The Bungee Cord. 11-13-24

Hello,

I am a day late on the Bungee Cord this week, because I am on the road. A dear college friend of mine (I wrote of him a couple of Bungee’s ago) died, and I am off to his funeral in Northwest Illinois. I am taking a little detour on my way there to visit my dad who is in a memory care unity in Davenport, Iowa.

On my way to Davenport, I drove as far at Valparaiso, Indiana, home of Valparaiso University, which is the college from which I graduated. By looking at my wardrobe and my mancave, you might think that I graduated from the University of Illinois. Well, I did attend the University of Illinois my first two years, but it was there that I decided to be a Pastor, and I needed to transfer to get the courses I needed to go to seminary. I learned a lot at Valpo, but I had a great time at the University of Illinois. My mind may have left U of I, but my heart did not.

Anyway, it’s been decades since I wandered back to Valpo, which is about an hour southeast of Chicago in Indiana. When I got off the Indiana tollway at the Valparaiso exit, I was immediately lost. Some of my confusion was due to the length of time of my absence that was straining my waning memory, but the larger part of the confusion was due to the major change that has transpired around Valparaiso since I left in 1979. The fields of corn and soybeans have all vanished and have been replaced with housing developments, businesses, storefronts and apartment buildings. Traffic lights, round abouts, and congestion. I was so confounded that I had to ask Siri to direct me to Valparaiso University.

The University has also changed. New buildings, new roads, blocked off roads, and athletic facilities that were not there 45 years ago. I have to say that the campus has a new and fresh look to it, which I guess is necessary in this day of competition for students. The chapel, which is one of the largest in the U.S. still stands majestically above everything else, giving witness to the school’s foundation of Christian mission to the students, the town, and the world. I have heard that the huge chapel, which was packed on Sundays and was well attended for chapel during the week is more akin to an empty echo chamber these days with far more people attending basketball games with Valpo’s team in the national spotlight. (When I was there it was much more in the national dungeon.)

I find that visits like this, to the haunts of my past, give me a clear picture of how much time has passed in my life. When I stay in my familiar abode or visit new places, time does not seem to have scooted by that much. Sure, my face and figure give me evidence of time’s march, but the transition is so slow that it is hard to see the change from day to day. My Valpo visit put a microscope to time’s advance in my life, and made we contemplate on who I am in this drastically different world.

Even further ago was the day that Jesus was crucified on Calvary’s hill and then rose from the stone sealed grave. I have been to that hill and tomb, and it, like my Valpo visit was a stark reminder of the passage of time. But I don’t think you have to go to these holy sites to be made aware of vast difference in that world verses the world in which we live. Visiting the pages of scripture take us to a time in the past that we have a hard time imagining. We might then wonder, “What does this ancient story of Jesus have to do with me? Is the work of God that it speaks of have any impact on me who lives so far removed, both in time and space from Jesus?”

To those wonderings, I hear a timely answer that comes from Jesus making a direct and tangible visit into my world. When the waters of baptism splashed over me and I heard, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” and when I receive a piece of bread and a sip of wine with Jesus’ promised presence, “This is my body given for you …this is my blood shed for you,”….my wonderings are answered. “I have come to visit in your time and place” says Jesus, “and embrace you with my love and mercy.” Although time may change a lot of things as we age our way through life, time does not change the most important thing in our lives, God’s love for us.

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.”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord. 11-4-24

Hello,

Autumn has arrived. The daytime is shorter, the nighttime is longer. The warm temperatures are gone. The leaves are gone. The flowers are gone. The cornfields are gone. And out here in the country one notices one more thing that is gone: the songbirds.

Gone is the chatter of tweets. Gone is the melodic reply of two birds searching for each other. Gone is the greeting from the feathered neighbors as one drinks a cup of morning coffee on the porch. Gone is the flutter and chirp of hummingbirds gathering nectar from the geraniums in the flowerboxes. All the songbirds have left us, and all we have flying around us now are crows and buzzards. The silence, although peaceful, is also full of emptiness. The songbirds are gone.

There is also an emptiness to the silence of autumns in our souls. Those times when the songbirds have left our lives. Times when one day just slips into another and another and another. Times when daily routines feel as if one is simply going through the motions. Times when light is diminished, and darkness is encroaching. Times when cackling crows and garbage collecting buzzards are the only people who filles one’s skies. Times when there is a ho-hum-ness to waking up, and an oh-well-ness is the fuel for the day. Autumn is part of our lives, too.

When those times come, and it is my perception that they come to all of us, I hear a reoccurring word from Jesus, “Keep awake.” Like the bridesmaids of old who were caught in the silence of waiting for the wedding, Jesus says keep awake. Not as a warning of doom or punishment for sleep, but as ones who are not engulfed in those autumn times of life: their ears to the ground, their eyes canvassing the horizon, their hearts beating rapidly to discover the wonder of what God is stirring up behind the silence.

A new day! That is what God is stirring up. A day when the load of emptiness is dumped out and an outpouring of Christ’s dying love is poured in. A day when the trees that have reached out their branches as if boney fleshless fingers will find leaves like jewelry adorning their life-full wave. A day when the crows and the buzzards are drowned out by twittering joy. A new day when autumn has descended on our lives, and a new day when our lives come to an end. God is stirring up a new day!

“Keep awake,” says Jesus when autumn times come. Because if you do, your eyes will be open to see the rare bright red cardinal that is a visual proof that God is still here. Because if you do, you will be overwhelmed in hope when the first bud appears on the tree. Because if you do you will hear the first chirp of the robin telling you that the damn of the doldrums is beginning to break. Jesus says to us who find ourselves in the autumn of our days, “Keep awake,” because if you do you will feel the surge of hope and joy in your soul as you find yourself about to experience the mighty chorus of songbirds when the stirring of God explodes into your life with divine grace. “Keep awake!”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

(A photo of the autumn in my back yard.)

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 The Bungee Cord. 10-29-24

Hello,

What would you say if someone said to you, “What’s the good word today?”

Well, it happened to me last week as I was trying to set up an EZ pass account for an old pick-up we have. I had tried to do it on the internet, but, as all too often with me, I could not get the process to work on the website. So, I called the “contact” number on the site ready to be frustrated again.

“Hello, my name is Jerry Nuernberger, and I am trying to set up an EZ pass account for my pick-up. I tried the website, but was unable to complete the process,” I said trying to be as polite as possible in spite of my frustrations.

“Well, Mr. Nuernberger, let me see what we can do for you,” said the guy who responded in a tone as if he had said this over and over again.

“Uh oh,” I thought to myself, readying myself for another round of frustration.

“Do you already have an account?” he asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“And what is your account number?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What is your pin number?”

“I don’t know that either?”

“What is your e-mail?”

Ah, something I could tell him. “Nurnillini@gmail.com”

“We don’t seem to have that email on our file,” he responded.

Ugh! But just as I was about to spew out some of my frustration, I realized that I had reversed my email. “Wait,” I said, “It’s illinurn@gmail.com.”

“Ah, there it is. Now Mr. Nuernberger, what is it again that you want to do?”

I reminded him that I was trying get an EZ pass account for my pickup. It took him a couple of minutes and a few more questions, and my mission was accomplished. My pickup was ready to be equipped with an EZ pass. I was just about to hang up, when he said, “I see it says that you are a pastor. Are you a pastor?”

“I am,” I said abruptly, just wanting to hang up the phone.

“Pastor. What’s the good word today?”

I was caught off guard. I had expected that he, like I, just wanted to get our business over with. I did not know him. He did not know me. So, quickly thinking, I said the word that I think the Christian faith is all about, “Hope.”

“Well, Pastor,” he said, “I’ll do more than hope. I will trust that you will have a blessed day.”

“Thank you,” I said, “and I’ll trust the same for you.” And I hung up.

I don’t know if this was the way that he tried to end all of his phone calls, but it left an impression with me. He took a very mundane thing, a phone call to establish an EZ pass account, and turned it into a spark of joy. I hope that this regular mundane missive from me, The Bungee Cord, does the same for you each week. I hope that every week that you receive it, you hear in it the good word for the day, “Hope.” As you and I gather together on the Bungee Cord, I trust Jesus’ promise to be there as two or more gather in his name. And I believe, as I wrote in a song when Mary and Martha said to Jesus who came to Lazurus’ tomb, “Lord, when you draw near there is hope.”

As my EZpass helper said to me, I will take that hope, and I will trust that you will have a blessed day.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord. 10-21-24

Hello,

Normally I would tell you unequivocally that October is the best time to live in Western Pennsylvania. The temperature is mild. The hills look as though a fine quilter has laid her handiwork on them as they are adorned in a patchwork of orange, red, yellow, green and brown. The angle of the morning sun coming over the ridge creates a filter that magnifies the colors around. People are out and about enjoying the beauty. That is what October normally looks like in Western Pennsylvania.

But every four years, and this year much more than normal, there is an invasion the likes of locusts plaguing our state: political ads. Pennsylvania is a “swing state”, and so we are inundated with ads in hopes of securing our vote. When watching a football game on TV, each two-minute break is stuffed with nothing but ads telling me why I should or should not vote for a candidate. Often times there are several ads back-to-back for a candidate. Every day, I get at least four or five e-mails from my two newest best friends, Kamala and Donald. My mailbox is littered with shiny mailings warning me about the end of the world that is about to come if the sender is not elected. The beauty of October is sometimes hard to see amid the acid fog of incivility, fear peddling, raised voices, and anger.

Alas, only 15 days left!

This weekend, one of my dearest friends from my college days died of cancer at the age of 68. We met as fraternity brothers, Beta Sigma Psi a national Lutheran fraternity, when I started at the University of Illinois. He had grown up on a dairy farm in Northwest Illinois, and I grew up in a suburb of Chicago populated by country clubs (which I didn’t belong to) and business executives (my parents were public school teachers in that town). He was a year older than me and was majoring in Dairy Science, and I began my college career majoring in Finance on my way to becoming a corporate lawyer. An unlikely pair to meet and become lifelong friends.

I don’t know what he saw in me that led him to befriend me, but I know what I saw in him. The world that he carried on his shoulders was much lighter than mine. Contrary to the environment in which I grew up, upward mobility was unimportant to him. A stress on perfection and being the best which was normal where I was from, was countered by contentment in “good enough” and curiosity for the sake of curiosity in him. He would often have me come out to his farm and get my hands dirty and meet his cows, each of which had a name by which he called them. (When my wife and I were dating, we arrived at his farm only to find a young Heffer tied to a post with a sign saying, “Katie”…my wife’s name. ) For me, those years of college were life shaping and transforming. It was the first time that I was on my own, out from under the roof of my parents and town, and I was blessed to be swept up into a group of guys who cared for me deeply and opened my eyes to what I might become. My friend who died, Dale, was that kind of friend. I miss him.

One of the most significant things about Dale was the depth and the certainty of his faith. Life for him was pretty bumpy. Some bumps much bigger than others. But when the bumps came, he always got back on his feet, not by his own strength, but by the strength of Jesus who was holding him tight and lifting him up. About a month and a half ago, he hit a bump like none other: uncurable cancer. When I heard of it, I went to see him, and it was easy to see that the cancer had been hungry, eating him away. Strong and rugged before the cancer, frail and withered now. When he was told that he had cancer, he decided not to fight it and let it take its course, and here is the reason why: heaven was going to be far greater than this life. Death was not a thing to be feared, but the opening of a door to wonder and awe. I know, because he told me so, that even though he didn’t know how many days lie ahead for him, maybe 15, turned out to be 30 or so, he knew that he would soon find himself in a place where nothing, not even political ads and hostility, could spoil the beauty of all that would be around him.

That door opened on Saturday, and in the timelessness of heaven, he felt the strong arm of Jesus taking ahold of him again, lifting him out of the grip of death, and I know that he heard, “Dale, welcome home.”

I, too, look forward to hearing that welcome said to me and residing in that beauty…and you can look forward to it, too.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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