The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for August 31, 2022

A setting I won’t forget, a future we pray for.       Sunday I preached for the 175^th anniversary of St. Luke Lutheran Church in Cabot, Pennsylvania. Their normal three services were combined into one, an outdoor service, several hundred chairs facing an improvised altar, a cross on its top, and in the distance, maybe a hundred or so yards away, was the church cemetery. The whole service long, everyone looked at the cemetery beyond the cross.  

At the start of the sermon, I turned toward the cemetery and joked that 100% of the alumni had shown up.  People laughed. After the service and a catered picnic meal, longtime Pastor Barry Keurulainen, now retired, gave a tour of the cemetery. I especially liked one thing that he said, that every year he would bring the confirmation class to the cemetery, give them 15 minutes to look at the stones, and then talk about it. The stones, their decorations, their inscriptions, put before us the whole Christian creed. 

About 45 years ago, I conducted the funeral for an elderly church member. I remember the visitation as if it were yesterday. His 16-year-old granddaughter had been shielded by her parents from death. The sight of grandpa dead sent the teenager into hysterics. How different Sunday in that outdoor anniversary service. In the first row, a boy in grade school, a teenage girl, and many more young people behind them. They were not being shielded from death but were seeing it in light of the cross on that altar.  “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:26). That’s the future we pray for. 

John Ylvisaker’s hymn was sung. “I was there to hear your borning cry, I’ll be there when you are old.  

I rejoiced the day you were baptized, to see your life unfold.  

In the middle ages of your life, not too old, no longer young,  

I’ll be there to guide you through the night, complete what I’ve begun.  

When the evening gently closes in, and you shut your weary eyes,  

I’ll be there as I have always been with just one more surprise.” 

I’m not ashamed to say that I teared up big time. Every congregation should have an outdoor service at a cemetery. We’re looking forward to that “one more surprise.”    

The Meyer Minute for August 29, 2022

These last days, Diane and I have been visiting almost daily with John. He comes over every year or so, usually for about a week. He’s pleasant and full of information…about unwanted creatures. John works for Veteran’s Pride Wildlife Control and sets traps for raccoons and whatever other creatures are causing trouble. John’s visit this year has netted five racoons and three possums, so far. 

I asked, “Why do they come to our house more than others on the street?” John said, “Maybe because of the garden.” Makes sense. Diane has a great garden. When she picks tomatoes, she puts them on the back porch, but the next morning we sometimes find that the ‘coons have helped themselves. This year Diane has a fantastic path of cantaloupes. They found it. John put two traps near the melon patch and voila, trapped raccoons. I don’t know what the possums are coming for. 

Whether in her love for gardening or feeding the birds… Diane makes nectar for the hummingbirds, who’ve come to depend on her. We were late last spring to hang the hummingbird feeder on the back porch. Those little birds have memory! When they returned from their winter in the south, they came to Diane’s Diner but found nothing. She immediately put up the feeder and the grateful hummers show up every day.  

In all she lovingly does for God’s nature, I see Diane anticipating Isaiah 11. “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the holy of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6-9). Diane’s gardening anticipates the new heavens and new earth that God promises us. When it comes, we’ll invite the racoons, possums, and other creatures to join us on the porch, but not yet! 

Happy Birthday, Diane. From your loving husband who is still learning about the depths of your love. 

The Meyer Minute for August 26, 2022

The word “righteous” is on my mind. It’s not a word I hear in daily life, only in church and then only from the Bible readings and maybe in the sermon. Gathering after worship for coffee, no one uses the word “righteous” in conversation. Yet it’s an important word in the Bible, describing the essence of being a Christian. What does it mean that we don’t use such a key word in our daily conversation? 

Actually, “righteous” is used as a slang word.  Here are examples from the Urban Dictionary. “Oh, man, that lasagna was righteous!” “Dude! That wave was righteous, man. That so totally rocked.” “Righteous” is on my mind because of 1 Peter 3:18. “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous.” Does that then translate, “Dude, Jesus hanging out, so righteous!” 

What does the word mean for us who aren’t “with it”? Meriam-Webster defines “righteous” as “conforming to a high standard of morality or virtue.” That meaning goes back to the Greco-Roman world of Bible times. A “righteous” person is “one who fulfils obligations towards men” and fulfills religious duties. Note: that’s human centered. “Righteous” in the New Testament is totally different. First and foremost, God is the righteous One who will judge those who do not live by His standard (that’s Law) and God makes repentant sinners “righteous” through faith in Christ (Gospel). “The justice of the One who is absolutely righteous is demonstrated in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. The new factor (in the New Testament) is the absolute connection with the atoning death of Christ in which shows Himself to be righteous.”   

Faithful Christians I know, the ones I talk with at church, at coffee after worship, whom I meet in town, they understand, as Paul puts it, that God is “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). I suspect they don’t know the Bible gives a whole different meaning to “righteous” than the world.” I didn’t know it either until my work on 1 Peter. What about people who think lasagna, or a wave is “righteous”? True as it is, old religious jargon won’t communicate to them.  

I always struggle to get seminarians out of religious jargon so that they truly communicate the Gospel. Today begins Concordia Seminary’s 184^th academic year. Pray that tomorrow’s pastors are both faithful to the Word but also communicate effectively.   

The Meyer Minute for August 23, 2022

I like to think of myself as a loving person, certainly I love family but how do I love God? Many hymns talk about loving God. “Thee will I love my strength, my tower.” “Lord, Thee I love with all my heart.” Do I do that, do you? Lines like that are, on one hand, convicting. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). “With all”? I don’t. On the other hand, those lines motivate me. “Long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation” (1 Peter 2:2). 

Yesterday I quoted the 18^th century minister Robert Leighton about all Jesus endured to save us, “one continued line of suffering, from the manger to the cross.” That’s history. Abraham Lincoln is history. I read about him, respect him for all that he did for our country, but I don’t love him. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 20^th century, helps me see God’s history with love. “Had there been no despair, no sense of desolation and defeat, but merely the onward march of irresistible power to the achievement of its end, evil might have been beaten, but not bound in captivity to love forever.” (“For All the Saints,” IV, 354). God could have defeated evil in other ways, but the way God chose, the personal anguish and suffering of His Son, shows God’s love and, this is important, makes me look at sacred history with love. You endured all that for me? 

So far though, it’s still history. As I said, we respect people from history but seldom love them the way we love family who are present with us, have been present with us. I experience my love for God and Christ increasing when I remember Jesus is now at the right hand of God and will soon appear in glory. He’s not just history; He is now. I want to see and be with people I love. It increases my love for God to picture Jesus reigning at the right hand now and I will soon see Him with my own eyes. “Come down, O Love divine; Seek Thou this soul of mine, / And visit it with Tine own ardor glowing” (Lutheran Service Book, 501:1). 

Going to our little cabin for a few days. Be back sometime. Learning the freedom of retirement. 

The Meyer Minute for August 22, 2022

A reflection from Robert Leighton, an 18^th century Puritan minister, upon “Christ also suffered once for sins” (1 Peter 3:18). Isn’t this more comforting than the bland, “Jesus died for your sins”? 

Jesus “whole life was one continued line of suffering, from the manger to the cross.… His best works paid with envy and revilings, called a wine-bibber, and a caster out of devils by the prince of devils; his life often laid in wait and sought for.  

“Art thou mean in thy birth and life, despised, misjudged, and reviled, on all hands? Look how it was with Him, who had more right than thou hast to better entertainment in the world (the original meaning of ‘entertainment’ was hospitality or reception). Thou wilt not deny it was his own; it was ‘made by him, and he was in it, and it knew him not’ (John 1:10). Are thy friends harsh to thee? “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11). Hast thou a mean cottage, or art thou drawn from it and hast no dwelling, and art thou every way poor and ill-accommodated? He was as poor as thou canst be, ‘and had not where to lay his head,’ worse provided than the birds and foxes (Matthew 8:20).  

“But then, consider to what a height his sufferings rose in the end, that most remarkable part of them here meant by his “once suffering for sins.” If thou shouldst be cut off by a violent death, or in the prime of thy years, mayst thou not look upon him as going before thee in both these? And in so ignominious a way! scourged, buffeted, and spit on, he endured all, ‘he gave his back to the smiters,’ and then, as the same prophet hath it, ‘he was numbered amongst the transgressors (Isaiah 50:6; 53:12). When they had used him with all that shame, they hanged him betwixt two thieves, and they that passed by ‘wagged their heads,’ and darted taunts at him, as at a mark fixed to the cross: they scoffed and said, ‘He saved others, himself he cannot save’ (Mark 15:29-30). ‘He endured the cross, and despised the shame,’ says the Apostle, (Hebrews 12:2). 

“We may apply this comfort and stay ourselves or our souls on him, and go to him as a compaasionate High Priest” (Hebrews 4:15). ‘For Christ also suffered.’” 

The Meyer Minute for August 19, 2022

One of the things I don’t like about going to church… Stay with me, I’m all for weekly church attendance… but I don’t like that it keeps moving, never silence for us to stop and think.  There’s an order of service and we have to get through it. Pastors plan so that sermon, hymns, readings, and prayers are of real spiritual help to worshippers, that’s good… Thank you, pastors! But each of us is at our own place in life and spiritual growth. At the end of life, at the end of time, I am, you are responsible for your spiritual life. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12) 

Sunday many of us will hear Jesus say, “Strive to enter through the narrow door” (Luke 13:24). That’s an example of what I mean. The lector will read “Strive” and keep galloping on. But if we could stop there… Wait! I’ll stop there right now. The Greek word for strive means, “to contend, to exert oneself, to struggle.” That word, agon-izo (pronounced with a short a and a long o) was used especially for athletic contests but in the New Testament has a figurative sense, but it still has substance. Strive means more than going to church. In faith you strive against something. You strive for something.    

Someone asked Jesus, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” Typical Jesus, He doesn’t answer the question but says, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” Jesus disagrees with the polls showing most Americans think they’ll go to heaven, if there is a heaven. People who think that way, think of themselves as Christian, who know about Jesus, will in the final judgment hear Him say, “I do not know where you come from. Depart from me” (Luke 13:27). That’s what we church goers should strive against, struggle against, false comfort because we know facts about Jesus. What we strive for, exert ourselves to do, is see ourselves humbly. Can you truly say, I am the chief of sinners? “Some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last” (Luke 13:30).  

That’s just one word from Sunday. Take the order of service home. Revisit the readings, prayers, hymns. Going to church on Sunday is good but not enough. 

The Meyer Minute for August 17, 2022

“The God I Know Is Not a Culture Warrior.” Of all places, that title was in yesterday’s New York Times, a paper that doesn’t line up with traditional Christian beliefs. It was written by Tish Harrison Warren, a priest in the conservative Anglican Church in North America. 

“In the news and on social media, God usually shows up when we are fighting about something. The subject of faith seems most often discussed in conversations about voting patterns and campaigning. God appears in our public discourse when Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, a Georgia Republican, calls for Christian nationalism. Or in Twitter debates about whether a coach should publicly pray on the 50-yard line. Or when the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor painted ‘Jesus, guns, babies’ on the side of her campaign bus” (A19).  

Pastor Kyle Wright and I are team-teaching a Sunday morning Bible class. We’re calling the class “You’re Peculiar,” from the old King James translation of 1 Peter 2:9, “you are…a peculiar people.” In modern versions, “a people for (God’s) own possession” (ESV). We’ve asked the class, “What would you like to study?” and they’ve responded with many topics. Ms. Warren: “Churches and other religious groups must continually highlight how our traditions address pressing issues that will never trend on Twitter or dominate political debates: problems like loneliness, despair, conflict in families, disappointment, grief, longing, loss and those all-too-human anxieties and insecurities that keep us up at night.” 

“Peculiar” is a gentle word for how many in today’s media and intelligentsia judge biblical Christianity. “Religion Dispatches” lambasted the Times for running Ms. Warren’s writing, “out of touch,” “bigoted social politics,” “misogynistic,” “homophobic,” etc. (September 8, 2021). We’re increasingly branded “peculiar,” usually worse, more and more like the Christians to whom Peter wrote, believers slandered, side-lined, and sometimes hauled into court for beliefs the majority thinks are un-American. It’s a one-sided view of the First Amendment, but the place where we respond should be less in front of our digital affinity groups, less in front of cameras, and more in quiet learning and discussion of Christian Scripture. Ms. Warren: “Faith touches all areas of life, and issues such as abortion, religious liberty and the relationship between church and state are important. But when we primarily talk about God in the context of political or ideological debate, believers’ actual experience of God, worship and faith – not to mention spiritual virtues like humility, gratitude and kindness – often get lost.” God’s people in Christ are indeed peculiar. 

The Meyer Minute for August 15, 2022

“Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed” (Psalm 34:5). Wouldn’t that be great, to have a smile and positive spirit whatever comes your way. Whatever the gossip going around, whatever the doctor says, whatever worries your children cause, however small the piggybank… “It is well, it is well with my soul.” 

But where do you get that radiant face? Teaching Bible class yesterday on Psalm 34, I asked, “Who is ‘him’? Those who look to him…” Several people answered, “God.” I had expected that answer and determined to be a kindly contrarian. What does the word “God” mean? With all the images science is bringing us from deep space, “God” is more mysterious than ever. Our expanding knowledge doesn’t tell me anything about God except that He is powerful beyond imagination and perhaps capricious. Galaxies collide, stars explode, and God might let an asteroid hit Earth. That doesn’t make me radiant. 

When David wrote the psalm, he had something specific in mind about “him.” In the preceding verse, David said, “I sought the Lord, and he answered me.” “Lord” in Hebrew is Yahweh, the name God revealed to Moses at the burning bush. Yahweh reveals a more specific way to think about the deity than the general “God.” Yahweh is God who comes to the rescue of his people, be that ancient Israel, David, or you and me. About us, remember we have received more revelation about God than Old Testament people had. The cosmic, mysterious God has centered our rescue in His Son. “For 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). So, “him” is Jesus, one of us, knows us every moment, good times and bad, and as He has triumphed, we will too. Radiance comes to your spirit when you keep focusing on the One who overcame trouble and death and is now at the right hand of God. 

“I thank Thee, Jesus, Sun from heaven, / Whose radiance hath brought light to me…  

“O keep me watchful, then, and humble; / Permit me nevermore to stray. 

Uphold me when my feet would stumble, / And keep me on the narrow way. 

Fill all my nature with Thy light, / O Radiance strong and bright.” 

(Lutheran Service Book, 694:3, 4).     

The Meyer Minute for August 12, 2022

Anticipation! If a Florida judge unseals the warrant for the search of former president Trump’s home, what will be revealed? I wish the Church was filled with anticipation. 

“Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne (that’s God the Father) a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’ And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it” (Revelation 5:1-3). The sealed scroll is in the hand of God. No judge, no politician, no corporate CEO, no theologian, no denomination…None of us is worthy to unseal the scroll that God holds in His powerful right hand. Who can know the mind of God? 

“I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him was seated on the throne…. And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God” (5:6-7, 9). Only the Son of God, the Son of Man, Jesus Christ is worthy to reveal to us what is in God’s mighty will. Christ has earned the right by His crucifixion and resurrection, the purpose to make us God’s people. The seven horns symbolize the almighty power of the ascended Christ now at the right hand of God. The seven spirits sent out into all the earth symbolize the omniscience of the ascended Christ. Your Lord Jesus sees and knows all that is happening in this world. 

What does scroll reveal? “The ultimate purpose of Christ receiving the scroll and then revealing its contents to John and the church is to strengthen the church’s faith and to encourage the church, in the midst of all the sufferings, to remain faithful to Christ and so to attain the promise of everlasting glory. That faithfulness involves carrying out the mission Christ has given to her” (Louis Brighton, “Concordia Commentary: Revelation,” 139). The ascended Christ who will soon return…now that’s real anticipation! 

The Meyer Minute for August 11, 2022

Yesterday I had the joy of speaking to about 300 church workers, most of them teachers in Lutheran schools. I closed by quoting Dr. Martin Koehneke’s address to the 1955 graduates of Concordia Teachers College in River Forest, Illinois. I hope all of us, lay as well as church workers, see in his words the uniqueness of our discipleship. 

“You join the ranks of thousands of men and women who for the most part have said with St. Paul: ‘I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, Who hath enabled me, for that He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry.’ (1 Timothy 1:12) In the discharge of their debt of love to God and man, a host of them have already gone down into the grave, by men unpraised, by the world unknown. While others filled the world with the breath of their name, they counted it their honor to fill thrones in heaven. They thought it far better to part with gold than with God, to bear the heaviest cross than miss a heavenly crown. 

“You link yourselves with men and women who look to Jesus Christ and say: ‘Thy love to me is wonderful,’ with Christian teachers whose holy calling requires the long and penetrating look of faith. To be a teacher worthy of the name given to Him, Who was called ‘A Teacher sent from God,’ you must understand by faith that not until you yourself have passed in at heaven’s gate, not until the palm of victory is in your own hands and a blood-bought crown is on your own head, not until you walk the streets that are paved with gold and join the songs of the heavenly choir, not until then will you fully understand what you owe to the love of Christ, and why you may justly say: ‘Thy love to me was wonderful!’ And on that day, when souls redeemed claim you as the friend who put their hands into the clasp of the Friend of sinners, then shall you better understand why I say that you are about to find yourself in a great tradition and a great ministry…. 

“Go, then, to work for the God Who loves you; work for the Savior Who bled for you; work for the world that, sinking into its doom, needs men and women who have tasted of the Lord’s mercies and found that they are good.” (“For All the Saints,” IV, 73)