The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for July 15, 2021

Samuel Moor Shoemaker was an Episcopal priest, well known for his preaching and social ministry (1893-1963). Here is the beginning of his “An Apologia for My Life.” 

“I stand by the door. 

I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out, 

The door is the most important door in the world – 

It is the door through which men walk when they find God. 

There’s no use my going way inside, and staying there, 

When so many are still outside and they, as much as I, 

Crave to know where the door is. 

And all that so many ever find 

Is only the wall where a door ought to be. 

They creep along the wall like blind men, 

With outstretched, grouping hands. 

Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door, 

Yet they never find it… 

So I stand by the door.  

The most tremendous thing in the world 

Is for men to find that door—the door to God.” 

Dr. Shomaker not only helped men toward God in word but also in deed. He helped guide the basic principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. Founder Bill Wilson said, “How well I remember that first day I caught sight of Sam. It was a Sunday service in his church. I was still rather gun-shy and diffident about churches. I can still see him standing there before the lectern. And Sam's utter honesty, his tremendous forthrightness, his almost terrible sincerity struck me deep. I shall never forget it.” Isn’t that to be the character of our church and ministry? 

The Meyer Minute for July 14, 2021

While major crops here in Illinois are corn, soybeans, and some wheat, now and then you drive past a field of sunflowers. The internet tells me sunflowers grow in all 50 states, but 75 percent of sunflowers grown for harvesting come from Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota. You know how the sunflower, like other flowers, follows the sun. Therein lies a little religious lesson. 

Consider the distance between the sun and a sunflower. The giant sun is about 93 million miles away from that one, solitary sunflower. In many ways God is even more distant from us. The Most High “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:16). Does God care about little me, little you? 

Still, the sun does reach across millions of miles to touch the sunflower. Why do we limit God’s coming to us to an hour in a building on Sunday? My thoughts these days are in the Old Testament, how it is filled with almost countless stories of God coming to mankind. “God in search of man” is how the Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel described the world around us. 

The sunflower depends totally upon its source of life. Do we religious have eyes but not see? Do we worship with our lips, but our hearts are not always looking to Him? Churchgoing and Bible meditation should turn us to God’s shining in our lives in every day, in every place. “God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). In His light, do we see light? (Psalm 36:9). “The whole earth is full of his glory! (Isaiah 6:3).  

“Father, I will today / On Your love rely; 

Let no evil thought / Cloud the clear blue sky. 

Joyful and content / With life’s simpler things, 

Knowing all I need / From Your kindness springs.” 

(Lutheran Service Book 871:3) 

The Meyer Minute for July 13, 2021

Richard Branson’s few exhilarating minutes on the threshold of space? I had more yesterday. Driving toward St. Louis, heavy fog was over the Mississippi River, not unusual, but the music on the radio put me into thoughts of my own eventual space journey. “Deep River, my home is over Jordan. Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.”  I was headed to the hospital for an MRI. 

This was my third MRI, so I knew the drill and wasn’t, am still not fretting over what the results might be. After all, I do know my future, though the exact details are like crossing the river, foggy. Three stabs before they could get the IV in. Does this happen to all older people? A few minutes later I’m on the tray, ready to be slid into the tube. Technician Megan, asks, “Do you have any questions before we hook up the power injector and get going?” Uh, the “power injector”? Does Richard Branson have a “power injector”? Turns out it had something to do with shooting dye into my veins.  

For the next 45 minutes I was relaxed, listening to classical music but also thinking ahead to that time when my body will be laid out after my spirit has taken its flight into eternity. Not being morbid here!  Thoughts in that narrow space made me realize how precious life is, and why we believe in “eternal” life. Lying still the whole time, I broke into a big smile when Handel’s Hallelujah chorus played in my headset. “The Kingdom of this world / Is become / The Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and of His Christ. / And He shall reign forever and ever.”  

“My home is over Jordan,” foggy though the details may be. “If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Romans 6:8). “The last enemy to be destroyed is death. This perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality…. Then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ …Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:26, 53-55, 57). What a journey awaits us!      

The Meyer Minute for July 12, 2021

“What’s with the skull?” Saturday’s Wall Street Journal had an article about Albrecht Duerer’s paintings, including “St. Jerome in His Study” from 1521. An old, bearded man is looking at you. He is St. Jerome, or supposed to be. In fact, he was a 91-year-old man of Antwerp whom Duerer contracted to sit as his model. Jerome looks right at you. Before him are books; Jerome was a scholar who translated the Bible into Latin. Next to the books, it’s the skull that intrigues me. I have a layman’s appreciation for art but depend upon experts to point me to art’s deeper meanings. Some armchair research guided my thoughts. The old biblical scholar’s index finger points my eyes to the skull, “memento mori,” “remember death.” “Even the wise die” (Psalm 49:10). And looming over the old man and skull, Duerer has painted a crucifix on the wall.   

Sometimes I’m tired and don’t have the energy to read the Bible or devotional literature. Often in those times I turn the pages of an art book. “A picture is worth a thousand words” is true for devotion as well. Jesus’ parables are pictures, maybe we should say videos. Stained glass windows in churches present truths, helpful when sermon or service aren’t compelling your attention. One prayer asks that “Your Word not be bound,” and art helps answer that prayer. 

Duerer’s painting recalls for me Psalm 49. “Why should I fear in times of trouble, when the iniquity of those who cheat me surrounds me, those who trust in their wealth and boast of the abundance of their riches? Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and he can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit. For he sees that even the wise die; the fool and the stupid alike must perish and leave their wealth to others” (5-10). 

See the crucifix behind the old man pondering the Bible and pointing us to the skull? See the crucifix? “God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me” (15).  

You can google “St. Jerome in His Study, 1521” to see this devotion yourself.    

The Meyer Minute for July 6, 2021

Now that the Fourth of July is over, we’re deep into hot summer. We all have pictures burned into our memory, and one that sticks with me is driving through the country during the hot days of summer. My memory still clearly sees a farmer cultivating his corn field. Small tractor, Allis Chalmers, not the big monsters of today. Umbrella shielding the farmer from the sun, no air-conditioned cab. Slow, tedious work, not contracted spraying like today.  

Our faith in Jesus needs constant cultivation. I think of some seeds in Jesus’ parable. “Others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:18-19). They heard God’s Word but, this makes the difference, they didn’t monitor their emotions. We all have “the cares of the world,” we all are tempted by “the deceitfulness of riches,” and we all desire “other things.” How can you and I resist the temptation so that the Word produces God’s life and growth within us?  Submitting our every feeling, idea, and plan to the will of God, we “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Yale theologian Paul Holmer: “What is involved is daring to let God and God’s will govern and discipline my life when I tend to botch the job. That is a matter of giving up my willing and giving God’s will the energizing role….” (“For All the Saints,” IV, 205). 

“But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold” (Mark 4:20). Faith is a gift from God that we want to cultivate for our salvation, and by this cultivation God’s Spirit also increases His works through us. “Do Thou in grace the harvest raise, and Thou alone shalt have the praise!” (Lutheran Service Book, 921:1).      

The Meyer Minute for July 2, 2021

By coincidence, the Fourth of July falls on a Sunday. At least in my faith tradition, church and state tend to be kept separate, so that church is about things spiritual, but you don’t hear much about community and national issues. The sanctity of life and changed morals in America are exceptions, but otherwise worship follows the calendar of the church while life outside the sanctuary has its own rhythms and observances. Sunday being the Fourth, it’s logical to ask how faithfulness to Christ impacts the neighborhoods and nation in which we live. 

Sunday’s Gospel lesson in many churches reports how Jesus returned to His hometown, spoke in the synagogue, but got bad reviews. “They took offense at him.” Jesus challenged their conventional beliefs and practices. Lesson: what goes on in our hearts and minds in worship has an impact upon the communities in which we live. “He could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief” (Mark 6:5-6). Worship is a contest of wills, my will or God’s will, and the outcome makes a difference where you live. 

A faithful Fourth for followers of Jesus is not a complicated church-state issue. Jesus says, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it. ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37-39). I take that to mean that if we are serious about God and faith and church, we’ll be bringing the help and hope of Christ to the people of… fill in the name of your town. Second-guessing my own ministry, we talked generally about outreach but how many actual programs of help and hope did we do in our community? Talk about evangelism can be like a hunter shooting with no target in sight, simply hoping a deer will wander into the path of his shot. One place where church and state are not separate is when we do good works in our community, and that too is “the free exercise” of our faith.  

Wishing you and yours a happy, safe, and faithful Fourth.  

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The Meyer Minute for July 1, 2021

“Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor” (1 Peter 2:17). God’s people have lived under various forms of government. This Fourth of July weekend, it’s profitable to look at principles of our democratic republic in light of God’s Word. 

The Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” 

It is significant, first, that the Founders said it is the Creator who has given rights to individuals and, second, that the role of government is to secure the God-given rights of individuals. The definitions of “life” and “liberty” haven’t changed over the years, but the meaning of “happiness” has. It did not mean “pleasure” but “a steady, durable state of worthy satisfaction with life” (George Will, “The Conservative Sensibility,” 231). The Ninth Amendment adds there are other rights, not listed in the Constitution, that belong to the people. But today? Many of our fellow citizens imagine it’s government that gives us our rights. We regularly see various self-interest groups going to the government to give them rights, not in a spirit of securing God-given rights as the Founders said. Gene Healy described it most succinctly, “The state stepping in for Yahweh” (in George Will, 109).  

How should a Christian think about rights today? “Honor everyone” tells us to think of every human as a creature created by God, whether or not we like or approve how they live. I don’t think that’s too controversial, but this might be. “Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants (literally slaves) of God” (1 Peter 2:16). That is, there are times when followers of Jesus Christ, the suffering servant, do not exercise our rights but “let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (1 Peter 4:19). How that works out in a democratic republic in which due process is guaranteed to everyone is a topic for another day. For now, may this Fourth be a civics lesson for all Americans, and for us reflection based on God’s Word.