Our speaker this morning is Dean Robert P. Meye, who is a native of Oregon, the state about which one visitor joked, “In Oregon, they have just one rain, but that’s all winter”. Dr. Meye is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary, with a degree of Master of Theology. He received his Doctor of Theology from the University of Basel in Switzerland, graduating with honors. Dr. Meye has authored a book, and contributes to several learned journals. He is a dynamic speaker, as you will find out this morning. It is my pleasure, at this time, to present to you, the author, scholar, and preacher, Dean Robert P. Meye. Let’s greet him.

“That may be the best introduction ever have. I’d like to be one up on the County Board Chairman, just once. He spoke of the question his twelve-year-old daughter asked, “Why are Christmas Prayer Breakfasts held so early?”

One of the advantages of having a teenage son, as well as older children, is that you learn very early that not everybody takes you too seriously all of the time. Despite the fact that I have been thinking about this Prayer Breakfast for a long time with considerable seriousness, the question I heard from the back seat this morning, at 6:30, was, ‘Why do they have Prayer Breakfasts?’

I think that’s probably part of the challenge that faces me this morning, to speak to the question of why we are gathered here today.

By way of prefacing my comments, I want to make a few very brief observations. The first one is that the issues which face us, whenever we reflect on the church or the Christian in government, are complex. The number of things, therefore, that will have to go unsaid this morning are legion, and that’s the good news. The bad news is that the issues of politics, from my perspective, are rarely simple. They are incredibly complex, and I hope that the brevity of the comments that I have to share won’t betray my perception, of that complexity. Mark Hat field put it very well, in the title of his book, “Not Quite So Simple”.

You as an audience, represent a tremendously broad spectrum, both in your religious and political experience and understanding. To reach all of you in the same way is virtually impossible. I speak from the assumption that the Bible is authoritative, both in what it says directly and in what it assumes, or that which is implicit in it.

The final thing that I would like to stress by way of foreword is that the church in more recent time, is discover ing and emphasizing the meaning of gifts, those special abilities and talents which God gives to people, to exercise in leadership, and all aspects of the life of the church. The negative side of that teaching is that fools ought not to rush in where angels fear to tred. Exercise your gift, but don’t presume to exercise someone else’s. I think that what is true in the church is also true in politics. I as a theologian and a churchman will not seek to run government, but simply seek to address some comments to it from my own perspective as a Christian citizen.

I would like to be a bit autobiographical–I suppose that it all begins in Oregon, where my parents literally carved the farm, where I grew up, out of the woods. It was all forest when they arrived there, and most of the people who lived around us had the same life. Oregon has had a tremendous pioneering spirit, and it shows up in its politics. And its politics, as I experienced them as young man, affected the lives of most everybody. I can’t remember a time when my father, with his friends around the Sunday table, did not sit and discuss politics, political issues or political figures as well as theology, churchly concern, and theological issues. The one thing that I miss as I look back upon all of that now, is the connection between the two. Rarely did I hear reflection on the way in which the life of the Christian ought to be related to the life of the government. Somehow it was assumed that we knew how to cut into both of them. But the question was never asked, “How really, do they relate?” But in any case, I’ve never known a time when there was not concern shown in my home, for the issues of the day. I perceive of this as a very Christian situation.

I went to Salem High School, near my home in Oregon, and was the editor and member of the school newspaper team, and got my first taste of political activity. We had secret societies in the high school in those days, which in my opinion were devastating the lives of young people with fear. I raised a crusade against them, which I understand became the occasion for the school board to simply put an end to them, once and for all. Preceding me in that same high school, was Mark Hatfield, later to become the Governor of Oregon and then one of its senators. Also in that high school, was Doug Coe, Chairman of the National Prayer Breakfast. While on the staff of the newspaper at high school, we did our set-up work at the local newspaper office of the Salem Statesman. While I went about my small tasks, the editor of that newspaper went about his large tasks. As I had the experience of observing him and learning something about him, I began to understand that political figures could be kind and interesting. It is very easy to think evil of persons or types of persons we don’t know. It is very hard to think of these significant figures in those terms, once you have met them. I feel that one of the plus factors of this Prayer Breakfast is that we meet political persons and come to think of them with greater realism.

When I graduated from high school I joined the Navy, along with some other volunteers. We were called the Alignment Valley Volunteers. What distresses me today, as I look back upon that experience, is that it was as easy for me then to join the Navy, as it would have been for me to go to a state university or to join the Boy Scouts. I asked no questions. Nobody had ever taught me to ask them. It wasn’t until I went to Stanford University and met a young woman who was to become my wife, and met her father who had spent two years in Leavenworth Prison during World War I as a conscientious objector, that I learned that there was a biblical word and a Christian heritage that at least teaches one to ask questions about many things that governments do. I am not saying this morning that I am a pacifist, but I think of the question.

I am concerned that we should see that in the New Testament we are taught to ask questions, which sometimes the church that we belong to has never taught us to ask. Those questions became very acute to me when after Stanford, I became a Navy officer, and spent three years off of Korea, sometimes wondering what in the world we were doing in Asia.

I was very interested to read Mark Hatfield’s letters to his own parents during those days, and to find that he was asking a lot of the same questions as I. As Christian people we need to learn to ask questons that we have all too often never learned to ask. When I went to the University of Basel in Switzerland, I became a student of one of the greatest theological leaders that the church has ever known, Karl Barth, who was teaching in Nazi Germany during the time of Hitler’s power. He exercised an influence which can not be calculated. An article appeared in the Chicago Daily News about him, on the occasion of his death, entitled “No Pocketsize Gods For Karl Barth.”

The article began “God is not on anybody’s side.” This was probably the biggest point which Karl Barth made in a lifetime of theology. He was a teacher in a German university in 1933 when Adolph Hitler came to power, and began to substitute allegiance to the State for worship of God. refused to take an oath of allegiance required of state employees, and refused to begin his classes with a salute to Hitler, and for this he was expelled from Germany in 1935.

On religious grounds he objected to Hitler because Barth: was a man of God, and was no patriot when asked to adulterate religion. He was not ready to cut God down t( small size for small men, and he was not ready to identit, God with any culture, including Western Europe’s.

Karl Barth has taught me to think in new terms of th, relation of a citizen to his country. I would like to read to you. words from a draft of a Declaration penned by Karl Barth, at a time when the most cultured and educated nation that the world had ever known, Germany, had monuments to church leaders that still stand today. The document begins: “In view of the errors of the German Christian of the Right Government, which are devastating the church, and are also thereby breaking up the unity of the Evangelical Church, we confess the following Evangelical truths: ‘I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by Me. Truly, Truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. I am the door, if any one enters by Me he will be saved. — Barth then commented, “Jesus Christ, as He has attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear, and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine, and any other events and powers, other than the word of God.”

The document then goes on to declare Christ’s lordship over all of a Christian’s life, and the sovereignty of God over all the laws of the State. I think that is what Jesus meant when He declared that persons ought to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but to God’s what is God’s. Jesus clearly stated that God was first, and Caesar was second, and that we ought not divide the spoils between them.

Where do we go from there? I would like two strong points to be made this morning. The first is an image, On the Prayer Breakfast folder that you have are the words “Praying for Those in Authority.” The flag and the cross are symbols of our country and of our Christian faith. I want to burn into your minds this morning the neglected meaning of a wellknown fact and symbol. If there is anything familiar in a country where Christians are still allowed to worship and to live in peace, it is the symbol of the cross. The cross stands on our churches and in our churches, and Protestants and Catholics wear them. But do you understand that the cross is a lasting, burning reminder of the fact that- Jesus was crucified as a political criminal? Two sets of powers, quite opposed to one another, were united more or less, in that one concern. Do not take me wrong, I do not mean to say that Jesus was a Democrat or Republican or any other party advocate. Nor do I mean to say that he had a political program ready to launch at a moment’s notice. But what is very clear is that there was, to those two parties, something ultimate and political.

I would like to recall some of the famous work of Albert Schweitzer on Jesus. Schweitzer said in his writing that there is no task so revealing of a man’s true self as a writing of the life of Jesus. He also said that the stronger the love, and the stronger the hate, the more lifelike is the figure produced.

Hate as well as love can write the life of Jesus. There’s a truth there, worth remembering. And I am thinking today of the fact that from the earliest centuries, the church and Christians have often been perceived to be enemies of the state, when they were most true to their God. In Russia today, a Christian as he practices his faith is an enemy of the state. It was not different in Rome, in the first century. So, Christians are like the Lord, and the world around them often perceives a tension between their faith commitments and the political scene to which they address themselves. That is a thought worth thinking about. It simply reminds us of the fact that God and Caesar are never one, not in Berlin or Washington, D.C., or even in DuPage County. But there is alway some sort of tension that exists, and we as Christian citizens need to be wise, we need to ask God’s perception about where we are, and where government is, and about when we need to support it and when we should take a stand against it.

My final point, on the matter of the motto “Praying for Those in Authority,” is from a New Testament text that I take to be the mandate to any Christian population. But I wonder if we as Christians, and if the government are clear in understanding what this text means. Let me suggest that it means first of all that this Prayer Breakfast is only a beginning.

Our prayer will be limited this morning, and made for us by others who pray on our behalf. What we have done today can only be the beginning response of prayer for those in authority. For unless prayer becomes a personal and churchly concern as we leave this breakfast, it will mean nothing at all. Our consciences will have been sensitized by the Scriptures which have been read. And if we do nothing, it would have been better not to have been here. We must pray for government as we leave this breakfast. And we have to do more, for it is nonsense to pray, and then to do nothing. One cannot pray for a project in which he has no part. We ought not to pray if we are not ready to be God’s instruments in meeting the needs for which we have prayed. Prayer ought to be the beginning of a wonderfully democratic process in which a Christian’s citizenry includes prayer for a good government, and support for good government and then involvement in that government. In other words, don’t pray unless you are ready to assume the responsibilities of good citizenship. Don’t pray, and act out a lie in your life. Be a full citizen, be salt and light in the world, in the nation and in the state, in the county and the municipality and your local area of residence.

Prayer can lead to problems. The Lord’s Prayer says “Thy will be done.” This means that when the governmental process goes against the good things that God desires for His creatures, that our prayers already mandate a critical response and action, and that’s a tough assignment. It’s especially tough when you begin to know the people who rule and govern. It’s not easy to stand against a friend or a neighbor who is in government. Sometimes a Christian will have to be a member of a loyal minority at whatever stage in the process of government. My father-in-law, though a loyal citizen, was a part of a very small but loyal minority who went to Leavenworth Prison.

There is a strong likelihood that in many areas of local politics, housing, law enforcement, education, environmental concerns and so forth, that you will find yourself at the point where I found myself¡ªin front of a board concerned with flooding. I had moved into DuPage County in a place where housing had been allowed and I talked with an old timer who said that he had once seen that whole area under water. I saw floodwaters swirl three times around my home, because of allowing building where it should not have been. Great pain and grief is the constant lot of all people who still live in that place.

That is what I mean when I say we have to pray and we have to be willing to act and to stand against. But we also have to stand for that which we see is good. We ought to be there to support it, to give a word of encouragement. Otherwise the prayer for strong government is nonsense. The prayer for wisdom is important; but we also pray for the courage to listen, and to stand firm.

I do not know how you will go away from this occasion. I hope that I will go away praying for those in authority, and acting on God’s behalf for better government and for strong government. for upright government, for just government, and for leaders who will lead us in the way which we should go. I thank God for the energies th,o :,re exerted by the political figures in this room. I want to assure them as a Christian that they never need fear a praying Christian, who acts honestly and responds to God’s mandate.

God always is on the side of justice and right. Let’s pray for justice and right. Let’s pray for those in authority. God bless you as citizens. And God bless you as leaders.