The Bungee Cord 6-11-25

Hello,

The reason that I am a couple of days late with the Bungee Cord is that I just got home from a long weekend with my son in Denver. My father, who is living with complete dementia, is in a cognitive care unit in Davenport, Iowa, and so after visiting him, I continued my drive to Denver. Now that I am home from my trip, I have become completely certain that when I did not choose to become an over the road truck driver, I made the right decision.

Distance makes being with my son far too rare, but he has spread his wings, and he is soaring well. While I was with him, we did a bunch of father/son things, of which one of them was to go to an Italian restaurant that he had been wanting to go to. Not knowing the restaurants exclusiveness, I went severely underdressed as I wore an Illinois hoody. No one said anything, although everyone else was clearly more sharply attired. The restaurant was such a hot item, that it was hard to get a reservation , so we got the only reservation we could get: a couple of seats at a common table. I had never done such a thing before, so I didn’t know quite what the appropriate etiquette was.

There were two open seats on one end of the table that sat eight, so we sat ourselves in them. A couple of mid-aged ladies sat on our left, and a young couple sat on our right, which was at the end of the table, so they sort of faced us. Soon after we took our seats, a waitress came and placed a menu that was leather covered in front of us. When I opened it, I saw the price tag for the “sampler” page, $115.00. I snickered as I noted the price to my son, thinking that my credit card was going to be the recipient of the cost.

My snicker must have been audible as the young woman at the end of the table, snickered, too. And with that snicker a two-hour conversation began. My son gave me a tap on my thigh to tell me that I should leave them alone as he sensed they were out for a special meal. And they were. It was their 5th anniversary. We briefly shared our stories, and I figured that that would be the end of it, but not so. Every time that I tried to end our conversation by saying that I didn’t mean to interrupt their celebration, the woman would always say, “Oh no, you aren’t interrupting .”

Being naïve about these sort of things and realizing that I would never see these people again, I kept the conversation going. As it turns out, the young woman’s father grew up in Ligonier (the town that we are nearest to, and the town where my last parish was), and he was very active in the Episcopal church in the neighboring small town. What a small world!

So, on and on we chatted amidst the waitress’ interruptions. She had been to Africa, as had I. Her husband was an attorney that dealt with food safety cases…very interesting. She knew of where my son lived, next to a hospital. She was the head nurse in a NICU unit. It was all very fascinating. She even was hoping to make further plans to meet my son’s wife at a dinner.

After dinner, my son told me how nervous he was about my lack of etiquette when our conversation got started. They were obviously, as far as he could tell, on a significant dinner date. But funny enough, as the conversation got rolling, the significance of their dinner time was swept up in an enjoyable sharing of stories and lives.

When we left the restaurant, we thanked the maître d’. After our thanks, she said to us, “Sounds like you made some friends. I think that couple needed some love.” Of course, we were given no idea of why they “needed some love”. Maybe they had been quite bothered when they were seated? Maybe they had brought with them obvious baggage that they were carrying? Who knows?

Just as Jesus said, you never know when you find yourself in a position to bring life changing love into people’s lives. It would be fun to know what might become of our loving interaction with those two young people, but this I do know, it was a delight to unknowingly put a dent of love in their lives.

A delight that I hope you will one day come to encounter, too.

Have a great week

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 The Bungee Cord 6-2-25

Hello,

Maybe this has happened to you? I was in the middle of Ohio at a rest stop getting a sandwich at Pinera. As I was ordering, suddenly a feather fluttered in my nose, and I had to sneeze….which I did. I turned from the young man at the computer, placed my forearm over my mouth and sneezed. Achoo! Even before I had a chance to turn around, I heard from the young man, “Bless you.”

Another time, I was in a grocery store hunting for something, and that feather started fluttering in my nose again. I had to sneeze. And I did. Achoo! And not sooner than having finished my “choo”, all the way down from the end of aisle I heard, “Bless you.”

I happen to sneeze often. I am on a blood pressure medicine that causes congestion and thus sneezing. Regularly, my random sneezes are met by the same response, “Bless you.” Perfect strangers. People who I have never seen before. People who have no idea who I am, upon hearing my distress are quick to respond, “Bless you.”

Do they mean it?

I have heard that in times long gone, it was believed that a sneeze was the expulsion of evil spirits blasting into the air, thus the response of protection from those who have just been unleashed into the world. “Bless you.” Actually, “God bless you.”

Seems a bit silly to continue to offer this response to sneezing, “Bless you.” Most of us…all of us…know that sneezes have nothing to do with evil spirits. Maybe a cold. Maybe allergies. Maybe dust in the air. But evil spirits? No. So, in my thinking, I don’t really believe that the bless-or means anything at all of what comes from their lips.

At the end of worship services in the churches at which I preside, I speak a benediction, or a blessing, over the congregation. “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”….or…. “The blessings of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit be upon you now and forever.”

Unlike the responders to my sneezing, I know that when I speak the Benediction, I definitely mean what I am saying. I am not one who professes the existence of lurking evil spirits, but I do believe, with all my heart, that the world can be a pretty rough place. Pressures from all sorts of places - work, family, school, finances - bearing down and ready to crush us. Cruel words that have the power to spear us to our hearts. Mistakes that try and shackle us in dungeons of shame. Illnesses and disease that stalk us like a lion. It is a tough world into which people are stepping when they leave worship.

So, before they step out into the world, I pronounce upon them God’s blessings. Blessings that bear the depth of God’s love, so deep that God would give his life for his beloved. Blessings that bear the powerful companionship of God, a companionship so strong that is melted together in the sacrament of Holy Communion. Blessings that bear the promise of God that nothing will be able to snatch God’s beloved from his hand

The world is a tough place, but we do not face it alone. God is with us! So, as you step into the world today, “God bless you!”

Have a great day.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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 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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