The Bungee Cord. 8-29-23

Hello,

The reason that I didn’t get my Bungee Cord out yesterday is that I was playing golf yesterday afternoon with two of my sons who were visiting. All three of my sons were here over the weekend, and the four of us played golf on Saturday, but my oldest needed to return to Denver leaving just the three of us to play yesterday. None of us claims to be a very good golfer, but it is great fun to wander around the course together for several hours….swinging, slicing, hooking, duffing, occasionally hitting a great shot, and always laughingl

I don’t get to see my sons very often as they live in Denver, Charlotte, and Brooklyn. Time flies for me when we’re together, as it did yesterday on the golf course. When we teed off on the first hole, the forecast included the possibility of rain showers, but the radar was telling us that things should stay clear. And they did….mostly. On a couple of the holes, some sprinkles joined our game, and on the last three holes heavy rain fell on us. Everyone else cleared the course, but not us. We don’t get to goof around together very often, and besides, “It’s only a little rain.” In less than an hour, it rained an inch and a half at our house which is about 4 miles from the course.

I suppose that if I had been out on the course with anyone else, I would have abandoned ship, too. Wet hands and wet grips sent our shots flying even more aimlessly around the course. Puddles gathered our balls in and soaked our feet. Our clothes clung to us as if we had been sweating up a storm, but we played on. We weren’t going to let “a little rain” douse the joy of spending time together.

Now, I am not talking about major tragedies, but for me, when the rain showers of life hit, there is still joy to be found in playing the round because of who is playing with me, the Lord. The Lord doesn’t laugh at me when my shots go awry, he looks at me with a carefree smile, and we laugh together. The Lord doesn’t make belittling comments when I duff one really badly and my mighty swing only renders a couple of yards distance. No, he tosses me another ball and says, “Try that again.” He doesn’t walk away from me to play his perfect shot and abandon me in the sand trap, but he wanders into the trap with me and gives me a quick lesson and stays there with me even if it takes 5 hits to get out. And if it is pouring rain, he reminds me that “it’s just a little rain.”

I, just like everyone else, can get caught up in playing a round in life. Putting pressure on each of my swings as if my life depended on each one. Feeling my blood pressure rise when ball after ball that I hit plops in the water. Blushing in embarrassment as other people see me hit the divot further than the ball, even people that I don’t know. Aggravated at the storms that make play hard and even. Inclined to throw my club in the air, and ready to pick up my ball and head back to the car.

It is at moments like that that I hear the voice of the one with whom I am playing. “Fear not, I, the good shepherd have you and your life in my hand, and nothing will be able to snatch you away from me.” “Peace I give to you, not as the world gives, but my peace that surpasses all human understanding.” “I have come to save sinners.” “The waves don’t scare me. I walk on them.” And instead of picking up my ball, pout, and head for the clubhouse, I reach into my bag, pull out my wet handled driver, stick a tee in the ground, set a ball on it and swing away with joy….after all, what can beat playing a round of life with the Lord?

Fore!

Have a great week,

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 Hello,

Michael Phelps' Final Individual Swimming Record Broken by 21-Year-Old Leon Marchand

Well, the time has finally come. Michael Phelps is no longer the greatest swimmer in the world. Those of you who are my age or older might remember his swimming career in which he broke record after record and received gold medal after gold medal. He was dubbed the greatest swimmer of all time. So great was he that he raced a shark….and lost.

Of course, before Phelps, there was Mark Spitz who preceded Phelps in setting records and winning a neck-full of gold medals, 7 of them, at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich. He also was dubbed the greatest swimmer of all time, but with all of his records also being broken, he like Phelps is now only “one of the greatest swimmers of all time.”

Greatness is a time limited thing. Those who attain a pinnacle in life soon find themselves bypassed by someone who has bettered them. The slide from greatness is a humbling thing and can happen in the wink of an eye. One mess up is all that it takes to have the title greatest erased from who one is, and the passage of time can almost make one’s greatness meaningless (i.e., who was the greatest chariot rider of all time?). Greatness is eroded by the winds of change, sometimes to the point that people look in the mirror and see someone who doesn’t seem very great at all.

But today, I want you to know this: you are great, unsurpassingly great in one way. You are the greatest child of God. Not because of what you have done or accomplished, but what has been done and accomplished for you. God died for you. God Almighty took the bullet for you. God took God’s stand on the cross and took the pain, the suffering and even the death that was aimed at you and put his life on the line for you. Consider what greatness would be awarded to you if the President of the United States took a bullet for you. But such a mark of greatness is paltry compared to the fact that the one who is ruler of the universe, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega did that very thing for you. Who could ever surpass such an act? Who could ever diminish your greatness?

So, when the world runs by you and you can’t keep up and you feel like a nobody…when you look in the mirror and see the nasty scar of the mess that you have made in your life and you feel like a miserable worm….when you see the tears rolling down the face of someone who life is steamrolling and you can’t do anything to stop it and you feel worthless….when you are down on yourself because of the trash that is floating in the wake of your life….when your energy is drained and the world wants to discard you like a uncharged battery….remember this: God took the bullet for you. You are great….unsurpassingly great!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 Hello,

In today’s Bungee Cord, I thought I would take on a big question: Why do I believe in God?

Well, of this I am sure, it is not because it is easy to believe in God, nor is it because I want to believe in God. It seems to me that in the day in which we live, it is actually easier not to believe in God. Considering the multitude of suffering that is all too easy to see and the increased understanding of the world around us, belief in God is not automatic. If there is a God, how can all this bad happen? If God is the answer to unanswered questions (a once common perspective, but one that I don’t share), the more questions we answer, the less the “need” for God.

Further, although some psychologists might call me to task on this, I don’t believe in God because I want some cosmic blank-ie in which to wrap myself in this cold universe. As I have aged, I have become all the more aware of my insignificance in the larger picture of creation, and I am not afraid of that reality. I don’t fear death, either. As one who lives with the uninvited guest of depression in my life, death’s sting doesn’t pack much of a punch. Of course, I don’t want the door of my life to close on my relationships and blessings, but the closing of that door will also slam shut the pain of depression. (I have to say, that thanks to medication, therapy, and engaging in life, my depression is being well managed now.)

So, if what I have said is true, and it is, why do I believe in God? The short answer is this; God wants me to believe. As an earthly parent, I have come to understand the connection that one has with the “bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh”. When their hearts stir with joy, so does mine. When they stumble and get scraped, I tangibly feel their pain. It doesn’t matter how big or small they are in the world. They are my sons. I love them. I am with them, heart and soul. My sons are of immeasurable value to me, and I want them to know that.

I have come to believe that is akin to the experience that God has with me. So zealously does God want me to know not just of God, but to know God that God raised Jesus from the dead and shattered the barrier of time and space when Jesus ascended from this small dot in the universe. If there is truth to the story of Jesus, then there must be truth to the existence of God. This is the same sort of logic that the Apostle Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15.15-25 when speaking about the possibility of resurrection. In short, Paul says, how can you say there is no resurrection of the dead, when Jesus has indeed been resurrected.

But more than just believing in God, Jesus is the prime witness to the character of this God who sees God’s image in you and me. And that character is grace. God is not one who sits back and callously spectates the events of God’s creation. God is not one who keeps a running score for each person who is part of God’s ongoing work. God is not one who abusively lashes out in anger when things are not going as God wishes. No, God is one who will not let anything in all of creation sever God from those who bear God’s name, children of God. God takes it all on God’s self….that is grace.

I believe in God because of Jesus. I believe in the graciousness of God because of Jesus. And because of this, I believe there is hope to guide my days, peace to fill my heart, and love to share in the world. Truthfully, if the story of Jesus is true, and the power of the story to give new life causes me to see truth in it, it seems to me , even in the face of the struggles and sufferings in the world, that it is actually hard to not believe in God.

That’s why I believe in God.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord 8-7-23

Hello,

“What’s your faith like, now that you’ve retired?” That was the question that I was asked as I was sharing a glass of wine with some folks.

I retired from my vocation of being a pastor last September after nearly 40 years of ministry. When I decided to go to seminary, or as we pastors say, “felt the call”, I was a freshman in college attending the University of Illinois. My intention when I enrolled at Illinois was to become a corporate lawyer where I would be destined to be wealthy and powerful. It was in the cauldron of my college experience when I decided that wealth and power were rather flimsy and thin things on which to build a life. As Jesus said, building a house on sand is not a very good idea, but rather when one builds a house on rock, that is a house that can endure the mightiest storms and be an anchor for life. So, that is what I decided that I wanted to do for my own life, and also help others build their lives on a rock, but not just any rock, but a rock so strong that it could even hold tight during the greatest hurricanes of life.

I don’t know how things were for you when you were in your late teens and early 20’s, but for me, I was pretty idealistic. As I considered the place of faith in my life, I was pretty unquestioning about the certainty of the one who claimed to be the rock, Jesus, and the strength it possessed with its divine might. When I went to seminary, I expected that my four years there would be years of tempering my faith, reinforcing the idealism and solidifying the naïve understandings of my youth. Seminary was far from that. In seminary, we wrestled with the hard questions, questions that I thought you weren’t supposed to ask, but instead, just believe. How do you know that God exists? Was Jesus really who I had learned him to be? What did the Christian faith have to say about who I was and how I would lead my life? How does the mess of life mesh with the promise of God’s dominion over all creation?

Simple answers did not survive these questions in seminary, and in those years, it felt like the rock that I thought was the ultimate building site was crumbling with cracks and fissures. As a matter of fact, it was crumbling right under my feet. And good that it was, because, in truth, I had set my sights not on gold, but on fool’s gold. Fool’s gold that sparkled with the confidence in my understandings, the confidence in my vision for what a good Christian looked like, and the confidence in my abilities to make things right. I discovered it to be fool’s gold, because in seminary I found myself being handed real gold, God’s grace. What I had thought was the Christian faith, was not. It was really faith in something far less than Jesus. It was ultimately faith in me, and Jesus was nothing more than a personal trainer who I had hired to make me stronger.

In seminary, I learned that there’s nothing wrong with holding on to Jesus with all my strength, but far more important is it to live feeling the grip that God has on me, a grip that nothing can sever. That is grace, and that is the core of faith in Christ Jesus. Over these years of being a pastor, I have seen how weak my grip is. The tragedies of life have no answers to hold onto. The increasing awareness of my less than microscopic place in the universe is humbling. The pain that I have brought to myself and others is sapping. The never-ending judgment of the world is crushing. There have been times in my life where I have felt my grip on God slipping to the point of looking for something else to hold on to, even disbelief.

But it is at those moments of my weakness of grip, that I have found that I am not falling into oblivion or self-destruction. I have readied myself to be crushed and broken by the collision with the ground, but my dismantling never happens. Instead, I feel the embrace of the one who rose up out of oblivion and total destruction on a Sunday morning, holding onto me, and the echo of the words that splashed on my head in Baptism and slid down my throat in Communion saying, “I’ve got you!”

What is my faith like, now that I have retired? My faith is ever full of questions and littered with doubts. My faith is wind battered by storms and pummeled by waves of despair. But nonetheless my faith is stronger every day, because my faith has been built on a rock, the Rock, Jesus who grips me with his love and in that grip, I feel the truth of his promise, “I’ll never let you go.” I have come from seeing Jesus as the rock that one has to build on, to seeing Jesus as the one who out of grace has taken me unto himself, the rock, and has shown me that he, Jesus, is worth building on.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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