The Bungee Cord 1-27020

Hello,

     As I have written on several occasions, my wife has a hobby of which I have become a participant: raising chickens.  Not necessarily a willing participant, but not opposed to being part of the “fun”.  Over the course of the last several years, her hobby has grown.  We started out as greenhorns in the chicken raising world. Kate built a moveable chicken coop, we ordered a small flock of chickens over the internet, and we were on our way. Since then, Kate’s mastery of chicken raising has grown….feeders, water dispensers, feeding mixtures, variety of chicken breeds, and……..an electric fence.

      Up until the electric fence, the chickens had the roam of our property.  This led to some disasters and inconvenience.  The disaster took its place in the disappearance of several chickens by the jaws of a fox.  The inconvenience being that when the chickens were out of their coop, my dogs had to be inside…..much to their torment and dismay.

     So, we bought a movable electric fence that could be replanted as the coop was moved.  100 feet of it, giving the chickens quite a bit of ground to stroll around in.  But apparently not enough ground, because recently a couple of the chickens have so developed the urge to find new ground to dig in that they have developed the muster to take flight over the fence, even with their wings clipped!

     I was playing fetch with my dog, MacMahon, about a week or so ago on the field below our house, and when he had had enough I said to him, “Ok, let’s go inside.”  Being a little quicker of foot than I, he reached the house before me.  As I neared the house, I was struck with terror.  A chicken was wandering about, outside of its fence!  I was shocked that it was still alive.  Had MacMahon not seen it?  He must have been too focused on getting back inside and it escaped his glance.

     I quickly herded him inside, shut the door, and took off to catch the over-venturous chicken. Believe it or not, chickens can be quite fleet of foot, but fortunately as I neared this chicken it did what scared chickens also do….they kind of spread their wings and cower.  I grabbed, and as I grabbed it I thought to myself with aggravation, “You dumb chicken!”, and I carried it back to the fence over which it had dangerously vaulted, and dropped it in…..not from a potentially harmful height, but because I could not bend over the electric fence far enough to reach the ground….without getting shocked!  “Dumb Chicken!”

     All this has made me thankful for the God that has claimed me as his own, because I, like that chicken have a way of venturing over the fence in which God has set up to keep me safe.  Drawn to what looks like greener grass.  Wanting to spread my wings.  Rebellious to things that fence me in.  And so I jump…jump the fence.  More often than my wife’s chickens, and every time that I jump that fence, I do so foolishly.  Placing myself in dire danger.  Creating havoc in my life and in the lives of those who love me.

     And every time that I take flight over the fence, I soon find God coming to gather me in.  Sometimes I scurry….but God is quicker of speed.  Sometimes I cower.  But either way, when God gathers me up, I don’t hear the words that ran through my mind when I gathered that chicken, “Dumb chicken!”  Instead, I hear, “Beloved, let’s go home.”  And as I feel myself being gently gathered up in God’s arms, I hear, as Jesus says, “more joy in heaven” over the wanderer who has been found.

     So, if you find yourself dangerously wandering in life with bird dogs and foxes hoping to devour you…..fear not….for God is also out to find you.  To find you, gently gather you up, and say to you, “Beloved, let’s go home.”

Have a great week,

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord   1-20-20

Hello,

     The summer after my junior year of high school, I and three of my friends became entrepreneurs and started up a lawn mowing company. WumpKripBergerBuns Precision Lawn Care. We found an old rickety trailer to tote around our family’s lawn boy mowers, had our parents put a hitch on each of our family cars, and we spent the summer roving around our suburban Chicago towns of Hinsdale, Oak Brook, and Clarendon Hills mowing about 50 yards per week. To say that we were highly disciplined workers would be a bit of a stretch.  One of my friends, Bill, was always late, and so if we started by 10:00 in the morning when he was driving we were lucky.  Two of us played baseball, so it was a bit tricky getting all of our lawns mowed in the spring, and often we were mowing until 10:00 at night, in the pitch black, not able to see rocks and stakes that banged up our mower blades  But all in all, it was a great way to spend the summer with my friends, and earn enough spending money to carry me through my senior year.

     That was the middle ‘70’s, and if any of you remember those days, those days were the days of short cut offs, long hair, getting a great tan from never wearing a shirt…….and this is the most important thing, wearing tennis shoes with no socks.  And that is what all four of us did all summer long.  Mowed lawns wearing tennis shoes with no socks.  On hot steamy days with our feet sweating as much as our brows, on damp early morning dew covered lawns, on days when it was raining but the grass was tall…..50 lawns a week…..from spring to fall, each of us wore the same tennis shoes with no socks.  My pair of shoes was a pair of suede converse all-stars that I had worn during the basketball season.  Not canvas, but suede.  They were cool on the court, but I am not sure that cool is the right word as lawn moving shoes, because they were hot.  They amplified the sweat.  They soaked up the dew, and they never did quite completely dry out.  And so…they stunk!  They stunk so badly that my mom demanded that I take them off before I came into the house, and leave them out on the back porch.  They stunk so badly that after a day’s work, the car that we had all been riding in was un-ridable for a couple of hours.  They stunk so badly that I could leave them safely outside overnight, for no critter would ever think about gnawing on them.

     Bout mid-summer, my  mom decreed that I needed to get something to deal with their stink, because it was wafting its way into our house from the back porch.  So, I went to the grocery store and got some Dr. Scholl’s shoe spray.  I liberally sprayed the shoes, and set them out in the sun to dry, but the relief of the smell was only temporary.  The spray didn’t take the smell away, it just tried to overwhelm the stink with a fresher scent.  The stink always won.

     Have you taken a whiff of your life lately?  Although it may not smell as rank as those suede Converse All Stars that I wore when mowing lawns, but I bet it doesn’t smell like roses. Anger at someone that keeps on festering.  Greed that is deeply ground into your heart.  The mess that you have made of your life.  The stench of betrayal that clings so deeply.  The lack of care for those who are suffering.  Take a whiff and see if you don’t smell a bit like fermenting cut grass.  Everyone does.

     And people, since grass has been cut, have tried to deal with the stench of their lives the same way that I tried to deal with the stench of my shoes.  We try and spray them with sweet smelling spray, hoping that the sweet smell will overwhelm the rancid smell, and the spray that we use is a can of Dr. Scholl’s of being good and being right.  It’s not a bad product, this Dr. Scholl’s can of being good and being right.  The help we give to our neighbor….the donations to the food bank….the visit to the hospital of a friend who is sick…the willingness to give the shirt off of our backs.   All good and good smelling.

But when patience gets thin….when money gets short….when fear grabs ahold of your heart…when you’re lost and confused…when your defenses weaken and your hopes diminish….the stench comes back.  We find out that that Dr. Scholl’s spray of being good and being right just covers up the rancid smell.  The smelly stuff is so deeply engrained, so completely absorbed, and so baked into our lives that the sweet smelling spray doesn’t take away the smell.  It just covers it up….for a while.  The stink always wins.

     Now, some 50 years later, I understand that Dr. Scholl’s has a shoe spray and inserts that do more than just try and sweetly cover the stink of smelly shoes up.  Their product is dubbed, “Odor Eaters”.  Supposedly, this new product doesn’t just cover up the stink.  It eats it up.  When the rotting grass and infused sweat start to smell, supposedly this new product….these odor eaters….actually takes the stink out of the air by eating it up. Supposedly these odor eaters have an appetite for stench that is never satisfied, and that which was smelly no longer is.  I don’t know if it would have worked for my Converse All Stars.

     But I do know this, that when it comes to the stench in our lives, God goes one step further than Dr. Scholl’s.  God doesn’t just give us a can of Being Good and Being Right spray. God doesn’t even give us a can or inserts that eat up the smell that the molding grass of our lives is making. God gives us one, the Lamb of God, who takes away…who takes away….the sin of the world.  God doesn’t just deal with the smell….God deals with the cause of the smell…the stuff that is rotten, the stuff that is rancid, the stuff that … well…the stuff that stinks….and he takes it away.  

    When God sent Jesus into this world, Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  He takes it away.  Removes it from our lives.  Gathers it upon himself.  On the cross takes it into the incinerator of death.  And turns it into ashes.  Ashes that stink no more.  Ashes that we wear on Ash Wednesday that tell us the powerlessness of our sins.  Ashes made in the sign of a cross that tell us the power of Jesus’ love.  Ashes marked on our foreheads where a cross was made when you and I were Baptized when you were washed in the waters of new life, fresh and clean life.

     Here’s the good news for you and me…and the good news for the world.  When it comes to people with smelly lives….God doesn’t just cover up the smell….God doesn’t just eat up the smell….God gets rid of the stuff that makes the smell.  “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord 1-13-20

Hello,

     I was driving into work this morning, listening to the Pittsburgh sports talk radio show that is always playing in my car.  Being an aged player of sports….my current playing is pickle ball three or four times a week….I enjoy listening to the banter that goes on in the world of sports.

    Today, the banter was about the Football Hall of Fame inductions, and the radio folks were debating the merit of the inductees. Where they really of Hall of Fame level? How about ….?  And they listed folks who I knew and others I had never heard of.

     Sometimes, it seems to me, the church is seen as a Hall of Fame.  People look in its doors and expect to see folks who are on the top rung of the ladder of goodness and holiness.  They enter its doors hoping to rub elbows with and to be counted amongst those who have their lives together.  They believe that those with whom they are sitting and singing are the kind of people worth being around and to be counted in their number.  

     Evidence of this Hall of Fame image of the church is what people say about the church when they see the arguments that go on among church folks, and they see the lack of goodness and holiness in the lives of church-goers when they are not in church.  “Hypocrites, the church is full of hypocrites,” they say.  Like the sports radio hosts, people spend a lot of time critiquing those who go to church debating the worthiness of their place in the church.  And even more evident of the church being seen as a Hall of Fame is when someone who is part of a church does something truly awful.    When that happens people often judge the church as totally despicable, no longer worthy of attendance, participation, or affiliation.

     Well, fact of the matter is that Jesus never meant the church to be a Hall of Fame.  Just think about the folks that Jesus rubbed elbows with.  They weren’t Hall of Famers…tax collectors, prostitutes, greedy, weak, confused, burdens on society, fishers, and failures.  The truth is that Jesus ran into the most trouble with those who thought that the church should be a Hall of Fame: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the scribes.  These groups of people were shocked and astonished that Jesus spent time and ate with sinners.  And when a woman of ill repute came and anointed his feet, they said of him, “If he knew who she was, he wouldn’t let her do that.”  He knew who she was!

     I don’t know how the idea that the church is meant to be a Hall of Fame got started, but it certainly was not started by Jesus.  The church that Jesus started was much more of a hospital for the hurting, a place where broken people found healing, and when healed sent out into the world to be people of healing.  It isn’t always easy to be part of a church.  Ask any hospital worker.  Hospital work and life is often trying and hard.  People tend not to have a great deal of patience when they are really hurting.  People can be a bit self-focused when they are in pain.  People can be a bit hard headed when they are frightened.  As a pastor, I often have to remind myself that when the church is what Jesus meant it to be it is a bunch of sinners in need of forgiveness, not a bunch of angels perfectly playing their harps.

     So, let me invite you to receive Jesus’ invitation to gather with him this Sunday in church.  It is an invitation not to come and gawk at perfect Hall of Fame people, because you won’t find any of that sort there.  It is an invitation to come as you are…tired, broken, bruised, confused…just like the rest of the people who are there, and in the presence of the One who is famous for his dying love experience the healing, wholeness, and hope that only he, Jesus, can give.

     If the church was a Hall of Fame, you would never find me there. But because it is a House of Hope,  I am there every Sunday.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord 1-6-20

Hello,

     Even though most Christmas pageants include the arrival of the Wisemen on the night of Jesus’ birth, the Biblical story does not have them arriving until sometime later.  How much later?  We don’t know, but to mark the span of time to their visit, Christians for centuries have celebrated the Wisemen’s arrival twelve days after Christmas, January 6^th.  There’s a name for this day, which is the day on which I am writing this Bungee Cord, and it is called “Epiphany”.  “Epiphany” means “making known”,  and it is on this day that Jesus is made known as the one whose saving grace extends to all people, because the wisemen were foreigners who were drawn to Jesus’ side.

     Over the course of the centuries, much speculation has been placed upon the Wisemen.  They have been given names.  They have been designated to be different races.  Their travel has been assigned to camels.

     In fact, though, from the Biblical witness we don’t know any of these things.  Truth is, we don’t know much at all about them.  We don’t know exactly where they came from.  We don’t know how many there were.  We don’t know how they travelled.  We don’t know exactly what they did for a living.  We don’t know if they had good reputations or if their past was a bit checkered.

     Other than the three types of gifts that they brought Jesus, the only thing that we really know about the Wisemen is that they were welcome at Jesus’ side.

     To me, that is the most important thing to know about them, because if the Bible does not place any descriptive details upon those first visitor’s to Jesus, then I can be confident that there are no descriptive details placed upon me when I come to Jesus side.  Nothing needed to be there.  Nothing possessed that would keep me away.  All we know about the Wisemen was that they …whoever, or whatever they were….were welcome at Jesus side, and so am I.

     Somehow that message has gotten lost, and people hear of limiting conditions.  If you struggle with believing in Jesus…if you have done something that the world has deemed absolutely shameful…if you are too busy to make time for Jesus in your daily lives…if you haven’t been to church for years, or decades…if you have a lot of money and you spend it all on yourself…if you have a temper that is hard to control…if you tend to gossip…if you are so confused in life about who you are………..on and on the list could go.

     On occasion there has been someone walk into a church that I have been a pastor, and when they walk in, you can feel the astonishment and you can hear the whispering (neither one of which apparently happened when the Wisemen came into Jesus’ presence), “What is he/she doing here?”  And when that person has taken a seat, you can see people making sure that they don’t sit to closely.

     That is not what happened on the first Epiphany.  Those Wisemen….no matter who or whatever they were…..were welcomed at Jesus side.  That is why in every church that I have been in I have worked hard to overcome the limits and conditions that people may place upon those who wish to draw near to Jesus.  After all, Jesus himself, didn’t just wait for outcasts (lepers, prostitutes, taxcollectors) to come to him…..he went to them!

    I know that there are lots of churches who work hard to be Epiphany people, people who place no limits or conditions to be welcome at Jesus’ side.  So, let me offer this Epiphany invitation…..no matter who you are…..no matter what you are….Jesus came to be with  you, and you are welcome at his side!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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