The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for March 30, 2018

“Were you there when they crucified the Lord?”

Good Friday is the day to answer, “Yes, I am there.” Time is part of creation. “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day” (Genesis 1:5). While our lives are physically bound to time and place, historians and futurists lift our minds from the here-and-now. Missing a loved one who has died or anticipating falling in love show the heart can live beyond the present. Good Friday mind and heart are present at the ancient cross.

Jesus prayed Psalm 22 on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When you and I meditate upon and pray the psalms, we are lifted beyond our boundness. We are one with Christians around the world who pray the psalms with us. Praying Psalm 22 this Good Friday 2018, we pray with Jesus on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.” “I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him” (Psalm 22:1-2, 6-8).

“Were you there when they crucified the Lord?” Faith lifts us from the present to the past, mysteriously. “We were buried with him by baptism into death” (Romans 6:4). Come Sunday, faith lifts us to the future. “If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him” (Romans 6:8). But for today, watch and pray with Jesus. Know that you are there. “I have been crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). “He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted” (Psalm 22:24).

The Meyer Minute for March 28, 2018

One and done. Jesus’ death fully paid the price for our sins. “It is finished,” Jesus said as He breathed His last (John 20:30). “Christ…offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins” (Hebrews 10:12). “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

One and done does not describe our contemplation of the cross. Forgiveness from the cross has not removed the sin that continues in us. Forgiveness has not removed the law of God from our lives. Yes, our sins are covered by the blood of Jesus. Yes, we are no longer under the impossibly demanding lordship of the Law, but we are not yet freed of sin. This, I think, is the great temptation for us practicing Christians, that we lose touch with our present reality. “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Romans 7:18). Paul said that as a believing Christian. Martin Luther describes us as “simul iustus et peccator,” saint and sinner at the same time.

The fourth of the traditional penitential psalms comes from David, who sinned even while being God’s man. The Bathsheba affair turned that man of God to deep inner searching. “I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.” “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me,” referring to inherited, original sin that continues in our hearts also, forgiven though we be (Psalm 51:3, 5). There’s enough sin and consequence of sin all about us that we Christians dare not gloss over our own deeply flawed individual nature.

“Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean, wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow” (Psalm 51). That newness of life comes only from being done with ourselves and one with the death of Christ.

The Meyer Minute for March 26, 2018

Jesus saw His death coming. “The Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day” (Matthew 20:18-19).

Will you watch Jesus this week as you would watch an actor in a drama, a drama of great injustice and horror, but suddenly the star reappears alive? Or do you see someone substituting for you, so you can say, “I have forgiveness of sins. I have the promise of heaven. I have blessings.” I, I, I… Jesus facilitates our needs and wants. Is Holy Week like looking at a TV, a screen, a monitor? Are you only a spectator to the crucifixion?

Theologian Gerhardt Forde suggests we see Jesus on the cross as a mirror. Indeed. Paul says, “We were buried with Christ by baptism into death” (Romans 6:3). Look at the cross as you look into a mirror, but don’t see just yourself. See yourself crucified with Christ. See yourself dying with Christ. See yourself dead and buried with Christ.  How else can God answer the prayer, “Create in me a clean heart, O God”? (Psalm 51). As God created the world out of nothing, He creates new life in you through your mysterious death with Christ in Baptism.

Animators do amazing things with what we see. So look at the mirror, see yourself, and imagine animation morphing your image into the image of Christ dying on the cross. "I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave My himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Awe at the mystery of your death with Christ… Let this week be holy.

The Meyer Minute for March 23, 2018

“This can be a mean-spirited town.” That’s how Rex Tillerson described Washington D.C. in his farewell speech yesterday to workers at the State Department.

Jerusalem proved a mean-spirited town after Jesus rode in on Palm Sunday. Sunday’s hosannas became “Crucify him” by Friday. Jesus’ “friend” betrayed Him, and the other disciples fled. He anguished in His heart about what was being done to Him, (“being in an agony,” Luke 22:44), and His body was tortured. How did Jesus respond? “Put your sword back in its place” (Matthew 26:53). As the week wore down and evil closed in, Jesus let people have their mean-spirited way. “This is your hour, and the power of darkness” (Luke 24:53).

In the third penitential psalm, Psalm 38, we see Jesus. The psalmist is plagued in body and soul. “My sides are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and crushed because of the tumult of my heart” (7-8). His friends are treacherous. “My friends and companions stand aloof from my plague, and my nearest kin stand far off. Those who seek my life lay their snares; those who seek my hurt speak I of ruin and meditate treachery all day long” (11-12). All this is sin, but the psalmist is most concerned about his own sin. “My iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me” (4). Read Psalm 38 and see Jesus. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24).

Is your town mean-spirited? Your work place? Your church? Someone in your family? So be it, sadly. Let Holy Week draw your thoughts more to your relationship with God and less on what other people are doing to you. “Those who render me evil for good accuse me because I follow after good. Do not forsake me, O Lord! O my God, be not far from me! Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation” (20-22). “Hallowed be your

The Meyer Minute for March 21, 2018

God answers prayer.

“Deliver us from evil.” Martin Luther explains the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer this way. “We pray in this petition, in summary, that our Father in heaven would rescue us from every evil of body and soul, possessions and reputation, and finally, when our last hour comes, give us a blessed end, and graciously take us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven.”

God answered that and many other prayers by the search, identification and finally death of the serial bomber near Austin. As God ordinarily does, He answered prayers through earthly means, in this case through local, state and federal authorities. We thank them and thank God for them.

“And Jesus answered them, ‘Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses’” (Mark 11:22-26).

“Amen, that is, so shall it be, / Make strong our faith in You, that we

May doubt not but with trust believe / That what we ask we shall receive.

Thus in Your name and at Your Word / We say, ‘Amen, O hear us Lord!’”

(Lutheran Service Book 767, 9)

The Meyer Minute for March 19, 2018

Part of putting together 52 of my old sermons for the book, “Word Alive,” was writing retrospectives. How would I have written and preached this old sermon today? I wanted to be open with readers, sermons can always be better. Here’s a retrospective about a Lutheran Hour message from 1997.

“If there seems to be lethargy in today’s Church, it may be because we’ve lost our sense of pilgrimage. We are living in a time of immediacy, our frenetic rushaholism even greater today than 20 years ago when this sermon aired. Communication is instantaneous around the world. Credit enables me to have anything I want right now. I’m conditioned to escape unpleasant things as quickly as possible. I imagine I can pretty well manage my life with my smartphone. We’ve lost our sense of journeying to the eternal. Or have we willingly given up?

“To this here-and-now time in which we try to cope, couple the tendency of some preachers to talk exclusively about Jesus’ death and resurrection, which was oh, so long ago. Crucial as that first-century history is, there’s more. Jesus’ ascension, His pouring out of the Spirit not just on Pentecost but today through Word and Sacrament, the promise that He will return as judge of living and dead and take His faithful to the eternal joys of heaven… all these should make us look forward. We tell our seminarians that we are not preparing them to become the curators of church museums. Museums are nice, but not many people want to go to a museum every Sunday morning. Church buildings are so set in one place.  We’re pilgrims in God’s creation and the Spirit is leading us to see our Savior face to face. I want our graduates to inspire us with the indescribably heavenly future opened to us by Jesus’ death and resurrection.” (“Word Alive,” pages 128-129; www.tripillarpublishing.com )

The Meyer Minute for March 16, 2018

We were shocked to hear of the bridge collapse at Florida International University in Miami. Weighing 950 tons and 174 feet long, the collapse of the new pedestrian bridge killed at least 6 people and injured 10. Shocking to us, but even more terrifying to the victims, if they even had time to realize what was coming.

Jesus spoke about victims of faulty human construction. “Those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:4). Jesus is reflecting the popular belief that you get what you deserve. Popular piety imagined that righteous living would spare you disaster.

“Unless you repent…” Jesus had used “unless” earlier in His ministry. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). The Pharisees went to great lengths to justify themselves before God and others. They naively imagined their religious life merited blessings from God, blessings they had earned by the upright way they lived. Isn’t there something of that deep in the hearts of us church-goers? “Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you” (Psalm 143:4). Pointing us to eternity, Jesus uses the disaster at Siloam to turn our hearts away from ourselves and toward complete and constant dependence upon a forgiving God, come what may in earthly life. “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

“Who knows when death may overtake me! Time passes on, my end draws near.

How swiftly can my breath forsake me! How soon can life’s last hour appear!

My God, for Jesus’ sake I pray Thy peace may bless my dying day.”

(The Lutheran Hymnal, 598, 1)

Our sympathies to the families of the victims.

The Meyer Minute for March 14, 2018

Yes, this town I’m in is called “Carefree,” and that’s only the beginning. Taking my morning walk, I’m fascinated by the street names. Sunshine Way, Easy Street, Nonchalant, Radiant Court, Never Mind Trail, Lucky Lane, and Ho and Hum roads who intersect, obviously at HoHum. The poles for street lights have banners, people smiling and enjoying the good life here in Carefree.

I smile as I write this, not mocking, not envious. One blessing of this spiritual retreat is to learn again where we are carefree. That is in total dependence upon God and our only hope, Jesus. Along with the high-end jewelry and art stores, real estate agents offering expensive properties, and busy banks here in Carefree, you also find doctors’ offices, counseling services, meditation areas and ministries. In other words, life is never carefree.

Martin Luther drew a sharp contrast between the things that attract us and the things we avoid, you might say between life carefree or full of cares. “God’s love does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. Human love comes into being through that which is please to it…. (God’s love) is the love of the cross, born of the cross, which turns in the direction where it does not find good, which it may enjoy, but where it may confer good upon the evil and needy person” (Heidelberg Thesis 28).

As I was walking, I came upon a sign at an intersection. Turn left onto Bloody Basin Road or turn right onto Tranquil Trail. Where do you find God in our lives? Figuratively on “Bloody Basin Road,” in the suffering of life, all climaxing every day in the cross of Jesus. Walking with Christ turns to embrace the cares of life and so be with Him in His sufferings for this world God loves. Then one day the resurrected Lord Jesus will lead us to walk the tranquil heavenly way.

The Meyer Minute for March 12, 2018

Last week was cram-packing, traveling and speaking the first half of the week and a meeting of the Seminary’s Board of Regents the second half. “All work and no play…” So I’m now at a retreat center in Carefree, Arizona (yes, that’s the name) with 14 other pastors. Every morning we gather for devotions. Every evening we have an hour or so of theological talk and close with an evening devotion. In between? Spring training baseball games!

Being pastors, we talk about theologians. The theologian who looms over our group is the German Franz Bibfeldt. The names of many theologians begin with B, like Barth, Bonhoeffer, Bruner, Buber and Bultmann, but as Martin Marty and Jerald Brauer wrote, only Bibfeldt “survives and thrives” (“The Unrelieved Paradox: Studies in the Theology of Franz Bibfeldt, xi). His doctoral dissertation was “The Problem of the Year Zero.” When the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard published “Either/Or,” Bibfeldt responded with “Both/And.” The University of Chicago has 2½ linear feet of Bibfeldt artifacts and scholarship. Despite being such a great scholar, he loved baseball. In “The Boys of Sumer,” Bibfeldt argues that baseball began in ancient Mesopotamia, Sumer the name of its earliest civilization, dating back to 3000 B.C. And I’m especially proud to say that he was a White Sox fan.

Franz Bibfeldt is most associated with the University of Chicago, but he got his start at Concordia Seminary. Google his name and learn how our Seminary launched this great theologian.

The point of this diversion from seriousness is that we preachers need to get away from church work for rest and reflection. “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while” (Mark 6:31). That’s today’s Minute from Carefree!

The Meyer Minute for March 5, 2018

One of the great things about being part of Concordia Seminary are insights for faith and life. When we realize that we need all the help we can get in life, there are many “Thanks, I needed that” moments. Such a time came last Wednesday when Dr. Joel Biermann preached in chapel on John 3:13:25, a lesson read in many churches yesterday.

John 3:23 reports, “Many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed.” Dr. Biermann zeroed in on the next verses. “But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man” (John 3:24-25; NIV). The Greek word translated “entrust” is the same word used for “faith” in verse 23. In other words, many people believed in Jesus because of the miracles he did, but Jesus did not put His faith in people because He knew, He knows, what’s in our heart.

A woman wrote that she likes most of my Minutes but she thinks sometimes I’m heavy on Law. Yes, ma’am, that’s the best way to appreciate Jesus!  April marks the 500^th anniversary of the Heidelberg Disputation. Martin Luther wrote in the first thesis, “The Law of God, the most salutary doctrine of life, cannot advance human beings on their way to righteousness, but rather hinders them.” The Law is “most salutary” because it drives us to humility and fear of God. Jesus doesn’t put His faith in us, His religious, try-to-live right followers. By His unmerited grace, He gives us faith.

Pow, right between my religious eyes: Dale, Jesus doesn’t put His faith in you. Concordia Seminary’s insights for faith and life are also available to you. Just visit our website, csl.edu or go to concordiatheology.org.