The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for August 15, 2012

I travel a lot, so I'm often in hotel rooms...hotel rooms with fluorescent light fixtures over the sink.  Did you ever notice how those fluorescent lights bring out the gray in your hair?  Only the Lord knows how much time I've spent staring at the mirror, wondering where those, uh, signs of maturity came from.

Jesus said, "You cannot make even one hair white or black” (Matthew 5:36).  Yes, we can and our youth obsessed culture encourages us to hide the truth.  Come on, are the glitterati the media broadcasts at us really what life is about?  No, here's what it's all about:

Throughout all their lifetime my people will prove

My sovereign, eternal unchangeable love;

And then, when gray hairs will their temples adorn,

Like lambs they will still in my bosom be born.

(Lutheran Service Book, 728, 5)

It's gotten to the point that I no longer need a fluorescent light.  Even in a dimly lit bathroom, those gray hairs are all too obvious.  That's OK.  It's a regular reminder that more and more I am one of Jesus' little lambs.  “And then, when gray hairs will their temples adorn, Like lambs they will still in my bosom be born.”

 

 

The Meyer Minute for August 14, 2012

One of the first things every morning is to browse the newspapers.  Still groggy, I was drawn in this morning by Elizabeth Bernstein’s title, “Are We All Braggarts Now?”  “Consider your Facebook updates,” Ms. Bernstein begins.  ‘Best gift ever from the best husband ever.’  ‘Swam 30 minutes at a very fast time despite the large amount of Chardonnay served to me on the plane last night.’  ‘Got my first royalty check for my book!’  ‘Sunset sail.  Turned into a moonlight sail.  Shooting stars everywhere…Perfect.’ A benign reading,” Ms. Bernstein says, “would be that these are just typical daily updates.  But folks, this is bragging, whether you recognize it or not.  And it’s out of control.”

I don’t do much on Facebook, although I know people who do.  I put these Minutes out; am I bragging when I write about the grandkids?  Maybe.  The article totally captured me with this: “Boasting isn’t just a problem on the Internet.  In a society of unrelenting competition—where reality-show contestants duke it out for the approval of aging celebrities and pastors have publicists—is it any wonder we market ourselves relentlessly?”  (Wall Street Journal, D1)

Ms. Bernstein is waking me up to reality, and her article reminds me of what I read the other day in St. Augustine’s “Confessions.”  “Ambition seeks honor and glory, whereas only You, Lord, should be honored above all, and glorified forever.  The powerful man seeks to be feared, because of his cruelty; but who ought really to be feared but God only?  The enticements of the lustful claim the name of love; and yet nothing is more enticing than Your love, nor is anything loved more healthfully than Your truth, bright and beautiful above all.    Indeed, ignorance and foolishness themselves go masked under the names of simplicity and innocence; yet there is no being that has true simplicity like Yours, and none is innocent as You are.  Thus it is that by a sinner’s own deeds he is himself harmed.  Thus the soul commits fornication when she is turned from You, and seeks apart from You what she cannot find pure and untainted until she returns to You.”  (Confessions, 2.6.13-14)

Did you slow down when St. Augustine said, “There is no being that has true simplicity like Yours”?  He’s referring to the Bible’s teaching that God is a pure being.  God is pure love.  God is pure justice.  God is pure contentment, and so on.  We who are complex and live such complicated lives cannot comprehend the pure simplicity of God.  When we do so much of our posting, our self-serving publicity, our getting the last word, our bragging, our fretting over our own worthiness, all of that, we show how far we are from God and the Lord Jesus whom we profess to follow.  St. Augustine’s oft-quoted line reveals the deeper reason why we often use social media as we do.  “Restless is our heart until it comes to rest in You.”  (1.1.1)

 

The Meyer Minute for August 13, 2012

From a speech that Mark Twain gave in London in 1899:

"Yesterday I was at a luncheon party.  At the end of the party a great dignitary of the English Established Church went away half an hour before anybody else and carried off my hat.  Now, that was an innocent act on his part.  He went out first and, of course, had the choice of hats.  As a rule I try to get out first myself.  But I hold that it was an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to heredity.  He was thinking about ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that condition of mind he will take anybody's hat.  The result was that the whole afternoon I was under the influence of his clerical hat and could not tell a lie.  Of course, he was hard at it."

“Let each of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.  Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.  Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.  Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up.  Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.  Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”  (from Ephesians 4)

Yesterday you were in church, I hope.  On this day when you re-engage the real world, whose influence are you under?  Whose hat are you wearing?    

 

 

 

 

The Meyer Minute for August 10, 2012

It’s the time of year when teachers are preparing for the start of a new year.  They don’t make Wall Street salaries, sometimes don’t even make enough to continue in teaching, but a story from long ago reminds us of the nobility of the teaching profession.

Hannah Breece was born in Pennsylvania in 1859.  She became a teacher and in 1904, at age 45, agreed with the federal Department of the Interior to teach school in Alaska at a salary of $600 a year.  Her first school was in Afognak, a village near Kodiak.

There was prejudice.  "The Aleut children were a ragged, unkempt lot and the Russian...children treated them shamefully” (p. 17).

There was superstition.  One child wouldn't eat popcorn because he thought only the devil could turn something inside out.

Hannah must have wondered if her efforts were futile.  Afognak had a church, school, and tavern.  About the tavern, she wrote in her memoirs, "Here you are, ready to tear down what each institution can do for the good of the people” (p. 13).  She drilled her students in civics, but "One day, I asked, "Who says which man shall be president of the United States?  With one accord they chorused, 'The Czar!'" (A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska, p. 22)

Hannah stayed in Alaska until 1918, an unheralded hero in a noble and needed profession.  God bless our teachers!

 

 

 

The Meyer Minute for August 9, 2012

In the wake of Tuesday’s primary election in Missouri, analyses of the vote are now showing up.  Because of redistricting, two incumbent congressmen, William Lacy Clay and Russ Carnahan, ran against each other.  Even though they were old friends and political allies, the contest was nasty.  During the campaign, there was a suspicion that race would play a factor.  Clay is black; Carnahan white.  Today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch headlines, “As it turns out, race mattered in Clay-Carnahan primary vote.”  The article and accompanying district map show that the vote largely followed racial lines, Clay winning handily in predominantly African-American neighborhoods and Carnahan taking white areas.  The voting was more even in mixed neighborhoods.  Now fly from St. Louis to the South.  Today’s Wall Street Journal headlines, “Southern White Democrats Face End of Era in Congress,” and expands in detail on “Minorities and women have become a bigger part of the Democratic contingent in the House, while Republicans increasingly are attracting white southerners.”  Race.

Church people talk about racial equality, often pulling out Revelation 7:9, heaven filled with people, “from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.”  In many cases that talk is cheap.  In a 1963 speech at Western Michigan University, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of Christian America.”  A Gallup poll in 2002 found that close location and style of worship are driving reasons why Sunday morning is still the “most segregated hour” in America. I personally know a few parishioners who changed churches so that they could be part of a racially diverse congregation, but by and large we stay in our comfort zones.

Jesus spoke with a Samaritan woman at the well (John 4, which says “Jews do not associate with Samaritans,” verse 9), praised the faith of a Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30), held up the widow of Zarephath and Naaman as examples of faith (Luke 4:24-27), and always modeled “God does not show favoritism,” as Peter said, Acts 10:34.  So the Bible teaches us, but for reasons, some understandable and others sinful, many American Christian congregations are not improving the racial divide in America.

Residential students here at Concordia Seminary are predominantly white.  Why?  They come to us from the congregations of our denomination, and those congregations are predominantly white.  How shall we get a residential population of future ministers that will more reflect the reality of heaven?  From greater diversity in our congregations, but how will that happen?  It comes down to the actions of individual followers of Jesus Christ.  Am I working in my life for a color-blind church?  That’s worth much self-reflection.  By the way, Concordia Seminary is in Congressman Clay’s district.

 

The Meyer Minute for August 8, 2012

God must smile, speaking of God as human, whenever we discover evidence of His quiet working among us.

Our daughter Elizabeth tells this story about grandson Christian, 6-years-old and about to enter first grade.  “While we were in the car on the way to the shoe store, Christian starts down this path: ‘I think I’d like to be like Jesus.’  ‘OK,’ mom responds, ‘why?’  “Because He got to die on the cross.  I think I’d like to do that to be like Him.’  ‘Um, why would you want to do that?’  ‘Redemption, Mommy.  Jesus died on the cross for redemption for us.’”

Having her law degree, Elizabeth pressed Christian on his desire to die on the cross but she pressed to no satisfactory conclusion.  Granted, he doesn’t yet have an inkling of the pain of crucifixion or the cruel reality of death, but still their conversation shows both the working of the Spirit of God and the young boy’s receptivity to that working.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the image of God, a theme throughout the Bible.  “The image of God is the image of Jesus Christ on the cross.  It is into this image that the disciple’s life must be transformed.  In baptism Christ engraves the form of death on his own.  Having died to the flesh and to sin, Christians are now dead to this world, and the world is dead to them.  Those who live out of their baptism live out of their death.  Christ marks the life of his own with their daily dying in the struggle of the spirit against the flesh, and with their daily suffering the pains of death which the devil inflicts on Christians.  It is the suffering of none other than Jesus Christ that all of his disciples on earth have to endure.”

“Speaking of God as human,” I wrote in the first sentence.  He indeed did become human and whenever our obedience to God’s will brings us suffering for following Christ, we are being conformed to the image of God incarnate.  It happens in first graders and should be happening in adults our whole life long.  “This is a progression in us from one level of understanding to another and from one degree of clarity to another, toward an ever-increasing perfection in the form of likeness to the image of the Son of God.”

Whom do you see as you go about the tasks of today?  “The image of Jesus Christ, which is always before the disciples’ eyes, and before which all other images fade away, enters, permeates, and transforms them.”   (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Discipleship,” 285, 286, 281)

 

The Meyer Minute for August 7, 2012

Back to school! Years ago Paul Turner wrote in The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Washington what you should not say to a 13-year-old when shopping for back-to-school clothes. (August 17, 2001 ; D1)

“Hahahahaha.  Yeah, right.  Like we’re going to buy that.”

“That’s fine, honey.  Go ahead and embarrass our whole family.”

“I’m sorry my mere presence here in the store humiliates you. But I wish you would remember that I’m the one with the credit card.”

One thing I learned as a parent of teens: Our children are not our appendages.  They are independent human beings, fully equal to us in the sight of God. God is no respecter of persons (1 Peter 1:17).  Yes, parents have an authority over their children (Exodus 20:12), but that is oh so temporary. Children should honor and obey their parents, but we parents should give the highest respect to these children of God.

Heavenly Father, help us be good parents to your children…and teach them to appreciate that we’re the ones with the credit card!

Amen.

 

 

The Meyer Minute for August 6, 2012

I’m sitting on the deck, an enjoyable 65 degrees, and look up to the moon in a clear sky, some 240,000 miles away.  Can you picture me, one little human amazed at the universe?  Have you sat in awe yourself?  Beyond our sight, 352 million miles away, a one-ton rover named “Curiosity” has landed on Mars.  This was no park-your-car landing.  “The jaw-dropping landing process, involving a sky crane and the world’s largest supersonic parachute, allowed the spacecraft carrying Curiosity to target the landing area that scientists had meticulously chosen.”   NASA says that Curiosity’s mission is “to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms.”  (CNN Tech)  From my Adirondack, I look around at a planet, well, really just a backyard, filled with amazing “life forms.”  The hibiscus is opening its flowers to the sun, crickets chirping, birds singing...  What Curiosity seeks millions of miles away is all around you and me, the divine mystery of life if we’ll take the time to take it in.  “Ye forest leaves so green and tender that dance for joy in summer air; ye meadow grasses bright and slender, ye flowers so wondrous, sweet and fair, ye live to show His praise alone.  With me now make His glory known.”

Still on the deck, taking in the mystery this cool morning, I read the headline in today’s paper, “Temple spree leaves 7 dead.  Suspect is killed, several others are wounded in act called domestic terrorism.”  (Wall Street Journal)  Pondering that headline leads me to the Bible’s teaching that God is triune.  Our curiosity about the universe makes us marvel at the Creator.   The headline shows how sorely humanity needs a Savior.  And the Spirit enables us to experience the good and the bad in the “now but not yet” dependency of trust in the eventual full revelation of God’s goodness and glory.  “Praise ye the Lord.  Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in the firmament of His power.  Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.”  (Psalm 150:1, 6)  That’s the “environment able to support small life forms” that is around me this morning.  I hope it’s your environment too.  Oh, I just remembered, it’s Monday.  Got to put the garbage out.