The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for December 8, 2020

Yesterday Diane posted a picture of this year’s Christmas tree. It reminded me of the following devotion I wrote some years ago: 

How it happens I have no clue, but there is hidden heavenly knowledge revealed only to my wife, who in turn lays it on me. It has been revealed to her that this Saturday we must buy the family Christmas tree. 

My mom once let my dad buy the tree all by himself. Great tree he got. You could see right through it. He probably liked the price but Mom wasn’t happy, and when Mom’s not happy… 

In my own marriage there were some years when I wanted a big tree and I pushed to get it. Great trees all right, but no space left in the living room. Now the divine revelation has taught me to say, “Oh, Diane, I love that tree you’ve picked!” 

There are Sacraments, Baptism and the Eucharist, divine ways God gives and strengthens faith. There are also sacramentals – human rituals or objects that point us to the Gospel and grace God gives us sinners in the Word and Sacraments of Christ. I think Christmas trees serve that function. As a kid growing up, I stood with open-mouthed wonder at the huge Christmas trees in church. Two of them, one on each side of the chancel, reached from the main floor up to the level of the balcony. Those great trees made a lasting impression. I sensed there’s something bigger than normal life here, something that puts even grow-ups in awe. 

That’s still true today. God’s grace is coming down in Jesus. Happy tree-hunting! 

 

That devotion was published in 2014 in “Timely Reflections” from [email protected]  It’s still true but I must say that this year Diane deferred to me on the size of the tree. I love it! 

 

 

The Meyer Minute for December 7, 2020

Good Monday morning! We went to church or watched. Maybe you heard about John the Baptist preaching repentance. Good message: we church people are hypocrites if we don’t repent. Now on to this week’s activities. Or not. 

 

I worry how our western culture subtly distorts the Bible’s message. In The Bondage Breaker, Neil T. Anderson says western culture has a two-tier worldview: The transcendent world of God and spiritual forces (religion) and the empirical world of senses (science). People in the non-western world see things differently. They mingle the two tiers which we westerners keep separate. Hence, religion is compartmentalized to Sunday and church…not integral to the daily lives of many parishioners…and increasingly irrelevant to public life.  

 

Back to John the Baptist. He preached repentance, a message the Church willingly hears. Nothing wrong with that, but John wasn’t only preaching to religious people. Some were religious, “go to synagogue” types, those from the priests and Pharisees, but others were tax collectors, soldiers, and no doubt other categories of people from society (see Luke 3). John was preaching repentance to the whole society, not just to church people. The separation of Sunday from the west of the week, western compartmentalization, can let us be comfy in personal piety that doesn’t help our neighbors.  

 

“The arrogance in government, the multitude of unjust killings, the unjust wars, the hatred and the envy! Uncontrolled lusts, improper desires, the ravings of the demented are beyond calculation.  Thievery is clearly beyond measure in illegal business practices…. Who works without greed? Who is content with what he has? Who piously and properly handles his property? Finally, everyone deplores double-talk and lying in treaties, contracts, and courts of justice.” Isn’t that the truth about so much in America today? But these words came from the sixteenth century, from educator and theologian Philip Melanchthon.  

 

In every era, repentance is a message for all, not just for church people. What motivated the ancient prophets? The love of God. The essence of God is not anger but love (1 John 4:8). When prophets speak of God’s anger, they’re saying how much God loves this world He has created and how much He’s concerned how all people live in it. Jesus’ first Advent was not to condemn the world but to save it (John 3:17). “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4). Pleading for repentance before a loving God is not just for church.  

The Meyer Minute for December 4, 2020

I haven’t told Diane, so please keep this just between you and me. I’ve decided to sell our house in Collinsville and move to a secluded log cabin in the mountains, away from people. Yup, away from people. I’ve had it with society’s insanity. 

 

I’m going to have mentors. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, Paul Fredette and Karen Karper Fredette have made some changes to their lives: Ms. Fredette stopped attending her local exercise class, and the couple whittled their interaction with their neighbors down to waves. But in many ways, seclusion comes naturally to them. From a house they call Still Wood, nestled in the slope of a mountain surrounded by hundreds of acres of wild woodlands, the Fredettes live their lives ‘oriented towards solitude,’ which is their preferred way of saying that they’re hermits: devoted to simplicity, silence and prayer. The nearest town, Hot Springs, N.C., is 18 miles away and has a population just under 600.” (New York Times, November 29) 

 

I don’t know how Diane will react when I get up the courage to tell her, but I expect criticism from my Sem students. They’ll put in my face what our old Lutheran theologians wrote. For example, Martin Chemnitz: “Many people in all ages have given great approval to the solitary life, and it has seemed logical that a man should be freed from the cares and burdens of life in society and be able to devote himself entirely to the exercises of private piety.... But to these extravagant praises, we must place in opposition this fundamental and immovable fact, that the worship which is pleasing to God…is summed up in the Decalog. In the Second Table (commandments 4 through 10), not even one word calls attention to the solitary life….” Most succinctly, Martin Luther’s associate Philip Melanchthon wrote, “The works of the Second Table are truly the worship of God.” (“Loci Theologici, II, 716-717) 

 

So, should I be a hermit or a meliorist? A what? Wrote Peter Medawar, “I prefer to describe myself as a ‘meliorist’—one who believes that the world can be improved by finding out what is wrong with it and then taking steps to put it right.” (in William H. Danforth, “Thanksgiving Letters, 1974-1995”). Why not escape to a secluded cabin? Maybe the answer is the will of God expressed in His Ten Commandments. Remember, reader, Diane doesn’t know about this. Our secret. 

The Meyer Minute for December 3, 2020

“Come unto me,” our Lord says (Matthew 11:28). Advent is an invitation to do more than come with whatever knowledge of the Bible we might have. You can know about something or someone, but still be far, far away. Space probes let us know about distant places in the universe, but that knowledge isn’t the same as being there.  Advent is an invitation to our heart, to grow into greater intimacy with Jesus, but intimacy always means overcoming distance. 

The Angel of the Lord spoke out of the burning bush and said to Moses, “Do not come near” (Exodus 3:5). We cannot properly meditate upon the themes of our Lord’s coming in Advent unless we constantly know our distance from God, and know why we’re distant. “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear” (Isaiah 59:2; see also Isaiah 64:7). So it was that sometime after the burning bush, Moses was told, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). “Our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). Churchly practices and preaching must be in the fear of God.  “Do not come near.” 

Still, as distant as God may sometimes seem in our daily lives, God sees you and me up close and personal. I presume Moses wasn’t thinking about God when he was shepherding his father-in-law’s flock. It is God who makes the first move toward man, and see how. God comes to Moses in fire, not consuming fire but fire inviting Moses out of the ordinary. God veils Himself in fire so that Moses would not die but live. So God comes to us veiled in words and sacraments, hidden but wooing us. Only the Spirit can bring us that long distance from our isolation from God to an intimacy that transcends intellectual knowledge. “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Come unto Me and rest; / Lay down, thou weary one, lay down / thy head upon My breast” (TLH 277:1) 

“Still He comes within us, / Still His voice would win us 

From the sins that hurt us; / Would to Truth convert us 

From our foolish errors / Ere He comes in terrors.” 

(TLH, 74:2) 

The Meyer Minute for December 2, 2020

I need a deeper sense of God’s presence. Ritual brings us Advent, but haven’t we heard Advent themes before, Jesus’ coming, first at Bethlehem, finally on the Last Day, and between times now through Word and Sacrament? How easy to skate effortlessly through these themes, like reading “Advent for Dummies.” Especially this year, where is Jesus now? Yes, Word and Sacrament on Sunday, but where is He in the middle of the week? 

“And the angel of the Lord appeared to him (Moses) in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush” (Exodus 3:2). Who is this “Angel of the Lord”? As the story goes on, the Angel says, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (6). This story is less about God’s coming from far away, Jesus coming from heaven to be born, coming from heaven on the Last Day. It’s less about coming, much more God letting us know He is already here. “‘Do I not fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:24). 

Had we lived in first century Israel, we could have gone out and seen John the Baptist, maybe Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and wise men. We could have seen Jesus, but had you lived anyplace else, you couldn’t have seen Jesus. Advent is more meaningful seen through the Ascension. God “raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet…” (Ephesians 1:20-21). Heaven is more than someplace up in the sky, a place from which the Son of God comes. Heaven is Jesus Christ exalted, filling all things with divine power and care. “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20). “Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (5).  

Besides Bethlehem and the Last Day, He comes now. “I know your sufferings; I have come down to deliver you.” “The assurance that Christ rules and controls all things enables Christians to face the fears and uncertainties of this world, even death, with confidence” (Confessing the Gospel, 518). Wherever you are right now, Jesus is mysteriously both present and concealed. “I will turn aside to see this great sight” (3).