Hope Through Simplicity

             The problems in the Middle East just won’t go away.  When Rosie and I were in Israel and Palestine a few years ago, there was an obvious strain in the relationship that the Israelis had with the Palestinians.  The Palestinians had different license plates and there were many check points on the roads that they could not go through.  In the West Bank, there were numerous places where settlers were reclaiming territory that they thought had been given to them by God and that the Palestinians had no claim to the territory at all.  This attitude strained relationships beyond any tolerance and there were frequent violent clashes.  In Northern Jordan, we visited a Palestinian refugee camp filled with people who had lost their homes.  Their fears and disappointments were quite obvious.

            I am intrigued by the Book of Ruth and the wonderful integration of the cultures that it represents.  Ruth was a Moabite.  That probably means little to you, but the Moabites were created when the daughters of Lot found their father drunk in a cave following the escape from Sodom when their mother was turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back at the destruction of the town.  The daughters each got pregnant by their drunken father at their own insistence.  The eldest daughter gave birth to a child named Moab, who became the leader of the tribe that eventually produced Ruth.  The remarkable nature of the story is that in due course, Ruth married Boaz and they produced a baby named Obed who became the father of Jesse, who was the father of David, the great King of Israel.  There was a fully integrated family that came from both the tribes of the Moabites and the Hebrews.  That integration served them all very well when the opposition was from the Babylonians and the Assyrians.  It is harder to see today when the opposition is from the God given-ness of the Jewish state and the Arab people who have lived in the area for centuries. 

             I am convinced that there isn’t much that you and I can do to fix this mess.  We can only keep it in our prayers and our hearts and hope that by God’s infinite grace this problem will find a solution.  Simplicity seems to me to be a better place to start than the wielding of power. 

            In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus talks about the Scribes, the religious leaders,  who like to walk about in long robes and take the best seats at all of the gatherings.  He says that they will, in the end, receive condemnation.  He watches as people put money into the treasury.  He sees the rich people put in large sums very ostentatiously.  Then a poor widow comes and puts into the treasury two small copper coins that are worth a penny.  He tells his disciples that this woman has contributed more than any of the others because they have given out of their surplus, but she has given all that she has.  This is a wonderful sermon about simplicity; how less is often worth much more.

           I know that is true for you and me also.  It is also probably true about the problems that affect so much of our world.  We complicate them with our egotistical need to control and to fix.  What separates most people is their need to be right and for those who oppose them to be wrong.  That is certainly true in our politics.  Blame and finger pointing seem to substitute for relevant conversation about what we need to do in this world.  When we can remove our egos from the argument, it is always easier to find answers.  That, I believe, is what Jesus is telling his disciples and what he is telling us. 

            One of the prime reasons for our involvement in the Middle East has been a strong desire to plant democracy in those different nations.  That is what we had in mind in Iraq, in Libya and certainly what we hoped for in Syria.  Obviously, that isn’t happening.  Those countries have their own tribal governments that have no desire at all to have what we call democracy.  They are simply tribes struggling in their own areas to keep their own control.  Our vision for these people is much too large for them to understand what we have in mind, and more the problem, it is our vision, not theirs.  I wonder if we would learn to listen more and talk less that we might be able in this world to find more inclusive answers to the questions that confront us. 

            When Jesus was given a coin and asked if it was right to pay taxes to Caesar, Jesus asked whose picture was on the coin.  When the people answered that it was Caesar’s picture, Jesus told them to give to Caesar what belonged to Caesar, and to give to God what belonged to God.  He didn’t tell them to not pay the taxes, he simply told them to get their priorities straight.  If we could pay more attention to what God wants, which is for us to love one another as we are loved by God and not try to make everyone over in our own image, we might discover that the answers that seem to elude us are much easier to find.