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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 Hello,

The other day I was going into a store as several people were coming out. The last person to exit was a young man who, when he went through the doorway, held the door open for me to enter. “Thank you,” I said.

The young man surprised me by his response, “Of course.”

“Of course.” I had never heard that reply to thanking someone for holding the door. “You’re welcome,” or no reply at all is what I normally hear, but this young man said, “Of course.” Why “of course”? Was it because he considered me to be an old feeble man who he could tell did not have the strength to open the door? Was it because he was trying to soften my impatience for having to wait for his group to pass through the doorway? Or was it that it was in his nature to offer small acts of kindness as he went through his day?

My suspicion is that it is the last of these three. Of course he held the door, because that is the thing that he would naturally do. “Of course.”

It got me to thinking of the many doors that Jesus has opened for me.

Jesus, when he died on the cross, opened the door the cell room of my sin. There I was, locked behind all the things that I have done that have brought pain to my heart, the heart of God and to the world, and locked behind the bars of the things that I have not done when my ears have heard the cries that that pain has wrought. Not only were my sins like iron bars imprisoning me, they also were like shackles locked around my wrists and ankles that kept me from moving. Others have walked by me while I sat in my prison of sin, and they snickered and sneered at me saying, “You’re only getting what you deserve,” and “loser”. But not Jesus. Jesus with the power of God Almighty, pulled open the door and walked over to me, and with nail scarred hands tore the shackles off me as if they were made out of paper, lifted me to my feet, walked me over to the door of that prison, opened it again and gestured me to leave. I said, “Thank you.”

Jesus, when walked out of the Easter tomb, opened for me the doors of another prison in which I sat, the prison of fear. There I was, locked behind thick walls of fear: afraid of the lurking giant powers of the world seeking to smash me like an ant, afraid of the traps that my enemies have set for me, afraid of the ridicule and cruel laughter that awaits me when the bullies see how weak I am, afraid of the hungry jowls of death that drool with anticipatory delight. But when Jesus stepped out of that Easter tomb, all those things scurried like cockroaches running for their lives when he opened the door and the brilliance of his light fell upon them. And with all those fear mongering menaces dispersed from my path, even the biggest monger, death, Jesus held the door of that suffocating room open, and with the swaying motion of his hand bid me to leave that room behind. I said, “Thank you.”

And what did Jesus say as I walked through those now open doorways?

“Of course.”

Have a great week.

God’s Grace and Peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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