Today’s Scripture Reading (September 6,
2017): Malachi 3 & 4
He wants to “Make
America Great Again.” I am just not sure that it is something he can do. Don’t get
me wrong; this has nothing to do with power
or intelligence. I just don’t think it is the prerogative of one man to
complete that task. It will take a nation, and as I look out on our global
village, it may take the world to complete the promise. The time of nation
building is over; we are too
interconnected for that kind of dream to actually
work. Besides, what does it even mean to
be great? Is my version of great and your version of great the same? Or is
there a difference. Does a great Christian nation look the same as a Great
Muslim nation, or even a great Atheistic
or Agnostic nation? Would Bill Maher and Franklin Graham dream of the same
America? (Disclaimer: I am not sure I would want to live in the world that
either of these men might wish to build.)
Does
greatness come in isolation? On that last one, for me, the answer is no. Greatness is a position of influence and
making a difference in our ever widening circles of acquaintance. I also think
that it takes great discipline on the part of the people to build a nation or a world that is great, not intent on the part
of the leader. If the people of the world want to be great again (because this
should not just be a national slogan but rather a global desire), the path to
greatness is found in leaders who will lift up the ideal and in people who will
discipline themselves to achieve that ideal. When John F. Kennedy declared that
the United States would land a spacecraft on the moon by the end of the decade
(the 1960’s), he was not inferring that
he himself possessed the technical
expertise to get the job done. In fact, it was going to take a number of people working incredibly hard and a nation willing to spend
money on space exploration to accomplish the task. Kennedy, unfortunately, was
not even alive for most of the journey that the United States took to the moon
during that decade. Today, space exploration is a global initiative; it takes
us all. But Kennedy did give us a real target
toward which we could aim. That is what leaders do.
In some
ways, this passage in Malachi is strange. The people of Israel wanted the Messiah
to come. The average person on the street would have probably said that they
were ready for the Messiah to come. What was there for which they needed to
prepare? But the problem was that they were not really
ready. What they wanted was a leader who comes
to “Make Israel Great Again,” returning
the nation to the prestige that had been experienced
during the days of David and Solomon. What they didn’t understand was that
greatness was something that would emerge from the people willing to follow the
Messiah, a greatness defined in terms of
mercy and grace, forgiveness and an attitude of service. The people desired
military conquest. And before the Messiah came, they would get a taste of that
conquest in the Maccabean Revolt. But that conquest would not be Messianic.
But the Messiah and his forerunner would have a
different idea of greatness. And the forerunner
(John the Baptist) would call the nation to a time of repentance before the Messiah would come and defined greatness in an entirely unexpected way.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Luke 1
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