Shimon Peres, Last of Israel's Founding Leaders, Dies at 93

The Wired Word for the Week of October 9, 2016

In the News

Shimon Peres, the elder statesman of Israel, died September 28, two weeks after suffering a massive stroke at the age of 93. His obituary in The New York Times declared that he "was laid to rest as an Israeli prince of peace." He is considered the last link to Israel's founding generation.

Over his lifetime of service to Israel, Peres served in several leadership positions, including defense minister, foreign minister, prime minister and others. His most recent office was that of president, a position Peres held from 2007 until his retirement in 2014.

Prior to the 1948 war for independence that established the nation of Israel, Peres was assigned responsibility for manpower and arms. In 1948, during the war, he was appointed head of Israel's navy. At war's end, he became director of the Defense Ministry's delegation in the United States.

In a political career spanning nearly 70 years, Peres later served twice as the prime minister of Israel and twice as interim prime minister, He was a member of 12 cabinets. When he retired in 2014 from Israel's presidency, he was the world's oldest head of state.

While Peres would have liked his legacy to be peace for Israel, the reality of the situation over the years meant that many of his efforts had to be focused on his nation's security when its peace was threatened. He helped to develop Israel's nuclear options and stood up to Palestinian Arab demands when he deemed it necessary for Israel's well-being.

However, he did make significant efforts for peace. Along with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Peres, who was then Israel's foreign minister, won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for the talks that produced the Oslo Accords.

Sadly, the Oslo Accords did not produce a lasting peace, and conflict remains.

In 1996, Peres founded the Peres Center for Peace, which describes itself as a "non-profit, non-political, non-governmental organization focused on promoting lasting peace and advancement in the Middle East by fostering tolerance, economic and technological development, innovation, cooperation and well-being, all in the spirit of President Peres' vision." Its logo is a stylized dove and olive branch with the word "peace" in Arabic, Hebrew and English. It seeks "to advance the creation of a real, effective and durable peace" that is implemented in three core fields:

• medicine and healthcare
• peace education (through sports, the arts and technology)
  
• business and environment

At Peres' funeral, which was attended by more than 80 foreign leaders, United States President Barack Obama described Peres' work to attain security for the state of Israel as well as peace with the Palestinians, but Obama went on to say that "of course we gather here in the knowledge that Shimon never had his dream of peace fulfilled."

More on this story can be found at these links:

Shimon Peres: Not Just a Man of Peace. The New York TimesPresident Barack Obama's Eulogy [for Shimon Peres]. The Jerusalem PostThe Peres Center for PeaceShimon Peres: Loser, Schemer or Romantic? Aljazeera

Applying the News Story

In the introduction above, we described a point of similarity between Peres and Moses in that both were closed out of a "Promised Land." In Moses' case, it was the actual Promised Land of Canaan; in Peres' case, it was the metaphorical Promised Land of peace and security for his nation. Both men devoted their lives to leading their people to the edge of that land.

There are a few other points of similarity as well: Like Moses, Peres was a warrior when he needed to be. Like Moses, Peres was up against a force as intransigent as a pharaoh. Like Moses, he was leading a people who often disagreed with his decisions. And like Moses, Peres died not only revered by many, but also hale and hearty almost to the end.

But mostly, we are focusing on the matter of goals not reached.

The capricious unraveling of legitimately earned fulfillments happens to most of us at some time or other. It happens, for example, when we realize that our marriage, although intact, is never going to reach the level of companionship we had hoped for. It happens when the company we have worked for faithfully for years downsizes us out of our job or dumps us without an expected and promised pension. It happens when the church in which we labor fails to grow. It happens when we reach retirement with plans to travel or enjoy a life of leisure in some other way, only to have it all shot down by a sudden loss of health. And it happens in other ways too.

The Big Questions

1. When have you felt shortchanged by life with no way to get what you've worked hard for or assumed you are entitled to? Especially how do you feel when you have paid your dues, done your homework, burned the midnightoil, kept your shoulder to the wheel and your nose to the grindstone, when you have poured your heart, mind and strength into reaching a goal or fulfilling a dream, and then found that the reward is going to elude you despite all that?

2. How might your answer to Question 1 change, if at all, if you perceived that it was God who slammed the door you had expected to go through?

3. When you've served God faithfully and things still don't work out, what does that do to your faith? Can God be trusted even then? Why or why not? What, if anything, helps you maintain your faith in God despite such turns of events?

4. What role does the question "Where does God want me to go from here?" have after you are shut out of some reward you deserved?

5. What do you gain when you fail to achieve benchmarks you've worked hard for? What does a church gain after its members work hard to help the church grow only to see it shrink?

Confronting the News With Scripture and HopeHere are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:

Deuteronomy 34:4-5
The LORD said to [Moses], "This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, 'I will give it to your descendants'; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there." Then Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, at the LORD's command. (For context, read 34:1-8.)

Moses spent the last four decades of his life leading an ungrateful, contentious and recalcitrant mob of ex-slaves and their descendants out of Egypt to a land where they could be free, a land promised to them by God. To do that difficult job, Moses left behind a settled life with his family. He'd had to convince the Israelites to take the risk of leaving Egypt -- no easy task -- and once they'd finally agreed, he'd had to face down Pharaoh, one of the most powerful men in the world at time.

During the years in the wilderness -- made all the longer because the fickle Israelites wouldn't trust God and barely trusted him -- Moses had endured pursuit by Pharaoh's army and been forced to take on hostile peoples who didn't want this horde of foreigners tramping through their lands. Yet Moses had held his massive group together and gotten them at last to the border of the Promised Land. But it was no picnic.

And now, with his charges about to enter that land -- reportedly flowing with milk and honey -- God tells Moses that he can view the land from a high vantage point, but he will not live to enter it. Instead, one of his lieutenants will lead the people into Canaan.

Surely, this privilege should have been reserved for Moses. He'd earned it with his sweat, prayers, tears and grit. It was rightfully his. He was entitled to some milk and honey. But God said "No," and there was no court of appeals.

According to Numbers 20:2-12, God excluded Moses from the Promised Land because Moses had somehow demonstrated a lack of trust in God during an incident in which the people were demanding water. What that lack of trust was is not clear -- perhaps because Moses struck the rock instead of verbally commanding it to yield water or perhaps because of some other failure on his part not recorded in the story.

Questions: How do you explain this turn of events? How would you defend God from someone who said God played a dirty trick on poor old Moses?
Looking at the Numbers 20 story, does Moses' being excluded from the Promised Land for whatever the infraction was seem like a just punishment? Does there have to be a reason for every slammed door? Explain your answer.
What Promised Land have you realized you may not attain? Is it a goal for your children or grandchildren? Have you made your peace with those things you will not accomplish after all in this life?

Luke 12:16-21
Then [Jesus] told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God." (For context, read 12:13-21.)

The rich man in this parable also has a slammed door experience, and like Moses, he dies before entering his promised land. But perhaps we have less sympathy for him than for Moses because God's message to him implies that he was using his wealth to benefit only himself.

Questions: Are you more accepting of the slammed doors of your life if you feel that you deserved the outcome that happened? Why or why not? Are you more likely to accept being closed out of a "promised land" if the goal was for you alone rather than for others as well?

Psalm 23:1, 3
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. … He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. (For context, read 23:1-6.)

That God will lead us "in right paths" is a conviction born of faith.

Questions: When things don't work out as we think they should, and, in fact, something that is rightfully ours is irretrievably snatched away or put out of our reach, can that outcome still be interpreted as being on the "right path"? How can we test that interpretation? Should being led by God in the right paths be understood as a promise to faithful people? Why or why not?
Can the path we have originally chosen somehow equip us for the real path God seems to have chosen for us?

James 4:13-15Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money." Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that." (For context, read 4:13-17.)

James here notes the uncertainty of life, but not as a cause for alarm. Rather, he sees in it reason for our complete dependency on God. There's nothing inherently wrong with making plans, but we always need to allow for the fact that God may intervene in our lives in ways we cannot anticipate. As Proverbs 27:1 says, "Do not boast abouttomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring."

Questions: Is every unexpected thing that happens to us God's will? How do we know? How does God's will work with our appointment calendar? How easy do you find it to switch paths when God seems to have a different idea for your life (or just for today) from yours?

Romans 12:2
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God -- what is good and acceptable and perfect. (For context, read 12:1-2.)

Questions: What, if anything, helps you "discern what is the will of God," as this verse says? What if you are trying to follow his will but meet only with failure? How much of your original path was determined by the world, by your family or by someone other than you or the Lord?

For Further Discussion

1. Respond to this, from TWW team member Mary Sells: "I was struck by how much we count on God doing ourwill on our timeline and how hard it can be to accept that we cannot know the will or the mind of God. It reminded me that trusting in God and looking for the cues and clues he sends is so important as we work toward anything, any worthy goal. I believe God puts a flame in our heart to know we are on the path he desires, even if we do not see the result. Therefore our prayers must include asking for the endurance required to stay the course for God's sake, not ours."

2. Comment on this, from TWW team member Malia Miller. She said that while serving on a church committee doing annual reports, the committee members discussed that so much of what they do as a church and individually cannot be quantified, yet that is often how they are measured. Miller said, "As the church changes through time, it is sometimes hard to 'stay the course' when we try to impose worldly measures to other-worldly goals. The result often feels like failure, but it is helpful to know that God knows the heart."

3. Respond to this, from TWW team member Joanna Loucky-Ramsey: "Sometimes to fail in the eyes of the world is to succeed in God's eyes, and the inverse is also true, that to succeed in the world's eyes may well mean that we fail in God's eyes."
            She also said, "If I judged my own ministry by the churches I've served as pastor or on staff, I might consider myself a failure, since three don't exist anymore and others are in decline. But I don't take it personally. The churches Paul started you can't find on the map any more either."

4. Discuss this: One pastor tells of conducting a funeral for a parishioner who died suddenly in his mid-60s, just a few months after he'd retired, despite appearing to be in good health right up to the moment he died. His wife and grown children were stunned by his death and deeply hurt by it. They'd expected they'd have many more years with him. The funeral was sad, of course, but the next Sunday, both the wife and children took exception to something the pastor said in the worship service and, in what seemed to be anger all out of proportion to the comment, got very upset and raged at the pastor. He was baffled at first, but as he continued ministry with that family, he eventually realized that they were angry at God for this sudden slamming of the door that the man's death was for them. But it's hard to acknowledge anger at God. So what happened, the pastor concluded, was that the anger at God came out at him. As their minister, he was, in effect, God's representative.

5. Peres' final government position was as president of Israel. In that nation's system, the president is the head of state as compared to the prime minister, who is the head of the government. The Head of State is an honored and trusted person who represents the country in ceremonial and official capacities, which leaves the head of government free to be reviled and insulted without insulting the country. Is there an "honored head of state" in your church who represents your congregation in an honored and unofficial capacity?

Responding to the News

This is a good time to remind ourselves that when we don't receive an expected reward, this is not God going back on his word. God never promised that we won't have to relinquish anything in this life, but he has promised to be with us through whatever happens.

He has promised us that nothing can separate from his love -- not disappointment, not slammed doors, not pain, not worry, not tragedy, not even death, can separate us from him (see Romans 8:38-39).

And he has promised us another world beyond this one, the ultimate Promised Land, toward which we go.

This knowledge about God may not make things any less painful now, but it does set us free to walk away from the tombs of our former hopes when the burial of those hopes is over and done. And it helps us remember that we are not failures as people even though some important dreams of ours have not succeeded.

The finest kind of faith is not that which grows out of easy times, but that which continues to trust God's promises despite being closed out of our personal promised lands in this life.

Prayer

Help us to count on what you have actually promised, O Lord, and not treat our wishes as though they were divine promises. But when life slams doors in our face, give us your grace, and bolster our trust in you. In Jesus' name. Amen.