The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for May 31, 2012

From a church newsletter I picked up the following Diary of a Bible.  The author is unknown.

January: A busy time for me.  Most of the family decided to read me through this year.  They kept me busy for the first two weeks, but they have forgotten me now.

February: Clean-up time.  I was dusted yesterday and put in my place.  My owner did use me for a few minutes last week.  He had been in an argument and was looking for some references to prove he was right.

March: Had a busy first day of the month.  My owner was elected president of the PTA and used me to prepare a speech.

April: Grandpa visited this month.  He kept me on his lap for an hour reading from 1 Peter 5:5-7.  He seems to think more of me than do some people in my own household.

May: I have a few green stains on my pages.  Some spring flowers were pressed in my pages.

How does the diary of your Bible read this far into the year?

 

 

The Meyer Minute for May 30, 2012

Last Sunday many Christian churches observed Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus’ first disciples.  1 Corinthians 12:3 teaches that the Holy Spirit gives us faith in Jesus Christ.  “No one can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit.”

Religious people make claims about having the Spirit, but how do you get the Holy Spirit? Here’s a quotation you may find troubling.  “We should and must constantly maintain that God will not deal with us except through His external Word and sacrament” (Smalcald Articles, III. VIII. 10).  That comes from Martin Luther and was adopted in 1580 as an official statement of the Lutheran Church’s understanding of the Bible.

Whether you agree or not, my follow up question is why?  What is your basis for rejecting or agreeing with this or, for that matter, any other religious statement?  Have you thought through your beliefs on the basis of biblical texts, church teaching, history and logic?  Why do you believe what you believe?

I’ll leave this subject hanging…except for one practical thing to factor into your thoughts about how the Spirit comes to us. When you’re really down, when you’re hurting and need some divine help and hope, it’s sure nice to know where you can go and what you can read and hear to be touched by the Holy Spirit.  “My soul faints with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word.”  (Psalm 119:81)

 

 

The Meyer Minute for May 29, 2012

With free time these last days, I read Tim Jackson’s opinion piece in Sunday’s New York Times.  Jackson is a professor at the University of Surrey and his editorial is titled “Let’s Be Less Productive.” 

“Productivity – the amount of output delivered per hour of work in the economy – is often viewed as the engine of progress in modern capitalist economies.  Output is everything.  Time is money.” Jackson suggests that our unemployment problems are actually made worse by our obsession with productivity.  Not being an economist, I don’t know about that, but my life experiences tell me the professor is making a good point when he writes, “There are sectors of the economy where chasing productivity growth doesn’t make sense at all.  Certain kinds of tasks rely inherently on the allocation of people’s time and attention.”  As examples he lists medicine, social work, education, musicians and others.  Pastoral ministry, I’d also add.  “The care and concern of one human being for another is a peculiar ‘commodity.’ It can’t be stockpiled.  It becomes degraded through trade.  It isn’t delivered by machines.  Its quality rests entirely on the attention paid by one person to another.  Even to speak of reducing the time involved is to misunderstand its value.”

Do we limit Christian love to meet production quotas?  Jesus said, “Love your neighbors as much as you love yourself” to an expert in the Mosaic law.  Back came the practical question, “Who are my neighbors?”  After all, Jesus, I have expectations to meet and therefore can’t deal with everyone.  So Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan and here’s the moral: anyone you meet is your neighbor. (Luke 10:23-37)  Life doesn’t fit into nice, tidy organizational and personal schedules.  Professor Jackson: “People often achieve a greater sense of well-being and fulfillment, both as producers and consumers of such activities, than they ever do in the time-poor, materialistic supermarket economy in which most of our lives are spent.”  It may leave you a bit ragged at times but prioritizing people over programs and productivity will be proven a rich way to live.

 

The Meyer Minute for May 24, 2012

We’re all experienced, too much so, in days when “the sun doesn’t shine.”

“You cannot see My face, for man shall not see Me and live,” said God to Moses (Exodus 33:21).  So at Mount Sinai, “a thick cloud (settled) on the mountain” (Exodus 19:16 ).  

God was as close as close could be, but veiled Himself so that His people would not die but live.

Here’s how He led them through the wilderness: “Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out.” (Exodus 40:36).   When Solomon dedicated the Temple, “a cloud filled the house of the Lord” (1 Kings 8:10 ).

When Jesus was transfigured and gave His disciples a fleeting glimpse of future glory, “A cloud came and overshadowed them…and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is My Son, my Chosen One; listen to Him!’” (Luke 9:34-35).

On the day of the Ascension: “As they were looking on, Jesus was lifted up, and a cloud took Him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9).  Not a Weather Channel cloud; the cloud of God receiving His Son into glory.

And there are clouds to come.  On Judgment Day, “Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him” (Revelation 1)

“I am with you always,” says the exalted Jesus (Matthew 28:20).  So when the sun isn’t shining in your life, remember that God is especially to us on our cloudy days!

 

 

Meyer Minute for May 23

You sometimes hear of parents who let their children grow up without formal religion because they don’t want to impose upon them a particular faith.  That may be well-intentioned but it’s wrong-headed.  It instills in a child the attitude that faith is a result of our choice based upon our understanding.  No, taught St. Augustine.  It’s the other way around.  We do not understand in order to believe but we believe in order to understand.  Jesus says, “You did not choose Me but I chose you.”  (John 15:16) 

 

This Friday evening I’ve been invited to speak for the 8^th grade graduation of St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Chicago Heights, Illinois.  I graduated from St. Paul’s 51 years ago and count that education as one of the greatest benefits in my life.  Parochial school taught me to learn in the context of faith, faith seeking understanding.

In a 1938 sermon for the confirmation of young people, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said,“Confirmands today are like young soldiers marching to war, the war of Jesus Christ against the gods of this world.  It is a war that demands the commitment of one’s whole life.  Is not God, our Lord, worthy of this struggle?  Idolatry and cowardice confront us on all sides, but the direst foe does not confront us, He is with us.  “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.”  (Eric Metaxas, “Bonhoeffer,” 309)

So then, should we raise children spiritually unprepared and unarmed for the life ahead of them?  God bless our parochial schools!

 

 

The Meyer Minute for May 22

Today’s topic is economy and politics.

The book of Genesis tells how a young man named Joseph was sold into slavery, got thrown into jail, and ended up being the second most powerful person in Egypt.  Coming from Illinois, we often joke that many of our powerful politicians end up going to jail.  Anyway, the reason for Joseph’s ascent was his God-given ability to interpret dreams.  When he interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh, that there would be seven years of good national economy followed by seven poor years, Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of the economy.  “During the seven plentiful years the earth produced abundantly, and he gathered up all the food of these seven years…and put the food in the cities.  And Joseph stored up grain in great abundance, like the sand of the sea, until he ceased to measure it, for it could not be measured.  The seven years of plenty…came to an end, and the seven years of famine began to come.  There was famine in all lands, but in all the land of Egypt there was bread.”  (Genesis 41:49-54)

Will our children and grandchildren live in good economic times or bad? 

Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. has just written a book about the economy and politics, “The Debt Bomb.”  Dr. Coburn writes, “America is already bankrupt.  We may not believe it.  We may not yet feel its full effects.  But we are effectively bankrupt.  Our debt now exceeds the size of our entire economy.  Our payments on our obligations—our unfunded liabilities—exceed our income as far as the eye can see.  No amount of obtainable growth or tax revenue will be enough.  There simply is no possible way we can finance our long-term liabilities with fundamentally reimagining what government can do in the twenty-first century.” (p. 12)

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” the Bible teaches (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39).  Aren’t coming generations our neighbors too?  Joseph seems to have had almost dictatorial powers over the Egyptian economy.  Our founders gave the power to us, normal, pay-your-bills, common sense citizens.  Don’t wait until the last minute to get to know the candidates.  Christian love is not limited to the Sunday sanctuary.  The lean years seem to have already begun.

 

The Meyer Minute for May 21

Yesterday many churches observed the Ascension.  Jesus rises from the ground, ascends, and when a cloud covers Him, He is no longer seen.  Still today, no longer seen.  If it strikes you as a strange story, the disciples who actually were there thought it strange too.  “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here gazing into the sky?”  (Acts 1:11)

People of faith wrestle with experiences that don’t fit our understanding of how things should work.  Just as people don’t rise from the ground unaided, many of our natural experiences in life don’t seem to fit with the idea of a close, personal God who cares for us.  When we find ourselves not seeing the goodness of God in our lives, we have only faith, only God’s promises of His goodness to us.  We don’t see God.  We don’t see Jesus.  “No one has ever seen God.”  (John 1:18)  “You cannot see My face, for no one may see Me and live.” (Exodus 33:20)  Since a hidden God, like rising from the ground unaided, goes against our natural desire to see and hear, to touch and experience, some people build idols and Americans worship worldly power, consumerism and celebrity.  Living amidst worshippers of what is seen, we followers of Christ can only trust the promise.  “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.”  (Acts 1:11)

When you have gone through tough times, I mean really tough, and had nothing to hang onto except the promises of God, then in hindsight you see that God, though hidden, truly is personal, close and caring.  Faith does sustain us.  Hymns say it; the Bible teaches it.  “When all things seem against us to drive us to despair, we know one gate is open, one ear will hear our prayer.”  “Faith shall cry as fails each sense, Jesus is my confidence.”  “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)

 

The Meyer Minute for May 11, 2012

Look around.  Can you find the Word of God, pick up and hold up the Word of God?  Years ago I heard a former executive of CNN speak.  I can’t remember his name but he obviously understood the world of broadcasting and he was a committed Christian.  He spoke to us about the “Gutenberg captivity of the Word of God.”  His point was that we’ve let ourselves think that the living and active Word of God is confined, captive to the print and pages bound in the Bible.

Acts 8:26-40 tells about an Ethiopian struggling to understand Isaiah 53.  Because the Ethiopian could not understand who the passage was talking about, the Good News was being held captive in the letters of the Isaiah scroll.  So an angel said to Philip, “Go south to the road – the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”  “Go” is a Great Commission word; so Philip went.  (Matthew 28:19)  The Spirit said, “Go and join yourself to the carriage.”  In other words, meet them where they’re at, and so Philip met the Ethiopian where he was at and initiated a conversation.  “Do you understand what you’re reading?”  When the Ethiopian showed his willingness to talk, Philip began with the Isaiah text and told the Good News of Jesus.  End result: They came to an oasis, the Ethiopian asked to be baptized and Philip obliged him.  The Word of God was no longer captive to print and pages. 

Will that Word be free in your life this weekend?  “Blessed Lord, You have caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning.  Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and take them to heart that, by the patience and comfort of Your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord.”  Amen.

 

 

The Meyer Minute for May 8, 2012

Back in 1899 the editor of the New London, Connecticut, Bee, advertised, "Here various news we tell, of love and strife, Of peace and war, health sickness, death and life...Of old mismanagements, taxations new, All neither wholly false, nor wholly true” (Mitchell Stephens, A History of News. p. 201).

Things have changed dramatically since 1899.  Back then information came from the local newspaper and the talk you shared with neighbors and townspeople, limited sources of information.  Today the sources of information are unlimited and, this is so important, you can choose the sources that suit your preferences.  Like flipping through channels for a TV show we like or blogging with an affinity group, we make our own realities. 

A friend of mine down at the gas station used to say, "Dale, when the Big Guy calls me, I'm going to tell Him I'm a friend of yours."  To which I said, "You know, that won't be your normal audit.  H&R Block won't go with you.  You have to appear on your own." (see 2 Corinthians 5:10)

Here’s a special challenge to Christians today: To get God’s reality into the unlimited sources from which we can pick and choose our information.  They used to say, a newspaper in one hand and a Bible in the other.  Today you can have both in your smart phone at your finger tip, the Bible and “various news we tell, of love and strife, Of peace and war, health sickness, death and life...Of old mismanagements, taxations new.”  But is it all relative, “all neither wholly false, nor wholly true,” with you deciding your reality?  Really, take a look at 2 Corinthians 5:10.