“When elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled” says an African proverb. This saying is often applied to a situation where tensions between political powers result in suffering of the uninvolved communities of people at the grass roots level. Here I am, in Nazareth, in a part of the world where this proverb can so aptly be applied and yet I find myself losing track of who the elephants are and who the grass is. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying…I am a typical social justice type Mennonite in my beliefs about injustices and the wall here in Israel/Palestine etc. And if I label the situation as “complicated” perhaps I will suffer the wrath of those who would say it a simple matter of lobbying one’s government because it is clearly the governments who can make the difference if they would only change their policies.
A story recently came out about a Jewish “museum of tolerance” planned to be built on a Muslim graveyard site in Jerusalem. The irony of the situation is rationalized away by language about rights, Jerusalem’s space issues, and the fact that the entire city is probably built on bones anyway.
But if you remove yourself from the situation for just a moment (which is difficult to do when you live here) you realize how ludicrous the rationale is and yet this is the very rationale that most governments base their action on when it comes to situations of “injustice”. In the first century when the Jews of Nazareth were being oppressed by the occupying Roman government, they looked for a leader/or leaders who might lead them to something that they understood as justice. Then when a 30+ year old Jesus stood up in the synagogue in Nazareth to read from the scroll of Isaiah and when he so eloquently took passages from Isaiah 61 and 58 all talking about freedom from oppression, those gathered in the synagogue were elated! Yes finally, someone who understood their situation and would lead them, by the power of all those amazing things they had heard he did in towns surrounding them, to freedom and justice.
Jesus turned the situation on its head, questioned the faith of those gathered and talked about a freedom and a fulfillment that did fit the demands of those gathered in the synagogue. In response to the suggestion that his ministry and God’s message was for all – Jew and Gentile – those gathered were ready to kill Jesus (see Luke chapter 4:16-30).
Jesus has always symbolized the third way to Anabaptists and this story in the synagogue in Nazareth is yet another example of how he so creatively and provocatively achieved this. How would he creatively and provocatively find a third way today in Israel/Palestine? Yes there are political powers who are clearly elephants but then there are other elephants who pose as grass and grass that abuses power like an elephant would. The situation however, is not more complicated than it is has ever been. How did Jesus navigate the craziness of his context? He simply lived, challenged the status quo in love of those who he came into contact with and that in itself was somehow revolutionary enough to get him killed. Simply the integrity and truth of his being was enough to challenge the powers and enough to comfort and encourage the oppressed at the same time.
It’s a paradox that I continually strive to understand but risk making more complicated than it need be in my search to uncover it.
