The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for September 30, 2015

On a Saturday morning several years ago, I walked over to Sieck Hall; that’s where my working office is located. A young seminarian… I mean young, didn’t look like he’d been confirmed…was standing outside. “What are you doing here on a Saturday?” I asked. “We’re having a computer software workshop.” “It’s a fad,” I said. “Carbon paper is coming back.” He looked at me and said, “Sir, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I tell that story because Diane and I saw “The Intern” yesterday afternoon. Robert DeNiro plays a 70-year-old widower who knows he needs to keep busy, and wants to. So he signs up for a “Senior Intern” position at an internet company. He starts out as a curiosity to the young people who dominate the company but by the end of the movie is recognized for the wisdom he learned over the years, wisdom he gently shares with young people willing to listen.

King Rehoboam wasn’t willing to listen. His father Solomon had died and the people pleaded for relief from the heavy hand of government. His older advisers said to be gentle, “to please them and speak good words to them” (2 Chronicles 10:7), but his younger advisers told him to double down. Rehoboam rejected the advice of the older men and civil war broke out. Israel was forever divided.

In the New Testament, religious hard-liners had arrested the apostles for preaching about Jesus. An older and learned rabbi named Gamaliel recounted history and said, “‘If this plan or undertaking is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!’ So they took his advice” (Acts 5:39).

“Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction, and be attentive, that you may gain insight” (Proverbs 4:1).

We can’t live the lives of younger adults. They’ll just wait us out, if you know what I mean, but interest them in the honest life stories we have to tell, they’ll listen. If you know what carbon paper is, or was, you’ll enjoy “The Intern.”

 

The Meyer Minute for September 29, 2015

Our family was together this past weekend. Of course, everyone’s attention was on the Cinco de Meyer, the five grandsons. “Children are a heritage from the Lord” (Psalm 127:3).

Drew, you had broken your wrist but were still the daredevil, jumping off everything. Jacob, you’re a Power Ranger, striking fear into your imaginary opponents. Connor, we were glad to watch your soccer game and see you score goals. Nicholas, “Toodles,” you were good in church, until you took a header off the pew. Fact is, you were all very well-behaved in church, or so I was told. I was up front doing the liturgy. Christian, you stood with me as people left church and asked if we could “hang out.” Oh, what more could I want?

The disciples had been arguing about who was the greatest. Jesus said to them, “‘If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.’ And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.’” (Mark 9:35-37). “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 18:10).

They are the Power Rangers. They are the soccer stars. They are the college students who think they have insights their parents never had. They are climbing the career ladder. They are the adults who strive to be greatest. Jesus wasn’t speaking only about children. He was speaking about you and me, little ones who follow Him. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” (1 John 3:1-3).

After the service was over the boys reverted to being boys. They went outside and climbed on the railings and light poles of the church. Today is the Day of St. Michael and All Angels. Thank You, Lord!

 

 

 

The Meyer Minute for September 28, 2015

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

You may have sped through those words yesterday in church but they’re worth a little more time this Monday morning. Those words tell us that sins, trespasses, happen in our interactions with one another. In church people are oriented toward God but during the week we face off against each other. In your family, in your work, in your neighborhood, on the Internet or highway… Our work week is filled with personal interactions and some can get intense. Of the Ten Commandments, all but the first are about some aspect of our interactions with one another. So this petition in the Lord’s Prayer identifies where we’ll see sin, less in church where we’re proper and more in daily life where we’re real.

“Forgive us…as we forgive those….” There’s more a group sense than an individual sense to this prayer, the “Our Father” not “My Father.” Of course the individual is part of the whole, but I can pray this prayer for myself only to a point. Forgive me my trespasses but next I take forgiveness into the group, to “those” people “who trespass against us.” Our sins hurt all of us but forgiving love helps all of us. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Jesus had forgiveness for others in mind when He was dying. We should when we are living.   

By that death and resurrection of Jesus, the Father is the source of forgiveness. “Our Father who art in heaven…forgive us.” As an individual sorry for my sin, I apply the word of forgiveness to myself. In our weekday, group interactions? We speak forgiveness to one another. The clergy doesn’t have a lock on this market! Jesus has given His Church a special authority to forgive the sins of those who are truly sorry and not forgive when someone is impenitent (John 20:23), but this petition shows that all God’s people can speak an authoritative word of forgiveness to one another. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Who but the Lord could give us so much to think about in one little prayer?

The Meyer Minute for September 24, 2015

I am not pleasing my wife. You have to be careful what you put on the Internet but heh, this is about ME! So in advance, I want to thank you for listening to how unfairly she’s treating me and thank you for taking my side.

“How come you’re piling up your stuff on the dining room table?” “Well, Diane, the dining room table is where I dump stuff when I come home. And a couple things on the table are yours. So there!”

“When are you going to pick up the piles around your easy chair? And you know that the recycling bin is overflowing. When are you going to take it to the dumpster?” “Diane, I know. I’ll get to it. OK? Let me have my morning coffee and ease into the day.”

“So what are you going to do today?” I say, “I have appointments most of the day” and she asks, “So I’ve got to do this all by myself?”  In the early years of our marriage I would have said something about that being my job, but I learned not to do that. Just sit in your chair, Dale. When you get up, I tell myself, do something that she might notice and then maybe she’ll let you off the hook.

So why are Diane and I going through this patch? Because daughter Katie and her family are coming to visit us this weekend. Diane wants the house clean. “But Diane, once Drew and Jake get here, it’ll be like a tornado going through the house. Why bother?” To that she has two answers, neither of which she’ll come out and say, but I know her. The first unspoken answer is “MEN!” And the second is this, “I do it because I love my family.”

“She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all…. A woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Proverbs 31:27-30).

 

 

The Meyer Minute for September 23, 2015

Guilt is persistent, keeps coming at you. Even in the middle of the night, guilt can wake you and get you tossing and turning – useless, fretful tossing and turning.

Forgiveness is more flighty. It comes and goes, often going as soon as it has come. You hear words of forgiveness, maybe from a friend, maybe in church on Sunday, and feel better but before those words have settled in your heart, they’re evicted by that squatter, guilt.

Leviticus 16 spells out the ancient ceremony of Yom Kippur, the High Priest offering sacrifices for his personal sins and for the sins of the people. This had to be done every year; one year’s sacrifice was not good for the next – guilt keeps coming. In contrast, the New Testament presents the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins as an offering once and for all time, no need to repeat it.

“Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us … he adds, ‘I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.’ Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin” (Hebrews 10:11-18).

Guilt can be a good thing. It goads us to the Priest who sacrificed Himself once and for all for our sins. The art of Christian spiritual living is to keep invoking that once-for-all forgiveness from God through Christ so that you keep evicting that squatter, guilt. “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

This Minute is taken from “Timely Reflections,” a compilation of 365 Meyer Minutes. It is available for purchase from www.tripillarpublishing.com.  

The Meyer Minute for September 22, 2015

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Carly Fiorina, Pope Francis, Jeb Bush, Bernie Sanders…

What’s Francis doing in that list? Well, the media coverage I’ve been seeing about his visit is akin to the tone of their political coverage. Climate change, gay issues, immigration, relations with Cuba. Oh, yes, there’s communion for divorced Catholics and maybe even for gays, but that too is reported as another partisan struggle for the church, with implications for the Democrat and Republican parties, of course. Dear God, is that what reporters think your Church essentially is?

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal had a special section about the papal visit. In that section I found only four references to Jesus, and they were passing.  And Jesus, You didn’t even get a passing nod in yesterday’s New York Times. Listen, reader. This isn’t about proselytizing, but there are substantive issues of belief that the media ignores. What’s the reason for differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants? How do different Christian groupings look at church-state issues? Reporting on those things doesn’t make you Billy Sunday, but so much reporting, not all but much, is shallow, willfully ignoring the substantive depths of faith communities. Read James 3:1, journalists and editors.  By virtue of your reach, you’re included. And I’ve seen a lot of denominational publications that are essentially denominational propaganda, Jesus doing only cameo appearances.

When Jesus began His visible ministry, “he entered the synagogue and was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:21-22). One of the great possibilities in the decline of church attendance and membership is for church members and leaders to make clear to the world that the Church is people who follow Jesus Christ (John 6:68). If we do that more in the future than we have in the past, maybe more people will recognize and reject secular media’s censorship of faith. The challenge is on us to do what Paul did, publicly portray Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:1). When the masses see Him, they say, “We never saw anything like this!” (Mark 2:12).

 

The Meyer Minute for September 18, 2015

Several Saturdays ago, Diane and I went to Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. It’s old, founded in 1854, and it’s big, some 300,000 graves. We had learned that some of Diane’s ancestors were buried there, so we went to find their resting places (the dates you go on when you get older!), but while we were there we found the graves of other famous people. One of them is Dred Scott.

In a case that arose from Dred Scott’s contested freedom, the Supreme Court ruled in 1857 that blacks are “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” How terrible was that?

Yesterday was Constitution Day, commemorating the day in 1787 when 12 state delegations to the constitutional convention ratified the new constitution. Many authors of the Constitution were troubled by slavery but knew practically that it couldn’t be eliminated immediately. Hence articles, like Article 1, section 9, undermined slavery and anticipated its eventual abolition. But that didn’t happen until the Civil War. After the Civil War, Amendment XIV declared, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States.” It was slow in coming, and justice for all is still a goal.

Because the Articles of Confederation weren’t working, the founders wrote their Constitution “to form a more perfect Union, (and) establish Justice” (Preamble). Practicing love for our neighbor is God’s command for His people, and love in action for all people is how we Christians contribute toward “a more perfect Union.” “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Mr. Scott, we’re still working at justice for all, still struggling for “a more perfect union.”

The Meyer Minute for September 17, 2015

“Deep guile and great might are his dread arms in fight. On earth is not his equal.” So Martin Luther described the devil in his hymn, “A Mighty Fortress.” It seems to me that the devil doesn’t have to lure you into a drug gang or sign you up for the atheist society to pull you away from saving faith. He can do it with the church. In my sermon for the opening of Concordia Seminary’s 177^th year, I identified three temptations of the devil. Here’s the second.

“The second temptation is the word “church.” What pops into your mind when I say the word “church?” Maybe you think of the building. Maybe you think of a church service. “I’m going to 8 o’clock church.” Maybe you think of a congregation called “Trinity Lutheran Church” with its school, its properties, its employees, its bylaws and constitution, its groups and its members. When we hear the word “church” we tend to think of a Christian institution. Guess what? There was no institutional Christian church in the decades after Jesus died, rose and ascended, not in the way we think of it. There was no institutional Christian church that first Pentecost when thousands and thousands of believers were added. In fact, the word “Christian” didn’t exist at Pentecost. The word “Christian” came later, in Antioch in Acts 11:26. At Pentecost the people who followed Jesus were known as “People of the Way” because they followed Him who is “the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). They were a small group within Judaism. Judaism had various groups, like the Pharisees and Sadducees and Essenes and now this little group of people who had started to follow Jesus of Nazareth, the “People of the Way.” It wasn’t until after 70 A.D., some 40 years after Pentecost, that the church was generally considered something separate from Judaism. … And so the devil tempts us to confine Jesus to the past and to suppose that the church is just another institution.”

 

The Meyer Minute for September 16, 2015

Classes are in full swing here on the campus. Other activities as well, our soccer team winning its first match yesterday, 5 to 2. Playing or studying, this is a mission. Let me share one paragraph from my sermon on Opening Day.

“There are many temptations the devil uses to make Americans indifferent to the fear and love of God. Let me identify three that “the old evil foe” uses to our harm. The first is…indifference to the coming judgment and therefore no fear and love of our God and Savior.  When we are indifferent or only give lip service to judgment, the result is that Jesus and the Gospel are confined to the past. That’s so important; let me repeat it. When we are indifferent or only give lip service to judgment, the result is that Jesus and the Gospel are confined to the past. Now to be sure, what Jesus did during His visible ministry is the source and essence of our salvation, but if we only talk about it as a first century event, we end up being curators of a museum instead of proclaimers of something awesome now and for eternity. Do you think it’s possible that people may not be coming to our churches because they don’t like going to museums?  I do know people who like to go to museums but most of them don’t go every week. The devil doesn’t mind us saying that Jesus died for our sins so long as we leave it in the past, in the museum, and are indifferent to His return in judgment. That’s the devil’s first way of weakening the church.”

Are you a museum member or a person aware and anticipating the future?

 

 

The Meyer Minute for September 15, 2015

Oh my, do I have a mountain of work to do these next days! Sunday’s Gospel talked about casting out demons. The disciples had cast some out (Mark 6:13), but in Mark 9 they came across a demon they couldn’t budge. “Why could we not cast it out?” (Mark 9:28) Down here in my little life, I don’t know how I’ll attack the mountain, let alone cast out demons.

Jesus: “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer” (Mark 9:29). Think about the essence of prayer. It’s an admission that we need help, that our self-reliance has run out. Prayer is creatures going to their Creator. Prayer is people who need deliverance going to their rescuer and Savior. Prayer is people not completely sanctified going to the Spirit who alone can sanctify us wholly, spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). You can pray thinking “Me and Jesus” or “God is my co-pilot,” but that’s double-minded (James 1:8). Prayer is being done with yourself. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). This kind of prayer is a life-style, not just the occasional head bowed and hands folded, “prayer without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) that takes “every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4). That’s the way to move the mountains before you today (Matthew 17:20).

The only One who fits that description of prayer is Jesus. “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). That description of prayer certainly doesn’t describe me, or you either, I assume. That’s why “I need Thy presence ev’ry passing hour; what but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s pow’r? Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be? Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me!” (Lutheran Service Book, 878, 1)

Isn’t there something strangely reassuring to know that no matter how faltering my prayer life is, I’m hanging onto the One who is perfectly united to the Father?