The Bungee Cord 8-21-17

Hello,

     I turn 60 this week.  60!

    I suspect that for younger readers of the Bungee Cord, that sounds pretty old, or at least it seemed old to me when I was young.  60!  But for those of you older readers, I suspect that 60 seems pretty young to you, and many who have passed this milestone in life have told me so.  Ah, 60!

     As I pass this milestone in my life, I am led to reflect on these 60 years.  To reflect with absolute amazement on all the things that have changed in the world.  Who would have ever believed in the year that I was born, 1957, that the phone that I carry in my pocket would be more powerful that a computer that filled rooms.  To reflect on all the pain and suffering that have etched their misery upon the retina of my eyes, and I find myself singing along with Jackson Brown…. “Doctor my eyes have seen the years and the slow parade of tears….”.  To reflect on the countless number of times that my heart has exploded in joy and wonder, creating a stream of memories that like marching bands have paraded through my life.  To reflect on my struggles and failures that like leaches live off of me and refuse to let go.  So many things to reflect on that have filled these 60 years…so many that I have forgotten more than I remember.

     But,

“³ When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
   the moon and the stars that you have established; 
⁴ what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
   mortals^* that you care for them?” (Psalm 8)

Although 60 years may be a long time for me filled with innumerable memories, the span and the events of my life do not add up to what God can gather in in the blink of God’s eye.  To the one whose hands have been endlessly at work creatively shaping the universe, and to the one whose vision encompasses time and beyond….the work of my hands and the gaze of my life is microscopic in substance and importance.  “What am I (a human being) that God is mindful of me, I (a mortal) that you care for me?”

     God answers that question by the Good Friday cross and the empty Easter tomb.  Everything.  That is God’s answer to this question.  What am I that God is mindful of me, I, that God cares for me?  I am everything to God.  So much do I mean to God that God gave everything in order that nothing might separate me from God.  So much do I mean to God that God conquered everything in order that nothing might take me from God.  God’s answer to the question that reflection on one’s life necessarily asks is, “Everything…everything to God.”

     Thing is that God’s answer is so outrageous that many find it hard to believe.  The product of an inner need to feel important.  Wishful thinking that stems from the fear of death.

     One thing that has happened to me in this span of 60 years, happened 36 years ago.  I married.  On the day that I got married, I heard someone say to me that I meant so much to her that she would let nothing ever separate us for as long as we both should live.  And the question that kept running through my mind?  “Who am I that someone should care so much for me?”  It seemed an outrageous thing to me.  An inner need?  Wishful thinking?

     Over the course of these years, I have come to believe the seemingly outrageous words that my wife spoke to me.  Her persistent love of me has made a believer out of me.  And so it is with God.  God’s persistent love of me has made a believer out of me.  Not the events of my life over these 60 years, but the relentless love with which God has filled each of my days has made a believer out of me.  As outrageous and unbelievable as it might be that I mean everything to God, God is determined that I would believe it….believe it so that I might live each day in divine peace, that I might confidently step in tomorrow after I have failed today, that I might stop spending all my time trying to become worthy and spend my time reaching out to those who the world has decided is not worthy of any one’s time, that I might look square eyed at my greatest fears and snicker with victorious delight.

     This week I turn 60.  60!  Don’t know how many days or years lie ahead, but this I have come to believe that as has been for 60 years…..  “What am I that God is mindful of me, I, that God cares for me?”  Everything!

     And so are you, too, no matter how old you are.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord  8-14-17

Hello,

     I am a bad golfer.  Off the tee anyone standing in the fairway, or at least my fairway, is under no threat of being struck by my ball.  Worms need to stay in their holes when I shoot my long shots.  If there is sand or water….I find it, and when I am on the green, I have a hard time finding the hole (maybe if there was sand or water in it, I would one putt every green).  I am a bad golfer.

     Nevertheless, I keep on golfing.  I golf, not for the sport of it, but for the exercise.  As many of you know, I am spending this summer trying to refocus and rejuvenate.  One of the prescriptions given to me to do so is to get some daily exercise.  That is where golf comes in.  There’s a course about 5 minutes from my house that if I get there before 8:00 a.m., it is wide open for me to play at my own pace.  So, with my clubs on my shoulders and my golf shoes on my feet, I walk and carry nine holes several times a week.  For the exercise.

     I have to keep on reminding myself that it is for the exercise and not for sport, because when I forget to maintain focus, I can find myself getting very frustrated and even upset, which defeats the purpose of doing things that help me clear my head.   After all, it is only golf.  So when I duff my tee shot, chunk my approach, blade my chip shot, and king kong my putt, I tell myself as I put my club back in my bag and put the straps over my shoulder, “It is only golf.”

     I find that an easier thing to say when I am playing by myself, because when I am playing with others whose skills exceed mine, embarrassment, failure, and despair creep their way into my psyche.  The score card that compares me to another lets me know how bad I am.  The time I spend looking for wayward balls while those who I am playing with are patiently waiting for me lets me know how bad I am.  The shots out of the sand that go sailing over the green and almost hit my playing partners let me know how bad I am.  Like I said, I am a bad golfer, and when I am playing with someone else, I find myself not humbled, but humiliated.

     Fact is, this is the way that, as Martin Luther would say, “the Devil, the world and my sinful self” are at work seeking to corrode my life with sadness and shame.  We never play life alone.  They take things and twist them around, often times making things that are of no great importance weigh heavy in our lives.  Things like the size of the house we live in, the status our job holds, the physique of our bodies, the style of the clothes that we wear, and the score on our golf card and make of them measures of our worth, and in doing so they always keep peace, hope, and joy at bay.

     But Jesus would remind us that it is only golf.  When it comes to worth and value, Jesus says, “I died and rose for you.  What could make you of any more or less value or worth.”  That is why Jesus gathers us together every week so that having heard the chorus of “the Devil, the world and my sinful self” throughout the week, he might speak with a solitary clarity of our worth and value.  Weekly worship doesn’t make us more valuable or worthy, it makes our value and worth clear in our lives….showing us that we do have something to offer our neighbor in need, that we do have something to stand upon when faced with the reflection in our mirrors, and that we do have something to count on in the presence of the divine.  Jesus died and rose for you and me.  What could make us more or less valuable than that.

     I am a bad golfer….but it is only golf.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord  8-7-17

Hello,

     I was rummaging through some boxes in my garage attic and came upon a baseball that was signed by my teammates from the All Star team that I was on when I was 12 years old.  Although I am not certain, I think it was the game ball from the game that I pitched against the other All Star team from our town, a game that we won….a game where I hit a home run off of Rick Bouchard, and struck out my best friend, Mike Kripner, on a curve ball in the dirt.  Some of the names on the ball I remember well, other’s have passed through my memory.  Back in those days I had dreams, and so did others of me, of going somewhere in my life with baseball.  Of being a baseball success.  Well….only dreams….as it turned out that I peaked out in my high school years.  (Not so for my friend, Mike, who played in the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates systems for a number of years.)

     It would be fun to find out what all those other guys who signed that ball are doing in life.  I suspect that I might be surprised where life has taken many of them, as they might be surprised to see me standing in a pulpit rather than on a pitcher’s mound.

     As a pitcher, success was fairly easy to measure.  If we won the game…if I struck out a bunch of batters…if I pitched the whole game, I knew I had succeeded.  As a pastor, I have discovered that success was a far trickier mark to claim.  When I look out at a congregation and see some people dozing off as I preach my sermon….when I visit the hospital and sit with someone who is in rapidly declining health and I can only watch it happen….when I invest myself in the lives of young people only to see them pulled away from Jesus by other things in life…when I lose my patience and become cynical …….all of these things cause me to wonder, “Have I succeeded as a Pastor?”

     I know that the primary question to ask of myself is, “Have I been faithful as a Pastor?”, because that is what I hear God asking of me in the Scriptures, but amid the faithfulness that I have striven for, it would be nice to see that I have had some success in my vocation.  Early in my ministry as I pondered what a successful pastorate might look like, I decided to measure my degree of success in this way: If I, with the grace of God, have made a difference in one person’s life….that is enough to count my ministry and life successful.

     The world, of course tells us differently.  The more people who know your name….the more toys that one collects…the stores that you shop in…the breadth of influence that you have…the neighborhood that you live in….these are the things that the world has marked as signs of success,  marks that always leave us always falling short of success.  But when I consider what it means to see a person who has been overwhelmed in hopelessness take the next step in life with courage ….when I see a person who has fallen into a deep pit of their own making leave the shame and guilt behind having experienced the power of God’s forgiveness to amend their lives…when I see a person engaged in a battle with death with eternal confidence in Christ’s love say to death, “Death be not proud.”…..if, by the grace of God, I have been part of these things happening even in just one person….I will lay myself down at the end of my days and say of my time in this life, that I have been a success.

     You don’t have to be a pastor to make such a mark in a person’s life.  As a matter of fact, I think that those who are not pastors find themselves maybe more often on the front lines of life.  So, let me encourage you to plug your ears to the world’s depiction of success, and with the power of the grace of God step into today with the hope that you might be blessed to make a difference in one person’s life…and be thankful that you can count yourself as a success.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger