The Bungee Cord 2-12-18

Hello,

     A lot of Christians will be walking around with a cross of ashes on their foreheads this Wednesday, “Ash Wednesday”.  So, what is that all about?

     Well, to put it simply this practice is all about honoring the truth.  When the ashes are applied to a person’s forehead, the applier says, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  That is the truth of human existence.  We begin as a microscopic speck of carbon, and when this life is over the multitude of carbon particles that we have become disintegrates into the store of carbon that creation holds.  Between the beginning and the end, the amalgamation of this carbon takes its place in the wonder of a body, and that body enjoys spectacularly amazing animation, which we call life.  The truth is that this life that we enjoy is a temporary thing, bookended by dust and dust, carbon and carbon.

     As Christians, we do not assert the immortality of the soul that purports that we have existed in some form from before creation began, and a form that will exist after creation is over, making our bodies simply a temporary hotel for this eternal thing.  That is an ancient Greek concept, a concept that has sort of crept its way into a lot of Christian belief.  Unfortunately, this concept has a way of making our bodies “prisons” from which the “soul” must try to escape, and that turns this wonderful thing called life into a thing of terror and evil.

     Thing is, the heart of the Christian message is that this experience of life, the unique experience of life that is you and me, is not the enemy.  It is a treasured gift, so treasured that the Giver of life took on life to fill every moment of life with eternity, and fill eternity with life, your life and mine.  In Jesus’ death and resurrection, we encounter the depth of God’s love for us that destroys the bookends of dust and dust, carbon and carbon, so that God might have us in God’s realm, a realm that is not bordered by time or space.  As the Bible says, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17) 

     That is why the ashes that are placed on a person’s forehead are made in the shape of a cross.  For it was what God did on the cross on which Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, hung that gives us hope.  If not for the cross of Christ our only hope would be what we could make of our ashes and carbon, which in the end is really nothing.  But because of the cross we can live in the hope of God’s almighty love and what God can do with ashes and carbon, which is everlasting.  That is why when death comes our way we, who have been marked with Christ’s claiming cross, have “certain hope” (words from the funeral service) that dust and carbon won’t be our end, but life, life anew, will greet us …. us.  Resurrection – not reincarnation – not immortality of the soul…but resurrection, new life,  from the dead.

     So, every time on the day that Christians begin Lent, the reflective journey to the cross (that is, Ash Wednesday) that we look in the mirror and see those cross-shaped ashes on our forehead we see the truth staring at us right in the face: the truth of the temporary length of our days witnessed every time we stand by a grave if not for Christ’s cross, and the truth of life beyond the border of days because of Christ’s claiming cross and the grave out of which he walked on Easter.

     There….that’s what Ash Wednesday is all about!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord  2-5-18

Hello,

     I, along with millions of others, and maybe even you, watched the Super Bowl yesterday.  As Super Bowls go, I found it to be quite an entertaining game as well as a game that made a lot of people happy.  I say that because I saw a pie chart posted on Facebook this week with a small black sliver of that pie indicating the number of people who as Eagles fans were hoping that the Philadelphia Eagles would win.  The entire rest of the pie chart was a light green depicting the vast percentage of people who were just hoping that the Patriots would lose.  I know that the pie chart was a joke, but I have a feeling it wasn’t too far from the truth.  For a lot of reasons , the Patriots have become a team to hate.

     This morning as I was in my car with my radio on, the Public Radio station was doing a story on the Super Bowl.  As part of the story, the reporter was interviewing some of those folks that comprised that small black sliver of people who as Eagles fans were hoping that they would win.

     One woman interviewee said this, “Yesterday was the second greatest day in my life.  The first was the day that I married my husband. Yesterday I saw my Eagles finally win the Super Bowl, and that was the second greatest day in my life.”

     “Wow,” I thought to myself, “either that woman’s life is really miserable, really empty, or really shallow.”  After all, it was just a football game.  Now in saying that, you need to know that I am a big fan of sports….any kind of sports.  My wife will vouch for me by informing you of two things: the almost locked-in reception our TV has to ESPN, and the existence of my orange and blue, Oskeewowow Illinois man cave in our basement.  For all the sports that I watch, especially the Fighting Illini of the University of Illinois, I would find myself pretty excited if the Illini ever (and I mean ever…ugh) won a national championship, but I am certain that if they (but they won’t!) ever do win a national championship it would rank far down my list of the greatest days of my life.

     The thing that I like about sports is its ability to be a great diversion in life.  After all, running a ball across a goal line, hitting a home run, scoring a goal, making a basket, sinking a put hardly comprise matters of life and death.  Sure, the discipline and hard work put in by those who do these things best is worthy of admiration and emulation, but the end product is really a piece of entertainment and diversion.  It gives those who watch, and play, a chance to lose themselves in something of limited consequence so that that of greater consequence isn’t quite so overbearing.  And I believe that we all need these sort of diversions in life.

     Thing is, though, that like all diversions, life’s diversions are only temporary.  Sooner or later life hits us smack in the face, and when that happens something deep, not shallow or trivial, needs to be there to keep us from getting crushed or swept away.  And I find myself counting the advent of those things in my life as some of the greatest days in my life….the day that I married my wife, the day that each of my kids was born, the day I graduated from Seminary, the day someone said to me “you saved my life”….. on and on I could go.  Thankfully, unlike my fear for the interviewed Eagle fan, my life has been neither miserable, empty, or shallow.

     But greater than all of these days, one day yet stands out as the best: the day that I got hit with water….water that alerted me that it was me that was being spoken to…spoken to by the one whose power spans the universe, who holds it together, who permeates everything that is and isn’t…who is bound by nothing, not even space or time…..that that one was speaking to me and saying, “Jerry, it was for you that I died and rose, and I won’t let anything…and I mean anything….ever….and I mean ever....take you away from me.

     Now that was the greatest day in my life, a day that makes every day great!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord  1-19-18

Hello,

“There’s probably no God.”  That was the slogan of an “advertising campaign” launched in England in 2009.  Countering a campaign by Christians who plastered the sides of buses with the promise of eternal torment for those who were not Christian (not what I would put on a bus to speak of the Christian faith to the world), a group of people who see no evidence for God’s existence, and also believe that those who promote the existence of God detract people from engaging in the most important things in life, began plastering their message on London buses.  “There’s probably no God.”  The campaign took off, and soon this slogan found itself translated to a variety of languages and posted on buses in a variety of countries.

As odd as it may seem, I find myself agreeing with these folks….not agreeing that there is no God….but agreeing with them in the word “probably”.  Limited in my knowledge of statistical analysis and probabilities, it seems completely reasonable to me that if one examines the existence of God based upon specific criteria, that is, the empirical data collected by day to day human experience, one might well conclude that the data is far from conclusive that there is a God.  Although some may say that they have put God to the test and God has responded to that test to prove God’s existence (I remember in my high school days that one such person asked God to cause the cloths hanging in his closet to flutter to prove God’s existence, to which he said that happened), I find myself, for a variety of reasons, not assured of God’s existence because of such things.  Folks far wiser than I find causes for the happenings in our world that do not mandate the existence of God.

This is no new phenomena.  Even in the Bible, in Psalms 10, 14, and 53, we are told that there were people who said, “There is no god.” 

I don’t know if the number of people who profess that God does not exist is any greater today than in other generations, but it does seem to me that the numbers are not falling.  And my guess is that is happening because as folks look around in hopes of discovering God’s existence, much of what they take in leads them to conclude that the probability of God’s existence is minimal at best.

That doesn’t surprise me, because if indeed, God is one who is so utterly different than human beings, that is, not bound by time and space, than to use the confines of time and space to discover God is not a very probable task.  To me, it is like a blind person seeking to prove the existence of the color orange.  What would give a blind person empirical truth to the existence of the color orange?  Would not a blind person be led to say, “Orange probably doesn’t exist.”?

So, you may be asking of me, why do I believe in God?  My answer lies in what the Apostle Paul wrote centuries ago to the Corinthians,

²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”  (1 Cor. 1:21-25)

For me, it seems very reasonable that God, who is beyond our limits, would take hold of our hearts and minds through something that is likewise beyond empirical proof…..love.  Love so great that God would enter into time and space to reveal God’s self to us.  It is said, and I have found it so for myself, that when one is in love, one sees the world in a whole new way.  Likewise, when I discover that I am in God’s love, I likewise envision things anew…I see God’s presence where empirical eyes do not.  I live with hope when empirical eyes do not.  I find reason for peace and joy when empirical eyes do not.

My tradition of Christianity has long taught that “ I believe that I cannot come to my Lord Jesus Christ by my own intellegence or power. But the Holy Spirit called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with her gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith…”.  This teaching rings true to me, thankfully true.

So, giving credit where credit is due…..those who seek to discover God through human wisdom will probably always conclude that “probably there is no God”, but I have come to see that God’s deepest desire is for me to know him and his love for me, and God will go to unbelievably foolish means until I, and you, abide in his love…..have eyes that see with his love…..and believe in him….not just probably….but certainly!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger