The Bungee Cord. 5-27-25

Hello,

Yesterday, as I was driving into Ligonier (the closest town to where we live) to go to the grocery store, I got behind a robin’s egg blue ford pick-up that I think was pretty new. It was sparkling clean, but as I came close to it, I noticed that it was actually quite dirty. On each of the three window panels on the back of the cab were decals, each decal bearing a visual message declaring that women are meant to be seen and used as disposable sex objects. These decals were brazen in their silhouette depictions and the words that were underneath them. I couldn’t see the driver, so I wondered what sort of person would decide to embellish his brand-new truck with such dirt.

Now, I know that I am more sensitive to foul language and foul jokes than most. My sensitivity does not come from the fact that I am a pastor, but from the fact that I am an environmentalist, of sorts. To me, foul things are not “bad”, but they are foul, as in putrid smelling. The kind of smell that come from a garbage dump. I see them… no I smell them as verbal garbage. In my mind, there’s plenty of things in this world that stink – violence, greed, poverty, hatred – and I choose not to add to the stench with the words that I say and with the decals on my life.

So, I got to thinking, “What if I was to find that pick-up, with its decals, parked in the church parking lot on a Sunday morning?” What would you do? If you knew the driver, would you sit next to the driver and tell that person that those decals needed to come off the truck if he wanted to worship in your church? Would you tell the pastor and ask the pastor to announce that the driver of that truck needed to remove it from our parking lot, lest people driving by would see its dirty windows? Would you make sure the pastor rebuked that pick-up’s message in the sermon? Would you, if you saw who got out of the truck, make sure that you did not sit anywhere close to that person?

As I consider what I might do, it occurs to me that although my Mini Cooper’s rear window does not bear the dirt that was on that truck, it too, is far from clean. There are grudges that adorn my window that I haven’t washed off. There are hurtful things that I have done to people I deeply love, and people that I will never know, that are affixed on my hatch’s window. There are foolish and stupid things from my past that are easily seen by those who have been part of my history. So, it seems to me that if that pick-up driver would be deemed unwelcome in my church, I guess the same would be deemed of me.

But the fact of the matter is that I find myself welcome in my church, because my church knows that it is not a bunch of perfect angels that gather every week, but it is a bunch of sinners whose lives are full of pain, pain that infects their lives and pain that infects the world, and they are there to do something about those sins and the pain that they inflict. So, every Sunday, our worship begins by asking God to open our eyes to the pain that is wrought by our sins, and then God deals his blow to me whose car is parked in the church parking lot has a filthy rear window. God says to me, “You are forgiven.” God doesn’t kick me out until I have gotten things cleaned up. No, God gets out God’s cleanser, the blood of his Son, and goes to work on my life. Some of the dirt has been baked on, and so God uses industrial strength cleanser, his presence in bread and wine.

When the service is over and I go back to my car, my car looks as though it has gone through a car wash with a follow up detailing. No longer dirty, but crystal clean. But no sooner than I put it in gear, it gets dirty again: unkind thoughts about someone who is driving too slowly hit my window like bird droppings, anger pools up as I drive past someone who has hurt me and the grime splashes on my window, I dig up decals of intentional neglect and stick them to my car as I fill my belly to overflowing and forget about the bellies of those in the world that remain empty….on and on it goes…I dirty my car, and my car gets dirtied by the world. By the time a week has past, I can barely see through my rear window.

Thank God…literally….thank God that there’s a place that I can go back to where I am welcomed, and my car is cleaned.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord. 5-19-25

Hello,

I am not sure who decided that May is Mental Health Awareness Month, but that is what May is. I, personally, don’t need to have a designated month to make me aware of mental health, because I have lived with depression and its sidekick, anxiety, for twenty years. Twenty years ago, I found myself being swallowed up in darkness. When people have asked me, what depression is like, and I think it is different for each person, I say it’s like feeling that you are in a toilet bowl and someone has just flushed it and you are fighting with all your might not to be sucked down.

It is not just being deeply sad, there are plenty of things in life for which sadness is an appropriate and helpful emotion. It is not something that a few laughs will get you out of. For me, when depression hits, it is irrational. I have everything to live for, and yet life feels completely empty. I have lived a life full of successes, but I look in the mirror and see a complete failure. My mind tells me that I have the Midas touch, only my touch doesn’t turn everything to gold but into crap. Depression is an ugly thing.

I know that it is hard to live with someone who deals with depression. You never know how the depressed person will be from day to day. And since depression is wrapped in irrationality, you never know quite what to say. What seems so simple to you, is almost insurmountable to the one who is depressed. It is hard for the people around the depressed one, too.

I have been blessed, though. I have a wife who has held onto me when my life is shaking. I have sons who have done the same. I have friends who have called me to check in on me. I have had good doctors who have given me the best of care. I have responded to the medicine, medicine for which I am greatly thankful. And I have a God who has searched for me in my darkness, gathered me in his arms, and has promised to not let me go. When in the deepest of my depression, Holy Communion was a powerful grace. “This is my body. Give for you. This is my blood, shed for you.” In my weakest moments, Jesus did not abandon me, but instead Jesus united himself with me. Hugged me from the inside.

As I look back on my life, I believe that I have dealt with depression and anxiety from my childhood. When I was younger, I developed coping mechanisms that shielded me from the darts of depression. But when those shields no longer existed, or weakened, the chemical imbalance that is who I am churned up.

Rich Mullens has a song entitled, “We Are Not As Strong As We Think We Are.” I have discovered the truth in that song. Most days, I live in the light, thanks to the grace of God. Grace I tangibly feel in the love and care of those around me, in the incredible wonder of scientists who care for me so much that they create medicines for me, and in God whose words I repeat in my head when the world’s words are tearing me down. “My grace is sufficient for you.” “Be still and know that I am God.”

When I was hit head on with depression, I called a pastor friend who I knew was a fellow upstream swimmer with depression, and I said to her, “Tell me that there is hope.” And she said to me with gentle confidence, “Jerry, there is hope.” I have found her words to be true. I don’t know if any of you, my readers, find yourself shadow boxing depression, but if you are, my word to you is as was my friend’s to me, “There is hope.”

When you don’t have the strength to hold on, feel the strength of the one who is holding on to you, Jesus the Son of God. When the darkness is so dense and you don’t have the strength to move to the end of the tunnel, see the light coming to you into that tunnel, Jesus the light that nothing can overcome. When you don’t think that anyone cares, scream out and see someone coming to you…scream out to a friend, scream out to a pastor or priest. You are worth so much to God that God, himself, took on the pain of depression on the cross, so that he, not depression, has claimed you…forever!

Before I got hit with depression, and depression was lurking in the bushes of my life, I wrote a song, a song that put Mary and Martha’s words to music (John 11:21,22). Many have heard these words as words of scolding, but I hear them as words of deep faith, and so the song, “Lord When You Draw Near, There Is Hope.”

There is hope!

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord 5-12-25

Hello,

Do bees smell?

It is a beautiful time of the year in Western Pennsylvania, not just in what our eyes take in, but also in what our noses take in. Right next to my hot tub are four lilac bushes that I planted several years ago, and as they begin to blossom, they cast their lovely aroma upon my patio. If you have never smelled a lilac flower, you have missed one of nature’s gifts. It is a sweet, but not overwhelming, smell that when you breath it in you can feel your lungs filling with soft joy. And as the flowers overtake the bushes, I find myself just wanting to bury my face in the flowers and swim in their luxurious scent. The smell is captivating.

However, as I sit near my lilac bushes, I come to find out that I am not the only one drawn to them. Bees are too! My lilac bushes look like a Walmart store that just got a new shipment of toilet paper during the pandemic. The bushes are crawling with bees, all having come to load their “honey stomachs” with the delivery of nectar from the lilac blooms. I know that plants use vibrant colors to attract bee for the purpose of pollination, but as I sit in the cloud of their aroma, I wonder are bees, like me, also attracted by the smell? I know that bees can see. I wonder, can they smell?

So, I Googled it, and this is what I found: “Yes, bees have a very strong sense of smell. They use it to find food, communicate within their hive, and even detect threats. Their sense of smell is much more sensitive than humans, allowing them to detect odors at incredibly low concentrations.” Wow, I guess that they can smell….and smell well!

Also, when I Googled, “What sense creates the deepest memories for humans?”, this is what I found out: “The sense of smell (olfaction) is often cited as the one that creates the strongest and longest-lasting memories. This is due to its unique connection to the limbic system, the brain region responsible for emotions and memory storage. Specifically, the olfactory bulb, where smell information is processed, is directly connected to the hippocampus and amygdala. “

So, as I consider the power of smell to draw bees to a lilac bush, and to create memories that are timeless, I wonder if I have stumbled on to one of the reasons that so many people avoid going to church every week, or maybe completely avoid it. Might it be that when they open the doors of a church, it doesn’t smell very good, or maybe they don’t open them at all because of the rancid smell that they have encountered there? Do they smell, or remember the smell, of judgment, narrow mindedness, institutional control, money grabbing, lifelong grudges, silly rules, and the like.

The Bible tells us that on Easter Sunday morning, some women went with spices to Jesus’ tomb. Why? Because tombs stunk! After three days of death dining on a body, everyone knew that when you opened the tomb, the smell would be rancid. So, they brought spices to help make it smell better. I find it interesting that when you read the Biblical stories of Easter Sunday morning, there is no mention of the smell! When the women walked in and when Peter stepped in, we are not told that any of them reacted by covering their nose. It is true, of course, that it may have just been a detail that all of the Gospel writers overlooked, but as I read the accounts where conversations take place in the tomb, it seems that the rancid smell of death was not there to drive them out. The aroma was not of death, but of life, lilac-like.

The best that those women could have hoped for was to cover of the smell of death for a while, and even with their best efforts and spices, death’s smell would return. I believe the same is true for dealing with the aromas that turn people away from going to church, humans can only cover up the smell. But clearly God can do more. As God did in that Easter tomb, God can incinerate death’s smell in a fire of the Holy Spirit, a fire of life. And not only can God do it, God is doing it. Every Sunday God ignites a fire of the Holy Spirit inside the building where people have gathered in God’s name filling it with the aroma of life, eternal life. And God is determined to keep setting that fire until death’s smell is completely gone.

I invite you to “smell for yourself” God at work amongst those who bear God’s name, including the work that God is doing in your life, and although it may not smell like lilacs yet, I am sure that you will catch whiffs of what God’s love smells like, and you, like a bee, just might find yourself drawn to gather in your “honey stomach” from the shipment of grace that God has delivered there.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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