The Bungee Cord 12-29-19

Hello,
Today’s Bungee Cord is an audio/visual message….go to my Facebook page, Jerry Nuernberger, and you’ll find it there.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)]
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord   12-16-19

Hello,                                                                                      

I’d like to paint a picture for you.  It’s a picture of a sight that I saw some years ago as I was travelling out in the bush from Lutheran congregation to Lutheran congregation in Cameroon, Africa.

The road was like most of the roads in rural Cameroon, dusty dirt, excessively bumpy from the lack of care and the occasional rain that caused wash outs.  The road sliced its way like a laser beam through the endless savannah.  Sometimes the grass was no more than dried stubble, other times it was knee high, but in either case it was sandy brown, baking under the heat of the African sun.

As the 10 of us rode in the medium sized SUV, driven by Phillipe who knew the unmapped roads and was skilled in navigating the untamed terrain, we came upon an old man walking on the side of the road, out in the middle of nowhere.  Tattered and torn was the shirt that draped his shoulders, and baggy and loose the short pants that he wore, held up by a worn out rope.  An old weathered baseball hat covered his head.  His African face was age worn, his cheek bones and jaw bone where chiseled out of his gaunt face.  His eye were glazed over with blindness.  Tennis shoes, if you could call them shoes, shod his feet.

He walked with great effort, bent over, shuffling his feet along the dusty roadside.  His legs were thin and seemed almost muscle-less, his knees stuck out like cantaloupes.  In his boney left hand was a stick with which he stabbed the ground with every labored step.   What was this old man doing out on this road?   Where was he going, out in the middle of nowhere?

He wasn’t alone, though, because in front of him….maybe four feet in front of him was a young boy, middle school aged, I would have guessed. Thin, but seemingly healthy and strong. The shorts and shirt that he wore were in good shape, and they fit him well.  There was a strength to his stride as he put one second or third hand Nike flip flop clad foot in front of the other.  He was obviously walking much slower than the pace that he would have set on his own, because the pace that he was walking was being set by his travelling partner…..the old man who was walking behind him.

But the most striking thing about these two travelers was what each of them was holding in their right hands.  It was a branch, maybe about six feet long, linking the young boy to the old man behind him.  The boy carried it behind him.  The man held onto it in front of him.  Sighted leading the blind.  Strong leading the weak.

And when I saw it, this verse from Isaiah came to my mind:

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
   the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
   and a little child shall lead them. 

Do you ever feel like that old man?  Worn out from life?  Eyes glazed with blinding cataracts from the “years and tears” that Jackson brown sang of? Muscles wilted from the heat of the oppressive sun and sin that has beaten down on you? Out in the middle of nowhere shuffling your way along an endless dusty road?

And you don’t have to be old to find yourself in this picture.  The kid who gets teased every day as she shuffles her was through the high school halls, and sits alone among a table of peers who doesn’t even notice she’s there.  The man who has fallen into so many holes – some holes of his own making, others that have simply been covered traps on his path, fallen into so many holes that his phone never rings and his guest chair is never used.  The parent who looks in the mirror and is beat down by the whispers of “failure”.

There are some….and maybe even some of you…who know all too well the steps of that old African man because you have walked them a lot.  But isn’t it true, that all of us, have found ourselves walking in his steps at times in our life, and we know that all of us will find such blind and dusty walks ahead of us.  Do you every feel like that old man?  Yes. Of course.

So, listen to today’s Advent message, “And a young child will lead them.”  That is the Advent message to us when we know that old African man’s steps far too well.  “A young child shall lead them.” A young child with keen eyesight to keep us on the path.  A young child with strength and endurance to be able to travel the distance.  A young child with a sharp mind who knows the way. A young child who will patiently walk a slow and deliberate pace.  A young child who will stay close and connected to us by a branch, a cross shaped branch.

To us who sometimes feel, or a lot of the time feel like that old African man, God says this from the book of Isaiah… “and a young child shall lead you.”  And who is that “young child”?  It is the one that John the Baptist pointed to to all those people who had come out into the wilderness.  “I can lead you only so far,” he said to the people….but there is one who is coming after me who will lead you all the way…he will take hold of you like fire taking hold of dry piece of wood….he will take hold of you in an everlasting grip of love and mercy that will fill your lungs and soul.  I can lead you only so far, says John the Baptist, to you and me today….but there is one who is coming who will lead you all the way….his sandals I could never fill.  Out of a Bethlehem manger he will come.

Hear this, those who know the steps of that old African man, “a young child will lead you.” 

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord  12-9-19

Hello,

     We said “good bye” last Wednesday to my old dog Duncan.  It was a sad day.

     Twelve and a half years ago I drove from Sioux Falls to Mason City, Iowa to pick him up.  I had found him on the internet when I typed in “Gordon Setter puppies.”  There aren’t a lot of Gordon Setter breeders around, but I like the way that they look, so I went hunting, and a great hunt it turned out to be.

     Duncan and I lived a lot of life together.  We carried each other through a lot of storms.  The first storm was on the trip home from Mason City, where we were driving into a line of tornados.  The approaching sky was as dark as I had ever seen it, and the radio was warning to take shelter.  And so we did.  We got off the interstate and went into the lobby of a hotel, and the tornado bounced right over us.  After it passed, we went back outside, and when I put Duncan down to unlock the car, he trotted away from me.  Even as a little puppy he moved faster than me, and being skittish of strangers he kept on walking away from me as I called him.  For some reason, he stopped for a moment, and I was able to pick him up.  I thought I had lost him even before we got home.

Not too many days after we got home, we took him for a walk in the park across the road from our house, and as we entered the park a guy on a bicycle came at us.  Frightened, Duncan pulled away from me, and he slid out of his collar that was too big for him.  He took off on a run up the four lane road, as I tried to keep up with him. Fortunately, someone in a Suburban saw us ahead of him, and he stopped his car and the traffic behind him so Duncan wouldn’t get hit.  Luckily, he got himself cornered in a fence, and I was able to pick him up.

It so happened that we got him as I was dealing with a bout of depression, and he turned out to be my buddy when things were dark.  He wouldn’t let me hole up in my house, telling me often that he and I needed to go for a walk.  Every time I came home from work, there he was greeting me with unmeasured joy.  He would keep me company when loneliness would try and take hold of me.  He helped pull me through.

Not that he was always an angel.  He had a thing for chewing shoes, and I think I went through 3 pairs of tennis shoes in the first couple of months that we had him.  And when we went to the dog park, he had a habit of stealing other dogs’ toys, and playing keep away from me as I tried to get them back.  He had a mind of his own, and if he wanted to stay outside, there was no cajoling or trickery with food that would coax him in. And if he wanted to play and wasn’t getting the attention that he thought he deserved, he would go into the laundry basket and pull out a sock and bring it in front of me and start to chew on it.  He could be a stinker.

Duncan and I lived a lot of life together, life enough to fill a multitude of Bungee Cords.  But about a month or so ago he stopped eating. We took him to the vet, and cancer was discovered in his lungs.  “Feed him anything he will eat,” the Vet said.  And so we did.  Suddenly his menu was much more gourmet than dry dog food.  He perked up, and although he didn’t return to his normal energetic self, he still would go out and play and go for walks.  But we could see him slowly getting weaker and weaker as the days went on.  Still he was a great friend, blessing us with his companionship.  Last week, he wouldn’t eat a thing, he had a hard time walking, and his breathing was labored.  “Have you had enough, buddy?”, I said to him.  It was time.

So, I said to him as he lay on the couch, “Do you want to go for a ride?”  He raised his head from the couch and gave it a tilt, as he always did when you said, “Do you want …”  I went over and picked him up and carried him to the car.  I couldn’t hold back the tears.  Kate drove, and when we got to the Vet, I opened up the back door of the car and picked him up again.  Even though he was feeling awful there wasn’t a twinge of fear in him as I picked him up. He had come to know how much I loved him.  I carried him into the exam room and set him down.  He stood there sort of slouched over.  He was worn out.  The Vet was tremendously compassionate, and after giving him a sedative injection, she left us alone with Duncan.  

“Good bye, buddy,” I said to him as he fell asleep.  I wept.

I learned something from Duncan last week, and that is when you are in the arms of one who you know loves you, you don’t need to fear, even when death is near.  If Duncan can have that much confidence in facing death as he was held in the hands of a human, I know that I can have that same confidence as I am held in the hands of God when I face death.

Thank you, Duncan.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord 12-2-19

Hello,

Last week, I told you that I am planning on “singing songs of the season” as we walk our way to Christmas. The path of this walk is through Advent, and the season is meant to prepare us for the awesome grace of God that comes to us in Jesus….Jesus who came in a manger, Jesus who comes every day in our lives, and Jesus who will come at the end of time to complete Gods will of grace.  This week, the designated Psalm for Sunday’s worship service is selected verses from Psalm 72.

¹ Give the king your justice, O God,
   and your righteousness to a king’s son. ² May he judge your people with righteousness,
   and your poor with justice. ³ May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
   and the hills, in righteousness. ⁴ May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
   give deliverance to the needy,
   and crush the oppressor. ⁵ May he live while the sun endures,
   and as long as the moon, throughout all generations. ⁶ May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass,
   like showers that water the earth. ⁷ In his days may righteousness flourish
   and peace abound, until the moon is no more. 

¹⁸ Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
   who alone does wondrous things. ¹⁹ Blessed be his glorious name for ever;
   may his glory fill the whole earth.

One of the most interesting things about Jesus’ birth was the threat that the news of it brought to the king of Israel, Herod. You may remember that when the Wisemen told him that they had come to pay homage to the King of the Jews, Herod was quite taken back.  So taken back was he that he tried to kill the one of whom the Wisemen spoke.

The reason that I mention this detail of the Christmas story is that Psalm 72 is a song to be sung as a blessing to the king, specifically the king of Israel.  Of course, in those days, the tradition was that the King was selected by God, and certainly that tradition held true in the days of the first Kings of Israel as the book of  1 Samuel tells us.  Unfortunately, as time progressed, the one who became the king was not always so God ordained, as in the case of Herod.

Nevertheless, God ordained or not, this Psalm sings of God’s hope for the rule of the king, and notice in this song that God’s main hope is that the people’s lives will be blessed.  It is God’s hope that the King will be an channel of God’s love into the world.

As you and I live in this world, we can sing this song of the season, Psalm 72, because no less is it God’s hope that the people of all nations would receive God’s blessings through those who govern today.  And although the palpable hand of God may not be as clear in the selection of the world’s leaders as it was for Saul, David and Solomon, God’s love for the people whom they govern is crystal clear, crystal clear in Jesus who hung on a cross and walked out of an Easter tomb.  

That is why in the church of which I am a Pastor, the central symbol is the cross of Christ, not the flag of any nation or the emblem of any political party.  Christ died for all people, people of every race and tribe.  God is not American or Russian.  God is not Republican, Democrat, or Communist.   So, it doesn’t matter what country you hail from or which political party you find yourself like-minded, you are welcome in God’s house.  For God wants nothing more than that every person in every land to come to know the depth of God’s love for them.  

Let me extend God’s invitation to come to his house this Sunday and sit beside someone who just might see the world differently than you do.  And as you share a pew with such a person, you will find yourself also sharing your heart with them, because Jesus will hold you both in his heart.  And being mutually held in Jesus heart, you just might find yourself singing Psalm 72  from your heart, praying God’s blessing upon the earthly one who leads you, and the earthly one who leads the one next to you.

Just think what a difference it might make in the world if the air was filled with a countless chorus of voices belting out this song of blessing, Psalm 72.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord  11-26-19

Hello,

     As the airwaves and shopping centers fill the air with songs of the season (actually, for us Christians, the season is Advent…not Christmas), I thought that I would try something new with the Bungee Cord, and fill the internet with different songs of the season…..Psalms.  The book of Psalms was the hymnal for the people of God.  Each of the Psalms has a specific focus and purpose.  People knew them, knew them by heart.  So well did they know them that when the first line was said/sung, that was as good as saying/singing the whole thing.  An ancient “Name That Tune” sort of thing.

In the branch of the church of which I am a Pastor, a specific Psalm is designated to be part of the worship service, and so during Advent (the four weeks before Christmas), I thought that I would “sing” the designated Psalm each week in my Bungee Cord, and fill the internet with the songs of the season.

Week 1 of Advent: Psalm 122

I was glad when they said to me,
   ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ 
Our feet are standing
   within your gates, O Jerusalem. 

Jerusalem—built as a city
   that is bound firmly together. 
To it the tribes go up,
   the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
   to give thanks to the name of the Lord. 
For there the thrones for judgement were set up,
   the thrones of the house of David. 

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
   ‘May they prosper who love you. 
Peace be within your walls,
   and security within your towers.’ 
For the sake of my relatives and friends
   I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’ 
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
   I will seek your good.

There is one line in this Psalm that as a kid, I just could not understand, “I was glad when they said unto me, “Let us go into the house of the Lord.”  As a kid, going to church every Sunday morning was not the highlight of my week. Getting up early on Sunday morning (we always, and I mean always, attended the 8:30 service instead of the 11:00), was an unwanted wakeup time.  Going to church and spending time with a bunch of old people when I could have been watching cartoons was a pain.  Having to listen to what seemed like an hour of a droning sermon was torture.  Trying to sit still and not fall asleep was nearly impossible.  I was not glad when my folks said unto me every Sunday morning, “Let us go into the house of the Lord.”

Something obviously changed, after all, I am a Pastor, one who calls people into the house of the Lord Sunday after Sunday, and what changed was this: as I continued to go to church, I came to see something that drew me there, drew me there like a super-magnet.  Jesus was there.  In a more profound way than his presence with me every day, I experienced the presence of Jesus in church and worship.  

I think of the Bethlehem shepherds who were told that in a stable they would encounter the one who would change their lives forever….literally, forever.  And so they “made haste” to go to that place.  When I invite people to church, I, likewise am inviting people to come to a place where they will encounter someone who will change their lives forever….literally forever.  A pastor friend of mine said this, “If people believed that Jesus was really there in church/worship every Sunday morning, who wouldn’t come!”

“I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.’”

Have a great week,

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord   11-19-19

Hello,

With no scientific backing, but only personal observation over the years of being a Pastor, it seems to me that as people live out their lives, they find themselves falling somewhere between being a tree climber and a hole digger.  Here’s what I mean.

Some folks tend to live their lives climbing to higher and higher levels of accomplishment.  They gain greater and greater amounts of respect and acclaim.  People look up to them, and they often are awarded for their deeds.  “World’s Greatest Dad”, “Mother of the year”, “Employee of the month”, “Student of the week”, the sibling you can always count on, the kindest person I have ever met, the pillar of the community, the living example of the Christian faith.  Thing about tree climbers, though, is the higher you go, the more precarious the perch, and the further it is to fall.   It can be a scary thing being a tree climber.  One slip and you can lose it all.  For some tree climbers, the world delights in their tumbling.  For others, the world tends to abandon them in shunning disappointment.

The other end of the spectrum are hole diggers.  They are folks that just don’t seem to be able to live without a shovel in their hands, digging themselves into deeper and deeper holes.  People look at them, too, and stick labels on them.  Loser, black sheep, good for nothing, fool, dregs of society, bottom feeders, deadwood.  Thing about hole diggers is the more holes you dig, the easier it is to fall into them, and the deeper you dig the harder it is to get out of them. People tire of dealing with hole diggers, and so often the world tries not to look into the holes that they come upon in order to not have to deal with what they may find in them

Interestingly enough, the Bible tells us that Jesus had a heart for both tree climbers and hole diggers….and everyone in between.  There was an expert tree climber that Jesus came across one day, Zacchaeus.  He had worked hard to become one of the wealthiest men in town, and the was at the top of his trade, tax collecting. Unfortunately for him, it was lonely at the top and the people could hardly wait for him to come tumbling down.  Interestingly, he was high in a Sycamore tree when Jesus spotted him, and while the crowds laughed at him for his tree climbing, Jesus opened his heart to him, telling him to come on down from that precarious tree, so that Jesus could set him high on a unwavering tree, the tree of God’s love for him.  So loved was Zacchaeus, that Jesus, the Son of God was going to take his place in Zacchaeus’ house.  That is a higher stoop than Zacchaeus’ could have ever climbed himself, and it was a stoop from which Zacchaeus would never fall.

And then the hole diggers….. Once a group of people brought to Jesus a woman who was caught in adultery, apparently to put it gently, caught in the act.  We don’t know how it all happened…what led to the adultery…how they were discovered, but we do know this: the law prescribed that the woman be stoned to death.  All the good people were to gather around her and pelt her with large stones that would crack her skull, break her bones, and fatally injure her.  Caught in a deep, deep pit, the people gathered around her and as they were looking for stones to wield upon her, Jesus looked at something else. He looked at her.  And making every stone too heavy with guilt to lift up, he shielded her with his grace and mercy.  Then he lifted her up out of the hole she had dug, and like a prisoner released from jail said, “Go, you are free.”

If my sociological/theological observations are correct, each of you who are reading this Bungee Cord lie somewhere on the climber-digger continuum.  So, I hope that by reading this, you have discovered that no matter where you are on this continuum, there is one who is neither hoping for your fall or preparing to throw dirt upon you in your hole.  Instead he comes to you to lift you up – up in his grace, grace from which you will never fall, and grace that will overwhelm any hole that might try and swallow you up.  That is what happens every Sunday morning when we gather in church, so let me invite you to join the rest of us tree climbers and hole diggers whom Jesus is lifting up.

Have a great week,

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord
11-10-19

Hello,

     TODAY IS A HAPPY DAY.  YOU ARE IN A HAPPY PLACE.

     Any guesses where I spotted these sentences?

     I spotted them, as I was enthroned, on the interior door of the bathroom of the hotel in which I stayed this past week when I was on vacation (thus the reason for the lack of a Bungee Cord last week.)  They covered the entire door, and they tapped my funny bone when I saw them.

     I snickered at their size, their location, and their content. So big were they that they felt like an order being issued by a marine drill seargent, “You will be happy!”  Located on the interior side of the bathroom door made me think of my time in that room in a way I had not thought of before, and the message they gave seemed an unusual one for a hotel to plaster on a bathroom door.

     TODAY IS A HAPPY DAY.  YOU ARE IN A HAPPY PLACE.

     As I have talked to folks, it seems to me that maybe these words might be expected  somewhere else, too: on the front wall of the church.  I say that because many operate with the impression that Christianity is all about being happy.   Somehow folks have gotten the message that you need to be happy in order to come to church, you need to have a happy face when you’re there, and when you leave you should leave with a smile on your face.  True enough, a great place to bring one’s happiness is to the place from where all blessings flow.  And true enough, who can help from smiling when good news is announced, especially the good news of Jesus Christ.  And true enough, a skip in your step comes quite naturally after dining on a foretaste of the feast to come.  But I am not too sure that happiness is the measure of the worth of having come to church, nor the measure of the depth of a person’s faith.

     I say that because in the Bible happiness isn’t always the result of an encounter with Jesus.  Just think about how the disciples must have felt when Jesus ate his last meal with them, a meal that carried the shadow of his death.  Or, how about what the disciples felt when they gathered in the post-Easter room, hiding for their lives.  Or how about when the Apostle Paul was imprisoned for his faith.

     Likewise, there are times in life where happiness is hard to find….when a loved one dies, when your life has fallen apart because of what you have done, when hopes and dreams evaporate and crumble.

     Clearly, Jesus didn’t come to bring sprinkles to life so that we might be happy, that would make his presence pretty trivial and very fleeting.  Jesus came to bring something far more essential and substantial for life: hope.  As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8, “I am convinced that …… nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Sometimes life is hard.  Sometimes life is sad.  Sometimes life is wearisome.  When we read scripture we find that Jesus, like insects to a light at night, is drawn to those times.  And when Jesus inhabits those times, Jesus doesn’t say, “don’t worry, be happy.”… or, “you have to look on the bright side of things”…. Or, “it’s not that bad, just think about what other people are going through”.  No, what Jesus says is this, “I am with you.”  And if Jesus, the embodiment of God’s power and love, is with you, there is hope.

     With that in mind, maybe there is a message that should be emblazoned on the front wall of every church, a message that can’t be missed when a person sits down on their pew, a message that declares with Christianity and Jesus is really all about:

     TODAY IS A HOPEFUL DAY.  YOU ARE IN A HOPEFUL PLACE.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger