then suddenly does, one realizes the blessing of being able to hear.

It's a blessing to hear and experience orientation in life. It’s a blessing to hear the sounds of the world around. It’s a blessing to hear with clarity someone say to you, “I love you.” It is a blessing to hear the footsteps on the floor to tell you that you are not alone.

After last week, I have a new appreciation for the Christian season of Lent. Like earwax, the globbiness of the world can collect and settle in our ears. Sorrow and grief cling. Pressures and failures settle with the strength of glue. Sin, that we produce or that finds its way into our life, forms clogs that muffle. Pretty soon we start having a hard time hearing, hearing the loving care of God for us, and we find ourselves saying, “God, are you here? I don’t hear you. God, do you love me? I can’t hear you over the noise of the world that is telling me that I am unlovable.”

I now have come to see these 40 days of Lent as spiritual ear cleaning. During these days when we pray, fast, do a specific deed of love and mercy, attend mid-week services, and sing “boring” hymns we are turning our faces to the Lord, and the Lord comes to us with powerful waters of grace, blasting away at the globby wax that we accumulate in our ears. So that when Easter comes, we can hear the good news that God has for us that changes our lives.

“I love you! I died and rose for you! I am here with you, and there is nothing in all of creation that can separate me from you! The world may call you a lot of things, but I whose hands created the universe have only one name for you, and that name is “beloved child.”

It is a wondrous and miraculous thing to hear, and during these wintery days of Lent, God is squirting with divine pressure grace-full water into your ears so that when Easter comes you will clearly hear God’s word to you and live!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord 2-7-23

Hello,

ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz………..

I have a confession to make. I fell asleep Sunday in church. I found myself pretty groggy as the sermon started because I didn’t get much sleep the night before and I am taking a blood pressure medicine that makes me drowsy. But I kept fighting if off as I knew the Pastor had something that would be important to hear, and my brother-in-law, who was visiting our church, was sitting next to me. (In truth, the latter was more important to me than former.). On the floor in front of me was my travelling mug of coffee, so I started taking sips from in to keep me from dozing off. But the coffee in it was decaf so it didn’t help me at all. I shuffled in my seat for a bit and tried to active listen to the preacher. Once again, to no avail. The pastor was a guest pastor, and he spoke with a low- level soothing voice. I worked on keeping my eyes open, but as the minutes went by I could feel my eye lids gaining weight, until I caught my head bobbing down on my chest. ZZZZZzzzz. I don’t know how many bobbles my head made. I don’t think it was very many, but fortunately the shock of the last bobble gave me a jolt of guilt, enough to keep me wake for the rest of the sermon.

But that is not the end of my confession of falling asleep in church. As a kid, from elementary age, through my Junior High years, and all the way through high school, sermon time was always a struggle to stay awake, and often I would doze off. But not for long, though, because the sharp elbow of my mother would find its way to my ribs to wake me up. A couple of months ago, I felt that same sensation, except this time it was coming from my wife who heard the low rumble of a snore coming out of my nose.

But I am not alone in my church-time napping. When I have preached, I notice many things going on in the congregation. Some people are visually locked in on me. Some are gazing out the window. Some are occupied with the baby in the pew in front of the. And some have fallen asleep…..or meditating with their eyes shut, so they say to me.

Throughout my life, I have looked askance at people falling asleep in church, including me. I can blame the pastor for being a boring and monotonous in voice, but neither of those things seem to count as I consider the words of Jesus who may have been boring and spoken in an Ambien tone, “If anyone has ears, listen.” Or I can fall on my own excuses: lack of sleep and all the things on my mind that lead me to drift away, but as Jesus said to his sleeping disciples on the day of his arrest, “could you not stay awake a few hours…..the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Or I can say that the sanctuary is so warm and it would put anyone to sleep.”

But as I think on the history of my siestas in church and many others joining in, I see a new insight. I find myself asking, “Is it really so bad to fall asleep in church?” Maybe the sleep is a sign that the church, in this way at least, is a place of comfort and solace. Unlike the outside world that piles pressure after pressure on our lives, and sleep is hard to find. Unlike the outside world that is moving so fast that you dare not fall asleep. Unlike the outside world where you can’t bring yourself to sleep as hungry wolves run rampant and vultures sail with a drool on their beak anticipating dropping out of the sky and gorging themselves on the fox’s leftovers or the innocent victims of road kill. Unlike the outside world the world, inside a church’ sanctuary there is a wide open doorr and the one whose home it is calls out, “‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Rest.

Maybe by the fact that some people fall asleep in church, it says that to some extent, the church is doing what is supposed to be doing: creating a place of restful, and gentle comfort. A place where there is safety and calm. A place where weary souls can find their rest, and lost travelers can find shelter. A place where the Prince of Peace, reigns in peace. A place so peaceful that it induces sleep.

Now, I am not saying that it is a good faith building thing to fall asleep every week in church, because when you fall asleep in church you miss the looking into the mirror and see the sin that has its hold on you , and you also miss the life save words that come from the pulpit that are transforming your life to be who you are, a child of God. But if it so happens that you come to church on Sunday beaten down by the bullies of this world and worn out from the voices of guilt that swirl in your brain, then a few moments of sleep in the pew is a sign that you have come to the right place: “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Peaceful sleep.

Have a great week,

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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