Bungee Cord 2-24-14

Hello,

     Sadly, the winter Olympics are over in Sochi, Russia, but thankfully they are also over in Stahlstown, Pennsylvania.

     Our house sits on top of a hill with a serpentine ½ mile gravel lane leading to it.  It has six 90 degree turns connected by straight-ways of varied lengths culminating in a circular drive.  Because of the seemingly daily snows of 5 inches for the past several weeks, traversing our drive has been a bit Olympic.   A layer of one-inch thick ice formed atop the gravel creating a bobsled run to rival the one in Sochi.  My runs (drives) down our drive have closely matched the Jamaica bobsledders’ covering every inch of the ice (as the Olympic announcers commented) bouncing off the sidewalls of hardened snow and occasionally skidding sideways coming out of the turns.  As with the bobsled runs of Sochi, going down our drive may have been treacherous, but going up was nearly impossible causing me to abandon my four-wheel drive truck at the bottom of the hill and trudge my up the hill through the 2 feet of snow that covered the ground.  But this weekend our temperatures rose into the 50’s, melting the ice and returning our drive to its gravel beginnings.

     We heat our house with propane that is brought by a tanker truck to the one thousand gallon tank that sits behind our garage.  When the snow started to fall in the first weeks of January we took a peek at the volume gauge on our propane tank and noticed it was reading 40% full.  Not knowing how cold the winter was going to be and seeing that there would be no way for the propane truck to make it up our ever increasingly icy drive, we went into conservation mode (dropping the thermostats in our home to 62-65 degrees and relying on our wood burning fireplace for heat) and kept a vigilant eye on the tank level that was creeping its way down.

     This morning as I was sitting in my reclining chair, I heard a rumble making its way to the top of our hill.  It was the propane truck!  I watched as they parked their truck alongside our garage, and saw them pull the big hose to our tank that they took longer than their normal visit to fill.  But alas, now we can release our fears of no hot water, no fuel for our stove, and a flameless furnace, and we can return the temperature of our family room above its toe chilling setting.  Alleluia!

     “Alleluia” means “praise the LORD”, and I am thankful that with the snow vanquished by the warm temperatures I can rest at ease.  But as a Christian I am more thankful for what I read in Romans 8, that “nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”  No matter how steep the hill or deep the valley, no matter the lack of traction or depth of ice, and no matter the size of drifts or length of the drive……nothing in all of creation can keep God from reaching us with the power of his love.  And with that promise, what need I fear….ever?   Nothing!  Not that I am looking forward to blizzards not of my doing, to deep pits of my creation, or to the gusty drift piling winds of the world….but unlike my propane dealer facing my bobsled run of a driveway…..nothing will keep God from reaching me.  Alleluia!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 2-17-14

Hello,

I went to the grocery store last week to pick up a couple of things…broccoli, croutons (I got the wrong kind….I didn’t know there were stuffing croutons and salad croutons),  and some tomato paste.  With only three things in my basket, I determined that I was eligible for the “express lane” where there were only two people in front of me.  When I stepped into line, I noticed that the woman who was leading the line had emptied a shopping cart full of items in front of her.  Had she not seen the sign “12 items or less”?

I confess that on a few occasions I have pushed the limit of 12 to 13 or maybe 15, but never to 20 and never to a cart-full.  So, as I stood waiting in the “express lane” two things happened.  First, my patience waned as I saw the regular lanes emptying out.  Second, I noticed that she had separated her purchase into two sections, placing the dividing bar between them…each section still excessively exceeding the limit of 12, but closer than her cartful..  Clever…but aggravating!

Her rule parsing may have soothed her conscience from guilt, but it certainly struck down the purpose of that lane for those of us who stood behind her in the “fast” lane.  I was ready to cast stones – stones of guilt upon this one whose concern for others seemed to go no further than the glasses upon her nose.

But wait…..I, too, have glasses upon my nose, and when I look through them to take a clear look at my life, I have to confess that my care for others often doesn’t even reach the lenses, instead they are drawn  back into myself in my own black hole of self-centeredness….or in Christian terms….my own black hole of sin.

For these past few weeks in the Lutheran churches throughout the world, we have read together Jesus’ words from his Sermon on the Mount saying things like, “You have heard it said that you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that when you look upon a person in lust that you have committed adultery in your heart.”  Rule parsing , so says Jesus, may dilute personal guilt, but it doesn’t diminish the pain and fear that comes when that rule parsing shakes the ground upon which relationship build their foundations.

So where does that leave us rule parsers?  Will our relationships with dear ones near to us and those dear to God in places far away from us always be as precarious as walks on springtime ice?

I am afraid the answer is “yes”…”yes” as long as there’s a black hole of sin in each of our lives.  But the answer that comes from God is “no”…”no” because God who is the antithesis of a black hole of self-consumption has taken aim at the black holes in our lives.  He took a shot of divine grace and mercy that travelled through a Bethlehem manger, hit with a lethal blow upon a Golgotha cross, and punctured every black hole as it exited the gates of an emptied tomb …going on to strike you and me in the waters of Baptism and the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.

“No,” says God.  “No, your relationships are not built upon the thin and cracking ice of black holes.  They are built upon the ever-expanding  pulsing of my grace.”

Sunday after Sunday that grace of God thunders and throbs as we gather together, shaking and rattling those deflated black holes so that the holes God pierced in them might not scab over ever again.  Maybe you have never thought of  going to church in this way….maybe to you it seems more like a sedative than a shot of divine adrenaline….but you just might be surprised…surprised to find out that something deep is going on under the surface….God is at work, infusing you with his grace, building a pressure of his love and mercy, that cannot be tamed but will explode in your life…bursting black holes and drawing you closer to him and casting your vision and care well beyond the glasses sitting upon your nose.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee cord 2-10-14

Hello,

I am sorry to say, but I have become antisocial.

A couple of years ago, I was visiting my son who lives in NYC, and every time that I hopped on the Subway I noticed that a large number of the people who were riding with me had no desire to see who was on the train with them.  They were locked into their “smart phones” playing games.  It seemed very anti-social to me.

Alas, I have joined them.  This past summer when my previous “dumb phone” was up for upgrade, I found myself upgrading to a “smart phone”.  (I am not quite sure why they call it a smart phone….it hasn’t made me any smarter, but more reliant on technology.)  Although I didn’t want a smart phone because I am too cheap to pay the extra internet hookup, I was told the only dumb phone that I could get was the same one that I was turning in, and I didn’t like it for a variety of reasons.  So now I carry a smart phone….and I have become anti-social, pulling it out as I wait at doctor’s offices, relaxing at home, drinking a cup of coffee at a coffee shop, and I probably would pull it out on the subway except for the fact that there is no subway between Stahlstown and Greensburg, Pa.  And when I lock myself into my cell phone, my game of choice is Solitaire (I know….how boring!).  But for me, that is the point of it all, to do something to pass the time that requires little to no brainwork or dexterity…..thus Solitaire.

My same NYC son said some years ago that he couldn’t understand the attraction to playing solitaire, because it is a game where winning is totally dependant upon the luck of the draw….no skill needed, no strategy to implement, just taking the cards you are dealt and flipping through a deck and making the best of it.

Although I don’t usually get very philosophical about Solitaire, it occurred to me that Solitaire mirrors life.  Sure, just like Solitaire there are some strategies, like clearing spots for kings, that can lead toward winning…but sometimes the cards, no matter how you play them, leave you short….and my phone is quick to rub it in my making this nasty musical sound that reminds me of water being flushed down the toilet. 

I don’t know.  Does playing Solitaire help me to deal with the lack of control that comes with living life?  Maybe in some small way.  Maybe it reminds me of the truth of which “skill” games belie, and that is that in the end life really isn’t a matter of strategy and brains….in the end life has more to do with things completely outside of our control.

But there is something, that I believe, about life that Solitaire also belies, and that is that life isn’t ever solitary…it is always “dual-itary” ( I know, that isn’t really a word.).  That is the essence of the Christian faith, that the one who is behind all that we will ever know about the universe has joined us as we take the cards that are dealt, and adds a rule of his own to the game, and this is it: no matter  how the cards are played or the outcome of the game ( that is, one’s life ), his word, “I am with you” is the final word.  Not, “you’ve won” or “you’ve lost”, but “I am with you”.  This rule…this rule that God adds…was shouted from the cross for the world to hear when Jesus said, “It is finished”…. was spoken with the splash of water in Baptism for you to hear in the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”….and is whispered to you when you come to the table, “This is my body given for you….this is my blood shed for you,”…and on the day that you die your dead ears will hear, “come to the place that I have prepared for you, for where I am, you will be also.”

When we find ourselves soloing Rich Mullins song, the song of Solitaire, “We’re not as strong as we think we are (check it out on youtube)….God adds God’s voice and sings along, the song of Dual-itaire, “I’ve got you in my hands, and I’m not letting go!”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 2-3-14

Hello,

Winter lesson number 1: when in hot tub, immerse deeply to stay warm.

My hot tub sits 10 feet from the sliding door to my Illini Mancave on the back side of my house.  So, in these winter months when I have the itch to sit in my hot tub, I first open the hot tub up clad in coat and gloves.  Then I re-enter my man cave, dress down as if it was an 80 degree summer day, re-open the sliding glass door, and DASH for the water! 

There is a certain peace that comes in sitting in the hot tub as soft snow falls from the sky, and on the coldest of days it is kind of fun to thumb my nose at the chill all the while sitting in the warm water dressed as if it were a mid-summer’s day.

Yet, as I sit in the hot tub, I have noticed that the cold still tries to chill my bones by attacking whatever stands above water level.  If I sit up straight, I find that the top of my shoulders ride above the water, and as the wind captures the spray from the jets I find that my shoulders and face can get quite cold quite fast.  So, being the physics genius that I am, I make a slight adjustment in my sitting….slouch down a bit, drawing the water to just under my chin and the cold is conquered.  Thus the lesson learned:  when it is cold outside, immerse yourself deeply in the hot tub to keep warm.

A lesson to be learned about life, too.  When it’s cold outside(and when is the world not cold and biting) immerse yourself deeply in the warm waters of God’s grace and mercy to keep warm.

How does one immerse one’s self deeper in the warm waters of God’s grace and mercy? 

Worship regularly:  develop relationships with the people of God who gather with you, listen attentively to the word of God, partake in the deepest embrace of God at his table, unite your voice with others in song and prayer.

Live out God’s grace: forgive those who have wronged you instead of holding grudges, reach out a hand of help to those who have fallen instead of leaving them lie in pain, visit and befriend those whom the world has tossed away, pray for those who would wish to be your enemy.

When Jesus said, “Come to me all you that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” had he had a hot tub, I think he would have said, “When it’s cold outside, remember to immerse yourself deeply in my tub of grace and mercy, and I will keep you warm.”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 1-26-14

Hello,

I’m back.  After two weeks of tromping up and down ancient tells, skating along original Roman streets, wandering through the extravagant tombs of civilizations dating back 2000 years, transversing city gates built 1500 BC, standing at certain and uncertain sites of Jesus’ life, slinking through cavernous water system tunnels, discovering the altars and temples of pagan gods, rubbing shoulders with people of unfamiliar cultures…..all in sunny 60 and 70 degrees weather in the middle of January….I am back!

What I learned and what I experienced could fill a year’s worth of Bungee Cords, but lest I bore you with an endless travel log, something happened to me early on in my travels that opened my eyes to something that I have always known, but never really took to heart.

I am not a fan of “touristy” things, so the idea of hopping on a forty-foot passenger boat and circle around the Sea of Galilee seemed a part of the trip that I might have easily foregone had it not been on the group itinerary. So, I, along with the other 42 members of our contingent and a group of people from India set sail out to sea (the Sea of Galilee is not really a sea…it is actually a small/medium size lake, small enough to look across it and see all the shoreline).  The sail started off with the raising of the American Flag accompanied by the playing of the National Anthem, and like wise the Indian Flag and anthem.  (A touch of touristry to me, but not all.)  As was all of our days, sunny and beautiful, we motored our way upon the Sea, feeling the waves and the wind upon our boat as Jesus might have.  (Actually our engine powered boat that was twice as long as Jesus’ boats, and much heavier and stable set us a bit apart from Jesus’ rides on the Sea of Galilee, but we were out on the lake, and I have to admit it was kind of cool.)

As it happened I was sitting in the front of the boat and three people whom I had never met made their way to the front, too.  Three natives of India, all in their 20’s, two women and a man.  One of the women had a camera, and she gave it to the man, asking him to take a picture of her and the other woman as they stood by the bow of the boat.  He raised the camera to his eye, snapped off a couple of pictures and handed it back to the woman, and as he did so, he asked them to take a picture of him. (Of course this was all happening in a language of which I had no understanding.)  So, the two women stepped back, and as they did, he took a seat next to me, and he put his arm around my shoulder.  Although this shoulder hug may have been of little surprise to people of his culture…it came as quite a surprise to me.  My smile may have shown a bit of shock to it, but nevertheless, the woman snapped the picture of the two of us.

The picture taken, the man took his arm from my shoulder and said in broken English, “Christian, yes?”

“Yes, I am a Christian,” I replied.  I tried with little success to find out more about him, but the language barrier was too great.

When I got off the boat, I knew that I would never again see this man whom I had never seen before….but his companionship would stay with me forever….a companionship whose only glue was our shared God-given name, “Christian.”

That encounter opened my eyes to the same unshatterable companionship that I so often overlook with those whom I regularly see and know who likewise bear the same God-given name, “Christian”.  Living in a world that is quick to point out differences in order to divide….sometimes I think it is to divide and conquer….to isolate and devastate….that man’s arm around my shoulder seemed like the arm of Jesus….after all, it was only Jesus that held us together.

As you walk into any church, you will note that in it is a rather rag-tag, conglomerate of people who are united with a glue that nothing in the world can dissolve: the blood of Jesus.  So, while the winds of the sea of Galilee still have tuffed my hair, let me invite you to church this weekend so that you, too, may feel the arm of Jesus resting upon your shoulder, uniting you with him and all who bear his name, “Christian”, in a solidarity of unity that no fear, no force, and no foe can sever.

“Christian, yes”.  “Yes!”

Have a great week,

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuenberger

Bungee Cord 1-4-14



Hello,

      For those of you who want to know how the Christmas story ended…..here it is…..

     Christmas Eve morning not only ushered in Christmas, but it also ushered in a Christmas snow storm, the like of which had never been known in his new town.  Of course where he used to live, it was just one of those winter storms that you lived through, so he had no idea of the surprise that was coming before him. Playing video games all day as the snow kept on falling, he had a harder and harder time concentrating on the video game knowing that the time to go to church, to feel at home, was coming near.
     “We’re not going to church tonight,” said Billy’s mother.  “The weather is too bad, and the roads have not been plowed.  We’ll never get there, and if we do, we’ll never get home.”  When he heard it, his heart sank.  He had waited so long to go to Christmas worship and finally not feel quite so lost.   Besides it seemed like silliness not to go to church.  Where they used to live, no amount of snow kept anyone from coming to Christmas Eve services.  He was sure that if he didn’t go, everyone would laugh at him when he got to school saying, “Why weren’t you at Christmas Eve services?  Is everyone a wimp where you used to live?”
     So, when the evening came, Billy got dressed up for church just like he always used to.  He went into the T.V. room where the rest of the family was sitting, and he said, “I am going to church.”  There was a surprised look on everyone’s face, and so he said it again, “I am going to church.”
     “Well, I told you that we weren’t going to go tonight,”  said his mother.
     “I know,” he said, “but I want to go.”
     “How are you going to get there,” his father asked.
     “I’m going to walk”, he said, because it wasn’t really that far away.
     “Ok,” his dad said, snickering a bit, sure that as soon as his son started off in the storm he’d come back home.
     So, Billy got his coat on, put on his warmest hat, put a scarf around his neck and gloves on his hands and walked out the front door to go to church on Christmas eve.  There were a couple of times when he thought to himself that maybe he should go back home, but no…he was tired of feeling lost and alone…..he was going to go to church on Christmas eve and not just feel at home…but be at home.
     When he got close he could see the light pouring through the stained glass windows, like rubies and sapphires sparkling from a king’s crown.  But when he got to the church he noticed something strange….the parking lot was completely empty….not a single car.
     “Mmm,” he thought to himself, “Maybe everyone parked someplace else because they couldn’t get the lot plowed.”  But when he walked into the church he found out that he had been wrong….it wasn’t that they had parked some place else….their cars were all still at home, because there wasn’t a single person there.
     “Maybe they’re just running late,” he thought, after all he was a bit early.  But as the minutes went by, no one else came through the door.  Not only was he all alone in that church, he now really felt all alone….all alone on a dark, cold night…in a town that seemed to not even know he was there…no one who he could really call a friend…and not even his family beside him now.  The loneliness was as dark as a lightless cave.  And then all of the sudden, all the lights of the church went off….darkness added to darkness.  What was he to do?  Didn’t anyone even realize that he was there?  Should he leave…he couldn’t…..it was so dark in there he couldn’t even see the aisles.  So he sat there…in the dark….in a daze….in despair.
     When all of the sudden a spot light broke into the darkness and shone on the cross in the front of the church, and from the back of the church he heard the familiar voice of the pastor yelling, “‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
     When he heard those words, words that he had heard year after year, he heard them like he had never heard them before.  He knew that they were the words the angels spoke to the shepherds…but there in the darkness, there in the daze, feeling like a forgotten hillside shepherd….there where the only “you” was him…those words seemed to be aimed at him.  “I am bringing you,” …yes me….’”good news of great joy, for unto you,”  yes me….”is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”…..Do not be afraid!”  For the first time since he had moved he didn’t feel lonely and he didn’t feel alone.  Jesus had been born for him, Billy Johnson…for him!
     For the last 12 years Billy had heard those words, words that angels had spoken to Bethlehem shepherds….but this year heard them differently.  When Billy Johnson left that church that night, he left having heard those words spoken to him.
     Just the same, know this, tonight those words once spoken to shepherds were on this night spoken to you.  AMEN.
   
     The Bungee Cord will be taking a two week break as I will be wandering around in Israel  Looking forward to getting a lay of the Biblical land, get a feel for the way people lived in Jesus' day, and see the struggle that continues among the people who live there.

     Talk to you when I get back, but in the mean time, have a great week.

God's grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 12-30-13

Hello,

     Merry Christmas!  As is my custom, I write a story for my Christmas Eve sermon.  So, for all of you who weren’t at the 7:00 service at First Lutheran of Greensburg (and even for those of you who were)….here’s this year’s story.            

                                   

‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

     Four 12 years Billy Johnson had lived in the same town, the same house, went to the same church, had the same friends, but when he turned 13 he moved.  His mother got a new job, a good job, so after a family conference around dinner one night, the family decided that although it was going to be hard to leave, the right thing to do was to move to the town where his mom’s job was going to be.

     So, in the middle of the summer they packed up everything that they had, went to a whole bunch of farewell parties and set off onto a new adventure.  When they drove out of town, it really was farewell, because his mom’s new job was clear across the country.  It was a bit scary for all of them, so when their old town was out of sight they passed a Bible around the car and everyone read a verse from Psalm 23….”The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want……he leadeth me by still waters, he restoreth my soul…..surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”

     It took several days to drive to their new town, and even though they were still in the United States when they hopped out of the car to get something to eat at the MacDonalds, it felt like they were in a foreign land.  Everything was so much older.  The streets were so much tighter.  The houses were so much closer together.  The people talked funny, at least funny to them.  There were people wearing clothes the likes of which they had never seen before, and some of their favorite TV shows came on so much later than they did in their previous town that he knew that they would never be able to watch them.

     The transition to the new school was tough.  It wasn’t that the kids and teachers were mean to him, it was just that it felt like the kids and the teachers didn’t even notice him.  When he walked into the classrooms, the kids would wave a quick “hi” to him, but then quickly turn and talk to their friends.  Plans were made by them to hang out, but those plans never included him.  Some of the subjects in school were new to him, and he felt like a cycler going up a hill trying to keep up with the rest of the pack.  Other subjects were old hat to him, and sitting in class was like taking a sleeping pill.  It wasn’t that things were bad with the move to this new town, it was just that it was like trying to jump into a train that was speeding by, and as the days passed by he just felt lost … a fish out of water, a ship without a sail.

     The one place where he felt a little different was in church.  They located a Lutheran church not too far from his new home, and every Sunday he would go to church and feel a little less lost.  The worship liturgy was the same as the church he grew up in, they just sang it a lot faster here.  Communion was still the body and blood of Jesus given in bread and wine, but instead of a continuous flow of people past the bread and wine, you had to kneel around the altar and wait for everyone to get done.  Some of the hymns he recognized and could sing, others he had never heard before.  And even though the kids were a little warmer to him, they still seemed to stick tight with their old friends, kind of leaving him out.  It wasn’t the perfect place to begin to feel at home in this new town, but unlike everything else, it was at least a beginning.

     So, when Christmas came, it came to Billy with an extra measure of excitement, a chance for him to really feel at home.  He could hardly wait to hear the familiar story of Jesus’ birth, just like he had heard it over and over again before he moved.  He could hardly wait to sing “Away in the Manger”, “Silent Night”, and “Joy to the World” and know that they were singing them back at his other home on that night, too.  He couldn’t wait to watch the candle light get passed through the congregation, just like it did in his old church.  After feeling so lost for the last several months, Billy could hardly wait to get on the solid and familiar ground of Christmas eve worship.

     Christmas Eve morning not only ushered in Christmas, but it also ushered in a Christmas snow storm, the like of which had never been known in his new town.  Of course where he used to live, it was just one of those winter storms that you lived through, so he had no idea of the surprise that was coming before him. Playing video games all day as the snow kept on falling, he had a harder and harder time concentrating on the video game knowing that the time to go to church, to feel at home, was coming near.

     “We’re not going to church tonight,” said Billy’s mother.  “The weather is too bad, and the roads have not been plowed.  We’ll never get there, and if we do, we’ll never get home.”  When he heard it, his heart sank…..(to be continued next week)

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger