The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for April 5, 2022

Last week the results of a study were released. Regular viewers of Fox News were paid $15 an hour to watch 7 hours of CNN during hours they normally watched Fox. “Despite regular Fox viewers being largely strong partisans, we found manifold effects of changing the slant of their media diets on their factual beliefs, attitudes, perceptions of issues’ importance, and overall political views.” 

Did you catch the words “media diet”? You are what you eat. We’re talking “epistemology,” how we know what we know. What’s the daily “diet” of information that shapes your knowledge and opinions? “The researchers concluded that this is an effect in part of ‘partisan coverage filtering’, wherein partisan outlets selectively report information, leading viewers to learn a biased set of facts.” (“Independent,” online). What we let into our heads is, or should be, a serious issue for Christians, and is a concern we pastors need to raise with our congregations. Even though I never asked for it, every week I get a report about my screen time, how much my usage was up or down the previous week. How does an hour in church every week, and that’s being optimistic since many people don’t see a need for weekly attendance… How does an hour a week compare to all the hours we are subtly influenced by our screens, whatever we’re watching?  

You are what you eat; you put forth what you let into your mind and heart. Some Christians have as their Second Commandment, “Thou shalt not make any graven image.” Aren’t screens the images of our day? However you enumerate the commandments, next comes the commandment about our speech, followed by the commandment about time management. What we look at, say, and how we spend our time flow from who is our god. The First Commandment says you and I should be shaped mind, body, and soul by God alone. Faith, says St. Augustine, seeks understanding. Watch the screens, follow the news, but filter everything through your ongoing reading, hearing, studying, and meditating upon God’s Word. “If you abide in my word…you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).   

The Meyer Minute for April 4, 2022

Did you give anything up for Lent? Early this morning it dawned on me that there’s not much Lent left, next Sunday begins Holy Week. I reflected that I haven’t given anything up this Lent, or did I? A little more waking up, thank you coffee, and I realized, I have indeed given something up this Lent, and what I’ve given up is self-denial in a significant way. 

“Scores of Bodies in Kyiv Suburb; ‘They Shot Everyone They Saw.’ Civilians Were Found Tied and Executed, Coroner Says” (Headline, today’s New York Times). “When the Russian military forces abandoned Bucha, it left streets littered with bodies of civilians. Human Rights Watch released a report on Sunday documenting instances of rape and summary executions in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, including Bucha, as well as other alleged crimes. Ukrainians were finding ‘people with hands tied behind their back and decapitated…kids who were killed and tortured, President Volodmyr Zelensky of Ukraine said” (Today’s Wall Street Journal).  

So then, what have I given up this Lent?  Flannery O’ Connor: “A faith that just accepts is a child’s faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do. What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross…. When we get our spiritual house in order, we’ll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty.” (“The Habit of Being,” in “For All the Saints,” III, 963). 

What I’ve given up, and am still giving up, is imagining religion is personal, private, comfy, Jesus letting me keep a child’s comfort blanket when, in truth, I’m supposed to be growing up into a fuller understanding of Jesus’ cross. Lent, 2022, is synonymous with Russian atrocities in Ukraine. “‘In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.’ It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life” (Jude 18-21). 

The Meyer Minute for April 1, 2022

Seminarians learn “proper” ways to pray. Fine, you want a pastor to bring biblical eloquence to immediate needs, but sometimes propriety and reverence seem to douse what should be passion in prayer. I sometimes hear Lutheran pastors read the public prayers almost like they’re reciting ritual incantations, an affected tone of voice, to which the congregation is conditioned to respond, “hear our prayer.” Maybe that’s just me, but it explains why I stopped when I read the following in a sermon by Rev. Melvin Von Wade, Sr. 

“I’m discovering that many people are engaging in unnecessary rhetoric in their prayer. Now, let me tell you about my friend who’s gone to be with the Lord; his name is E.K. Bailey, maybe you’ve heard of him. He said we have too many folk who are praying ‘tent prayers’—it covers everything but it don’t touch nothing. And we’ve got too many people that spend their time in salutation, and they’re trying to identify who God is. And I can hear God saying, ‘I know who I am. In fact, I know better than you know who I am. What do you want? 

“Now, let me tell you what the old black church used to sing. ‘Jesus is on the main line. Call him up, and just tell Him what you want.’ Based upon the text, brothers and sisters—I know some of you young folk haven’t got there yet—but trouble can so surround you, encircle, seize, and shackle you and shackle you until you don’t have time to say much when you pray. Do you not know there are times that trouble can cut and broth and truncate and abridge your prayers?” (“Let the Legends Preach,” 194). 

How short must be the prayers of Ukrainian Christians, or of someone in and out of consciousness before death, or someone panicked by a threatening problem of life! Look at the earnestness of prayer in the Psalms. Those are the prayers our Lord prayed. In His passion, those prayers laid His plight before the Father. In calm times, the Psalms must have kept Him in mind of the seriousness of His mission. Do you hear an earnestness, a passion in the Sunday prayers?