Ewe hungry?

Sunday June 13th, 2nd Samuel 11: 1 The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. 4 "Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him." The story is about David and Bathsheba, but it could just as well be about Goldman Sachs or perhaps the oil crisis in the gulf because it is a story about how those who pull the strings and make the rules always pull those strings and make those rules in their favor. This happens in public with a fair amount of justification. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Goldman’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein suggested that he is actually doing God’s work by keeping the economy flowing through his buying and selling. Never mind that the shenanigans have nearly brought the US, Europe and Greece to its knees and have sent shock waves throughout the world, all while paying unheard of bonuses for jobs well done while more and more victims stand in food lines. It is nice to have such an obvious villain up there to focus on, but reality is much less simple or finger pointingly fun. The libertarian influenced Tea Party while taking up the seemingly grass roots mantra of lower taxes and less government do not always realize that they are the crowds on the side of the road cheering on the right of the rich man to save his own herd while allowing him to take the poor man’s ewe without the cumbersome interferences of “big government” regulation preferring instead the unbridled pilfering of big business. In the end the “Big” always wins out over the “small” whether it be government, which at least has some of the safeguards of being a We, or business which has no intention of being other than a Me. The beauty of story is that it allows us to see what has been right in front of our noses all along. The beauty of scripture is that it points our focus in the direction of the victims and reminds us that they are our brothers and sisters for whom we are called to care and opens our eyes to see our own victimization and victimizing also.