The Bungee Cord 11/17/14

Hello,

     Yesterday I had “brunch” at a Chinese restaurant in Flushing, New York.  I was visiting my son in NYC, and part of my visit was an experience of the Chinese culture.  It was a Sunday Brunch completely unlike any I have ever had.

     He, his girlfriend (who is Chinese), and I walked into the restaurant that had a dining hall the size of a basketball court.  The  “court” was filled with round tables that sat 8 per table.  Since we were only three, we shared the table with a young Chinese couple that seemed oblivious to our presence at their table.  We were directed to the table by a walkie-talkie holding “maitre d’” who waved us past the wall divider into the hall as if he were a traffic cop and we were car-dodging pedestrians.

     We might as well had been car-dodging pedestrians, because weaving in and around the tables were women pushing metal carts with the food.   Some of the food was on little plates, always in groups of three (and often undecipherable to my western eyes).  Other carts had covered vats with soups whose colors I had never seen in soup before.  And still other carts had food that was dipped out of large containers and place in a bowl for us to share.  The folks who shared our table asked for one such thing as a woman rolled by, a bowl full of sliced cow’s lung.

     To me, it felt like I was eating on a bumper car track.  The din of the conversation (all in Chinese) was so loud that I could barely hear my son’s girlfriend trying to tell me what I was eating (which may have been a blessing), and the women who pushed their carts around hawked their wares like concession sellers at baseball games.  Of course, there were no forks or spoons, only chopsticks, which I found exceptionally challenging to use when seeking to grasp one of the foods that was ….well…slimy. (I had to resort to spearing some of my food in order to lift it off my plate and bring it to my mouth.)

     Like I said, it was a brunch the likes of which I had never had before.  A brunch, however, I am very glad to have had.   I ate things that I had never eaten before, some of which I won’t be disappointed if I don’t eat again.  But more importantly around that brunch table, I experienced a culture that I had never experienced before.  Without having to go to China, I got a taste of the energy, the table fellowship, and the palate of a culture far different from the one that I daily experience.  It was a blessing which has broadened my life.

     Although I do it regularly, I feel like I experience the same sort of thing every time that I go to the Lord’s supper and receive Holy Communion.  That meal that comes with the promise of the body and blood of Jesus “in, with, and under the bread and wine” is of a sort that no human kitchen could concoct.  It is a unity with the Divine and with those who share this holy brunch with me that is beyond my human understanding, and the culture of forgiveness and mercy that permeates the meal gives me a taste of hope and love that is foreign to anything else in life.

     I was quickly filled as I ate my Chinese brunch, not only with food but also with a great appreciation for a different culture.  Let me extend to you the Lord’s invitation to come to his table on Sunday and see if you do not find yourself quickly and wonderfully filled….filled with the grace of God which far surpasses amazing, and filled with a new taste of hope that will flavor every encounter in life that you have with others and every challenge that you face.

     I am thankful for the invite given me to this past Sunday’s brunch.  Might I be so bold as to invite you to a wonderful brunch this Sunday…the Lord’s Supper.  It is a dining experience unlike any other.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord 11-10-14

Hello,

     Today, I am doing something different…..rather that writing the Bungee Cord, I am going to let you hear it!  It’s an audio Bungee Cord!

     Follow this link to my sermon for this Sunday, a sermon that was based on these words of Jesus, “Stay awake therefore, for you do not know the hour or time.”

            http://felchurch.org/sermons/

     Go to the sermon for Nov. 9…..Take a listen…..see what you think.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 11/2/14

Hello,

     “Will you please pick up a box of these on your way to the wedding,” said my wife to me as I was getting ready to go out the door on Saturday.  The “box of these” was a box of vinyl gloves that she needed so she could apply some stain to a bench that she was refinishing.  Since I was giving myself about an extra half hour before the wedding party was to arrive, I said that I could do that, especially because the store was on the way to church.

     When I arrived at the store, one of those huge stores that has everything that you want and everything that you don’t need, the parking lot was full, as you would expect on a Saturday afternoon.  Stubbornly trying to find a spot close to the door, I drove up and down a number of lanes until I realized I was just going to have to walk, parking several lanes away from the door and quite a ways away from the door.

     My wife told me that I would be likely to find these vinyl gloves in the pharmacy area of the store.  Confessing to male blindness in shopping, I must have walked up and down every aisle of the pharmacy section four or five times, not finding the assigned gloves.  Fortunately, I found an employee of the store, decked out in her store’s vest, and so I asked her, “Do you happen to have vinyl gloves?”

     “Medical or cleaning gloves?” she asked me.

     “I don’t know.  My wife needs them to put some stain on a bench.”

     “Oh, then you can find them on the furthest aisle, next to the band-aides.”

     “Thanks,” I said, and ventured where I was directed, and behold boxes of gloves….all latex.

     To my surprise, I heard, “Sir, I am sorry, but I think that you’ll find the gloves that you want in the cleaning area in the back of the store.”  It was the woman who realized her error and had come to be of greater assistance.

     So, off I went to the back of the store, which was a football’s field away.  Unfortunately when I got there and wandered through the cleaning supplies area numerous times, male shopper’s blindness returned and I couldn’t find the gloves anywhere.  As my frustration was mounting, my eyes landed on something that brought peace to my boiling aggravation: another employee in his store vest coming my way.  “Sir,” I said, “I was told that I could find vinyl gloves in this section.”

     Without missing a step, and giving me only a slight glance, he said, “I am off the clock.  I can’t help you.”  And he walked right by me.  Immediately, my blood temperature soared!  So, I spent another ten minutes scouring the cleaning section aisles….and no gloves to be found.  With 20 minutes of hunting behind me, and a wedding parting soon to await me to open the church doors, I gave up, gloveless, and left with steam escaping from my ears.  “I am off the clock.  I can’t help you.”

     Of this, I am very glad:  I will never hear that from God.

Psalm 121

I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? 
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.


He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber. 
He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.


The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand. 
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.


The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. 
The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time on and for evermore.

     Unlike some store employees, God is never off the clock, and good thing, because life is full of far more perplexing things than trying to find a box of vinyl gloves…things that you and I encounter every day…and every night.  When I am lost…when I am confused…when I am struggling…when I am scared…when I am overwhelmed…when I have blown it…when I can’t even stand to look at myself in the mirror……God, like that employee, comes to me…but unlike that employee, God doesn’t watch the clock, instead God sees the anxiety and frustration in my eyes, and he takes ahold of me and says, “Here, let me help you.”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 10=27-14

Hello,

     I got some new glasses about a week ago.  My old ones broke….for good.

     “Don’t get the same kind,” my wife said as I set off to get a new pair of specs.  The kind that I had were “rimless” ones, and the reason that I was to avoid such glasses in the future was that the lenses kept popping out, and they were very difficult to get back in.  Those of you who have shared this type of glasses with me know that the lenses are held in by a thin fishing-line type thread.  I am half to blame for the ease of the lenses falling out because I wasn’t exactly gentle with them, once closing them underneath the lid of my hot tub, bending the frames and sending both lenses a-popping.  Beyond that my nightly wrestles with my dog were bending and breaking the nose pads, and of course, popping my lenses out.  “Don’t get the same kind.”

     When I arrived at the same day glasses store I discovered something: there were only two types of glasses to choose from.  The kind that I had that had, no rims or partial rims, or plastic rimmed ones where the rims are comparatively thicker and quite visible.  With my departing instructions in my ears, I decided to venture into the plastic rim world.

     When I tried the first pair on, I was a bit taken back….didn’t know if I liked the look.  It was a far different look that I had been sporting for the past 17+ years of glasses wearing.  My previous look diminished the fact that my eyes had lost their accuracy and I was now in need of glasses.  This look, however screamed my need to the world, THIS GUY IS WEARING GLASSES!  I was about to return to my old look, against my marching orders, when one of the sales persons said to me, “Oh.  I like those on you!”  So, I took a second…and a third….and a fourth look in the mirror, and with each look I was getting a bit more accustomed to the new look.

     “Okay,” I said, “let’s give these a try.”  So with a few slightly different styles placed in front of me, I sat down to make a final decision and get my lenses fit.  There were four sales people in the showroom, and before I made my final choice, each put in their two cents on the frames that they thought looked best on me….and those were the frames that I got.  “I like the way those look on you,” they all said.

     I came home and walked through the door in search of my wife and her opinion.  When I found her she gave me a bit of a bewildering look and said with the same bewilderment, “Oh…you got new glasses.”

     “Yeah,” I said, “what do you think?”

     “Well, they are not like your old ones.”

     “But do you like them?”

     Silence….then, “Well, I’m trying to get used to them.”

     In the time that I have had my new glasses and my new look, I have received mixed reactions.  Some like them….some do not, but like them or not, one thing everyone said, that they sure made me look different.  Smarter?  Younger?  Goofier?  Hipper?  A babe magnet?  They never said…..just different.

     Over the course of my life as a Christian, I have found myself sporting different frames….same lenses…faith in Christ….but different frames.  In my younger years when everything looked simple and clear, my frame of Christian reference was much the same…simple and clear, as if I didn’t need glasses at all.  But as I have walked this path of faith, my frame of reference has become much more complex…I NEED GLASSES….life throws questions at me that make it hard to see God at work….my own shortcomings make my vision far more near sighted than I wish it were….the experiences of others bring things into my vision that I had never seen before.  Maybe it is appropriate that the glasses I wear now are far more visible than the ones I used to wear.

     So, if we haven’t seen each other in a while…even a few days…and you notice that I am wearing different glasses…..know this….its still me, graced with the love of God in Christ Jesus…just wearing new glasses in hopes to see God’s grace with greater clarity and to see how I might apply that grace to my life in a world where simple and clear answers are not always easy to see.

Have a great day.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 10-20-14

Hello,

     “I’ve been trained to go and help people no matter where they are, please don’t stop me from going.”  So said a young lady who was being interviewed on a National Public Radio program to which I listened on the way to work this past week.  The program was looking at the Ebola outbreak in Africa and people from the U.S. who are going over to help.  Many people couldn’t understand why she would go over and risk her life to help people whom she didn’t know.  Her parents were afraid for her and were hoping she wouldn’t go.  “I’ve been trained to go and help people no matter where they are, please don’t stop me from going.”

     Although it seems thus far that only a few Americans have become sick who have gone to Africa to help those stricken with Ebola, it is all too clear that to do so is to step into a situation that just might take one’s life.  No one would blame anyone for not going and instead staying where it is safe.  Although the call of some to not let anyone go to the area of the outbreak or to leave that area are clearly reactionary, nearly everyone can understand the fears that lead to such sentiments. 

     Why would anyone go and wrestle with this deadly virus?  Why would anyone risk their life for no apparent personal reward?  In truth, it is hard to believe that anyone would willingly do such a thing.

     For some, these are the very questions that they ask of God concerning the incarnation, the sending of his Son.  It seems to be unbelievable that the Divine would be bothered and concerned about the pain and suffering of human beings who are in truth smaller than specks of dust in the scope of all of creation.  It seems to be unbelievable that the Divine would leave the glory of a heavenly throne and risk….no not risk but expect to suffer the humiliation of an earthly throne of pain, the cross.  It seems to be unbelievable that the Divine would be so invested in those who seem hell bent to ruin his handiwork.  So unbelievable does it seem that some have determined it isn’t believable.  “No god, if there is a god,” they say, “would ever do such a thing.”

     The NPR interview gave us no deeper answer of what was driving that young lady to do what she did than her response that she had been trained to go anywhere and help people.  The Bible, however, does give an answer to why God would do what seems unbelievable for the Divine to do: Romans 5:6-8,  “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”  Why would God do such an unbelievable thing….love.

     Even for humans, love drives people to do unbelievable things.  Who amongst us hasn’t said or thought to one who has acted out of love, “I can’t believe that you did that!”  For me, it is the very unbelievablity of the Divine doings such a thing as dying on a cross for all of humanity…or even more unbelievable…for me…that stirs up faith and hope and belief in God, a God who as the Bible says “is love” (1 John 4:16).

     I am certain that those in Africa hold nothing but thanks for those who, for whatever reason, have come to help them.  As I look at the cross and resurrection, I find myself likewise holding nothing but thanks for the one whose love for me is more than I can believe.

     I also give thanks to those who have responded with reckless abandon to help those who have been caught in the grip of Ebola.  Inspired by them and by God, I find myself motivated to help as I can….not only for those who battle Ebola, but also those whose battles are just as deadly and are not an ocean away.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 10-13-14

Hello,

     This is the time of year that I feel sorry for the deer.  My sympathy does not come from the rifles and bows that are aimed at them, that misfortune has yet to arrive here in rural Pennsylvania.  What has arrived, however, is the autumn brilliance of the oak, maple, cherry, locus and sassafras trees whose leaves deliver a short burst of amazing color to the hills before they fall to the ground, dropping out of sight.  It is a show of incredible beauty that I get to see, and the deer do not.  I see it because the eyes that I have been given can see color; the deer miss out because their eyes only allow them to see in black and white.

     It is true that seeing things in black and white, as with a black and white photograph, provides an increased clarity that allow deer to see their predators (that is of course unless the predator is a hunter in camo’s), but that clarity comes at a price…..the price: diminished beauty, diminished awe, and diminished wonder.

     There is a common duel that is set up in our world, a duel that pits faith against science.  At its best this duel pits “truths” that cannot be seen against “truths” that can be seen.  At its worst this duel purports to be a challenge between those who think against those who mindlessly live in outdated fantasy.  It is a duel that claims victory to science when we believe we have discovered how something really works or came to be, and victory goes to faith when such discovery remains outside of our understanding.  There are a good number of Biblical literalistic Christians who delight in this duel and do their best to shoot science down.  Likewise, the same can be said for empirically driven scientists (and comics) who take aim at faith, usually Biblically literalistic faith, and delight in the ease of shooting it down.

     But when I look out my window at the October Pennsylvania hillsides, I don’t see a duel between science and faith going on.  What I see is the blessing of being able to see in color. 

     With the limited understanding of a solely scientific view of things that I have, it seems to me that the precision that science provides us comes to us through the benefits of seeing things in black and white (not ethically, but empirically).  The starkness of scientific empiricism has proven itself very helpful in leading us to discover how things have come to be, how things work, and how we might harness this knowledge to better the lives of all people.  Science is a blessing to the Christian witness, not a foe.

     Yet, science by its very nature, its non-emotional, statistically verifiable, empirically discernible database seems to me to give us eyes to see things well, but without color…without the color of love….without the color of forgiveness….without the color of hope….without the color of value and worth to that which seems valueless and worthless.  To me, that is the blessing of faith.  Faith does not stand opposed to science; faith brings color to science!

     There are many Christians, who the world seems not to spotlight, that see this partnership between faith and science in every page of the Bible.  We see faith giving wonderful color to the scientific, earth-centered understanding of creation of those who lived in Biblical times (an understanding that we see differently, now, but no less filled with awe inspiring color.)  We see faith giving wonderful color to the events of history that the Bible has passed on, transposing the stark facts of the history that we live in into color.  We see faith giving wonderful color to the joys and struggles of the daily lives of ancient people, and likewise coloring ours.

     When I consider the faith that God has given me, a faith that finds its roots in what God has done for the world (John 3:16), I don’t find myself raising a pistol for a duel.  I find myself thankful for the eyes of faith that allow me to see with color.

Have a great week….enjoy the color!

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 10-6-14

Hello,

     “Pastor, will I go to hell if I get a divorce?”

     I picked up the phone in my office as it rang a couple of days ago.  On the other end of the line was a woman whose voice I did not recognize, but by the tone I could tell that she was distressed.  She said that she lived in the neighborhood and had never come to my church, but she needed someone to talk to about the turns in the road that she had encountered in her life.

     Her husband, she said, had been unfaithful a number of times, had run-ins with the law, and had had a habit of verbal abuse with her.  It had become too much for her and they had separated some time ago.  Meantime, she had begun to date someone else, and therein was the focus of her emotional strife.  The other day she had picked up her Bible and was reading Matthew when she stumbled upon Jesus words on divorce, and she was terrified. (Matthew 5:32).

     “What should I do pastor?  Will I go to hell if I get a divorce?”

     In my three decades of being a pastor, I have heard this sort of question many times, the byproduct of “Christian” teaching that portrays God as some sort of tyrannical teacher who seems to delight in failing students.  From far too many preachers people have heard that Christianity is a lifetime entrance exam for heaven, an exam where failure leads to ….well….hell.

     It seems to me, however, that such an image of God is a misrepresentation of the Biblical witness.  The God that I have come to see in the Bible is not a God  who snickers as he pulls out his red pencil and circles the errors of our lives and enjoying putting a large “F” on our lives.  Quite to the contrary, the Bible tells of a God who so determined to hold us within his loving grasp that he has taken the possibility of failure out of our hands.  He has put away his red pencil that tallies the errors of our lives, and he has taken out his only son whose red blood blots out the convicting power of our errors and failures.

     Life is messy.  Life is complicated.  It always has been.  And to those who thought the messiness and complications of life could be fixed by abiding by rules and regulation, Jesus said, not so.  Jesus did not come to add to the pain of divorce by threats of hell and terrorizing people with fear when the choices they are left with provide no perfect answer but a choice between many imperfect answers.  Jesus came to bring hope…hope that is found in forgiveness…forgiveness that supersedes the deeds of our lives.

     “At this church,” I told her, “we believe that Jesus did not come to send us to hell for the pain that we bring to ourselves and others, he came to make sure that those things don’t send us to hell.”

     “What should I do about this other man that I am seeing?  Should I stop seeing him until I get a divorce?”

     “We believe that God wanted to wipe away the pain of confusion about his love for us.   That is why he sent Jesus, the embodiment of God’s love for us and the cornerstone on which a solid relationship with God can be built.  It seems to me, likewise, you will want to eliminate confusion in order to build solid relationships,” I told her.

     It is clear to me that the one who sent his son to endure the pain of the cross takes seriously the pain that we inflict on ourselves and others.  So seriously does he take the pain of divorce, abuse, anger, obsessive control, and everything else that takes its aim on us and our relationships that God has taken his aim on those things, robbing them of their power to ruin our lives, their power to tear us away from God, and their power to make our lives hell…or send us to hell. 

 2 Corinthians 5.17:

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!,

     “What time are your worship services,” she asked me.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

p.s. – Our worship services are 8:15 and 10:45.