The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for May 18, 2021

“Snail slime is being turned into soap.” Thanks to the local news for slipping another useless thing into my head. Daughter Katie in Maryland sent photos of the cicadas, which some people are eating? To wear a mask or not to wear a mask? Then all the other national, state, and local news, and add whatever’s thrown into your personal life. “Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out” (Ecclesiastes 8:17). “It’s a confused time,” said Peter Baker of NBC. 

Thank you, Mrs. Muniz! Both our daughters were blessed to have Mary Lee Muniz for Latin at Collinsville High School. “Living Latin Today” was part of her class, and this morning it is Latin that helps me get my bearings. Diane and I both slept poorly, we think because today’s schedule is filled with too many uncertainties. We like predictable routine. Anyway, the Latin word “confundo” is helping me get my bearings. It literally means to pour things together, exactly what media does, what people’s opinions do. The things they pour out funnel together in our feelings. And so, we get “confused,” which also comes from that same word “confundo.” 

My devotional thoughts bounced around too, until I landed on this. “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil” (Psalm 37:7-8).  

More Living Latin Today: “confundo” also gives us “confound it,” which the dictionary says is a polite way to say, “damn it.”  That’s what I want to say, but I’m centering on this. “Trust in the Lord, and do good. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act” (Psalm 37:3-5). Now I feel better! 

The Meyer Minute for May 17, 2021

Hamas is sending missiles from the Gaza strip into Israel killing people. Israel is retaliating, killing people. No cease fire. In America mass shootings almost every day.  

Do we hear in today’s willful killings the echo of many years ago? About 50 miles from Gaza in Jerusalem, people shouted, “Crucify him.” They did, and through force they kept their power and privilege. Or did they? They were stunned when they heard the dead man had been raised. “Death’s mightiest pow’rs have done their worst, And Jesus hath His foes dispersed” (The Lutheran Hymnal, 210:2). Because of Easter, they are losing their grip on power and privilege.  

“Death is the last weapon of the tyrant, and the point of the resurrection…is that death has been defeated. Resurrection is not the redescription of death; it is its overthrow and, with that, the overthrow of those whose power depends on it” (N.T. Wright, “Surprised by Hope,” 50). 

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). The time is coming, I believe it. Will we today show others our hope? “I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears” (Psalm 34:4).  

The Meyer Minute for May 14, 2021

Staying on Ascension, not only the one day but forgetting its significance throughout the year… 

Douglas Farrow: “Once too it was celebrated as the crown of Christian feasts and the ground of the sacraments…. Its festival is commonly passed over as a redundant marker on the road to Pentecost, allowing it little or no impact on the shape of Christian life and thought” (“Ascension and Ecclesia,” 9). 

Keeping Jesus’ ascension in mind keeps before us the mystery that Christ is both present and absent to us. “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matthew 18:20). Well, yes, but we don’t see Him. When you are going through tough times, His word promises you, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Again, yes, but we don’t see Him. The mystery is that He is present and He is absent.  

When Jesus ascended, the cloud removed him from human sight. It wasn’t that He just kept going to some place beyond Mars or wherever. He is with us now, but not visibly. The other message of Ascension is that He will again be seen visibly, “he will come in the same way you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). But here and now? Scholar Farrow says the one place where we know our Lord both present and absent is in the Holy Communion. “This is my body, my blood,” yes, truly, but still we do not see You with our eyes, not now, not until “the end of the age.” 

Dr. Farrow invites us to think about Christ present and absent in the story of the Emmaus disciples. “He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight” (Luke 24:30-31).  

The Meyer Minute for May 13, 2021

In the comic strip “Dustin,” Ed tells his wife, “I promised…I would only eat unhealthy foods on special occasions.” So, he looks at the month of May and says, “Did you know there are 109 holidays in May?” True or not, did you know today is Ascension Day? When I look at our hymnal, I find four pages of church festivals and commemorations, but Ascension gets only one line. 

“As they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven’” (Acts 1:9-11). 

Will your church have an Ascension service today? Maybe not. Will it be talked about this coming Sunday? We’ll see. Even if it is, we have let Jesus’ ascension become a minor festival in the life of the church, although Jesus’ bodily ascension and visible return are integral to the New Testament. So, think about the consequences. Jesus’ ascension to the right hand of God, that is to the full exercise of His divine glory and power, carries the promise that He will physically show Himself to us. But when we reduce Ascension to one line, one day out of 109 or however many holidays crowd our lives, then day-to-day faith life reverts to the historical facts of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Eternally important as they are, without our Lord’s ascension and return forefront in our minds, we have pretty much confined Jesus to history. And we wonder, “Where’s God now?” 

Reading, reflecting, retirement… More and more I believe we say the correct things but I’m not sure we really get it. “Do you not yet perceive or understand?” (Mark 8:17).    

The Meyer Minute for May 12, 2021

A line from Psalm 11 kept popping into my head yesterday, “Flee like a bird to your mountain.” Several things yesterday took my mood down, let the air out of my hope. Being a news junkie, partisan politics discouraged me. Being a prof, students saying they were near burnout at the end of the semester discouraged me. What’s the point of any of what we do? 

“The sounds of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.” That line from Simon and Garfunkel has always told me that people of faith need to look and read outside of the Bible so that we better believe what is in the Bible. Simon Critchley’s book, “Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us” got me to thinking about “Flee like a bird to your mountain.” Critchley called up a comedy by Aristophanes, “The Clouds.” In it birds, fed up with humans, set up their own country in the sky, “Cloud-cuckoo-land.” It’s nonsense, of course, and so is fantasizing about escaping the dysfunction all around us. But then this from Critchley: “The world is a tragicomedy defined by war, corruption, vanity, and greed, and entirely without the capacity for redemption” (267). 

Aha! Why expect heaven on earth? If politicians deceive us that their promises will save us, if preachers lure us to expect self-satisfaction and happiness here and now, no wonder we’re disappointed, and then come anger and bitterness. This world has had thousands of years to get better and hasn’t. Yes, little bursts of better, like coming out of Covid, but long term? No redemption in this world. And I came back happily this morning to the Word. “The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man. The Lord tests the righteous…. The upright shall behold face” (Psalm 111:4, 5, 7). “You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).   

The Meyer Minute for May 10, 2021

Since many seminarians are going to their first calls as pastors, last Friday I preached “A Devotion for “What Should I Do” times in ministry, and for that matter, in life.  

In Acts chapter 10, part of which was read in many churches yesterday, Peter faced a “what should I do now” situation. God had intended His people Israel to be a light to the nations; now it’s time. God gets word to the Gentile Cornelius to seek out Peter. God also gives a vision to Peter, a vision of clean and unclean animals, understand Jews and Gentiles. “Eat,” says God. “Whoa, I don’t do unclean!” “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:15). At this moment, the word and mission of God is theoretical for Peter. What’s theoretical becomes actual when Peter has a face-to-face conversation with Cornelius. Think of it this way, seminarians. You’ve learned many things in the classroom about the word and mission of God. It will become real when you engage in face-to-face conversation with people in their contexts. Meet them in their settings; don’t just sit in your office. Peter did just that and it made the theoretical actual. “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35).  

When I became Seminary president, people gave me leadership books. Oh, did that fill me with self-doubt! People must have known I didn’t have a clue about leadership. Here’s the thing. When you have to make a leadership decision, you don’t go to a book. You lead out of your being, out of your head and heart, as you talk with people. Love God and love people (Matthew 22:34-39). Peter’s example shows us, meet the people where they are, but don’t leave them there. Always be ready to give an account for the hope that is in you, but with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). And here’s the promise: When you tell people about Jesus, the Holy Spirit will be there for them… and the Holy Spirit will be there with you.  

The Meyer Minute for May 10, 2021

Since many seminarians are going to their first calls as pastors, last Friday I preached “A Devotion for “What Should I Do” times in ministry, and for that matter, in life.  

In Acts chapter 10, part of which was read in many churches yesterday, Peter faced a “what should I do now” situation. God had intended His people Israel to be a light to the nations; now it’s time. God gets word to the Gentile Cornelius to seek out Peter. God also gives a vision to Peter, a vision of clean and unclean animals, understand Jews and Gentiles. “Eat,” says God. “Whoa, I don’t do unclean!” “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:15). At this moment, the word and mission of God is theoretical for Peter. What’s theoretical becomes actual when Peter has a face-to-face conversation with Cornelius. Think of it this way, seminarians. You’ve learned many things in the classroom about the word and mission of God. It will become real when you engage in face-to-face conversation with people in their contexts. Meet them in their settings; don’t just sit in your office. Peter did just that and it made the theoretical actual. “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35).  

When I became Seminary president, people gave me leadership books. Oh, did that fill me with self-doubt! People must have known I didn’t have a clue about leadership. Here’s the thing. When you have to make a leadership decision, you don’t go to a book. You lead out of your being, out of your head and heart, as you talk with people. Love God and love people (Matthew 22:34-39). Peter’s example shows us, meet the people where they are, but don’t leave them there. Always be ready to give an account for the hope that is in you, but with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). And here’s the promise: When you tell people about Jesus, the Holy Spirit will be there for them… and the Holy Spirit will be there with you.  

The Meyer Minute for May 7, 2021

Scripture is filled with passages meaningful for Mother’s Day; one is 1 Samuel chapters 1 and 2. 

“Hannah had no children.” “She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. And she vowed a vow and said, “O Lord of hosts, if you indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life” (1:2, 10-11). This weekend we remember in heart and prayer those women who have never had children or who have lost children to death. May the God of mercies tend grief with the love and hope of Jesus’ touch. 

“And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the Lord remembered her. And in due time Hannah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Samuel, for she said, ‘I have asked for him from the Lord” (1:19-20). “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord” (Psalm 127:3). 

“When she had weaned him, she took him up with her… For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him. Therefore, I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord” (1:24, 27-28). May every mother’s child live and say, “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken” (Psalm 37:25). 

“Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy clothed with a linen ephod. And his mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice” (2:18-19). Heavenly Father, grace every mother and us all to care for children and youth and be with them in the house of the Lord forever. Amen. 

The Meyer Minute for May 6, 2021

Have you noticed how frequently public people promise, “I will fight for you”? Politicians pledge to special interest groups, “I will fight for you.” One local law firm promises in a TV commercial, “We will fight for you.” Was the word “fight” used this much years ago? My hunch is no. Well, they are keeping their promise. The news is full of people fighting, and for some reason we don’t feel better. 

People are angry. Elites tell us how we…should eat, should exercise, should dress, should raise our kids, should spend, should change our morality… What do we dummies know? “I will fight for you” panders to people’s anger. “Every group that isn’t your own becomes a threat. In a diverse society, such thinking is increasingly dangerous and divisive. Human history is littered with horrific examples of mob mentality that resulted in great evils justified by so-called ‘truths’ propagated in the name of group unity or survival. Tribalism, then, poses one of the most severe threats in a post-truth society, at the very least keeping groups from welcoming or considering another, let alone learning from them.” (Barna Trends 2018, 116-121) 

Go to church Sunday and you’ll hear Jesus. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:9-11). This Good News will sink deeper into our hearts by contrasting it to today’s news full of self-centeredness, anger, and fighting. Jesus doesn’t promise, “I will fight for you.” No. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). 

As I was writing the rough draft of this Minute, a reporter on TV said, “This is going to be a fight.” Isn’t Jesus’ promise so much more welcome? 

The Meyer Minute for May 4, 2021

We leave our garage door open during the day. Garage? We call it that, but we use it as a shed for whatever. Step in and to the right are shelves with WD-40, wasp killer, chain saw oil, plant fertilizer, that kind of stuff. The other day Diane said, “Did you see the bird nest in the garage?” “Huh?” 

On that catch-all shelf, wrens built a nest. Apparently, they make their homes in unusual places. I read on the internet that wren nests have been found in boots, cans, boxes, and even a clothespin bag hanging outside. Now every time I go into the garage, I look into the nest. Snuggled in, looking out at me are two eyes and a long beak. It’s a moment of wonder. “The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. In them the birds build their nests” (Psalm 104:16-17). “The sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts” (Psalm 84:3). And the wren chose our garage. 

From the Greek philosophers to our own day, intellectuals have theorized about the one thing that explains everything that exists. The problem is their hifalutin explanations leave us common people unimportant. I wonder if we ministers sometimes talk about God and Jesus in such grand terms that a person might think, “Fine, but how does that help my little life?” Read the Gospels. Jesus didn’t come as a philosopher or theologian but came from our Father and still comes with personal care for you and me. “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). The wren in my garage is preaching right to me.