The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for September 28, 2021

I’m fascinated by the key fob. Click it, and my car locks, unlocks, trunk opens, or in cold weather, the fob starts the car so it’s warm when I get in. I can see the fob, but its signals? Totally unseen. Shift to higher thoughts: How many of us go about daily life seeing what we see but not thinking about the unseen that is all around us right now? “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible” (Nicene Creed).

Think about Jesus in terms of seen and unseen. “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18). ”Jesus said, “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me” (John 16:16). “When he (Jesus) was at table with them, he stood the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him” (Luke 24:30). “As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them….” (Luke 24:36). “On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked…Jesus came and stood among them” (John 20:19-20). “Eight days later, his disciples were inside again…. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them” (John 20:26).

God’s realm, the unseen is all around you. That’s where Jesus is now to us, close but not seen. Think of it as a one-way window. Jesus can see us but we can’t see Him, at least not yet. We know Him now by faith. Better yet, think of it as a door. The epistle read Sunday in many churches, says, “the coming of the Lord is at hand,” and “behold, the Judge is standing at the door” (James 5:7-9). In a moment, He will open the door and faith will become sight. In a heartbeat, and we are only one heartbeat away from eternity, you will enter His eternity. When the disciples locked the doors, they couldn’t keep out the coming of their Lord. “Jesus came and stood among them.” Today, or certainly some tomorrow to come, you will see Him. An awesome world is all around you.

The Meyer Minute for September 27, 2021

This Monday morning I’m thankful for Chuckles. First, no Minute last week because my brain was empty. After leading a retreat in Michigan, I came home with nothing to write about. If you don’t have anything to say…

Diane and I have a little place on the Huzzah Creek, some say river, in Missouri. To get there, we go through Steelville, a town of about 1,600 on the Meramec River. Steelville advertises itself as the “Floating Capitol of Missouri” and has stores that lure tourists in. No visit to our little place on the Huzzah is complete without a visit to Lange’s General Store. The name evokes any old general store on any Main Street, but this old building is packed with touristy spur of the moment purchases. Catchy signs for your cabin or home, a great selection of old time pop bottles (soda in Missouri), tourist books, tee shirts advertising the town and Ozark life, and on and on, but the greatest thing I found at Lange’s is Chuckles.

Chuckles was one of my favorite candies growing up. My parents didn’t let us have much candy, and once, maybe twice a week we had pop, “soda” for some of you. Chuckles was special. I hadn’t seen it for decades, but now it’s back. Part of my brain block last week was that I wanted to write about Chuckles but didn’t know what to say. How can I make a theological point about Chuckles? What does Scripture teach about Chuckles? Finally, this dunderhead figured it out. Chuckles are Chuckles. God is Creator and you’re God’s creature of a day. Be heavenly minded, but enjoy the day. Exist. Be. With Chuckles.

The Meyer Minute for September 17, 2021

More and more I find myself reflecting on, as Paul Harvey used to say, “The rest of the story.” Consider the Gospel lesson to be read in many churches on Sunday. Jesus told His disciples, “’The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.’ But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him” (Mark 9:31-32).

It’s easy to target those old disciples for not getting it, and when you read the Gospel of Mark the first disciples never did understand until the resurrected Jesus appeared to them. That said, I’m not sure we get it either. Come Sunday, if our pastors preach on this text, they will talk about the resurrection of Jesus. It happened. History. Jesus’ word was proven true. “The rest of the story” I think we are missing, and I say this reflecting on this failure in the thousands of sermons I’ve preached, is stressing that Jesus is now alive, now at the right hand of God, and soon to return in glory as the Judge of all. Of course, we don’t deny that. We recite it in the creed almost every Sunday, but how often do we leave worship thinking, Jesus is living, His Spirit is in my life, and maybe today I’ll see Him on the clouds of heaven?

Scholars believe that the Gospel of Mark was influenced by Peter. Peter’s first epistle is known for encouraging hope in suffering. Often that is interpreted as hope in this problem, hope in that challenge, hope in whatever is facing me here and now. Yes, we should always have hope but Peter was not encouraging us to have generic hope. Biblical hope goes hand-in-hand with faith in God and Father of Jesus. “God…raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:20). That focus is not only history but because of history is future expectation. “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:13). Maybe I’m losing my filter, but I’m not sure we are stressing “the rest of the story.”

The Meyer Minute for September 16, 2021

Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee heard from four gymnasts who were sexually abused by their team doctor, Larry Nassar. The horror is not only his evil but also bureaucratic indifference by USA Gymnastics, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the FBI. The hearing wasn’t focused on Nassar, he’s in jail for the rest of his life, but senators wanted to know why the FBI failed to act for over a year on a complaint. In that time there were about 70 more victims. 

My reflections went to a problem inherent in institutions, a worker in an office or cubicle can disregard someone in need. Someone comes to the worker with a request. “That’s another office,” comes the answer. “Did you fill out the form?” “Go online, then come back.” That’s if there’s a response. How many times have you contacted an institution but got no response? Dominated as life is by impersonal institutions and bureaucracies, no wonder so many people are angry. 

The institutional church is guilty here. The Seminary has a bureaucracy, necessarily so. For 15 years I struggled to make it responsive to people, I hope with some success. I’d tell workers, “Whoever you are, whatever your job, you are the face of the Seminary to the person contacting you. Never tell anyone ‘No.’ If you’re unsure, say, ‘Let me see what we can do.’” I could talk about denominational and parachurch bureaucracies as well, but let’s get closer to home, to our congregations. 

“My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus said (John 18:36), but on this side of heaven the true church takes on institutional expressions, like bylaws, budgets, and personnel. We easily service the needs of the institution, imagining our oiling the machine is the same as the mission of Jesus. In Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite were religious institutionalists, unresponsive to human need (Luke 10:25-37). In Jesus’ picture of the final judgment, the condemned say, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?” (Matthew 25:31-46).  Maybe those will be bureaucrats who thought the org chart and their job description trumped the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12).  

Back to the top, may the Father of all mercies through caring people and especially followers of the Suffering Servant, bring help and hope to the victims of abuse.   

The Meyer Minute for September 15, 2021

In his misery, Job said, “There is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again.” That was going through my mind the other day when I was cutting saplings with a chainsaw. The hillside was overgrown and needed to be thinned out, but I kept thinking, these things are going to come back. A tree has hope, Job said, “But a man dies and is laid low; man breathes his last, and where is he?” 

Read the entire book of Job and you’ll agree and disagree with Job’s opinions about God’s ways. To his credit, Job dialogues with God, he prays “without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Job doesn’t want to accept nothingness in death. “Oh, that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath be past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me! If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come. You would call, and I would answer you; you would long for the work of your hands. For then you would number my steps; you would not keep watch over my sin; my transgression would be sealed up in a bag, and you would cover over my iniquity” (Job 14:7, 10, 13-17). 

Job’s Old Testament wish is what we see revealed in Jesus Christ in the New Testament. “Conceal me until your wrath be past.” Isn’t Good Friday about the wrath of God against our sin and isn’t Easter the assurance of life, that there is hope? “All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal shall come.” Isn’t that the hope we have in the coming revelation of Jesus Christ to take us to glory? “You would call, and I would answer you…. “You would number my steps.” Isn’t that Jesus saying, “Follow me,” and we do? “My transgression would be sealed up in a bag, and you would cover over my iniquity.” Isn’t that “Be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven”? The Old Testament is revealed in the New! 

Diane was worried about my escapade on the hillside, and probably rightly so. When I do it again, and I will, I’ll remember Job chapter 14. Scripture, old and new, grows hope amidst our problems.    

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The Meyer Minute for September 10, 2021

I was driving to the Seminary to teach my class. Traffic backed up on the interstate, I decided to get off at the Hampton exit, which was backed up as well, and on that ramp heard that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. “Small plane?” I wondered. Sometime later I was in the classroom. It had a TV, an old, boxy TV, no flat screens twenty years ago. We put the class assignment aside and silently watched what was unfolding.

From a New York Times editorial: “We find ourselves commemorating the first great jihadist victory over America, in 2001, right after delivering the second great jihadist victory over America, in 2021. The 9/11 memorial at the World Trade Center – water cascading into one void, and then trickling, out of sight, into another – has never been more fitting.” (Bret Stephens, September 8, A23).

Our country is in a somber mood, 9-11 and other crises. We all have our thoughts, and mine are not the most insightful, but for your reflection.

The blankety-blank sinfulness of mankind is on full display. “Dost thou not fear God?” said a dying member of humanity (Luke 23:40).

Congregations have to make a noticeable difference in their neighborhoods and communities. “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?” (James 2:14).

Americans need a better work ethic that demands competence. “A civilization ‘is born stoic and dies epicurean,’ wrote historian Will Durant” (Bret Stephens).

“The big crisis will only reveal the stuff we are made of, it will not put anything into us” (Oswald Chambers)

“I need Thy presence every passing hour;

What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s pow’r?

Who like thyself my guide and stay can be?

Through clouds and sunshine, O abide with me.”

(Lutheran Service Book, 878:2)

The Meyer Minute for September 9, 2021

Freed of institutional church stuff, my reading and reflecting tells me the institutional church has an elephant in the room. We don’t recognize how subtly western and American culture distorts how we understand and practice what the Bible teaches. A prime example is where we think God is.

In “The Bondage Breaker,” Neil T. Anderson says western culture has a two-tier worldview: The transcendent world of God and spiritual forces (religion) and the empirical world of senses (science). The majority world mingles the two, but western culture keeps them separate. Hence, religion is compartmentalized to Sunday and church. For example, the “separation of church and state,” which we assume is Gospel truth, is an example of this cultural compartmentalization.

There are 12 students in my Law/Gospel class, 9 from the United States, one each from Germany, Kenya, and India. The Americans and German, products of western culture, agreed that religion has been compartmentalized to worship in church, but the students from Kenya and India affirmed what Neil Anderson said. The cultures that raised them mingle the two; religion is not compartmentalized to Sunday worship.

The consequences of this cultural deception are numerous, and I’ll identify just one by quoting Os Guiness. “In short, 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)

So, where’s God? I certainly don’t disagree with the importance of worship services, but if we ministers don’t teach how God is just as present during our weekdays, we are being coopted by culture.

The Meyer Minute for September 8, 2021

Casually watching St. Louis news this morning… One killed and another hurt by a shooting on the interstate… Two separate shooting incidents wounded an 8-year-old and a 12-year-old… The body of Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, killed by the suicide bomber in Kabul, will be in procession from the St. Louis airport to the funeral home… vaccination and mask wars continue… people are riled up pro and con by the Texas abortion law… One thread through it all: Anger 

I’m teaching a sem class on Law and Gospel. The course begins with the Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” or in newer translations, “You shall not murder,” because government has the authority to take life, for example defending the country in war. The textbook for our course was written by a seventeenth century theologian, Martin Chemnitz. Citing Ephesians 4:26, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,” Chemnitz writes, there are “different degrees of anger. He (Paul) speaks of the first feelings, when out of the misery provoked by some injury, a hot anger boils up in the heart and the blood…. The second degree or level of anger…when the mind devises and plans evil and burns with desire for revenge. The third level is hatred, long-standing anger. The fourth which follows Is jealousy, dissension, quarreling, contentions, and other outward actions….” (Loci Theologici, VIII, 739-740) 

I can physically feel those degrees of anger in myself. Can't you? It’s not just in people who make the news; it’s in every last one of us, emotional creatures that we are. Hence, we pray, as one hymn puts it, “Guard my first springs of thought and will, and with Thyself my spirit fill” (Lutheran Service Book, 868:4). My faith tradition is big on salvation by faith and not by works, rightly so, but shouldn’t we also teach how the Word of Christ in us struggles against sin? Chemnitz again, “as James 1:20 says, ‘Man’s anger does not work the righteousness of God.’ The Holy Spirit has made these distinctions so that we may learn what great efforts we must make in order to control the inner desires of our mind.” I know I can’t change the news, but are we church people subjecting our daily feelings to the will of God? 

The Meyer Minute for September 7, 2021

It’s been slow but I’m finally coming to peace with retirement. One positive is more time for daily devotion. This morning’s reading in “For All the Saints,” a rich source of inspiration, fits me to a t, maybe you too. It’s a prayer attributed to a Mother Superior from the seventeenth. (Volume IV, page 796). 

“Lord, you know better than I know myself that I am growing older, and will some day be old. Keep me from getting talkative, and particularly form the fatal habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and on every occasion.  

“Release me from craving to straighten out everybody’s affairs. Keep my mind from the recital of endless details—give me wings to come to the point. 

“I ask for grace enough to listen to the tales of others’ pains. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains—they are increasing, and my love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. Help me to endure them with patience. 

“I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a lessening cocksureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally it is possible that I may be mistaken. 

“Keep me reasonably sweet. I do not want to be a saint—some of them are so hard to live with—but a sour old woman is one of the crowning works of the devil. 

“Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places, and talents in unexpected people. And give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so. 

“Make me thoughtful—but not moody: helpful, but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom it seems a pity not to use it all, but thou knowest Lord, that I want a few friends at the end. Amen.” 

The Meyer Minute for September 2, 2021

With so much swirling around us, it’s often hard to get a comprehensive understanding of what’s really going on. So I appreciate writers who give a name to what’s going on. Lance Morrow did that for me in a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

“We live in the golden age of stupidity. It is everywhere. President Biden’s conduct of the withdrawal from Afghanistan will be remembered as a defining stupidity of our time—one of many. The refusal of tens of millions of people to be vaccinated against the novel coronavirus will be analyzed as a textbook case of stupidity en masse. Stupid is as stupid does, or, in the case of vaccination, as it doesn’t do. Stupidity and irresponsibility are evil twins. The slow motion zombies’ assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6 was a fitting stupid finale to the Trump years, which offered dueling stupidities: Buy one, get one free. The political parties became locked in a four-year drama of hysteria and mutually demeaning abuse.” And on and on the editorial goes.

If everything out there is stupid, do we get it in the church? After Jesus had fed the 4000, the disciples “began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, ‘Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?’ They said to him, ‘Twelve’ ‘And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?’ And they said to him, ‘Seven.’ And he said to them, ‘Do you not yet understand?’” (Mark 8:16-21).

Socrates made a career trying to find someone who really knew the truth. For that he was put to death. Martin Luther: “Arrogance cannot be avoided nor can true hope be present, unless the judgment of damnation is feared in every work” (Heidelberg Disputation, 11). Mr. Morrow’s conclusion: “At the Tower of Babel, the Lord—whatever his reasons—confounded the languages of the peoples of the world. I suspect he has found he can achieve the same effect by making everyone stupid.” (WSJ, August 30; A17). It all tells me we have only one hope.