Bungee Cord 5-18-15

Hello,

     Yesterday, I had some of our high school graduates from our church up to my house for a “Senior Bash”.  Graduating class of 2015.  We goofed around (I was the winner at ping pong!) and had a chance to talk about thigh school and their plans for the years ahead.  I consider it a blessing that young people share their lives with me, and I hope that in some way God works through me to make a dent of his grace in their lives so that they will live lives shaped by Christ’s unconditional love for them, and they will be people who change the world with that same love.

     Forty years ago, I was at the same point in life as those who yesterday came to my house.  Graduating class of 1975 from Hinsdale Central High School was I.  I remember the cocktail of excitement and fear that I drank that day.  Behind the familiar.  Ahead the unknown.  My sights were set on attending the University of Illinois pursuant (the only legal word that I know) to my plans to become a corporate lawyer.  It was during my freshman year of college that I changed my vocational plans and decided that I would be a pastor.

     Why?  It occurred to me that my motivations to be a corporate lawyer were not mine, and although being a corporate lawyer can certainly be formed by solid motivations, I found my motivations to be grounded elsewhere.  Amongst some of the best friends that I have ever had, I discerned that my deepest hopes, strength, and peace were all grounded in God’s unconditional and unyielding love for me.  (Later, in Seminary, I would find that hope articulated in 1 John 3:1, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.” – my focus verse).  So, I came to the fork in the road, and as Yoggi Berra says,  I took it, hoping that I could help others live with the blessings of hope, strength and peace that had come to me through Jesus Christ.

     Soon I will have been a pastor for 32 years.  It is hard to believe that so many years have past.  With so many years behind me, sometimes I wonder, “Did I take the road’s right fork?”  How does one answer that question?  Sometimes I find myself falling into how the world answers this question, and I am drawn to numbers and statistics.  But in my heart, I find myself answering this question by saying that if I have helped one person live their lives with the undergirding of God’s grace….one person is enough to answer the question “yes”.  If one person has been able to look in the mirror and say, “ Everyone might think that I am worthless because of what I have done, but I know that I am not because of what Jesus has done for me.” ….. If one person has so felt the forgiveness of Jesus in their life that they won’t pick up the first stone to be thrown at someone else….  If one person has been lost and alone, and has been grasped in their darkness by a good shepherd who has left everything to find them… If one person can live their life for others because they know that death does not have the last word even if it is only for a few more days….if only one person has experienced the hope, the strength, and the peace that comes in Jesus Christ….then that is enough to tell me that I have not been on the wrong path for the past 32 years.

     We Lutherans believe that being a pastor is not a loftier vocation than any other, for all of us who possess the grace of God in our lives have the vocation of sharing that grace with all people.  Butchers, bakers and candlestick makers…no matter what …. each person’s primary vocation is to bless the world with the grace of God which they have received.  I once heard of a man who dried cars at the end of a car wash who placed a paper rose on the driver’s seat of every car he dried with an accompanying card that said, “Bless you.”

     If you are wondering if you have taken the right fork in the road of your life, let me invite you to consider this question, “Has one person experienced the peace, hope and strength that comes from Christ as they have encountered you?”  I bet at least one person has!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord  5-12-15

Hello,

     Someone recently said to me, “I know the Bible says that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.”  Well, the Bible doesn’t say that, at least I can’t find where it says that.  What the Bible says is this, “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” (1 Cor. 10:13)

     I know that many people find comfort in this verse, but although I trust that it is true, it isn’t the most comforting word to me when I am feeling like I have been powerfully pummeled and I see another right jab coming my way.  It lacks a ring of comfort to me because I am not too sure that I enjoy the thought of being God’s sparring partner who God beats down to the point of breaking, but not beyond so that we can go at it again tomorrow.

     Truthfully, I am not certain what the Biblical writer was intending with this verse, but a God who sends his Son to die for me does not seem to be the kind of God who “tests” me by inflicting tragedies upon me, punching me to the point of me saying, “Uncle!”

     I don’t believe that God spends his time seeing how many “punches” it takes to bring me to my knees.  It is clear to me, however, that that is exactly what the world delights to do.  Day in and day out I hear the world awake me with the words, “Okay. Put up your dukes!”  Pressures at work and school that hit you square in the jaw.  Uppercuts that attack your relationships.  Lies that hit you in the gut and take the breath right out of you.  From the corner there are those advising you to keep your hands up!  Take it like a man!  Get up and fight!  Don’t be a sissy!  And when you’ve been thrashed enough, to the point that you can’t get up, that is when the crowd all around you starts yelling, “Looser!”

     So, to me, when I find myself beaten and bruised, gasping for breath on the ground, I am glad to hear this verse from the Bible, “¹¹May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully ¹²giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. ¹³He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Col. 1)

     When the strength to stand has been beaten out of me, when my eyes have become so swollen that I can’t even see where to swing, when I am so pummeled that I can’t even lift my hands…and there are days when I find myself that way…I am glad….no not glad….elated….that God will fill me with his strength…that God has rescued me from the clutches of the evil one….and that through the power of his forgiveness God will send the puncher running with his tale between his legs. 

     It is not my strength that I need to count on to stand and face another day.  The Bible tells me that I can face every day with courage, with hope, and with determination because when I stand toe to toe with the puncher, I do so with the power of God in my being.  Sure, some of the days will be heavy weight fights, the world does not give up easily, if not at all.  But, when I face those days, rather than quivering in paralyzing fear, I can find myself looking at the puncher square into his eyes and say, “Go ahead.  Hit me with your best shot.”, and then a smile comes to my face knowing the power of the divine punch to which the puncher will be on the receiving end.

     Someday, the puncher might just learn not to throw the first punch.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (GGAP)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 5-4-15

Hello,

The lane to our house is about ½ mile long.  It comes off of a well-travelled road, serpentines its way around and above an apple orchard and then levels out before making its final ascent to our house.  At the top of its meandering there is an old dogwood tree standing in front of the tree line.  It’s at least 15 feet tall, and just as wide.  This year, like every year, it has been full of blossom buds.

Winter has finally left us, and the warm temperatures have begun to do their work.  Yesterday, as I was driving by the dogwood tree, I could see the buds puffed up so full that I could tell they were about to burst.  I went to bed last night ready to be amazed at the transformation of beauty that I knew would greet me at the end of the next day.  I had some idea of the wonder ahead because I remember the sight of the aftermath of the explosion of the buds the last several years, but because we live in the “mountains” everything is a little behind the timing of the trees and plants in the valleys, which are already fully abloom.

Sometimes people ask me what awaits us after we die.  Although I can’t say that I can speak from personal experience, I am able to say something….something akin to what I see in my dogwood tree.  Much like my dogwood tree laden with hundreds…maybe thousands of buds ready to burst open, when I take a look at the Bible I see Jesus saying, “the kingdom of God is at hand” in his incarnation, and I get a clue as to what it will be like after I die.  Like a flower bud at the verge of revealing the wonder and beauty that is building inside, so the wonder and beauty of God’s timeless and spaceless reign was abud in Jesus as he walked this earth.  And on Easter morning, when the sealed tomb burst open, the bud began its bloom – a bloom of mercy and grace, a bloom of love and power, a bloom of hope and joy, a bloom of peace that surpasses all human understanding.  As the bloom of God’s reign began to open up on that first Easter day, and continues to open like a flower at a pace that human eyes cannot always detect….continues day by day in the community of faith….I can begin to imagine what God’s reign will be like when it is fully abloom.

Today all the buds on my dogwood tree are buds no more.  Standing atop the lane to my house is what looks like a just exploded firework shimmering in the sky.  At the tip of every branch a five petalled flower flutters in phenomenal beauty and grace. 

God’s kingdom is at hand, buds pregnant with bloom.  So when the day comes that I close my eyes in final sleep, I see in my dogwood tree a promise that another day will come….a day when buds will be no more, but only blooms.  And when that day comes then I am sure that I will be, as they hymn writer says, “lost in wonder, love and praise.”

Have a great day,

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 4-27-15

Hello,

For the past several days, the news has been full of the tragic earthquake that has rumbled and ravaged Nepal.  Pictures of the devastation and the tallying of the dead and injured are gut wrenching.  They are a shocking reminder of the frailty of life and our compared weakness to the might of the creation.

They also are a commentary upon those who find their primary experience of God in nature.  Sunrises.  Sunsets.  Glorious vistas.  Soaring peaks.  Fields of spring flowers.   “Don’t you just feel the presence of God?” some say.

But what form does that presence take when earthquakes crumble entire cities?  Or when tornados swirl their way through the plains and sweep up school buildings full of children?  Or when rain disappears for years from fields and the only thing that those fields produce is a crop of dust?  “Where are you God?”, or “Why God?” or “How can there be a God?”, naturally rumble across people’s lips.

As a Christian, I do not deny the wonder and awesome beauty of nature.  It is a gift to behold.  To behold the handiwork of God, it can often take your breath away, and when that happens I find myself saying, “Thank you, God.”  Likewise, to find one’s self in the hands of that handiwork can just as easily take your breath away crushing life right out of you, and when that happens I find myself saying,  “Help me Lord!”

The reason that I cry out, “Help me Lord,” when the earth shakes and crumbles around me, literally or figuratively, is because my primary experience of God is not found in nature, but in the one who so embodied the love of God that he took on my nature.  Jesus, fully human, experienced every thing that I naturally experience, and fully divine Jesus took on in a battle to the death everything that nature, including my sinful nature, might seek to take my breath away from me.  When nature tries to get its hands on me, I turn to the one who has taken me into his hands with a grip that will never let me go.  “Help me Lord.”

Some may say that this all sounds highly theoretical and theological, but what good is it when real stuff happens?  Well, all I can say is that because I live the life that all of us live, real stuff does happen.  I have felt the earth quiver and shake, the walls of my life teetering, and my back growing wearing from trying to hold up the roof…..and when it all finally comes tumbling down, I have not been crushed….bruised, beaten up, and maybe broken a bit….but not crushed…held together by the one who has his hold on me.

The people of Nepal need more than for us just to fold our hands in prayer for them, although that is certainly something that we need to do.  But now that their world has come tumbling down around them, we, the body of Christ, are here to stretch our hands to them…lift them up, help them get back on their feet, walk hand in hand with them into their uncertain future, embracing them with the love of God.

Likewise for you, if you find yourself in an earthquake zone, know that you will get more than just our hands folded for you in prayer, but we, the Body of Christ, will be the hands of Christ who will hold you and never let you go.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 4-20-15

Hello,

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

As I wrote last week, I was under the weather the Sunday after Easter…two Sundays ago.  Fortunately, it was one of those short, but miserable bugs, and I was back in the saddle yesterday, having learned something from my Sunday when the horse had bucked me off.

As I wrote last week,  for my whole life, if it is Sunday morning, I have been in church.  One of the wonders of this technological age, is that on those occasions when the horse wins, a worship service can be found on the internet in which to participate at a distance. (Of course, just like anything else, the internet or T.V. cannot capture wonder and awe of actually being there, but when one can’t be there at least it keeps the horse from kicking us when we’re down.)

So, being a Lutheran Christian, I started searching through the internet to see if I could find a Lutheran service that I could take in.  I discovered a couple of things about my fellow Lutheran churches who make their services available on line.  First, it seems like none of us Lutheran stream our services live over the internet, thus I found myself taking in the service from the week before, which was Easter.  Secondly, I discovered that we Lutheran Christians have taken the most amazing, most spectacular, most cosmos changing, most life impacting event that has taken place since the dawn of creation and make it seem as though it is about as monumental as milk toast.

Let me explain myself.   Every one of the services that I took in, about 5 of them (I realize the sample size is small), the service began with the words with which I began this Bungee Cord, “Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!”  Well…not exactly.  Actually, the services began this way, “Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed.  Alleluia.”  The first phrase said by a pastor with the enthusiasm and force of the clerk at the drivers license bureau calling the next number holder to come up and have their picture taken.  The congregation responding with the second part with the energy and fervor of a bunch of hospital patients looking at the food that was just set before them.

Now, I know that Lutheran Christians tend to be people who are a bit reserved in emotion, and we value artistic quality….but I have seen even the most stoic of Lutherans get their dander up at a football game or a school board meeting.  And isn’t the resurrection of Jesus a bit more amazingly cataclysmic than either of those things….actually anything?  When I took in those internet services I thought to myself, if this is all muster that we portray to the world about the event that is at the center of our lives and faith….no wonder the Christian message seems to heard with little relevance by the world….no wonder Sunday morning worship falls way to the bottom of people’s priorities…no wonder the exuberance of T.V. car salesmen seems to have greater impact in people’s lives than pastors and Christian congregants.

So, I thought in this Bungee Cord that I would come out of my Lutheran Christian shell, and open my ears to the events that happened on the first day of the week so many years ago….that when the world thought they had done everything to rid themselves of this man named Jesus….tortured and discredited him, nailed him to a cross and plunged him with a spear, heard him breath his last and watched him hang his head in death, put him in a tomb and sealed it with a large stone…..that on Sunday God showed the world that they just wouldn’t ever be able to get rid of Jesus and the love with which he loved the world.  The stone was rolled back, breath returned to Jesus’ lungs, blood resumed beating from his heart, and he got up from his death repose and walked out of that tomb….alive!

“CHRIST IS RISEN!  HE IS RISEN INDEED!  ALLELUIA!”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace.

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 4-13-15

Hello,

It’s Sunday morning, and I am at home.  There’s been an intestinal bug that has been making its rounds around here, and it’s rounded its way to me.  Ugh.

I am one of those folks that have found myself in a church nearly every Sunday of my life.  As a matter of fact, I think that if I used my fingers and toes to count the number of Sundays that I have not been in church, I would have digits to spare.  That may not come as any surprise to you, after all, I am a pastor, and Sunday mornings pastors spend their time in a church.  However, when my kids were younger and they would contend that we were in church every Sunday because I was a pastor, my response to them always was, “No, we’d be in church every Sunday whether I was a pastor or not.”

Hard to prove the truth of that statement as I have always been a pastor, but as I look around the congregations that I have served, I have seen many people whose faith leads them to church every Sunday, and they are not pastors.  Truth is, I find myself more motivated to go to church on those Sundays that I am off my job.  It is nice to not be responsible for the worship experience, but simply worship instead.  That is not to say that when I am “pastoring”, I am not edified by the worship.  The hymns, the scriptures lessons, the Lord’s Supper, and the sermon (every sermon I preach, I also preach to me) all shape my life, too.  But it is nice to have those times when the time I spend in worship simply soaks into my life like butter on warm bread.

For you Bungee Cord readers, I suspect that you lie all across the continuum of those who are rarely in a church on Sunday morning, and those who would not even need your toes to count the Sundays that you have not been in church.  No guilt intended upon you where ever you find yourself, reason being that I do not believe that a person goes to church to please God.  After all, before you ever took a step in life, God had sent his Son to die and rise for you.  Whether you step into church once a year or once a week, it is not going to get God to love you any more or any less.  He’s already loved you as much as he can, he has loved you with his Son!

And I don’t believe that a person goes to church because they are a believer.  If that were the case most of us would be very sporadic worshipper, because there are days and weeks in our lives when life can hit us in ways that make it hard to believe.  For all of us, the existence and presence of God in our life can sometimes, if not often, be as visible as a fish in murky waters.

I know that for myself, I go to church for one reason, and one reason alone.  God has invited me to come.  God has extended me his invitation because God wants me to believe in him, not just in his existence, but in his unimaginable love for me.  After all, he has given his Son for me (wow!), and lest that deed be inconsequential in my life, God throws open the doors of his church and says, “Let’s spend some time together so my love for you might shape your life.”

The world around us is pretty good at telling us so many things that likewise can shape our lives…”all we are is dust in the wind”….”three strikes and you’re out”…. “whoever dies with the most toys wins”….”look out for number one because no one else is”….”winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”….”someone is the MVP”.   It may be that these words of the world can spur us on, but in my mind their spur feels like the spur of a boot; inflicting fear, pain, pressure, and resentfulness.

Even though it is only one hour a week that I find myself at worship in the church, compared to the 24x7-1 hours that I find myself a-swim in the world, I find the experience of that one hour to have the power to shape and mold me with hope, to motivate me to do my best because God has given me his best, and to free me to look beyond myself  having been the object of God’s self-giving gaze.  Week after week in church  I experience “see what love the Father has given us, that we should be called, “Children of God.  And that is what we are.”, an experience that helps me ward off what the world want to call me, good to inflate my ego or bad to crush my soul.  Sunday morning, when I am in church, I experience an embrace of God’s grace.

I am looking forward to this upcoming Sunday, when God will throw open the doors of his church, and (stomach bug abated) I’ll be there!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 3--6-15

Hello,

Have you ever heard what cockroaches talk about?  Well, the other day as I was sitting in a restaurant, I did a little eaves dropping.

“Hey Ralph, hear that you are up for Cockroach of the year.”

“Yeah, Sid, it’s true. Got the word yesterday.”

“Wow, that’s something, but I’m not surprised.  There isn’t a Cockroach that works as hard as you do cleaning up the kitchen floor.  You rip through the grease, and there isn’t a bit of grime that is too grimy for you.”

“Yeah….”

“And you are always looking out for the rest of us Cockroaches, calling us over to share in the discoveries that you have found.  A lot of us owe our life to you.”

“Well….”

“I’d vote for you…that’s for sure.  Hey, did you hear about Stan?  He got crushed by the cook yesterday.”

“Not surprised.  He always was pretty stupid.  Kind of just laid around while the rest of us did all the work.  Free loader…that’s what he was.  I’m sure that he would have never been up for Cockroach of the year.”

“Aren’t you a little bit worried about the cook’s foot?”

“Nah….I am up for Cockroach of the year,” said Ralph.

As I heard Ralph and Sid talking, I thought to myself, “Ralph, you’re missing something.  You’re a cockroach!”

True enough.  Like Ralph, Sid and Stan, when our sample size is our own kind, it is pretty easy for us to idolize some and look down on others, maybe even idolizing ourselves as we compare ourselves to others.  Surprised when “bad” things happen to “good” people, and at ease when “bad” things happen to “bad” people.

But wait!  Isn’t there a problem with this?  Isn’t our problem the same problem that Ralph, Sid and Stan fell into?  They all were cockroaches….we all are sinners. Sure, when we compare ourselves to one another, we might be able to say (although I am not sure that it bears much truth) that someone is less of a sinner than another.  Even though someone among us might be considered “Sinner of the Year” for sinning the least, nonetheless that one is still a sinner.

When I consider the story of Easter, a story that is hard for some, if not all, to believe, I find myself struggling less to believe that Jesus might have risen from the dead (after all, if God was involved in bringing life out lifelessness…however you might believe that involvement to be,….. it seems believable to me that such a God could bring life to one whose life has left him) than that God would care about me, a sinner (cockroach) that he would die and rise for me.  The grace of God is the most unbelievable part of the story of Easter for me. 

That God would endure the sufferings of this world and even the terror of death in order to extend his infinite love to me makes no sense to me when I eye myself next to Almighty God.    I find grace hard to believe.

And maybe that is why God went to the extent that he did when he sent his Son, Jesus.   To simply say, “I love you,” might not ever accomplish the will of God that people would live (abide) in his love.  However, to incarnate that Word, “I love you,” might indeed have the power to bring us under his wing, even when it is hard, or even impossible, to believe.

There might not be anything for cockroaches  to hope in as they wander ‘neath the footsteps of the cook….but not so for us, sinners,  who wander ‘neath the glory of God.  We have the grace of God, grace that is solidly sealed in Easter.  “Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!” 

Alleluia!

Have a great day,

God’s grace and peace, (GGAP)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger