Meyer Minute for November 12
“Thank you for your service.” You heard that many times, perhaps said it yourself to someone in military uniform. We’ve learned since the Viet Nam War to thank our military personnel, whether we agree with our current conflicts or not. No doubt our soldiers, sailors and airmen would rather be safe at home with loved ones, but they live mission-conscious in our chaotic and dangerous world.
“Thank you for your service.” If someone said that to you as a civilian, what would they be thanking you for? What service are you offering that in some small way makes your community and our country better? Americans’ attitudes have changed drastically since 2 million of our young men went to fight in World War I. When the Barna Organization put this statement before people, “The highest goal of life is to enjoy it as much as possible,” 84 percent of Americans agreed and 67 percent of practicing Christians agreed (Barna Trends 2017). If life is all about you, why bother with others who need your help, let alone go to war? How different from the Ten Commandments, which show our duties toward others for the good of community and country. The morality of self-fulfillment weakens us.
At the end of the war, President Woodrow Wilson wrote to Senator Henry Ashurst, “I am now playing for 100 years hence.” Wrote Ted Widmer of the City University of New York, “He would be dismayed at all the ways in which our world resembles his” (New York Times, Sunday Review, November 11, 2018; 10). If you disappeared tomorrow, or if your congregation suddenly disappeared, would people in your community care or even notice? No one said, “Thank you for your service” to the religious, to the priest or Levite who passed by the man beaten by robbers. Jesus’ approval went – Imagine, being approved by the Son of God! – to the Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37).
The Armistice ending World War I was signed at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Eleven-o’clock signals there’s not much time left. God only knows how much time self-absorbed America still has, but it’s high time for followers of Jesus to be more mission-conscious than ever. “Christians live not in themselves, but in Christ and their neighbor” (Martin Luther, “Freedom of a Christian”). “Thank you for your service?”
President Rev. Dale Meyer
Concordia Seminary, St. Louis
