Bungee cord 12-28-15

Hello,

“Silent night.  Holy night.   All is calm.  All is bright.  Round yon virgin, mother and child.  Holy infant so tender and mild.  Sleep in heavenly peace.  Sleep in heavenly peace.”

When it comes to the birthing of babies, the process that happens today is really quite a recent phenomenon.  All the prenatal care, the birthing classes, the rushing to the hospital, spinal taps and pain medication, sterile rooms and incubators….only recently born babies, at least in the scope of the centuries of births, have had this level of care and precision.  I have had parishioners for whom it was vastly different, who were born in their homes under the care of the town doctor calling for hot water and towels; not because they opted for a more “natural” birth, but because that was the way every baby came into the world.  What we have come to expect with baby births is really quite a recent expectation.

I don’t think that Mary and Joseph expected what we expect.  I highly doubt that they had many prenatal visits to a doctor gauging the process of the pregnancy.  I highly doubt that they were disappointed to have given birth in a stable.  At least it was shelter.  I rather suspect that when the contractions began, anxieties rose to a fever pitched level wondering if mother or child would survive what was about to take place.  If Jesus was Mary’s firstborn, as the Bible says he was, the birth pangs were probably the most severe she would ever feel as a birthing mother.  And I can only imagine the delight (?) in Mary’s heart when a bunch of shepherds showed up merely hours after her delivery…I know that I have visited many a new mother who greet me with thanks, but I can tell are struggling to put a smile on their faces after the ordeal that they have just been through.

Maybe, because birthing things are so different for us, the sentimentality and ease that we apply to the birth story of Jesus is a recent phenomenon, too.  Maybe we are among the first to miss the degree of worry that Mary and Joseph felt.  Maybe we are among the first to miss the degree of pain and fear that was part of that event.  Maybe we are among the first to miss the inconvenience of that night.  But most importantly,  maybe we are among the first to miss the degree of thankfulness and  amazement that all went well that night.

I find that something to consider when worry, pain, fear, and inconvenience take hold of me – maybe I will find myself more appropriately thankful and amazed by God’s fulfillment of his promise to be born into my life.

Have a great week!

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 12-21-15

Hello,

Merry Christmas.

I went on Google searching for the origins of “Merry Christmas”.  One site says it goes back to the pen of an English admiral and then expanded by Charles Dickens in his story, “A Christmas Carol”.  Although no one seems to  know for sure how it happened from there, but the phrase took off and became a pretty universal greeting between those celebrating the Christmas holiday.

Now, I realize that I am dwarfed by Charles Dickens as a literary trend setter, but today I would like to humbly propose changing the word that we connect to “Christmas” when we pass on our Christmas greetings.

Why the change?  Well….to me, “merry”  just falls a bit short of  the impact that I hope the story of Christmas makes in people’s lives.  “Merry” just seems , to me, to be too shallow and saccharine a word to connect with the events of the Christmas story.  “Merry”, to me, invokes “glee” and “happy”….neither of which a necessarily bad, but  it seems that God’s intent in the incarnation was meant to take hold of our lives with something far more profound.  Besides that, to wish someone “merriment” when they are in the darkest shadows of life does seem to be a bit hollow and empty.

So if not “merry”, what?

How about “wonder-full”….or how we usually spell it, “wonderful”?  When I consider the universal majesty of God, and the microscopic place that I hold in the universe, I, like the writer of the 8^th Psalm, am struck with nothing less than awesome wonder that God would deign to enflesh himself in the life that I live.  When I consider the fickleness of the faith that I hold and the defaming that my life brings to the name of God, I am struck with awesome wonder that God would go to such an extent to embrace me in his love.  When I consider that instead of hanging me over the fires of hell to deal with the toxicity of my life, God came to hang on the cross and make his blood the alkaline for the acid that runs through my life I am struck with nothing less than awesome wonder.  To me, the message of Christmas is far more than merry-making.  It is absolutely wonder-full.

     And so, no matter how you find yourself in life…cruising along, stumbling through it, battling it every day…let me offer my Christmas greeting to you.  May the one who is the light that no darkness can overcome so shine in your life that your eyes see with unobstructed vision the grace, the mercy, and the love of God for you in this Christmas season such that you are struck with nothing less than awesome wonder.

Have a Wonder-full Christmas.

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord  12-14-15

Hello,

“Everyone should get something for Christmas,” said a young boy who had come forward for yesterday’s children’s message.    His comment came in light of our congregation’s commitment to generously share with others the blessings with which God has blessed us. 

During the months of November and December we have been gathering items for school bags that will be distributed by Lutheran World Relief all over the world.   Rulers, notebooks, pens, pencils, erasers, and a bunch of other things have been brought in and gathered beneath the blackboard that is standing in the front of the church.  We’ve set a goal of filling 231 bags (the age of our congregation), and it looks like we will not only reach that goal, but crush it.  The Office Max, Staples, Walmart, and Dollar Stores in our area don’t seem to be able to keep their shelves filled to match the generosity of our congregation.

A nine foot Christmas tree once decked out with white angels with the names of families whose Christmas would be present-less, has been transformed into a nine foot Christmas tree adorned with hats and mittens to be sent to the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.  As the angels came down and morphed by the folks of the congregation into mounds of brightly wrapped presents gathered under the tree, the hats and mittens lit upon the branches.

Money and gifts came in and were taken to the residents in a state mental institution that is not too far from us as we participated in its “Reindeer Project.”  Cards for our shut-ins were circulated around the congregation during Communion, which were signed by everyone and will be personally delivered to the shut-ins on Sunday along with a stocking stuffed with care items.

The amazing God’s grace driven generosity  has been enfolding before our eyes in these weeks before Christmas.  First Lutheran is not a church whose pews are filled with the wealthy of our area, instead it is a church that mirrors the moderate and fixed incomed sectors of this town.  And as the generosity of these folk’s has flowed in, not once have I heard anyone say that people are feeling like they have been over asked.

“Everyone should get something for Christmas,” said that generous child.

“Everyone does,” I said back to him, “everyone gets Jesus.”

And as the mounding generosity grows in front of us in our sanctuary, I find myself overwhelmed by what the gift of Jesus does in people’s hearts.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord  12-6-15

Hello,

Last Monday I loaded my lawnmower up into my pickup for its winter tune up.  It is getting older, and as I have discovered with my aging body, without tune ups things just don’t work as well as they did when younger….even with tune ups they don’t, but at least they work.

So after lunch, my lawnmower and I set off for Doug’s.  Doug is one of the employees at the yard tool store.   There are other employees there, but Doug sold us our chain saw, and so we got to know him.  Believe me, Doug knows his chain saws, and with a little chew in his mouth he will tell you everything you don’t need to know about them along with the serial numbers of the various parts that make them up.  I trust Doug, not just with my chain saw, but with my lawnmower, too.

Doug’s place is about a town and a half away from my home, a 15 minute drive up and down the hills.  As I neared it, I noticed that it was missing the normal assorted  variety, age and repair of pickups that normally take their place in the parking lot.  Mmmm, I wondered.  Could it be that I caught Doug at a break in the flurry of business that normally buzzes at his store?

Well, I was wrong.  I had not caught him between business rushes.  Instead, as I neared the glass door that seemed far darker than usual, I noticed a single sheet of white paper taped to the door, and on it with uncommon technological fare was printed from a computer, “Store closed November 30^th.  Hunting season.”

A reminder of where I live; out in the country.

I’ve always known that hunting is big here….big enough to close schools…but I didn’t know that it was big enough to close businesses.  True enough, deer hunting season started last Monday, and had I not discovered it by my trip to Doug’s, I would have soon realized it by the constant sound of guns firing in the distance (and sometimes not so distant).

I remember when I was a kid growing up in suburban Chicago, there was a distant sound that likewise gave clue to businesses being closed: the sound of church bells.  In my town, lots of people followed those church bells to places of worship, and businesses followed suit by closing on Sunday morning, partly because lots of people were in church, but also partly because Sunday, like hunting season around here, was a holy-day (holiday).

Now, Sunday is the biggest business day of the week for lots of stores, and youth activities have inundated both days of the weekend.  Some complain and remember those “good old days” when churches didn’t have so much competition, and people flocked to church.

I, however, don’t find myself complaining about the “competition”, mostly because I don’t see it as “competition”.   I would not see an invite to spend an hour with the President of the United States to be in competition with a trip to the mall or even taking part in a ping pong tournament.  So, neither do I see an invite from God to spend an hour with him to be in competition with any other inviting voice.

So, one might ask, why isn’t everyone in church on Sunday morning?  Well, I have to say that I don’t know….but I have a theory….and this is it: people don’t hear God’s invitation.  I think that lots of people hear a moral judgment saying that you should go to church.  I think that lots of people hear an institution that is trying to survive say they need more people to fill the pews to meet a budget.  I think that lots of people hear a self-righteous distortion saying that if you have a lot of doubts or a confused life church isn’t for you.

What I don’t think a lot of people hear is an invitation from God Almighty, the one who has loved the invitee with the life of Jesus, his Son, saying, “Come to church and lets spend some time together getting to know each other and sharing life.”

Maybe I am wrong, but I know for myself, I find that to be an irresistible invitation, an invitation for which I find myself, like Doug in hunting season, turning off all the lights, locking my doors, and ready to post a sign for anyone who would wander to my home, “Closed, Sunday.  At church.”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 11-30-15

Hello,

Today, I write the Bungee Cord having just spent the last week with my three adult sons in Denver.  Two of them live there.  The other flew in from New York City.  It is a different Turkey Table now a days in many ways, but traces of Thanksgiving tables when we didn’t have to travel to be together still appear.  Sitting around the table with them and spending the week with them is a delight that this parent treasures and takes in with thanks.

But I’m back now; back in the familiar settings of my own home, surrounded by the relative silence of the empty nest.  There’s a difference, though, as I sit upon the couch today from my sitting here a week ago, and the difference is a soul settled sense of peace.  One might conjecture that this peace has taken hold of my heart because of the contrast of the frenetic energy that stirs when I’m back with my kids.  There is an increased stirring that matches the highest level of a kitchen mixer when all three of them lower themselves into the bowl of our life.  But I don’t think that is where the peace that I feel today comes from.

I believe that the peace that has taken hold of my soul has come from having been snatched away for a week by the things that matter deepest in my life.  Far too easily do the semi-important, mildly important, and truthfully really unimportant things have a way of tethering themselves to me, tangling me up in them like yards and yards of kite string.  To have my kids tease me about my aged foolishness, to hear them banter with one another, to see them taking on lives of their own, to be invited to share in their dreams and aspirations….well, it was like scissors slicing me free from life-sapping entanglements.  That is not to say that their lives are perfect and unfettered with difficulties, but even sharing their struggles has a way of freeing me from the lesser important things in life to be engaged in the what is far more important.

I don’t think that I am alone in being snagged by life’s tangling strings.  As a matter of fact, I know that I am not.  Getting tangled up in the omnipresent trip-cords of life is impossible not to do.  Everyone needs to have table time, like I have just had,  to snip them free from all those things that entangle us to death so we might be able to take a deep breath of all those things that are full of life and give us life.

I hope that is what Sunday morning around the Thanksgiving table of the Lord is all about.  (Interestingly enough, one of the words that we use for this weekly meal is “The Eucharist”, whose Greek root word is “Thanksgiving”.)  I hope that when folks gather around this table where the bread of life and the cup of salvation are shared people experience the grace of the Lord snatching them away from all the things that are suffocatingly entangling them and freeing them to be engaged in life, life abundant in hope, joy and peace.

I know that that what happens to me.  Although it may seem to be only piece of bread and a sip of wine, my ears are captured by the promise that it is more, God’s promise that his presence is tangibly entangled therein. And in a profound way that words and reason cannot capture, I can feel the snipping of all that the world had tethered me in entanglement, and my lungs freed to take in a soul cleansing breath that enlivens when I dine at the Lord’s table.

The peace that I wallow in today from my week with my kids will soon fall prey to the world’s entanglements, and so I look forward to the table time that we will have again.  Likewise, the peace that soothes me from dining at the Lord’s table is always soon snagged by the trip-cords of life, and so I look forward to the Lord’s table time that I will also have again.

I hope that your Thanksgiving table time brought the refreshment that mine did, and know this: there is a standing invitation at the Lord’s Thanksgiving (Eucharist) table every Sunday in which the Lord seeks to exponentially greater refresh your life with his divine mercy and grace.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord 11-24-15

Hello,

The Greensburg Holliday Parade rolled past our church on Saturday.  As always, it was led by the local color guard slicing the air with the red, white and blue hoisted high.  Behind them came the Greensburg Volunteer Fire Department stepping out in their cream colored parade uniforms.  Intermingled there after were several bands, old cars, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, fire engines, local business floats, alpacas, and politicians.  A mandatory entrance fee for parade participants must have been several bags of candy which were to be thrown to the children who lined the route as if they were hunting dogs at point.  At the end of the 2 ½ hour parade , Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus rode into town in a hay wagon pulled by draft horses.

It was a beautiful day for the parade: sunny and in the 50’s.  The weather on the last several years was not as welcoming, thus the reason for the thin crowd for those parades..  This year’s crowd , however, filled the sidewalks and edged into the streets.

As the crowd began to gather, I became worried. 

As a sign of the Grace of God, we have, the past few years, given out hot dogs and hot chocolate during parade time: free.  No cost to any one, after all, that is what  the Grace of God is all about: no cost to anyone  (except Jesus, that is).  My worries, you see, came about as I saw the crowd balloon and our supply of hot dogs remain stable.  Three hundred and fifty hot dogs was what we bought, and that was all that we had.  The flyers that we passed out to the parade goers were drawing in a steady stream of hot dog hunters. 

I had stationed myself in front of the church, clerically clad for recognition, greeting people as they walked by and welcoming them to their free hot dogs.  As the parade went on, I was glad to see that people were exiting the church with sour kraut laden hot dogs.  As the parade neared its second hour, I, who had not eaten but a piece of toast for breakfast felt the urge for a hot dog……too late.  They had just run out.  I suppose we could have given more away, but 350 was just about the right number.

Even though I didn’t get my hot dog, I did get something.  I found out that many people would not take our hot dogs for free.  They “demanded” we take their money.  So, a plate was put out with no instructions, and when the parade was over the count was $120.00…..which I will suggest will go to our effort to send 231 (that’s how old our church is) school bags to needy students around the world.

As I consider the $120.00 that was given for our free hot dogs, it seems to me that it might be thought of in a couple of ways.  One way to look at that $120.00 is to say that bears out the fact that grace is rather hard to receive.  Even as we stand before God, there’s a tendency for us to think we have to do something to receive God’s grace, and that get’s us in trouble because then we begin to wonder if we have done enough for the amazing grace that we receive.  But on the other hand, maybe that $120.00 is a sign of thanks, a response to grace.  That is what my offering is every Sunday morning, an offering of thanks that I give with no strings attached on how it is to be used.  So, if those hot dog recipients were giving their money in thanks, and not in payment …… well then, that would have been a wonderful thing.

I do know that many of those who got their free hot dogs were very thankful, because as they passed me with their hot dogs in their hands many said, “This was awful  nice of you.”

“Glad we could do it,” I would say back.

And to those who said nothing to me as they carried their hotdogs parade-side, I said grace-fully, “Have a great day!”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord  11-16-15

Hello,

There are events in the world so vile and incomprehensible that they cast a pall over every nation and land.  Such was the case with the events of Friday night in Paris.

My Friday night plan was to sit down, turn off my brain, turn on my TV, and watch some football.  That did not happen.  Instead of watching what is meant to be a diversion from the rigors of life, sports, I found myself watching life at its worst.  The feelings that rolled through my soul were like bowling balls knocking down pin after pin of hope and peace and joy.

When things like this happen, they who know about international politics are called upon to bring some analysis of such horrific chaos.  So, I will leave such discussion to them.  Even though there are countless theologians far wiser and deeper in thought than I, the darkness of these things has cast a shadow over my pen, a shadow that I humbly hope God will use the words of this minor league theologian to dissipate at least a bit.

Those who perpetrated the horror of last Friday night did so for a flurry of reasons, but it seems to me that a primary motivation is to create a tsunami of fear.  They intend to cause such a tidal wave of fear that people will run away from life, rather than live in the blessing of each day of life.  They hope that fear will so chill people’s hearts that earthquakes of hatred will rumble under every nation.  They hope that fear will so loom over people that a crest of suspicion will crash down upon neighborhoods and towns.  They hope that fear will rise to the level that compassion for those who suffer will be drowned.  They act in terrorizing ways, it seems to me, with the hopes that we will be inundated with fear.

This, of course, is nothing new.  The same was the case in the days when Jesus walked this earth.  The act of crucifixion was not just a means that the Romans used to carry out their brand of punishment; it was far more a weapon used by the Romans to keep the people bathed in fear.  Crucifixions, as you might recall, were not done behind high walls and in prison courtyards.  They were done out in the open.  In the middle of the day.  The Romans wanted to make sure that everyone knew they were going on, and that everyone could see what was going on.  They were meant to be a government-sanctioned act of terror.

The cross, which oddly for some has become merely a pretty piece of jewelry for many, is not so for me.  It is not so because I know the story of God’s encounter with the cross, the story of the one who was God incarnate that hung on that Golgotha cross and died….and the continuation of that story that took place three days later when that same one, Jesus, walked out of that Easter tomb.  When Jesus walked out of that tomb, everything that that Good Friday cross intended to bring down upon the world…..fear, guilt, terror, hatred, and even death….was crushed under his feet.  For me, the cross is the ultimate reminder, not of the terrifying powers of the world, but of the unbeatable power of God.

I, when I was baptized, was marked “with the cross of Christ forever”, and as a Christian I gather with all those who are so marked under the cross every Sunday.  And when I mark myself with the sign of the cross, I hear the words of Romans 8 ringing with unquestionable clarity, “There is nothing in ………. life or in death that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So, as one who lives under the cross, I need not, and I will not live in fear.  I will live with appropriate care, but I will not succumb to fear.  I will not hole myself away from life.  I will not regard every person who does not look like me with suspicion.  I will not brush large groups of people with hatred.  And I will not stop joining my brothers and sisters every week around the table of the Lord.

The cross is the supreme evidence to me that the grace and love of God is far more powerful than the evil that some are determined to ignite.  So, marked with the cross of Christ and living under it, I hope to show that power to the world so that the world’s gaze might be captured by it rather than by those who act with mistaken bravado.

“Fear not,” says the Lord, “I am with you always!”

Have a great week,

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger