The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for November 28, 2022

Last Wednesday when I was in the checkout line at Walgreen’s, a display caught my eye. You know, those displays tempting you to make a spur-of-the-moment purchase. Marketers are always trying to pick our pockets. And algorithms, whatever they are, are invisible seducers. Anyway, it was the title of the display that caught my attention, me a religious guy. “Advent Calendar.” Selling an Advent Calendar alongside People magazine, breath mints, cigarettes and other must haves? Looking closer, here’s the marketer’s description of the contents of the box: “24 days of chocolate ‘til Christmas.” So that’s Advent, chocolate? Stuff? Let me ask you three questions:

Where did the marketer come up with the idea there are 24 days in Advent? Is Advent over when you’ve eaten all the chocolates…or put away the nativity scene? Is America's media and consumer culture insidiously changing our understanding of Advent?

I’ll let it go at that...for now. Hope you’ll think about what Advent really means. “The (media, marketing) serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made” (Genesis 3:1). Prayer: “Let no false doctrine me beguile, let Satan not my soul defile” (Lutheran Service Book, 708:2).

The Meyer Minute for November 23, 2022

1863…middle of the Civil War, as bad a time as any in our nation. So that we put it all in perspective, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving.  

“The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the every-watchful providence of almighty God.”

President Lincoln then rehearsed the good Americans experienced. No foreign nation had joined the fighting in our terrible Civil War. New settlements were being established. Mining flourished. The population was growing. The economic outlook was good. “No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

“It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and grateful acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise of our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to him for such singular deliverances and blessing, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.”

Diane and I wish you and yours a safe and happy Thanksgiving. As you enjoy family, food, football, and your unique special traditions, may President Lincoln’s honest, common sense be in your heart and mind.

The Meyer Minute for November 22, 2022

One of the great things about gathering for Thanksgiving church is witness, witness that is gentle—not hard-hitting Jesus talk, not I’m going to wrestle you to believe apologetics—just quiet witness about the hope that is in us.

Christians aren’t the only ones who are thankful. You can find addicts, abusers, agnostics, and atheists who are thankful. Thanksgiving church gives worshippers, ala Paul Harvey, “the rest of the story.” That’s God who is actually “the whole of the story.” “We praise You, O God, our Redeemer, Creator; In grateful devotion our tribute we bring.” We physically bring our offering of thanks to a sacred place, to church. “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?” (Luke 17:17). “Oh, they’re relaxing at home. The Macy’s Parade. Football. Family.” “Was no one found to return and give praise to God?” (Luke 17:18). That one, fully thankful man took time to put himself before Jesus, the face of God to you and me. Spirituality, a popular word with Americans who don’t go to church, is in fact also physical. “We lay it before You, we kneel and adore You; We bless Your holy name, glad praises we sing” (Lutheran Service Book, 785:1). In gathering, we witness to one another.

Thanksgiving worship is a witness to our children and grandchildren. Many decades later, I still remember our pastor, Rev. Arthur Brauer, telling us in Thanksgiving church that thanksgiving should be thanks living. That stuck. We have a duty to help form the next generations in Christian thankfulness. “These words I command you this day shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). “Why do we have to go to church? It’s not Sunday!” “Because…” and you give them a Gospel answer, not a Law answer—because we have to—but we’re going to give thanks to God for all He has done for us.

More witness: Picture the person driving by a church later this Wednesday or Thursday morning. The driver notices the church’s parking lot is full. “I wonder why. It’s not Sunday. Oh, I know. It’s Thanksgiving.” Doesn’t that give the driver a clue that there is something different about how we Christians give thanks? “With voices united our praises we offer And gladly our songs of thanksgiving we raise” (LSB 785:3).

The Meyer Minute for November 21, 2022

I hope your congregation will have a special Thanksgiving service later this week. Be it late Wednesday afternoon or evening or Thanksgiving morning, the special effort to gather for public worship is, let’s use appropriate imagery, a cornucopia of blessings. One benefit is personal, our own growth in faith.

Most Americans have been born and raised in the ways of western civilization. It’s the air we unconsciously breath, the assumptions we make without critical thought. A major characteristic of our culture is compartmentalization, a place for everything and everything in its place. That includes assuming worship is for Sundays and has limited claim upon us the rest of the week. Faith should be more personal than public, they tell us. Scripture, however, is quite clear. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37). That’s hard, at least for me. I can multitask, but many times on weekdays God isn’t present when I’m multitasking pressing needs.

You can’t compartmentalize the Lord’s Prayer to Sunday. “Give us this day our daily bread” is a petition for every day. When we pray that God’s name be hallowed, His kingdom come, and His will be done, we are praying for that to happen every day. How do you make a day holy when the alarm clock awakens you to the daily grind? How does His kingdom, His rule and reign dominate when you’re coping with the impersonal forces of the bureaucracy? How does His will become your will, you a person after His heart, when sin and temptation are all around? Answer: For as long or short as our schedule permits, we sanctify weekdays through prayer and meditation on the Word.

The weekend is a wonderful part of American life. We have more time to do the things we want, and for followers of Jesus that means gathering for mutual encouragement and spiritual growth on our heavenward way (Hebrews 10:25). So, when the national calendar gives us a long weekend, and does so for the virtuous reason of giving thanks, shouldn’t we gather in our churches as a witness, a testimony to one another and to our compartmentalized culture that God is the ultimate giver of all we Americans have? “Come to God’s own temple, come; raise the song of harvest home.”  

The Meyer Minute for November 18, 2022

The topic this morning for my seminary class is the Eighth Commandment. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” It’s not only about being a true witness in court but a true witness in all of life. Wrote a Reformation era theologian, “This Law…contains the most beautiful of all virtues, truth.”

“What is truth?” asked Pilate (John 18:38). Knowing “truth” has deteriorated in our lifetimes. Remember the old sitcom, “Gilligan’s Island”? The Coast Guard actually received phone calls reporting people shipwrecked. It used to be, “I know it’s true because I saw it on TV!” A more current version is confusing truth with TV news or social media postings. Worse, many people today believe something is true simply because they believe it is true. Ignorant individualism. Socrates, the fourth century B.C. Greek philosopher, went to a politician, “and in conversation with him I formed the impression that although in many people’s opinion, and especially in his own, he appeared to be wise, in fact he was not” (“Apology,” 21, c). Socrates interviewed all walks of people and decided no one really knew the truth, although all thought they did. Today? “Nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

And us church goers? Barna found that in 1993 almost 9 out of 10 of Christians believed we have a responsibility to share our faith. In 2019 that number had gone down to 6 out of 10. In 1993, 4 out of 10 Christians would challenge someone to defend their beliefs. Now only about 2 out of 10 will. In our society of individually defining truth, Christian truth isn’t important enough for many church people to work into their conversations. “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8).

The little snippets we get on the news and social media show people spinning words to their own version of truth. Putting down someone else, kissing up to an important person, boasting, conveniently forgetting the past…Breaking the Eighth Commandment is all around us. How about you and me? Does Christian truth shape our conversations, or is it fear, or anger, jealousy, disappointment, seeking approval, desiring to get even, or something else? “Out of the heart” come our own sins against truth.

Sunday I’ll be teaching a Bible class at our church about conversations. They reveal a lot about the truth that is in us.

The Meyer Minute for November 16, 2022

I’ve unloaded some lousy sermons in 53 years of preaching, and this morning I’m thinking of sermons where I hammered the Law at the people. “You’re sinners,” on and on. “You’re the ones who put Jesus on the cross,” on and on. After those 2x4 sermons, some people would greet me on their way out of church and say, “Thank you. We need more Law.” Yes, we are sinners and yes, Jesus died because of my sins, but I never noticed that unloading all the bullets of the Law changed anything.

Yesterday was a downer for students in my Seminary class. I handed back their sermon manuscripts with my notes, lots and lots of notes. For about ten minutes I let them read my critique, their heads were down, no one was smiling. Back in group discussion, I told them I kept waking up the night before trying to figure out what it was about the sermons that bothered me. In the middle of the night, it came to me… Or maybe God gave it to me. I do believe the Spirit enlightens us in the darkness of night. Their sermons were too removed from the real struggles we believers have.

We who regularly go to church know that we are sinners, and that God gave His Son to pay the price for our sins. Therefore, we are forgiven. As eternally saving as that is, it doesn’t do much to help me understand my struggles on this side of heaven. Life can beat us up, which is the Law at work. When the preacher brings the Law down to help us understand spiritually our daily struggles, our feelings of anger, grief, disappointment, love, money, ego, and the like, then Law is making the goodness of God in the Gospel wonderfully welcome, relevant here-and-now as well as eternally. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105).

When I hear how the church is in decline, I keep thinking we just might be on the cusp of a great revival. If we are, one of the keys will be us preachers using the Law to help you faithful, heaven bound parishioners understand life as it is now on this side of bliss. Only the Gospel changes us. The Law teaches us every day how much we need Jesus.

The Meyer Minute for November 11, 2022

How could we adequately thank our veterans for their service? Certainly by hearing their stories. The late Leland R. Stevens was a military chaplain from 1953 to 1973. He recounted the day-to-day realities of the military and their families who sacrifice for us.

“I remember the young wife who called me one evening, obviously homesick for her native England—and disappointed in her marriage. I arranged to meet her at the chapel. It was the first of many marital counseling sessions I took part in during those 20 years…. Their marriage was ultimately healed.

“I was asked to address a choir contest put on by black—then called Negro—churches. That Sunday afternoon, as lively Gospel tunes laced the worship, I learned that the Gospel message dare not always be proclaimed in stuffy tones and phrases.

“During those 20 years, my conviction that God’s Word is always as swift and powerful as a two-edged sword continued to develop. Its proclamation is never thwarted by the situation. With that conviction, I proclaimed hi Word at a makeshift altar-bar with a backdrop of pinup girls on the wall—where I had the undivided attention of a dozen or so coast guardsmen in a remote LORAN station in Japan.

“Most of all, I remember my tragically frequent visits with air force wives to whom I had to announce tersely but tenderly the deaths of their pilot husbands. Afterward, I sat quietly and consoled them as best I could: with God’s love. One young wife lamented, ‘How can I live without him?’ Another wife commented on subsequent visits with her, ‘I’ll never forget your eyes as you told me my husband was dead.’ She saw my tears…but also with the certain hope that in Christ we are strengthened to bear all things. I remember little children and their reactions as they learned that Daddy was dead. I remember the little boy who turned to his younger sister (I had baptized both at an earlier assignment) and said, ‘Daddy’s with Jesus.’ Enough said!”

How could we adequately thank our veterans for their service? How thank their families? Silence is also a way, being quiet when you receive love. For all the weapons, military service is their selfless love to us. Our duty is to return love, our own selfless service to others in whatever place the Lord has us. (“They Shall Not March Alone,” 208-210)

The Meyer Minute for November 9, 2022

The election may be over, but the mania of this world won’t stop. That monster will just assume other forms. A Christian, I think, feels some detachment. An important election? Yes. Does it determine my destiny? Not really. Talking to a politician, our Victor says, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. The path of the righteous is level; you make level the way of the righteous. In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul” (Isaiah 26:3, 4, 7, 8).

“The election is over,” I said to my neighbor this morning. He answered, “I get my TV and mailbox back. No more ads.” That's detachment. “Trust not in rulers; they are but mortal; / Earthborn they are and soon decay. / Vain are their counsels at life’s last portal, / When the dark grave engulfs its prey. / Since mortals can no help afford, Place all your trust in Christ, our Lord. Alleluia, alleluia!” (LSB 797:2). The mania should make one thing clearer. “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8).

November 9^th is a notable day in world history. On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall opened. On November 9, 1938, the Nazis destroyed Jewish synagogues, Kristallnacht. Detachment doesn’t mean withdrawal. On November 9, 1522, Martin Chemnitz was born. A second-generation Protestant reformer, he wrote: “Many people in all ages have given great approval to the solitary life, and it has seemed logical that a man should be freed from the cares and burdens of life in society…. In the Second Table (i.e., commandments 4 through 10) not even one word calls attention to the solitary life; but concerning our duties toward our fellowman in society in our common life together” (Loci Theologici, II-III, 716).

“Lord, we pray that Your grace may always precede and follow us that we may continually be given to good works.” The news shows us that “Christian America” is gone. What can I and my church do for our community today? Much work to do, but without worry. “Thou hast taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul.”

The Meyer Minute for November 7, 2022

Yesterday our church, maybe yours too, observed All Saints Sunday by reading the names of those faithfully departed this last year. Each name was read, bells rung, and a scripture read about the resurrection. A time of memories for family and friends, and in some year to come, a time when family and friends will remember you and me.

I was talking last week with a vice president of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod Foundation. The Foundation manages funds and endowments that have been bequeathed to entities of the church by individuals and others. For example, our Seminary endowments are managed by the Foundation, and I add that they do an excellent job. Of course, we eagerly await a return to better market conditions!

When I asked what gift officers throughout the country are experiencing, I was surprised by the answer. It’s not unusual, the VP told me, that when mom and dad pass, the children are upset that some of the estate was given to their congregation or to an entity of the wider church. Is that true? I asked a friend who works with support for missionaries, and he confirmed that happens. He sometimes gets a call, “You had no right to get that money!”  

“One generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4). It’s one thing for children and grandchildren to know that Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa went to church. It’s a teachable moment when they learn the church has been so dear to us that we are leaving part of our estate to the work and mission of our Lord. As the vice president told me, it’s worth a conversation before the bells toll for us some coming All Saints Sunday. “We will not hide them from their children but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done” (Psalm 78:4).

The Meyer Minute for November 3, 2022

I’m not just tired of political ads, I’m tired and angry. And I also feel that about you political prognosticators who fill TV and social media screens with your “wisdom.” So many of you are obsessed about political power, and the businessmen who own your media outlets are ultimately about money. There, I got it off my chest, but I suspect I’m not alone.

If you would kindly stay with me. Illustrations are important in sermons. Any preacher who looks at people as he preaches, someone who doesn’t have his head buried in a manuscript to read, knows from eyeballing people that they perk up when you give a real-life illustration, something that helps them understand how faith applies to life as we’re really experiencing it. What illustration might help us understand the political anger of so many Americans today?  

Aren’t many political ads and in-the-tank prognosticators a perfect illustration of self-righteousness? Politics is supposed to be a way of working out our differences, not feeding off of and fueling self-righteousness, “I’m right and you’re wrong.” “Americans don’t want to share a living room with one another. We prefer to live and be entertained in ideological encampments” (Tressie McMillan Cottom, NY Times, Nov. 3; A23). “The righteousness of the righteous ones is hard and self-assured. They, too, want forgiveness, but they believe that they do not need much of it. And so their righteous actions are warmed by very little love” (Paul Tillich, “The New Being,” in “For All the Saints,” IV, 1031).  

“Having spent time around ‘sinners’ and also around purported saints, I have a hunch why Jesus spent so much time with the former group: I think he preferred their company. Because the sinners were honest about themselves and had no pretense, Jesus could deal with them. In contrast, the saints put on airs, judged him, and sought to catch him in a moral trap. In the end it was the saints, not the sinners, who arrested Jesus” (Philip Yancey, “What’s So Amazing about Grace?” In “unChristian,” David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, 60).

Oh my, what a rich time for preachers to lift listeners to the love of Jesus! Use real life to illustrate what is, or should be, so fundamentally different about our gathering together around Him who alone is our righteousness. Amen?