The Bungee Cord

Hello,

My dog, McMahon, is an aging Gordon Setter. We have had him about nine years, and most often he has brought delight to our lives. Always wagging his tail and glad to see us when we get home. “Protecting” us from strangers who drive up our drive as we live out in the country. Snuggling with us on the couch. Other than his incessant wanting inside and then out, he’s been a great dog.

We installed an underground fence soon after we got him, and so he is well trained to stay around our house. So well trained, we usually do not even put his shock collar on anymore. So, it was a couple of weeks ago as my wife and I were working around the house and realized that we hadn’t seen him in a while. After a number of calls and whistles, he still did not appear. We feared that he may have spotted a deer or rabbit and took off after it, his shock collar not on. Kate went north, and I went south looking for him. Up and down hills, around pastures and woods, I trudged calling his name. Every once in a while, I would hear a dog barking in the distance, and I followed the barking thinking that McMahon had disturbed another dog. I must have walked a couple of miles looking for him, and as I walked, I feared that I might not ever find him. Setters are known to find a scent, follow it, and then get lost. My hunt had exhausted me. As I was circling back to my house, I started contemplating life without him, and it made me very sad. He’s been my buddy.

When I got back home and walked in the door, there he was, tail wagging delighted to see me. Of course, I was glad to see him, but I was too weary to get very excited. Kate had found him. Turns out that Kate had opened the fence for the chickens so they could roam around. Unlike my previous Gordon Setter, Duncan, McMahon does not harm the chickens. He stalks them, but that is where it ends.

As I said, Kate went north, which passed our chicken coop, which is off the ground and about the size of a doghouse, and just out of a whim, she opened up the doors to the coop, and guess who was there. McMahon. He had scooted his way up the ramp into the coop, but he couldn’t figure out how to scoot his way out. Apparently, he was in search of “chicken treats” which he likes to lick up and snack on, and he had found a treasure trove in the coop.

I tell you of this adventure because yesterday was Good Shepherd Sunday, the Sunday of the year when all of the Bible readings set our ears onto Jesus’ shepherding care (Psalm 23, John 10). And one of the stories in the Bible comes from Matthew 18 where Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven is like a shepherd who has lost one sheep, and so he goes on a mission to find it, a mission that he will not end until the sheep is found. And when the sheep is found, the shepherd carries the sheep back to the flock in his arms, thrilled that he has found his beloved sheep. So thrilled that he throws a party!

I got a new understanding of the extent of the thrill that Jesus was speaking of when the shepherd found his wandering sheep after my search for McMahon. I know that I was excited to have McMahon back, but my excitement did not match my weariness. No party for McMahon! When I consider how often and how far I have wandered off from the Good Shepherd’s care and the exhaustion and frustration that Jesus must feel each time I wander, it is amazing to me that I am of that much value that Jesus throws a party in the Kingdom of Heaven when he has found me and gathered me back in his arms. No party for McMahon….but a party that rattles the Kingdom of Heaven for me! Amazing!

Know that that same party is thrown for you, too. You mean that much to the Good Shepherd, Jesus!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

 The Bungee Cord

Hello,

Over the course of my nearly 69 years, there are two times that I have felt most at peace. Certainly, there have been many, many times when peace has taken hold of my soul and many of those times have been when I have received Holy Communion around the table of the Lord. But there are two specific times when the peace that I felt was so profound that I remember them today.

Many years ago, when my wife and I were young and having kids, which we had three boys, I was always anxious during my wife’s pregnancy. Part of my anxiety came from the fact that I attract anxiety like a magnet, but the other part of my anxiety came from the fact that as a pastor, I was all too aware of all the things that could go wrong leading up to a birth. That is what ministry does to you. It often puts you in people’s lives when things are falling apart. In those younger years of ministry, I had become all too well acquainted with tears of parents who were confronted with the reality of this broken world. And so, for me, each of our three pregnancies were laced with anxiety. As it turned out, all three of my boys were healthy and continue to be so.

But when my third son was born, I had this hovering fear that having dodged the bullet two times, it just might not be so on the third. So, when the time came for my son to make his way into the world, my wife and I went to the hospital and soon found ourselves in a delivery room. In my recollection, the labor was not as long this time (ask my wife, and she can tell you for sure!), but for some reason my anxiety was higher. I was more fearful of what the birth might bring, and my imagination was taking me into deeper and darker possibilities. Then I heard the nurse say, “The baby is coming!”, and in that moment of complete helplessness, I found the thoughts of my mind turning around, as it occurred to me that God who loves me with all of his being would give me the courage and strength to handle whatever came my way…even the worst things that had been polluting my mind. And in that moment when everything was completely out of my hands, I felt an abiding peace in the hands of God that was overwhelming.

The second time was not so long ago. As you may remember, I had kidney cancer a little over four years ago, which brought a jolt of fear. To make a long story short, in preparation for having my cancer stricken kidney taken out, they did a whole lot of tests, and after one of the tests, a cat scan, I got a call from my doctor who said to me that the scan was showing that I had a “compromised blood vessel in my brain”, and I should immediately go to the hospital to get a special MRI to address the problem. “Pack some clothes,” the nurse said, “as they will probably want to keep you there.” So, my wife and I hopped in the car, and I was scared to death, as the news made me fear that my death might be near. If the cancer had not been enough to knock me off my feet, this was like a right-hand blow from Mohamed Ali. We got to the hospital, and they quickly got me into the MRI room and put me on the table and started to slide me into the machine, when the 23rd Psalm popped into my mind….The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures……”. And in that moment of complete helplessness sliding into the “

valley of the shadow of death”, I suddenly felt a peace, that as scripture says, “surpasses all human understanding”. The fear was shattered, and I “feared no evil.” Although that machine was holding me so tightly that I could not move, I felt the grip of God on me that made that machine’s grip, and even death’s grip, feel like nothing more than a pinch. Fortunately, the bulging vessel was deemed as probably having been there my whole life, and since it hadn’t popped yet, the likelihood was that it wasn’t going to pop.

Those two events were etched into my memory and my soul with their soothing peace. Interestingly enough, both of them were at times when things were completely out of my control. I don’t know about you, but I know that I find myself trying to keep things under control, and when things seem to be slipping out of control, I tend to up my efforts. A friend of mine some years ago, who was experiencing his life falling apart out of control, said a very wise thing to me, “Control is really just an illusion.”

Granted, it is a foolish thing to live life without making plans, setting goals, and being wise, but there are times when all of those things no longer hold things together and we find ourselves with no control, and when those times have crashed upon me, I have heard the echo of Psalm 46 ringing in my ears saturating me with peace, “Be still and know that I am God,” and I feel peace.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

 

The Bungee Cord

Hello,

Every year, the Gospel reading in liturgically aligned churches is from the Gospel of John, commonly called the story of “Doubting Thomas”. In the story, Thomas, who wasn’t with the disciples on Easter evening when they told him that they had seen the resurrected Jesus, said this to their story, ““Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25). Thus the name that history has given Thomas, “Doubting Thomas”.

However, if one reads the 20th Chapter of John carefully, it is clear that Thomas was not alone in his doubts. As the Bible tells us, all of the disciples….every one of them….were hiding in fear behind locked doors when suddenly there was another person with them, and they were filled with fear, not knowing who it was. It was only after that person presented his nail scarred hands and feet to them that they believed that this person was, incredulously as it might have seemed, Jesus. So, when Thomas asks to experience the exact thing that they had told them that they had experienced, Thomas was no more of a doubter than any of the other disciples.

I know that if I had been one of those disciples who had seen Jesus tortured, crucified and die, that I would have likewise not figured to see Jesus again. Interestingly, all of the Easter accounts written in the Bible make it clear that no one expected to see Jesus alive again after that grave-boulder had been rolled across the opening of the tomb. Not the women, not the disciples….no one.

So, I don’t find it surprising that many people throughout the centuries, and in these days, find themselves in the shoes of the first witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection….doubting Jesus’ resurrection. Actually, I think everybody does, at least a bit. Why else would things that “prove” Jesus’ resurrection gain so much attention and significance? The shroud of Turin (If you have not heard of it, google it and see what a stir it caused in the 70’s and 80’.)? Claims of apparitions of Jesus? Claims of miracles? There is a yearning for tangible proof. The story of Jesus’ resurrection that has been passed on to us, for many, lacks convinciblity, and they just can’t buy it.

For that reason, I am very thankful that I, as one whose life has been shaped by the story of the resurrection of Jesus, am glad that I am not a salesman….I am a talesman. When I preach, I am not selling anything. I am telling something. Something life changing. I am telling about one whose love for you and me….mere specks of dust in the scope of the universe…is so great that that one would hold nothing back in loving you and me. I. am telling about one who considers you and me so valuable, like a found pearl of unmeasurable worth, that in finding it he would give everything to have it. Or one who would leave 99 sheep to come after just one, and the he throws a party that rumbles through the universe when he finds it. Or one who would send his only child into a deathtrap in order to pull me out of it. I am the one to pass on the word (Word) that the one who created the universe and holds it together loves you and me.

Can love be proven? Maybe not completely, but it seems to me circumstantially. It surely can be spoken, shown, and exhibited which leads to tangible evidence of love. As Paul said in Romans 5, “ 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” And it is in that “proof” that my doubt that God loves me is quieted and my faith in his love is activated. Further, I find myself believing that if God is going to go that far to love me, maybe (or surely) God isn’t going to just hold me for a short time. Rather, having given his all for me, it makes sense to me that God is going to want to hold me always….forever.

Notice that when the Bible says that Jesus appeared to the disciples in that locked upper room, they did not recognize him by his face, by his voice, or by his stature…..they recognized him by the wounds that bore evidence of God’s love for them. His nail scarred hands and feet. His spear pierced side. It was then that the disciples said, “It’s the Lord!”, and it was then that Thomas said, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus showed them the depth of God’s love for them, and that is what I tell you and everyone who “has ears to hear”, and with the power of that love doubt loses its grip and faith explodes with eternal life.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

 The Bungee Cord.

No matter who tells us the Easter story….be it Matthew, Mark, Luke or John…they all make one thing very clear; no one expected to see what happened on that day. Sure, Jesus had told them several times before that he would be turned over to those who hated him, that he would die at their hands, and on the third day he would rise from the dead. But his words must have had an empty ring to them. The din of the cross … the nails, the suffering, the cries…must have been blaring in their ears. The silence that followed a spear thrusted through his side must have been haunting them. The deathly quiet of the grave in which he was laid must have been yelling at them. The roll of the stone to close the grave must have been echoing in their ears.

So, when the women went to the grave, they did not expect to see what they saw. Matthew tells us that the women were struck with fear as the earth quaked and the stone was rolled away, and they were taken back by the sight of lightning white angel who spoke to them who knew that those women were encountering something they didn’t expect. “I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified, “he said, “6 He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he[a] lay.”

And then they ran into the thing that they least expected to see, Jesus, standing there alive right in front of them, and I am sure with a smile on his face he said, “Surprise!” The reading that we just heard translates the word that Jesus greeted those two women as, “Greetings!”, but the word that is found in the original language of the Bible, Greek, is “chairete”, which literally means “rejoice”. Jesus did not just say, “Howdy”, or “Hi”….no, when those women ran into him, he saw their fears and doubts, and he said to them a word of victory, “Rejoice”…. “Surprise!”

Surprises are some of the best things in life when they are good surprises. They have a way of etching themselves in our memories, and they shape our lives. I remember some years ago on my 60th birthday that I was sitting in my house watching TV when suddenly my dog started barking, and when I went to the door, I heard the word, “Surprise!” It was my three sons who had come from their homes far away from me to give me a birthday present that I wasn’t expecting….them! I remember that day as if it was yesterday, and it shapes my life even to this day.

Imagine how that greeting from Jesus, “Surprise!”, must have implanted itself in those two women’s lives. How it must have overwhelmed all the other noise that had been filling their ears…how it must have been like a bomb exploding in their hearts with an urgency to tell others about it…how it must have brought strength to their legs as they ran to tell the disciples….how it must have crushed the darkness with brilliant light…how it changed the way they lived each day…and how it turned the day that they died upside down. “Surprise!”

And the power of that surprise has made it to you and me today. We who have stood by grave sites and watched death gobble up one person after another. We who have heard with our own ears and seen with our own eyes, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” We who have looked at the empty recliner in the living room, the empty seat at the kitchen table, the closet full of clothes that will never be worn again, and the smile that is only in pictures. To us, on this day, we hear the word that was spoken to those two women spoken to us, as we run into Jesus in this place, “Surprise!”

“Surprise!” Death is swallowed up in victory. “Surprise!” We are not just dust in the wind, but we are dust in whom the Spirit has breathed life, now and forever. “Surprise!” Loneliness and grief have been washed down the drain in a tidal flood of love and mercy. “Surprise!”

And today, those two women would have you know, that long after your days in this life are over, and your body has long rested in the grave or mingled with the dirt, you will hear a knocking and a recreating hand will reach down and pull you up into new life, and there will be Jesus, and he will say to you words that will transform you for eternity, “Surprise!” Amen.

 The Bungee Cord

Hello,

Welcome to Holy Week, the pinnacle of life in each year of faith. This week contains the anniversary of the three most important days in the Christian faith: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. As I wrote last week, Maundy Thursday was the day on which Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper and on which Jesus was handed over to those who sought to put him to death. Good Friday was the day on which Jesus was tortured and hung on a cross to die, and on Easter Sunday Jesus rose from the dead, conquering death forever.

This week bears the name “Holy Week”. Often the word “holy” is associated with things that are sacred and pure, and surely that is the case for the days of this week. However, one of my professors in seminary, James Nestingen, said that a more accurate understanding of holiness in the Bible is to call something holy when it works or is the way that God intended it to be. When we read of the angels in heaven singing “Holy, Holy, Holy” around the throne of God, their song is one praising God for God’s perfect love, power, and glory; perfection that is at work perfecting all that is seen and unseen. And when we place the word “holy” onto the week ahead, we do so because we see in this week things that God is doing with perfection. Perfect in God grace on Jesus who gave a meal of his presence that would perfectly unite God with God’s people until the end of time. Perfect in God’s power that God would take upon himself all the evil the world could muster and wrestle it to an eternal death. Perfect in glory that God would raise Jesus from the dead so that every knee would bow and every tongue confess in heaven and on earth that Jesus Christ is Lord of all.

This week is “holy” because it worked and works the way that God intended it to: to love, to redeem, to free, to bring hope, and to shake the universe with joy. Of course, this week is not holy because we, humans, made and make it so. It is holy because God made and makes it so. Despite our foolishness, despite our self-centered pride, despite our attempts to assert out power, despite all of our doubts and disbelief, despite our wayward ways….despite everything, this week is “holy” because God has made it so.

On this Holy Week there is much going on in the world that is far from perfect. People starving. Bombs dropping. Shootings in schools. Drugs strangling life. Disease choking the breath right out of us. Given the imperfection that we see all around us, it is easy for us to respond to what we see. Respond by putting up our dukes and fighting. Respond by hoarding to keep us safe. Respond to our fears by walling ourselves away from others. But the problem is that when we do so, we just make things more imperfect…less “holy”.

That is why this week is so important for us….important for us to take time to gather together on Maundy Thursday and hear Jesus’ words, “This is my body given for you. This is my blood shed for you.” It is important for us to gather together on Good Friday and see the very sins that ravage our lives taken to the grave when Jesus died. And it is important for us to gather together on Easter Sunday morning to hear final whistle blow in death’s failed attempt to take hold of us and then rush onto the court in elated victory. God, we see with perfect vision, is perfectly at work in this world, and in seeing that we can live each day of this life, and even on the day that we die with hope, joy, peace, and divine determination. That is the way it is supposed to be.

Welcome to Holy Week!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

 The Bungee Cord

Hello,

Some years ago, a group of people in my branch of Christianity, Lutheranism, decided that there needed to be a change in our Lenten (the 40 days before Easter) worship. The decision was to replace Palm Sunday with Palm/Passion Sunday. Palm Sunday, as you may know, commemorates the day that Jesus returned to Jerusalem aboard a donkey. It was a victorious entry, but not one delivered with aggressive power and might that would have brought Jesus into town on a mighty war horse, but one delivered with humble self-giving love. Hence the donkey. The Bible tells us that as Jesus entered Jerusalem on his way to his throne, the cross, the people lined the streets, placed cloaks and palms on the road…rolling out the red carpet…and shouting, “Hosanna (which means, “Lord save us!”). Blessed in the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”

For a multitude of years, on this was what Christians focused their worship on the Sunday before Easter. Shouts of laud and praise. However, as I said, some years ago, actually around when I began my career as a Pastor, someone decided that there needed to be a change to Palm Sunday. The change was propelled by the fact that fewer and fewer Christians were attending the services that were to be held on the Thursday and Friday before Easter, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. When people came to worship on Maundy Thursday, they heard Jesus’ last words to his disciples that they should love each other as he had loved them, and that they should regularly gather together and share a meal of his presence in bread and wine. Both of the words came on the night on which Judas, one of the disciples who had heard these words, betrayed, gave Jesus over, to the people who were out to kill Jesus. And when people came to worship on Good Friday, they heard the poignant story of Jesus’ abduction, his trial, his being whipped and spat upon, his crucifixion, and his burial in a tomb whose entrance was closed by a boulder.

Because so few people were attending Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, many Christians did not hear the excruciating pathos of God’s love. They did not “walk through the valley of death” with Jesus but only heard the “telling from the mountaintop” that Jesus Christ was alive on Easter. That group of decision makers decided that in order to grasp the wonder of Easter, it was important, if not necessary, to hear the pain and death of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. So, Palm Sunday was changed. If you attend, and I invite you to do so, a Lutheran church, you will find the worship this Sunday beginning with the faithful accolades of the people of Jerusalem on the lips of the worshippers, but then there will be an abrupt change of tone as the passion story of Jesus, the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday fall upon your ears, and the shouts of , “Crucify him!”, cross your lips.

Although I believe that going to worship on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday provide a deeper spiritual experience of Jesus’ passion, and thereby well worth attending, I agree that hearing the Easter trumpets without the cellos of Jesus’ passion can leave us wondering, “What’s the big deal about Easter?” Without hearing the fickleness of our own faith…a faith that sometimes boldly and confidently shouts, “Hosanna!”, but at other times if not by our words, surely by our actions bellows out, “Crucify him!”, we might not grasp how un-fickle God’s love is for us. A love so steadfast that as the Apostle Paul says, “Even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5)

It is the nature of our society to avoid bad news and to rush to triumphant news. Yet it is also the nature of our lives that bad news has its way of enveloping us in its quicksand. As we make our way into the last week before Easter, we come to see that Jesus is not averse to bad news, as a matter of fact it took hold of him, too. So, I invite you to come and hear the darkness of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, bringing all the bad news of your life with you, and discover that you are not alone in your bad news. Rather, God, in Jesus, has plummeted into the worst the world can give, and Jesus is going to do put that bad news in its place, forever…….next week!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

 The Bungee Cord

Hello,

Last week, a friend of mine and I went to Florida to take in a couple of Pirate preseason games and thaw out from the winter cold. As we were awaiting our flight in Pittsburgh, a man about my age sitting across from me noticed my Illinois baseball hat and inquired if I had gone there. I told him that indeed I went to U of I, and then he, who went to Maryland, started his tales of his college days, which in his words were a lot of “drinking and chasing girls”. His stories were mingled with a lot of flowery language, that is many words began with “f”, and then he went on to tell about how he and his college buddies go someplace every year to “drink and chase girls”, which he was on his way to do.

It was about this time in our conversation that asked me what I had done with my life, and I told him that I had been a Lutheran minister for 43 years. With that, he sat up a little straighter and said, “Well, I guess that you won’t be doing a lot of drinking and chasing girls.”

“No,” we both replied. He then “confessed” that he didn’t go to church very often, and he started telling me of his friends who were devout “born again” Christians. Then he said, with a little smirk in his eyes, “You know, as I am getting older, I am finding those things a bit more important.”

I suspect that many people, whether they are into drinking and chasing girls or not, would say that the concerns of the Christian faith become more important as they get older. The reason, I believe, is that as one ages, the sense of one’s mortality becomes more and more apparent. I know that it has for me. Having been through cancer, dealing with chronic high blood pressure, and wallowing through depression the arrival of my final day is not a distant thought.

However, for me, I do not find myself more attuned to my faith than when I was when I was younger. You see, for me, I do not find myself believing in Jesus so that I might go to heaven, on the contrary, I find myself certain of life beyond this life because I believe in Jesus. In other words, heaven is not the goal of my faith, Jesus, whose love for me is so great that he promises me a place in heaven, is my faith’s goal.

Truth to be told, I was far more concerned about things eternal when I was younger than I am now. I remember when I was a young adult waking up in the middle of the night, my heart racing over the specter of my death. The incompressibility of eternity brought me chilling fear. The final period that death puts on the story of my life was ominous. So, as I would lay there, electrically awake, I found myself saying to myself, “I have seen how much God has loved me in this life, and so I can trust that whatever the next life brings, it will be just as wonderfully filled with God’s grace to me. And with that thought blanketing me, I could go back to sleep.

As I have slept and awakened over the years with that faithful thought in my mind, I find myself far less anxious about my death. As a have gone to bed under the nightly prayerful protection of God and awoken each day under the shepherding care of the one who has named me as one of his own flock I find myself far less concerned about the day I will die, and far more concerned and thankful for each day that I live. I find myself far more interested in making the most of my days to love and help others. I find myself far more at peace with strolling through life rather than sprinting for victory. I find myself driven to be graceful rather than judgmental. I find myself living in the wonder and the joy of a Biblical verse that has brought me the light that no darkness can overcome, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” (1 John3:1)

It is my hope that each Bungee Cord that I send reaches those who read it with a weekly embrace of God’s love, so that those who read it might find themselves as I do, far more thank-full, joy-full, and peace-full the older we get.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger