The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for March 30, 2012

“Our Father who art in heaven.”

A sincere Christian is obsessed, quietly, not loudly, obsessed with God.  This is not religion in another’s face; it’s the calm personal conviction God is my loving Father, who gives me all and whom I want to please before all others.  True, I don’t fit this description and I presume neither do you.  We have jobs to do and lives to live that take our attention but still we pray to have through it all a consciousness of our Father in heaven.

Sunday is Palm Sunday, the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem to begin the week that led to His crucifixion.  “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified.  Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say?  ‘Father, save Me from this hour’?  But for this purpose I came to this hour.  Father, glorify Your name.” (John 12)

“Father,” Jesus calls God and teaches us to do the same.  What loving father ever wearies of his children, of you, of me?  When wander from Him, as we do, He waits for us to come back, to talk, to fall asleep in His arms.  May the Father’s Spirit lead us to quiet and holy obsession this week.  “Our Father who art in heaven.”

 

 

The Meyer Minute for March 29, 2012

For the last three days the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against Obamacare.  “The one in authority is God’s servant for your good” (Romans 13:4).  Who is “the one in authority?”  The administration?  Congress?

In the last hours of his presidency, John Adams made many late-night appointments. Some of those appointments didn’t get delivered, including the signed and sealed appointment of William Marbury to be a justice of the peace.  When James Madison, the new Secretary of State for President Thomas Jefferson, refused to deliver the appointment, Marbury and several others took the case to the Supreme Court.  The unanimous decision of the Court ruled that a section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 was unconstitutional.  Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, “The Constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall be pleased to alter it.” (James Simon, “What Kind of Nation,” 186)

Romans refers to “the one in authority.”  So who’s in authority in the Obamacare case?   Marbury vs. Madison, 1803, established that the Constitution is the final authority.  Whatever you think about the healthcare law, God has blessed us to live under a form of government that divides power.

 

 

The Meyer Minute for March 28, 2012

I have found Oswald Chambers a welcome antidote to brain-dead Christianity.  So my mind started whirling when he wrote, “The revelation of God is that He cannot forgive” (November 20).

Those of us who have spent much of our lives in the church have heard countless times that God forgives.  You don’t deserve it.  You can’t earn it.  Free gift. Sweet deal.  Those outside the church often hear this as a monstrous evasion of human responsibility.  Do whatever turns you on, they hear us saying.  God’s business is to forgive.

The critics have a valid point and Chambers calls us to rethink forgiveness.  Since God is a perfectly just being, our self-willed ways are affronts that He cannot tolerate.

Somebody has to pay. It should be you. That’s why His Son’s suffering on the cross is at the heart of the biblical message.  His substitutionary suffering satisfied God’s demand for justice.  Forgiveness follows, not as our entitlement but as a gift that we trust with all our being.  Yes, God forgives, but not by sweeping sin under the rug.

So when we Christians smugly lead less than holy lives, aren’t we misrepresenting forgiveness and thumbing our nose at the Holy One?

 

 

The Meyer Minute for March 27, 2012

I spent last weekend at a most unusual church.  It’s a new church, less than ten years old, but it’s been experiencing significant growth because it is very intentionally reaching out to people who feel they are not welcome at traditional churches.

In church I sat next to a man with long hair, tattoos, chains…and he sat in church and listened attentively to the sermon about Jesus’ forgiveness and love for all people.

A woman comes from a part of town known for drugs and prostitution.  When she came to this church and found out how forgiving Jesus is, she brought others, probably brought more people to Jesus than you or I have.

I met a young woman making her way through life with drugs and sex.  Later I saw her with a man.  “Is that her boyfriend?” I asked.  “No, he’s her pimp.  He abuses her but she’s afraid to leave him.”  Church members are working and praying for her.

People reproached Jesus for being “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” but Jesus said, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”  (Matthew 11:19; Luke 19:10)   The weekend made me wonder how Christ-like I and many of us traditional church people really are.

 

The Meyer Minute for March 26, 2012

A new work week…and probably a lot of things coming at you.  Romans 8:31 says, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”  Thomas Long has an interesting take on God being for us.  He writes, “The Bible speaks to particular people in the concrete circumstances of their lives.  It speaks ‘a word on target,’ illumining our situation from within.  It is not the word of God in the abstract but of God who is for us, of God who is against us in order to be truly for us.”  (“The Witness of Preaching,” 64)

Are your resources strained?  Taking criticism?  Illness in your life, death in your circle?  Need someone to pray for you?  All those things you’re not looking forward to?  God is in them, challenging you, refining you, sustaining you, sometimes seeming to be against you but always a loving Father who is for you.  “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”  (Psalm 27:1)  There’s a reason you can go at this week with calm confidence, proof that God is for you: Jesus Christ.  Take a look at Romans 8, starting with verse 28.  “All things work together for good.”

 

The Meyer Minute for March 23, 2012

A weekend off from work can mean spiritual benefit for you.  Imagine yourself on a royal throne. At creation God gave humans dominion over the earth.  “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Genesis 1:26).  We exercise that dominion by the work that we do.  The farmer plants and harvests.  The teacher teaches.  The retired person volunteers.  And so it goes.  Dominion. Our throne.

Someday, however, you’ll be forced to give up your throne and another person will take your place.  Disability, retirement, and finally, death.  You’re king or queen only for a day…or a few years…or decades.  One day God will give to another your dominion over your little corner of the world.

So welcome times off because they remind you that in the last analysis you’re saved by grace, not by works (Ephesians 2:8-9).  Working is a manifestation of the Law, and it is good.  Resting in God is grace, and that gives you time to take in the greatest Good News.  Rest…and remember with thanksgiving that the throne is the Lord’s.

 

 

 

The Meyer Minute for March 22, 2012

When does your newspaper run religious news stories?  Friday?  Saturday?  With just a simple little insight, you’ll see religious truth in the news every day.

Yesterday the National Football League punished the New Orleans Saints for their “bounty” program.  They paid cash rewards for hits that forced an opposing player out of the game. Head coach: Suspended without pay for the entire season.  One assistant coach suspended for 6 games; another indefinitely.  General Manager: out for 8 games. 

Punishments are the Law at work.  Bible passages that tell us what to do, not do, and how we are to be are passages of Law.  For example, “The wages of sin is death,” Romans 6:23, is Law.  Well, who always does what God wants?  Not me!  Bible passages that tell of God’s forgiveness and love to us are Gospel.  Romans 6:23 continues, “The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

Law and Gospel run through the whole Bible, helping us understand the Bible and life. So when you read a news story about someone paying a price for wrong doing, you’re seeing the Law at work in real life.  And when you’re taking the hit for what you’ve done wrong, take comfort from the Gospel.  At least God forgives you.

 

The Meyer Minute for March 13, 2012

The office memo… The e-mail telling you what you should do…  Sometimes co-workers find that the easiest way to communicate, other times what they send is self-serving, and still other times some memos and e-mails are obviously part of office intrigue.

In 74 B.C. the Roman statesman Cicero came back from a distinguished tour of duty in Sicily.  He assumed that people knew of his service.  They should have but they didn’t.  Some didn’t even know that he had been out of Rome.  Cicero learned a lesson from that.  “Once I had realized that the Roman people were rather deaf, but sharp-eyed, I stopped worrying about what the world heard about me.  From that day on, I took care to be seen in person every day.”  (Anthony Everett, p. 70)

Years later St. Paul had a similar experience.  He knew that people reacted differently to his letters than to his presence (2 Corinthians 10:10-11).  So he often wrote of his desire to see people in person.  His sincerity is proved by all the traveling he did throughout the Mediterranean world.

Sometimes memos and e-mails have to be sent, but shouldn’t love prompt more personal conversation in your office?  Get some exercise.  Take a walk.  Face-to-face conversations can take the edge off.

 

The Meyer Minute for March 12, 2012

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A friend is concerned that the minister of his church spends a lot of time on religious blogs, reading and posting. Picking up a whiff of information about something in the church, some of these bloggers and posters put out misleading or wrong information, and their like-minded fellows enjoy the feeding frenzy that follows.  To paraphrase 2 Timothy 4:3, “To suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of affinity posters to say what their itching ears want to hear.” 

Quote the commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness” and they say, “We’re talking about public, not private matters.”  That’s may be true but they seldom check their facts and often disregard people charged to deal with the matter, whatever the gossip du jour is.  Quote Jesus, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and they say, “Fine.”  They ignore the fact that their affinity group doesn’t include people who disagree. 

So my friend asked if the Seminary is cautioning students against this kind of behavior. Yes, we tell students, “What you post in public can eliminate you from being considered for a position at a church.”  Long ago someone said, “Ordain a fool and you get an ordained fool.”  Nothing new under the sun.

The Meyer Minute for March 9, 2012

The Roman poet Horace had a few acres outside of Rome. With that he was content.  “My stream of pure water, my woodland of few acres, and sure trust in my crop of corn bring me more blessing than the lot of the dazzling lord of fertile Africa.”  (Odes, III, 16)

On this date in 2010 the stock market had its greatest percentage loss since the 1930s.  Now two years later, are you still worried about your portfolio or do you find yourself at the other end, no investments, just scrimping from paycheck to paycheck, if you even have a job?  Are you obsessed with money or the lack of it?  Think of it this way, are you complaining about what God has or has not given you?

You can move toward contentment by imitating the wise of this world, like Horace who said, “To those who seek for much; much is ever lacking.”  It’s even better to strive for contentment because not being content is dangerous to your immortal soul.  “Having food and clothing, we these we shall be content.  But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts.”  (1 Timothy 6:8-9)  Underneath our concerns about money lies our belief or unbelief about God.