The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for May 23, 2022

I didn’t write any Minutes last week because I was way too busy. This semester I taught two preaching classes, had several writing projects, and one or two speaking engagements every month. It has reminded me of what retired people used to tell me, “Pastor, I’m so busy that I don’t know when I found time to go to work.” I don’t want to be like that. While I enjoy teaching, writing, and speaking, I repent of my retirement busyness, even for the church. The fundamental issue is grace or works.  

My morning habit is to get up early, sit on the back porch with a cup of coffee, scan the latest news on my iPad, and then read the Bible and devotional literature. This morning: “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing” (Psalm 1454:15-16). Stop, Dale. Hear the birds, filling the neighborhood with their chirping. They’re preaching to you. “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26).  

Preachers preach grace, pew sitters hear about grace, grace, grace, but I’m not sure most of us understand, at least I don’t totally get it. Our Lord instituted the Sabbath so that we would experience grace. “On it you shall not do any work” (Exodus 20:10). While Colossians 2:16-17 teaches that we need not legalistically keep one day as Sabbath, what reason is there for keeping constantly busy? Because there’s so much to do? Because it’s church work? Maybe because I’m conditioned not to sit still? Maybe because there’s something about my busyness that justifies me? Grace means leaving things undone, sometimes even church work. Don’t just do something; sit there.   

The German word for retirement, “Ruhestand,” literally means being in a state of rest, stillness, quiet, but the Germans also have a word that describes me right now, “Unruhestand,” retired but not really retired. The semester is over, but I have about 30 sermons to grade. Did I retire to read 30 sermons? I repent of my Unruhestand! 

The Meyer Minute for May 13, 2022

I find Christ-centered thinking a daily challenge. One help is getting older in faith. The old timers in my first church had a proverb, when the leaves come out, people die. They also noticed that deaths sometimes come in threes. These last days, two acquaintances of mine have passed. When you’re flourishing in youth, health, work and career, you might think the third person will be someone else. Aging, you think maybe it will be my turn.

Psalm 49 has a proverb. Wise people, dull, stupid, rich, poor, people of high rank, lowly people, you, me, all die, but a wise person faces it, doesn’t ignore the fact. “No man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit. For he sees that even the wise die…” (Verses 7-10). That’s Law. Here’s the psalm’s Good News: “But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me” (verse 15).

We, living thousands of years later, have a Christ-centered future, “knowing that you were ransomed…not with perishable things such as silver or gold (or your retirement accounts, your earthly career, your fine family, or anything you have, not that those things are to be despised), but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot…” Through him you “are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:18-19, 21).

My challenge is being Christ-centered in my every conscious, waking moment. How about you? “The modern world quite literally “manages” without God. We can do so much so well by ourselves that there is no need for God, even in his church. Thus we modern people can be profoundly secular in the midst of explicitly religious activities. Which explains why so many modern Christian believers are atheists unawares. Professing to believe in supernatural realities, they are virtual atheists; whatever they say they believe, they show in practice that they function without practical recourse to the supernatural…. The call to follow Jesus Christ runs directly counter to this deadly modern pressure toward secularization.” (Os Guiness, “The Call,” 149)

The Meyer Minute for May 12, 2022

The leak of the Supreme Court draft and a possible reversal of Roe v. Wade has unleashed many feelings. I am pro-life. I regret Roe v. Wade. That said, what is playing out in the newly reenergized debate about abortion troubles me in one special way. 

“The law brings wrath” (Romans 4:15). Paul is talking about the Law of God, all the “Thou shalts” and the “Thou shalt nots” that fill the pages of the Bible. The Fifth Commandment, for example, is one of God’s commands, “You shall not murder.” Jesus teaches that the Law is deeper than just the physical act. “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder’ and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whomever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matthew 5:21-22). This deepening of the external act to our inner thoughts and feelings applies to all the Ten Commandments (Matthew 5:27-48). It is a general principle of life. You tell me I shouldn’t do something I want to do? You tell me I shouldn’t even feel this way? I get angry. “The law brings wrath.” 

That’s what’s happening in the reinvigorated public debate about Roe v. Wade. The possibility that the law will be changed by the Supreme Court has resulted in all kinds of angry statements and protests. And, just as important, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, the public debate will still be in the area of Law, pro Supreme Court or con, pro state laws or con. This is indeed the way the government and public life works, Law. A church centered on the Gospel is different. Law can’t change the deepest feelings of the heart; only the Gospel of God’s longsuffering love in Jesus for each and every person can change hearts. My opinion is we shouldn’t obsess about what may happen or may not happen to Roe v. Wade. Instead, our Lord Jesus wants His followers to extend His life and love, not only to one another but also to those in our communities who are still living under the dominion of the Law.  

The Meyer Minute for May 10, 2022

“Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your righteousness to the upright of heart!” (Psalm 36:10) 

I woke up tired this morning but dutifully did my devotion. I’ve read Psalm 36 countless times but this morning, aha! Verse 10 jumped out at me. “If the Holy Spirit comes to you in the midst of such thoughts and begins to preach to your heart rich, illuminating thoughts, give him the opportunity. Be quiet and listen to him who can do much better than you. Pay close attention and take not of what he says. Thus you will discover, as David says, ‘wonderful things in the law of the God (Psalm 119:18)” (Martin Luther, “A Simple Way to Pray). 

“Continue your steadfast love to those who know you.” Continue. Don’t we all need endurance? Would God have done all He’s done for you, not to bring you through these days between your birth and your heavenly homegoing? “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28). 

Lord, continue “your righteousness to the upright of heart.” That’s me, that’s you. Upright of heart? My heart is still diseased with sin, but God’s continuing grace and forgiveness transplants a clean heart and renews a right spirit within you (Psalm 51:10). “Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness, my beauty are, my glorious dress” (Lutheran Service Book 563:1). 

A great thing about the leisurely reading of the Bible is experiencing the Word working on you. You really feel it. I’ve found that when my energies are low, as they are today, it’s prime time to linger over the Psalms. “When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul” (Psalm 94:19). Whatever your duties today, whatever your energy, the Word of Christ gives grace sufficient for this day.  

“Help me henceforth, O God of grace, / Help me on each occasion,  

Help me in each and ev’ry place, / Help me thro’ Jesus’ Passion; 

Help me in life and death, O God, / Help me thro’ Jesus’ dying blood; 

Help me as Thou hast helped me!” (The Lutheran Hymnal, 33:3)  

The Meyer Minute for May 9, 2022

“My sheep hear my voice,” says Jesus. Innumerable voices clamor to get into our heads, but one voice gets to our heart. Like a lost child who hears mother’s reassuring voice, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them.” 

“Almighty God, merciful Father, since You have wakened from death the Shepherd of Your sheep, grant us Your Holy Spirit that when we hear the voice of our Shepherd, we may know Him who calls us each by name and follow where He leads…” He’s leading us to heaven, which puts a different perspective on the troubles of today. “They are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”   

“The King of love my shepherd is, / Whose goodness faileth never; / I nothing lack if I am His / And He is mine forever.” I nothing lack? The clamoring voices tell us we lack this, we lack that, buy this, fight for that, but has anything of this world given you the peace that passes all understanding? “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” Is there any situation in life, as dire it may be, that does not receive peace from hearing the Shepherd’s words?  

It was a happy coincidence, Good Shepherd Sunday and Mother’s Day. Both observances were an invitation to silence. Silence is a prerequisite to letting Jesus calm our troubled hearts. “In quietness and trust shall be your strength.” “As with a mother’s tender hand, He leads His own, His chosen band: To God all praise and glory!”  

(References: John 10:27; Collect for Easter IV; Revelation 7:15-17; LSB 709:1; Philippians 4:7; John 14:27; LSB 819:4) 

The Meyer Minute for May 6, 2022

Diane asked, “Are you going to do a Minute today?” “I want to do one for Mother’s Day, but not sure what to say.” She looked at me with eyes wide open. “You don’t know what to say about Mother’s Day?” Diane knows how important Mom has been to me, to Bruce and Pam. What are the attributes of a good mother? Unconditional love, guidance growing up, discipline when necessary, providing physical necessities, worry… Even though we three kids are retired, she still worries about us…and prayer. 

I think of the mothers with small children trapped in the steel plant in Mariupol. No sunlight for two months. Low on food and water, but no lack of love, of worry, of prayer. Seven million Ukrainians have been displaced, many fleeing to Hungary, Moldova, and Poland, millions of mothers with their children. Husbands stayed behind to fight. “What’s happening?” the children wonder, and the best a mother can do is hug, and a hug is never the least but always the best. You, child, are loved. I think of the mothers who bring their children across our borders, legally or illegally is not my point. They come here wanting their children to grow up with more opportunities than they had. And I’ll close my list, it obviously could be much longer, with the single mother deep in the city, not enough income, no husband, no safety in the streets but trying her best to care for her children. 

Whatever the outward circumstances, a good mother, a loving mother is always an example of good works. The works of motherhood from diapers to school activities, from hugs in sadness to happiness in fun times, all these works, unnoticed by the world, spring from love, and the best love is selfless love sanctified by Christian faith. Paul wrote to Timothy, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well” (2 Timothy 1:5). A Christian mother’s love is generational, “their works do follow them” (Revelation 14:13). 

Another reason I wasn’t sure how to address Mother’s Day, the controversy over abortion. This weekend and every day that remains, I thank God that my mother loved and raised me. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! 

The Meyer Minute for May 5, 2022

Today is the National Day of Prayer. Begun in 1952, this day of prayer puts 1 Timothy 2:1-2 into practice, “that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in very way.” Yet, I’m cynical, not about praying for the nation, but how we mortals come before the Eternal and Almighty.  

Yesterday the United States passed one million Covid deaths in a short 27 months, but you know how we Americans politicized this, fighting that my way is better than your way. About the leak of the Supreme Court draft, here’s the title of an opinion in today’s New York Times, “It Appears Roe Will Fall. It’s Time to Rage,” with this subtitle, “We can’t let this country become a hollow theocracy.” On the other side, from the Wall Street Journal, “Repealing Roe would merely return abortion policy to the states and democratic debate. That’s all.”   

The theme for this year’s National Day of Prayer is “Exalt the Lord Who Has Established Us,” citing, wrongly, Colossians 2:6-7. One prayer provided by the non-profit that promotes this day says, “Lord, You have established America through the hearts of our founding fathers and the documents they penned declaring our dependence on Your sovereignty and supremacy. We overflow with gratitude having been firmly rooted and built up in our faith in You.” That’s a terrible misuse of Colossians 2:6-7. Read it yourself. It’s about the Church, not the United States. The brochure for today has many prayers, but no mention of our sorry sinful state, “God bless America” without seeing our need for repentance. 

C.S. Lewis criticizes “all those watered versions of Christianity which leave out all the darkest elements and try to establish a religion of pure consolation…. It is of the very nature of the real that it should have sharp corners and rough edges, that it should be resistant, should be itself. Dream-furniture is the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee… A safe god, a tame god, soon proclaims himself to any sound mind as a fantasy” (In “For All the Saints,” III, 1123-24).  

“If you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile” (1 Peter 1:17). 

The Meyer Minute for May 3, 2022

Photographs from space have become common, and we probably take for granted pictures of planet Earth, a blue, green, and white orb with a dark, forbidding background. We might say these photos of Earth give us a “God’s eye view” of the home the Creator made for us. “God sits high but looks low,” is a refrain I learned from black preaching. What does God see when He zooms in on His creation? 

If you would use Google Earth, you could zoom in on the place I preached Sunday, the intersection of Chalmers and Seymour in Detroit, Michigan. You’d see a church building, a grand Gothic style church dedicated in 1941. Behind the church is a two-story parochial school building. This is Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church, celebrating its 100^th anniversary. If you'd use Google Earth to look at the neighborhood, you’d see countless vacant lots where middle-class houses once stood, homes in a safe neighborhood where moms and dads raised their children. You’d see many abandoned houses, and not many blocks away abandoned apartment buildings and businesses. You’d see more than a few buildings gutted by fire, and not a recent fire, a fire some time back. And you’d see many homes still occupied. Did these people choose to stick with their neighborhood when urban blight came, or were they just trapped? That’s where I preached Sunday. I wondered if this 100^th anniversary was really going to be a funeral for the church. 

Nothing of the sort! How encouraged I was by these Christians who love God and their neighbors. Mt. Calvary’s school, closed in 2005, now hosts Camp Restore – Detroit. You should google it, making a difference in the neighborhood. The church has bought some vacant lots in hope for the future and service now, a community garden. Pastor Gladden has formed good working relations with community groups and the Detroit police. The anniversary banquet, which could have been a time of nostalgia for past glories, was filled with heart and soul energy to bring the love of God in Jesus to the neighborhood.  

A God’s eye view. “The Lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens! Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap” (Psalm 113:4-6). An energizing time to be the Church! 

The Meyer Minute for April 29, 2022

“Lord, when the shadows lengthen / And night has come, 

I know that You will strengthen / My steps toward home.” 

That’s a haunting verse from the popular hymn, “Lord, Take My Hand and Lead Me.” Julie von Hausmann delicately described the time when death draws near to you, to me. Martin Luther was not so delicate, was he ever? when he ended a sermon in 1533. “May our dear Lord God help us come to perceive the man, Christ…so that we may take comfort in him when our time comes to die.” His sermon was based on Luke 7:11-17, Jesus raises the young man of Nain. Some quotations from Luther’s sermon. 

“With all hope gone, and everyone disheartened by the death of the son, our dear Lord comes, without healing medicines, and speaks merely a word, ‘You man, I say to you, arise!’ At once the dead man arises and is alive. By this Christ powerfully proves that in his sight there is no barrier between death and life; they are neither more nor less, one is like the other to him. So, to him it is all the same whether we live or die. Though we die, with him we are not dead. The fact is that as far as he is concerned, death is merely a word; thus death is gone, and life has returned. It is just as Christ states in the Gospel: ‘God is not the God of the dead but of the living.’” 

Luther said that Jesus “speaks merely a word.” To a corpse. To someone, as they say, “dead as a doornail.” Continuing the sermon, “The widow’s son is dead, with all senses and hearing stopped; but as soon as Christ speaks to him, he hears. This is certainly an unusual, astonishing story, The one who does not hear, hears; the one who does not live, lives. And yet Christ does nothing more than open his mouth and tell him to arise. That one word is so powerful that death must yield, and life again returns.” 

“If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8). He will create new life in us even when we die. May this Minute strengthen your steps toward home. (16^th Sunday after Trinity; LSB 722, 3) 

The Meyer Minute for April 28, 2022

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). 

Today’s Minute is not about Putin, but he’s the starting point. He has turned a necessity of modern life, gas and oil, into weapons against Poland and Bulgaria. Now, back to Jesus’ command to love one another, it seems to me that we easily weaponize a basic necessity of life, love. It’s not only Jesus' command to love others. A basic necessity is that other people feel loved, but we can get into some nasty arguments about life and religion. “I’m only saying this because I love you.” “Oh, really? I’m not feeling the love.” 

Phillipp Jakob Spener was a minister in the 17^th century. Known as the father of Pietism, he reacted against intellectual Christianity that was devoid of love. “If there is any prospect of a union of most of the confessions among Christians,” he wrote, “the primary way of achieving it, and the one that God would bless most, would perhaps be this, that we do not stake everything on argumentation.” I’ve sat in a depressing number of meetings dedicated to hotly debated issues of Christian teaching and ministerial practice. No wonder, I thought and still think, that people are walking away from our denomination and from others.  

“Disputing,” Spener continues, “is not enough to maintain the truth among ourselves or to impart it to the erring. The holy love of God is necessary.” Growing up I was taught that emotional and physical feelings are not true love, but that true love is agape, selfless service to others. That’s still true, Jesus’ words are forever, but today’s partisan, argumentative culture… We sometimes experience it in church and are always seeing it in national politics. “I will fight for you!” we hear ad nauseum, falsifies love to attack others. Feeling the love? Not so much.  

Spener’s antidote was selflessness. Isn’t that what the Ten Commandments tell us to do? Plop us into Mariupol, into the daily life of the homeless, the abused, the addicted, plop us into prison… something as easy as trying to understand where the other person is coming from. “The Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them,’” (Luke 15:2). “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).