Bungee Cord 9-26-16

Hello,

     It was a good weekend for my team, the Fighting Illini of the University of Illinois.  We didn’t lose…..well, we didn’t play.

    It looks like another long year for the Illini.  I tell people that it sure must be boring cheering for a winning team, because when they win, there’s nothing to get very excited about.  But when you cheer for a cellar dweller…..when (rare as it may be) we win, life is thrilling!

     Some years ago when I was living in Ohio (Ohio State territory) I got tickets to the Illinois vs Ohio State game.  It was a late November game which meant that it was snowy, cold and windy.  One of my sons went with me (I don’t remember what I used to bribe him to go with me?).  We bundled up.  I put on my orange stocking cap, my orange stadium jacket, and my insulated boots.  My son was not so orange-ly clad.

     When we arrived at the “Horseshoe” we wove our way upstream through the river of scarlet and gray to our seats.  In the seats all around us were similarly clad folks, some even waving scarlet and grey pom-poms.  If the weather was not lousy enough to make it a miserable day, the score made it even worse.   44-0 in the third quarter….Ohio State.  The worst thing about the game was that with every score, the woman sitting next to me made sure that I was aware of the mounting score….cheering as if each touchdown was a game winner, turning toward me as she sang (off pitch, of course) the Ohio State fight song, and flinging her pom-pom in my face.

     Sometime in the fourth quarter when the score had ballooned even more, as the person next to me was rubbing my nose in it, I felt a tap on my shoulder.  I turned around, and there was a man in Notre Dame garb behind me.  Apparently he had been taking note of the abuse that I had been absorbing, and he said to me, “Aren’t Ohio State fans a pain in the #$%!”

     No comment then….no comment now.

     Truth be told, Ohio State fans are not the only ones who like to kick you in the teeth when you’re being crushed and humiliated.  The world seems to delight in it, too.  Scandals are not hidden deep in newspapers.  They are on the front page so everyone will see them.  It often only takes one misstep for a person to lose their job, and that misstep clings onto them like a stubborn tic when they try and find a new job.  Friends, when they see you at the mall, turn around and go the other way.  It may be that the world doesn’t make  losers wear a scarlet letter as were made to do in the days of the Puritans, but they wear letters…invisible ones…ones that everyone can amazingly see.

     The Christian church has often been accused of  kicking people when they are down, even to the point of shunning people for the mess they have made in their lives.  Fact is, the shoe too often has fit.

     But in my church, and a lot of other churches, we are trying not to be people who wear that shoe.  We try to be people who wear Christ-like sandals….sandals that took him to the homes of outcasts….sandals that brought him to touch lepers…sandals that walked with compassion alongside those who had foolishly ruined their lives…sandals that kicked stones away rather than gathered them up to throw.

     If you find yourself dealing with a world that is akin to my teeth kicking, rubbing noses in it, dirt slinging Ohio State fan, let me tap you on the shoulder today and instead of commenting on what a pain in the @#%!  the world is…let me invite you to come to a place where people who have walked in shoes like yours have been picked up off the ground by one wearing sandals.  Let me invite you to church.  The treatment you will get will be far better than an Illinois fan gets at the “Horseshoe”!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 9-19-16

Hello,

     Two funerals on Friday.  A wedding on Saturday.  A baptism in worship and the first day of Confirmation class with middle schoolers on Sunday.  This weekend was the gambit of life.

     “Pastor, what do you do?”  It is a question that has oft been asked of me by an honest inquisitor whose encounters with me are most often limited to seeing me in a white robe for an hour on Sunday morning.

     I usually answer that question with the list of daily tasks that I, as a Pastor, do, but after this weekend (not necessarily an abnormal weekend) I believe a more accurate answer is, “I live life with people.”

     I live life with people.  Not life at a distance.  Not life hidden behind rose colored curtains.  Not life at the surface.  Not life moving at just one speed or moving in just one direction.

     As a pastor, I live life with people.  I am with people in the most tender and the most terrible times of life.  I am with people in the most enthralling and most embarrassing times of life.  I am with people when life is settled and when life is spinning.  I am with people when life is cruising along and when it is crumbling away.  I am with people when they have no one else and I am with people when they are surrounded by everyone else.

     As a pastor, I live life with people…..because that is what God does.  When God enfleshed God’s self  in Jesus – as incomprehensible as that might be – God answered the question, “Where are you, God?”

     “I am here in your life,” says God.  God is not some spectator in the universal stands being entertained by the products of God’s creation.  God is not some force that is unmoved by the groaning of the cosmos.  God is not some theoretical idea that stems from human yearnings.  In Jesus Christ, God reveals what God does; God lives life with people.

     In knowing that God lives life with me, I discover that no moment of life is mundane.  I discover that no deed of life is a hole of inescapable depth nor a pedestal of superior view.  I discover that the bullies that try and bring me to my knees have to overwhelm a divine bodyguard.  I discover that quiet rings with love and that noise cannot plug my ears to hope.

     As this Bungee Cord intersects your life, I hope that it brings my presence into your life, wherever your life is or whatever is going on in your life, for as one who carries the yoke of Christ (that is what the stole that I wear on Sunday mornings is meant to symbolize), I do what God does….I live life with people.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 9-12-16

Hello,

     Yesterday before both of our worship services, I assumed my place curb-side in front of our church waving at people as they pass in their cars.  It is what I do every Sunday morning, weather providing.  I have become somewhat of a Greensburg  fixture, to the point that when often when my members tell a friend that they attend First Lutheran Church, the response they get is, “Oh, you go to the church with the waving pastor.”

     I have been the “waving pastor” at the churches that I have been the pastor for over 20 years.  I have done it for a couple of reasons.  One reason is that Christians were never meant to be some secret society, mysteriously meeting behind guarded doors.  Jesus took his message of God’s grace and mercy to the streets, and likewise, I believe, so should we.  Just like the football player who lifts weights, we who are strengthened as we worship in our church, are not meant to stay in the weight room forever, but to get out on the field and play the game.

     The second reason that I wave is because I hope that my wave is received as a gesture of God’s grace to all who pass by.  I don’t know where the people are going to whom I wave.  Some are at work as they pass in their trucks and semi’s.  Some are going to play as they tote their four wheelers in trailers.  Some may be going to worship at some other church.  But for most of the people who pass me, I have no idea why they have travelled by 246 S. Main Street in Greensburg on a Sunday morning.  So I wave at them all, hoping that my brief and somewhat distant attendant care to their life will be a sign to them that they are somebody’s.  I hope that they get a brief notice that they matter….matter to me….matter to God.  In a world where mattering is as passing as paper plates, and is as hard to reach as the peak of Everest, I hope that my wave will speak the essence of the faith that holds me, that whoever you are, without doing anything to earn it, you matter to God.  And so I wave….a gesture of God’s grace.

     Some of my parishoners joke with me asking me, “How many have you brought in this morning?”  They joke with me because they know that the answer to that question is not the reason why I am waving away.  Fact is, I don’t know that anyone has stopped by because of my waving.  It would be wonderful if they did.  But it is no less wonderful that when the time in life comes whey those “wavee’s” find themselves up against a brick wall, or watching their lives slip through their fingers, or wandering aimlessly in a life with thin purpose, or being cast aside by something that they have done…..when they look in the mirror and see a nobody….they will remember that someone who didn’t even know them, someone standing out on a curbside wearing a white robe and a colored stole, someone outside of a church….waved at them….and with that wave spoke a word of gracious truth…that they are somebody….somebody worth waving at….somebody worth dying for.

     So, although you are not driving past First Lutheran Church today, I hope that you see me waving at you, waving at you in my weekly Bungee Cords.  These weekly words may not be deep and profound, but I hope that they always catch your eyes as a gesture of God’s grace.  You, too, are somebody….somebody worth waving at….somebody worth dying for!

     Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord  9-5-16

Hello,

     I felt like honking….but I didn’t….because I don’t.  Out here you never know who has a shotgun in the car.

     The occasion for my urge to honk came as I pulled up at the drive-through ATM,  I was on my way to meet someone and needed some cash, so I was in a bit of a hurry.  There was only one car in front of me, so I figured that I would accomplish my mission of getting some money and be on time for my appointment.

     But I was wrong.  The person in the car in front of me must have been saving her yearly banking needs for the time that she was in front of me.  I don’t know how long she took to do her business, but it seemed like an hour (not really, but when you need to be somewhere, time moves speedily).  Three…maybe four times she stuck her card in the machine, pulled it out and sorted through stuff in her car.

     As I sat behind her, watching the minutes tick by, I thought to my self, “Surely she knows that I am waiting behind her.”  How inconsiderate of her to monopolize this machine.  If she had so much business to do, she should have gone to the inside teller….but no….she obviously was simply too lazy to park her car and do what would have been more considerate to others.  With every passing insertion of her card my patience waned. 

     Finally, she pulled her card out of the machine for the last time….but did she move forward?  No!  She rolled her window up, and in the comfort of her air conditioning she probably was sorting out her cash into old and  new bills …. and finally …..finally….she took her car out of park, applied her brake and crept out of the space that she had been hogging!  It is amazing, I thought to myself, how thoughtless some people are!

     So, I pulled up to the ATM, pulled out my card, and quickly inserted it.  By this time there was a car or two behind me, and I would show them that I would not be like the person who had been in front of me.  The screen invited me to take my card back and enter my pin number….and I did.  I, unlike the self-absorbed person that I waited for, I would be out of here in a second.

     A screen popped up that I had never seen before, asking me to select one of my accounts….wait…I only thought I had one account.  So, I stared at that screen wondering which button I should press.  So, I pressed one.  The wrong one, because after the computer thought for a bit, it printed the words on the screen, “Your request is larger than your account balance.  Transaction completed.”

     So, I had to reach into my back pocket and pull out my card that I had quickly put away, insert it in the ATM, punch in my pin number, and try a different account.  This time my request was within reach of my balance, but I must have hit the wrong button, because instead of giving me money, the machine read, “Thank you.  Transaction complete.”

     Back to my back pocket to retrieve my card, which I re-inserted in the machine, punched in my pin number, accessed the right account, typed in the amount that I wanted….and….this time it said, “Processing transaction”.  In a moment my cash appeared in front of me.  I pulled in into my car….and quickly moved out of the spot that I had monopolized…..a line of four or five cars now behind me.

     Evidence of the truth of what I say every Sunday morning, “I confess that I am in bondage to sin and cannot free myself.” 

     “Forgive me, Lord.”  And God does!

Have a great week.

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger