The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for March 4, 2021

Two questions, the first is about Psalm 32, the second penitential psalm. Who is “you”? “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you maybe found….  (Psalm 32:5-6). When you read that, who did you think “you” is? 

I expect most of us would say “you” is God. Certainly not wrong, but how helpful is that answer? God is hidden, so where do we put our confession? If we read “you” in the psalm as the hidden God, our confession of sin can just go out into the air, not finding a place to stick. Let’s bring to bear a truth of Christian interpretation, that the New Testament is hidden in the Old Testament, and the Old is revealed in the New. So when the psalmist is speaking about God, we understand “you” to be God specifically in the person of Jesus. Now our confession isn’t just into the air but has a place it sticks, Jesus’ passion and cross. 

Second question: If your Christian faith tradition observes midweek services during Lent, what’s the focus? Here’s where I’m coming from. Conservative Christians gripe about how our consumer culture makes Christmas a two-month holiday. Over and over we hear, “Keep Christ in Christmas.” “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3). Lent is 40 days that are not commercialized when we can show society the truth about Jesus, but midweek attendance, yes there’s Covid and I’m coming from my own faith tradition, is paltry. Does your community see you and fellow Christians, and we are a sizeable group, pause normal weekday life for worship? Are we playing the hypocrite? Poor attendance contradicts so much of our evangelism talk. 

I wonder how much focus Lenten services are putting on the biblical accounts of our Lord’s passion. Or are we assuming that and drifting into less specific general penitence and Christian living? “Let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you maybe found….” General penitence and Christian living are not where sins stick, not where we put our sins for forgiveness. “Jesus, I will ponder now on Thy holy passion” (Lutheran Service Book, 440:1). 

The Meyer Minute for March 1, 2021

I’m many years past parenting, but we used to warn our children about peer pressure. “Just because your classmates are doing it, doesn’t mean you have to do it.” Impressionable adolescents in high school, then off to college to live on their own, oh, peer pressure was a real worry for parents. 

Do adults worry about peer pressure anymore? Isn’t much of social media a high-tech form of peer pressure? Aren’t so many TV channels telling us how to act? Aren’t partisan news sources pulling us into what we want to hear? The array of religious channels lets you seek out peers who preach what you like. I don’t know what an algorithm is, but I do know that it personalizes what pops up on the screen by catering to my preferences. Are there any grown-ups scared by all this? 

I’m deep into the study of 1 Peter, and that old document offers insight. “As children of obedience, not conforming yourselves to the former passions of your ignorance, but…” Today people read that and think of gross sins, and while that wasn’t out of Peter’s mind, he’s laying down a deeper principle. You are what you take in. Whatever you uncritically let into your eyes and ears shapes who you are. Peter, writing to Christians living in an overwhelmingly non-Christian society, said you are shaped either by influences surrounding you or by the will of God who calls you to be holy in life. “Not conforming yourselves to the former passions of your ignorance, but, as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:14-15). 

Many Christians think of the Bible as a religious guidebook, instructions for holy living. If that’s all it is, you’re easy prey for the high-tech ways our culture can get into your being. The Word of God gets into your being too, but unlike media’s unholy peer pressure, the Word gives you new birth and shapes you for living as a child of God. Peter says you were “born again through the living and abiding Word of God” and “as newborn babies, desire pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow into salvation” (1:23; 2:2).  

“Whoever would save his life will lose it” Jesus said in yesterday’s Gospel lesson (Mark 8:35). Peer pressure has grown up and become an adult problem. 

The Meyer Minute for February 26, 2021

Imagine you’re going to take a step to a higher place. For example, you’re going to step up onto the bed of a pickup truck. It’s easiest if someone is up there to help you. So, you put one foot up on the tailgate, grab the hand your buddy extends, you push off your foot while your buddy pulls, and you’re up. Another example, you need to get something out of a high kitchen cabinet. You get something like a step ladder, stand on it, brace yourself by putting your hand up on the cabinet, and up you go. Common, ordinary ways we live, but they open for us Christians a view, maybe a new view of space and time. 

We’re living in a very here-and-now culture. “What time is it?” you ask, and your friend says, “It’s about 9:26.” About? That’s not about, it’s focused on the present almost to the second. Since you’re in the world, you have to navigate this here-and-now culture, but since you’re a person of faith, you are also not of this world and therefore have a different internal clock. 1 Peter 1:13 is very interesting. The ESV translates, “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you and the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Most English translations do the same future tense, “the grace that will be brought to you.” But that’s not precisely what the original Greek says: “Set your hope on the grace that is being brought to you by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Someday Judgment Day will come, we confess that, assuming it’s the sweet by and by, but the verse literally says already now you and I are receiving the gift of our inheritance in heaven that will fully be ours when Jesus comes. Picturing the pickup truck or step ladder, we’ve already got a foot higher in heaven. Think how that changes your outlook for today’s challenges. 

The scholarly word for this is “proleptic,” something in the future is presented as already happening. Another example from 1 Peter: You are “guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials” (1: 5-6). Believers are already receiving blessings from our future. “Oh, that we were there!” goes a Christmas hymn about heaven (LSB 386:4), but timewise? Already now we’re experiencing the upward pull. 

The Meyer Minute for February 25, 2021

Do I watch Jesus suffer the same way I watch sports or an engaging show – as a spectator? Paul saw no separation between himself and Jesus: “I have been crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). This Lent I ask myself, How can I more identify my very being with Christ? 

Part of the answer is to realize that forgiveness has not removed my sinfulness. The first of the six traditional penitential psalms is Psalm 6. It is prayed by a man who is godly, like you and me. “Depart from me all you workers of evil” (verse 8) is something a true Christian prays, and yet this spiritual man feels his guilt, feels it deep in his being. “I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord—how long?” (verses 2-3). Here we have no spectator in the pew but a true believer still troubled by his sin. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Note that the verse says, “fall short” – present tense, still failing. Shouldn’t that be troubling? 

“They contemplate Christ’s passion properly who look at it with a terrified heart and a despairing conscience,” said Martin Luther in his 1519 (“Sermon on the Meditation of Christ’s Passion”). That is more than looking on as a spectator. It’s desperation focused on Christ, an obsession to know His loving kindness is still with us. “Turn, O Lord, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love” (verse 4). Do you, as a believer, still pray this way? 

“Depart from me all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping” (verse 8). Therein the psalmist moves through the conscience troubled by sin to total dependence upon God. Luther again: “If we look at sin in our heart, it will be much too strong for us and will live on forever. But if we see that it rests on Christ and is overcome by his resurrection, and then boldly believe this, then sin is dead and nullified.”  

“Jesus, grant that balm and healing, / In Your holy wounds I find” (Lutheran Service Book, 421:1) 

The Meyer Minute for February 23, 2021

500,000 family members, friends, and fellow citizens lost to the pandemic. Is this changing how we think about death? 

From the first penitential psalm: “O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord—how long? Turn, O Lord, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love” (Psalm 6:1-4). 

How cruel the loss of ritual in this pandemic. If death comes into our family, our grief cannot be assuaged by the normal expressions of sympathies, public visitation, tears and hugs from people bringing sympathy. If someone dies whom we know but not family or close friend, we keep distance out of fear of infection. Are we being numbed? 

“And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, ‘Why was the ointment wasted like that?’ …And they scolded her. But Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial.’”   

“Because of Covid, a memorial service will be held at a future date.”  This woman, identified as Mary in John 12, did not delay the ritual of burial to some future date. Quite the opposite, she gave loving ritual to Jesus while He was still alive. With death so much around us, shouldn’t our Lenten devotion be more intense than ever before? Jesus, why do You die? Jesus, how can I too anoint You? “With Your Spirit me endow, for such meditation.”   

“Truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” “May I give You love for love! Hear me, O my Savior, That I may in heav’n above / Sing Your praise forever.” (Mark 14:3-9; Lutheran Service Book, 440:6). 

The Meyer Minute for February 23, 2021

500,000 family members, friends, and fellow citizens lost to the pandemic. Is this changing how we think about death? 

From the first penitential psalm: “O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord—how long? Turn, O Lord, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love” (Psalm 6:1-4). 

How cruel the loss of ritual in this pandemic. If death comes into our family, our grief cannot be assuaged by the normal expressions of sympathies, public visitation, tears and hugs from people bringing sympathy. If someone dies whom we know but not family or close friend, we keep distance out of fear of infection. Are we being numbed? 

“And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, ‘Why was the ointment wasted like that?’ …And they scolded her. But Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial.’”   

“Because of Covid, a memorial service will be held at a future date.”  This woman, identified as Mary in John 12, did not delay the ritual of burial to some future date. Quite the opposite, she gave loving ritual to Jesus while He was still alive. With death so much around us, shouldn’t our Lenten devotion be more intense than ever before? Jesus, why do You die? Jesus, how can I too anoint You? “With Your Spirit me endow, for such meditation.”   

“Truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” “May I give You love for love! Hear me, O my Savior, That I may in heav’n above / Sing Your praise forever.” (Mark 14:3-9; Lutheran Service Book, 440:6). 

The Meyer Minute for February 22, 2021

Dear Madelyn, 

Your Mom says you want to see your grandmother. Your Mom wrote “Madelyn (is) asking me 1937473 times a day, “when will Grandma Carol come back alive?” That’s a lot of asking! 

Your Grandma wants to be with you too!  She wants to spend time with you, watch you play, see you grow up. Your Grandma loved her family. I know your Mom and Grandfather miss her very, very much. We all do. She passed away before you were born. 

Maddie, someday you will see her. Your parents are teaching you about Jesus. We don’t see Jesus, do we? We don’t see your Grandma Carol and we don’t see Jesus, but Jesus is alive, and your Grandma Carol is alive. She's alive with Jesus. Someday we’ll see one another. Jesus told His disciples, “If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3). One day Jesus is going to take us to a new home. Jesus will be there. You'll see Grandma there. Everyone who loves Jesus will be there. Our new home is called “heaven.” It will be wonderful. No more hurts. No more tears. No more missing Grandma. We don’t know when Jesus will take us to our new home. That’s His secret. We’ll be surprised. Now we just wait. Big people are waiting too. That’s why big people say in church, “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” 

There’s lots of big people talk in church, isn’t there? Sometimes the pastor says, “With angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify Your glorious Name.” “With all the company of heaven” means that right now Grandma and all who love Jesus are already together. We can’t see some people, like we can’t see Grandma Carol, but we’re all together when we look to Jesus. That’s one of the great things about going to church. We’re with “all the company of heaven.”  

Maddie, your Dad and Mom take care of you because they love you. Jesus loves you too. One day you’ll see your Grandma Carol, all because Jesus loves you so much.  

Uncle Dale 

The Meyer Minute for February 22, 2021

Dear Madelyn, 

Your Mom says you want to see your grandmother. Your Mom wrote “Madelyn (is) asking me 1937473 times a day, “when will Grandma Carol come back alive?” That’s a lot of asking! 

Your Grandma wants to be with you too!  She wants to spend time with you, watch you play, see you grow up. Your Grandma loved her family. I know your Mom and Grandfather miss her very, very much. We all do. She passed away before you were born. 

Maddie, someday you will see her. Your parents are teaching you about Jesus. We don’t see Jesus, do we? We don’t see your Grandma Carol and we don’t see Jesus, but Jesus is alive, and your Grandma Carol is alive. She's alive with Jesus. Someday we’ll see one another. Jesus told His disciples, “If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3). One day Jesus is going to take us to a new home. Jesus will be there. You'll see Grandma there. Everyone who loves Jesus will be there. Our new home is called “heaven.” It will be wonderful. No more hurts. No more tears. No more missing Grandma. We don’t know when Jesus will take us to our new home. That’s His secret. We’ll be surprised. Now we just wait. Big people are waiting too. That’s why big people say in church, “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” 

There’s lots of big people talk in church, isn’t there? Sometimes the pastor says, “With angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify Your glorious Name.” “With all the company of heaven” means that right now Grandma and all who love Jesus are already together. We can’t see some people, like we can’t see Grandma Carol, but we’re all together when we look to Jesus. That’s one of the great things about going to church. We’re with “all the company of heaven.”  

Maddie, your Dad and Mom take care of you because they love you. Jesus loves you too. One day you’ll see your Grandma Carol, all because Jesus loves you so much.  

Uncle Dale 

The Meyer Minute for February 19, 2021

There are practical reasons why pastors use sermon illustrations. In preaching your pastor shares theology, insights from God’s Word, but we also know dry lectures aren’t effective in the pulpit. Illustrations give pew sitters a picture of the truth, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” And it’s easier to listen to an illustration than try to take in heavy theological teaching. Easier to preach too! 

Sunday many pastors will preach on the temptation of Jesus. After He was baptized, “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him” (Mark 2:12-13). Hmmm… How might I illustrate that? 

Mars! Thursday NASA landed our fourth rover on the red, waterless planet. Talk about a wilderness! After a long journey, the rover “Perseverance” when through “seven minutes of terror,” NASA’s description for entering the Martian atmosphere, a dangerous time, the mission could end in disaster, and for those minutes of entry there is no communication. To the joy of everyone in mission control, Perseverance landed successfully and is in the wilderness. Hmmm… That might preach. Someone entering an alien, hostile world, “out in the wilderness.” 

OK, good comparison but, as I asked my students yesterday, so what? How can that illustration help us in our here-and-now life and struggles? This is one of the hardest things about planning a sermon, trying to take a text into the hearer’s heart. In the 2015 movie, “The Martian,” an astronaut played by Matt Damon is stranded on Mars, few supplies, fated to death in that waterless place. Is that a picture of life on earth? For all the created goodness of Earth, so often life can be hostile, impersonal and evil forces all around and, akin to Matt Damon, without help here-and-now we’re fated to die? 

When Perseverance landed, it sent back a photo. NASA tweeted the photo as if Perseverance had written it. “Hello, world. My first look at my forever home.” Is life in a hostile world, fated to die, your forever home? “And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan.” You were baptized into the One who faced and overcame the forces of evil, first in the wilderness, and climactically at the cross and by His resurrection. Here-and-now, Jesus is our forever home. “Baptism promises and brings victory over death and the devil” (Martin Luther, “Large Catechism”). Water, Word, Perseverance.       

The Meyer Minute for February 17, 2021

I’ll never forget an Ash Wednesday years ago. In New York for a meeting of the American Bible Society, we attended the service at one of the big Manhattan churches, the name I can’t remember. When a woman in the pew ahead of me came back from the imposition of ashes, she pulled out a little mirror from her purse to see how she looked.   

“Renew me, O Eternal Light” is a 17^th century hymn fitting for Ash Wednesday. “Renew me.” Jesus forgives, but the Old Adam is still within me. “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep doing” (Romans 7:19). Don’t do outwardly evil things? What about dark feelings and urges are down in your heart? “Renew me,” “me.” I recall a local businessman saying he wanted me to go with when it came time for him to meet “The Big Guy.” You’re on your own, buddy. The only one who can help you then is Jesus. “Renew me, O eternal Light.” This is a prayer. “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). Will I feel the oppressiveness of sin this Ash Wednesday? Holying Spirit, come down into my dark heart! “In the midst of utter woe / When our sins oppress us, / Where shall we for refuge go, / Where for grace to bless us? / To Thee, Lord Jesus, only!” (LSB 755:3).  

“Create in me a new heart, Lord, / That gladly I obey Your Word. / Let what You will be my desire, / And with new life my soul inspire.” “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). Ashes are superficial. Look into your deepest being. 

“Renew me, O eternal Light, / And let my heart and soul be bright, / Illumined with the light of grace / That issues from Your holy face.” “You have said, ‘Seek my face.’ My heart says to you, ‘Your face, Lord, do I seek.’” “God has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”  “All the vain things that charm me most, / I sacrifice them to His blood” (LSB 704: 1; Psalm 27:8-9; 2 Corinthians 4:6; LSB 426:2).