The Bungee Cord 3-25-24

Hello,

Last week, I spent a couple of days in Florida watching the Pirates in pre-season games. Although the Pirates did not fare too well, the weather was 80 degrees and sunny compared to the 15 degrees and cloudy in Pennsylvania. It was a good trade-off.

In the game against the Toronto Blue Jays, the seats in front of us were occupied by three boys that I would guess were 5th or 6th graders. One boy was all decked out in a Blue Jays shirt bearing the name of a player, another was wearing black and gold and a Pirates hat, and the third was showing no team loyalties. All three of them had their gloves, prepped to catch a foul ball. If you have ever seen the movie “Sandlot”, these three looked like they came right out of the cast. Throughout the game they cheered for their team, but more often they were looking things up on their phones.

When it came to the 6 inning or so, they all left their seats to go and get something to eat. About an inning went by and they returned to their seats with their food. The Blue Jays fan had a hamburger and fries, the Pittsburg fan had fries and chicken tenders, and the unaffiliated fan just had fries. Perfect baseball food!

They sat down and were just about to dive into their food when the Pittsburgh fan said, “Wait guys, we gotta pray.”

“No, we don’t,” the Toronto fan said. “We’re at a baseball game.”

“Yes, we do,” the Pirate clad kid said sternly. “We gotta pray.” And with that he leaned toward his buddies, bowed his head , as did the others, and he said a quick spontaneous prayer. I was impressed.

Was he right? Do you have to pray before you eat, even at a ballpark? What happens if you don’t. Will God make your team lose? That would have been a difficult outcome as both teams were represented among these boys. Will God strike the food with some bacteria, and they would all get sick? Given that the food was ballpark food, the likelihood of bacteria in the food was already great. Will God get angry and bring tragedy to them after they leave the field? Would God be offended and put them on the naughty list?

So often, it seems the reason that we Christians do things, like praying, is in order to avoid something bad happening to us. You know, keep God buttered up so God will treat us well. But that sort of reasoning seems quite backward to me.

Personally, I do things…like pray, like help others, like give an offering, like give to World Hunger….not to keep out of trouble with God, but rather because God has rescued me from trouble. When Jesus died on the cross, Jesus brought with him anything and everything that might cause God’s wrath to fall upon me, and all those things died when Jesus died. They no longer had my name. And when Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus left all those things behind in the grave, and he walked out and opened his arms in eternal love…love that embraced me when the waters of Baptism splashed upon me, and God said, “Jerry Nuernberger, you are mine…..forever!”

I pray at mealtime because I am thankful that God’s love for me extends to my table, and my prayers of thank spur me on to make sure I work to bring food to other people’s table. I help others because I am thankful that God has jumped into the holes that I have dug for myself and lifted me out. I give an offering to my church, not to pay dues or my share of the budget, but because I am thankful for the divine love that I receive there and emanates out to the world. I live out my life, not out of fear, but out of thanks and praise.

So, the kid was right, in my mind. We gotta pray (something that I confess I did not do).

We gotta pray….pray not out of fear, but rather out of relieving the pressure of thanks that is building inside of us. You just can’t hold thanks and praise in forever. It will eventually burst out and change everything. It may be that the time of that bursting is when Jesus grabs you out of your tomb and says, “Come home to the place that I have prepared for you.”, but why wait that long? Pop the bubble of sin and pride every day….every meal…and see what a spectacular life you will have living embraced in thanks and praise to Jesus!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord. 3-18-24

Hello,

There are many stories in the Bible that I find myself thankful to read, and in church yesterday, I heard one of them. Luke 7:36-44. It is the recounting of what happened one day when Jesus had been invited to eat at the home of a pharisee, a very religious person who lived his life trying to follow each and every rule that he had learned from the synagogue. As it happened while Jesus was eating with this man, a woman, who bore the scarlet letter “sinner”, entered the room, kissed his feet and poured a jar of ointment on Jesus’ feet and dried his feet with her hair. When the host saw this happening, this is what he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.”

As the story continues, Jesus makes it quite clear that he, indeed, knew “who and what kind of a woman this was”. And that is why this story is on my list of top 10 stories in the Bible. Jesus knew…..AND…. Jesus let the woman touch him!

I, like you, know what kind of person I am. I know of sin that runs deep in my blood. I know the mean and hurtful thoughts that rattle in my mind and sometimes make their way to my mouth and my hands. I know the selfish and ignorant urges that drive my checkbook and my impression of others. I know the idols that sit on the shelf of my ego. I know, with photographic memory, the times that I have spit at Jesus in the face. I know the people that I have hurt, knowingly or not, because I see them bruised in my wake. I may hide the me that I know so well from other people, as we all do, I think. I try to give the impression that I have it all together. Some people who look at me, and maybe the same would be said of you, “Jerry’s is pretty good guy. He’s not as bad as ……”. But I know that when it comes to sin, sin is like cancer. Even one cancer cell is deadly. I know what kind of person I am.

In Jesus’ day, touch carried a lot of weight. If someone touched you, that person “rubbed” off on you. Their uncleanliness became your uncleanliness. In many ways, I think the same holds today. Maybe not so much those who physically touch us, but those whose lives touch ours. The values that we get from our friends. The way we see the world by the brand of news that we watch. The way we treat others by the fears that are instilled in us. We understand how “touch” can infect our lives.

So, I, who knows what kind of person I am, and who knows the infectious nature of touch read this Biblical story with delight, because like that woman, Jesus knows what kind of person I am….AND….Jesus lets me touch him! When I pray, Jesus turns his ear to me. When I have fallen and need someone to pick me up, Jesus takes ahold of my hand. When I come to the altar and stretch out my hand I hear Jesus’ promise, “This is my body. This is my blood. Given and shed for you.”

I know, as I think we all know, that if everyone knew the real you and me, they would not want us to touch them, but the great news of this story is that Jesus actually wants us to touch him. Even when Thomas (Joh 20) approached Jesus with doubts, Jesus said to Thomas, “Touch me.”

And why does Jesus want us to touch him? So that we do rub off on him. So that all the sin that brings pain and stench to our lives might indeed rub off on him….rub off on him so that Jesus could take that sin to the cross and kill it…take its power away….and then leave it all dead in the grave when he rose on Easter Sunday…gather us up in his arms and “touch us with his love” (as I wrote in my Doubting Thomas musical).

As part of the worship service in my church we “share the peace.” We touch each other and “rub” Jesus off on each other as we say, “The peace of the Lord be with you.” Jesus’ touch is transformational, and when we share Jesus’ transforming touch, Jesus’ powerful love is kindled among us.

It is my hope that these weekly Bungee Cords bring my touch to you, a touch full of Jesus love and mercy. So that you who knows yourself, might also know this: Jesus wants you to touch him and have your lives transformed by his sin-killing and eternal life-giving love.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord. 3-12-23

Hello,

There are several significant events in the Bible in which the number 40 is involved. The Bible says that it rained 40 days and 40 nights after Noah built the Ark. The Israelites were said to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus was tempted by the Devil in the wilderness for 40 days. Interestingly, many Biblical scholars believe that when the Bible uses the number 40, it is not meant to be taken literally. Rather, the number 40 is used as a figure of speech for another way of saying “a long, long time.”

Modern English also has ways of saying “a long, long time”. “It took me forever to clean my room.” “I studied all day for that test.” “I haven’t seen her in eons.” Or as Jed Clampet said, “I haven’t seen you since you were knee high to a grasshopper.”

Last week, I went to visit a friend of mine that I haven’t seen for 40 years, literally 40 years. He and I were college fraternity brothers, and when college ended, we went different directions in life. I went to the cold of Minnesota to go to Seminary. He went to the balmy shores of Hawaii to be an accountant. We have kept minimally in touch through Facebook, so I knew what he would look like when we met last week, but other than that there were a lot of blanks to fill in over the years. It was great fun to share our ventures. Neither of us had led boring or uneventful lives.

He had posted on Facebook that he was coming from Hawaii to Indianapolis to visit his father, and now that I am retired, I figured that I should grab the opportunity to go there and see him. After all, it was only a 6-hour drive from my house in Pennsylvania (from my days in South Dakota, a 6-hour drive is nothing at all!). It was worth the drive.

When I started writing the Bungee Cord over 25 years ago, my main aim was to provide a rendezvous with God for those whose lives and God had gone in different directions. And haven’t we all done that. Some of us have figuratively wandered off as far as Hawaii, and the rest of us who may not have distanced ourselves as far as that have certainly and regularly turned our backs on God and looked in other directions. I called this weekly writing “The Bungee Cord” because God has shown me that God’s love holds onto us no matter how far we might distance ourselves from God, and nothing can sever the bungee cord of God’s love that is always drawing us back to him.

In Jesus, God has shown that God will go as far as it takes to rendezvous with us…6 seconds, 6 minutes, 6 years, 60 years, 66 years and if need be, even to the den of the devil who in the figurative language of Revelation wears the number 666. And in Jesus, God has shown us that whether our ventures have taken us away from God for 40 seconds, 40 minutes, 40 days, or 40 years…a long, long time….God delights in the rendezvous….catching up on our ventures, filling in the blanks….and saying to us, “Beloved, know this: neither time nor space will ever be able to separate us from one another in Christ Jesus. Nothing!”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord 3-4-24

Hello,

Yesterday I watched history in the making. I saw Caitlin Clark make a free throw that made her the all-time scorer in college basketball. I watched her step up to the free throw line as if it was just another free throw. I saw her take a deep breath as she put the ball to her side. I saw her raise the ball to her forehead, flip it at the basketball. I saw it drop through the net, and I saw her make history. But what amazed me more than the shot that she made was that she made no demonstrable cheer for the accomplishment that she had made. As a matter of fact, when the reporter talked to her just after she made the free throw as she was on her way to the locker room for half time, she gave a short and mild response to the reporter’s question about the accomplishment she just made, and then she quickly went on to talk about her team and what they needed to do to win the game.

I am sure that somewhere down in her soul she was smiling ear to ear, but by her outward response it was clear to me that she understood something that the announcers did not: it was just a free throw. The announcers, however, said otherwise. The announcer, as Caitlin stepped to the line said, “She is about to take a shot for immortality.” Granted, it was a shot to put her name on the pages of history, but as the announcer lifted that shot to the level of immortality, I thought to myself, “Isn’t this just a basketball game?”

As remarkable as the feat was that Caitlin accomplished, did it have the power to overcome death? The same question might be asked of all sorts of other people’s accomplishment; the Wright Brothers, Jonas Sauk, Abraham Lincoln, Cleopatra, Amelia Earhart, Bill Gates. True, we remember their names and the things that they have done, but the fact is that in all of their cases, death won. Humans are mortal, and personally, I have become increasingly aware of my own mortality after my run in with cancer. The day will come when our faces won’t be seen, our touches won’t be felt, and our voices will not be heard. Death will win.

But that is the wonder and joy of the Easter tomb. There is one, a completely mortal one who was at the same time completely divine, for whom death did not win. When Jesus walked out of the tomb, he left death behind. His face was seen again, his touch was felt again, and his voice was heard again. Jesus won!

Death has been swallowed up in victory.’

55 ‘Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?’

56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 15)

Jesus, however, wasn’t the only one who won. “3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6). We are victors, too. Our names are not just written in history books so that we will be remembered forever, our names are written in the book of life and we, like Jesus will live again, live eternally.

To some, I know, it all seems too good to be true, but when I consider the love in my heart for my mortal children, love that would lead me to do anything to have them with me, it seems more than just likely that the one whose power created the universe and holds it together, would have the power to overcome the one thing that would keep me and you away from him, death. I can hardly wait for the victory party to come!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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