When Bill Gates and Paul Allen were in high school, they liked playing around with computers. After they graduated, they saw that microcomputers were starting to become accessible to the average consumer, so they wrote to MITS, the developers of a microcomputer called the Altair, and told them that they had developed a BASIC language interpreter for the Altair, and they wanted to license MITS to sell it, in exchange for royalties. MITS agreed, and after eight frantic weeks of writing the code that they claimed already to have, they delivered their product. Realizing that they were onto something that had great potential, they decided to form a corporation, and the next month, April 1974, Microsoft was born. The biggest computer company on earth began with a small idea, that flexible, multipurpose software was the engine that would drive the microcomputer revolution. Today's reading from 2 Samuel 7 describes the small idea that ultimately led to the founding of the world's largest religion. After David had become king in Jerusalem, he decided that he wanted to build a great temple for the worship of God. The prophet Nathan, however, brought the news that God did not want David to build a great house for worshiping God. Instead, God would build a house for David--not a physical house, but a dynasty that would last forever. "Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me," God said through Nathan. The royal line of David continued in Judah for the next 400 years, but it came to an abrupt end when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, knocked down its walls, and burned the temple to the ground. After the return from exile, the Jews waited expectantly for God to restore the Davidic kingdom, but it never transpired. What had happened to God's promise? The Jews were faced with two theological options. Either they could acknowledge the reality of the situation and admit that a Davidic king would never reign again over Israel, or they could read in the passage a promise that God would someday send an anointed king, or messiah, to reign again over God's people. This messianic hope sustained generations of Jews through the most difficult of circumstances, and even today, some 3000 years after the promise to David, many Jews continue to find hope in the promised return of the messiah. About 2000 years ago one group of Jews re-read the re-reading of Nathan's prophecy, and they stopped looking for a literal king to rule over a literal kingdom, because they saw in Jesus of Nazareth a greater fulfillment of God's prophecy. Jesus' kingdom was not limited to the geographic region of Judea or Galilee, but it encompassed the whole world. Jesus was not a temporal king who would reign for awhile and then die, but he was an eternal king who would reign from heaven over the earth forever. Jesus' subjects were not just the descendants of the original twelve tribes of Israel, but they included people from every continent and every nation, anyone who saw in Jesus the way to be united with God. Christianity has achieved great things over the centuries, and it has committed horrible atrocities, but through both good and bad, it has one great redeeming feature that continues to sustain it: the example of its founder, who taught his followers to love God with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love their neighbors as themselves. From such a small beginning has emerged a great world religion, a light in a world that is all too often filled with darkness.
What is it that makes a nation great? For some people, a nation is great when it controls a large amount of territory. For others, a nation is great when it possesses great wealth. For still others, a nation is great when it produces men and women of great intellect and ability. The psalmist describes a nation led by a Davidic king. He describes the king's honor among his contemporaries, the nation's strength relative to surrounding kingdoms, and the king's ingenuity in foreign affairs. What is the source of this greatness? It is the king's relationship with God: "He shall cry to me, 'You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation!'" The United States is looked upon by many as a great nation, and in some ways it is indisputably great. The U.S. has the most powerful armed forces in the world, with a military budget that is roughly equivalent to the total military spending of the rest of the world's nations combined. The U.S. is by far the richest nation on earth, and our citizens, on average, enjoy high standards of living. The U.S. produces more Nobel Prize winning scientists and economists that any other nation on the planet. We are the only nation that has been to the moon, and we have sequenced the human genome. Yet despite these aspects of greatness, many today question whether the U.S. can truly be described as a great nation. In recent days our nation's leaders have debated publicly whether or not torture should be permissible. The state of California has executed a man who, after an earlier life of crime, had spent the past several years writing books to encourage children to stay away from gangs. Despite acknowledging that all the pretenses we used for waging war on Iraq turned out to be false, the president and others still say that going to war was the right thing to do. The government refuses to negotiate with the world's other nations about cutting the greenhouse gases that are rapidly heating the planet, despite the fact that the U.S. is by far the world's largest producer of such gases. The U.S. refuses to join the International Criminal Court, making its soldiers and military leaders above the international law that applies to everyone else. Most recently, the New York Times has revealed that the nation's biggest intelligence organization, the NSA, has been spying on U.S. citizens without obtaining warrants. These are not the indicators of a great nation. Instead, they point to fundamental weaknesses of character that can only lead to the nation's downfall, if they are not corrected. The key to correcting the situation we Americans find ourselves in--and the same applies to other countries as well, small or large--is found in the words of this psalm. When we deviate from divine principles such as love, mercy, honesty, and trustworthiness, we are setting ourselves up for a fall. Citizens of all countries need to turn to God, the Rock of our salvation, for guidance and strength, instead of relying on our own resources or alternative moral codes. In the end, a nation's greatness is not based on its own self-evaluation but on the opinions of neighboring countries. The world right now needs a superpower whose moral compass is firm and that has a vision of a future in which the whole world prospers, not a superpower whose chief claim to the name is excessive military spending and an excess of wealth that is disproportionately distributed to the top 5% of the population. It's time for Christians of all nations to work to make their native countries great in the best sense of the word.
One of the innovations of the Protestant Reformation was to move the pulpit from the side of the clergy's portion of the sanctuary to the center. This move symbolized that the proclamation of the gospel had become the central feature of the worship service. Twentieth century theologians, particularly those of a neo-Orthodox bent, emphasized the two-fold message of the church, which consisted of the didache, or teaching, and the kerygma, or preaching. The term that is translated "proclamation" in Romans 16:25 is the word kerygma. It signifies the totality of Paul's message about Jesus Christ. For Paul, the message about Christ was a source of power for the church, not only in the sense of providing direction and encouragement but, even more, of providing a direct link to the being of God. Paul uses two other words in this short blessing to refer to the overall message of the church. The first is the word "gospel," which is the translation of a Greek word meaning "good news." The Greek word is also the root found in words like "evangelist" and "evangelism." The other word that Paul uses to describe the Christian message is the word "mystery." Paul says that the gospel that he proclaims was formerly a mystery, even though it was present in the prophets, but now it has been revealed, so it is a mystery no longer. This comment doesn't mean that the Christian message contains no enduring mystery. On the contrary, God's divine dealings with humanity are shrouded with mystery. What Paul is saying is that, in Christ, a major portion of God's divine plan has been revealed. This plan is particularly significant for the Gentiles, for it reveals that the God of the Jews is the God of the Gentiles as well. Unlike religions that focus either exclusively or primarily on one ethnic or national group, Christianity is a religion that is open to all. Early Christian leaders from Europe, Asia, and Africa intermingled with one another freely and without prejudice. It is unfortunately true that large numbers of Christians have frequently slipped into one form of prejudice or another--against blacks, against Native Americans, against Aboriginal Australians, and especially against Jews--but at the same time it is true that the overarching Christian message, the kerygma, continually calls Christians out of their narrow-minded bigotry into a grand and glorious inclusivity, one that encompasses all the people of the world in the love of God. This is a mystery that is still unfolding.
How do Christians treat unwed mothers, especially unwed teenaged mothers? Although our gospels don't indicate Mary's age explicitly, Jewish custom in the first century suggests that Mary was probably a teenager when she was betrothed to Joseph. (The apocryphal Infancy Gospel of James, which dates to the late second century, says that Mary was sixteen at the time.) In some churches unwed teenaged mothers are ostracized, having committed the "unpardonable sin" of having sex. Rarely, however, are the teenaged boys who got them pregnant similarly ostracized. In other churches the girls are comforted and supported through a difficult, life-changing experience. Clearly the latter is the proper Christian model, and it reflects the experience of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Today's Gospel reading tells of the angel Gabriel visiting Mary and announcing to her that she had been chosen to bear the Son of God. The gospel of Luke shows only the positive side of Mary's situation: her divine selection is announced by an angel, she is blessed by her aunt Elizabeth, she is accompanied to Bethlehem by her husband Joseph (with no mention of his considering divorcing her), and so forth. The whole experience is profound and awe-inspiring. The same cannot be said for most unwed teenagers today. Since almost none of the pregnancies are either planned or desired, the prospective mother's first conflict is with herself. She often feels guilty, used, stupid, or unlucky. The next conflict is normally with the father of the baby, who all too often is unwilling to take responsibility or commit to support the girl and their baby. Even when the boy is willing to take responsibility, rarely is he able to provide much financial support, and emotional support is often lacking as well. The next conflict is with the girl's parents. Pregnant girls are usually afraid to tell their parents, for fear of anger, rejection, or worse. In many cases, perhaps most, after the initial shock wears off, the parents prove to be the most supportive people in the young mother's life. If not the parents, then grandparents, aunts, or close friends can sometimes fill the role. At least two other conflicts await many pregnant teenagers: school and church. The problem with school is primarily one of embarrassment, which is relatively quickly overcome, as most teachers and school administrators are trained to deal with such situations, and besides, they have probably dealt with pregnant teens before. The conflict with the church is often not so easily overcome, particularly in churches whose view of the church's position in the world is of an island of piety in a sea of sin. In churches like these, a pregnant teen often encounters people who are far more ready to condemn than to comfort and encourage. How welcoming are our churches for unwed mothers? Do we allow them entry, only to lay a guilt trip on them, or do we sincerely welcome them to seek the face of God with us. Do we piously judge them as sinners, or do we stand beside them as fellow sinner in need of God's grace? Do unwed mothers feel welcome in our churches today? Would Mary feel welcome?