When King David slept with another man's wife, a prophet came to him and told him about a rich man stealing a poor man's pet lamb who was like a member of the family. David, outraged by the story, said the rich man had no pity and deserved to die. The prophet then told him, "You are the man." [2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a] Imagine a current version--a prophet goes before a rich and powerful nation and tells them: "There were once two men; a wealthy one and a poor one. The wealthy one had everything money could buy. The poor one often had to struggle even to have clean water or food or a roof over his head, but he had one pleasure in his life--a lion that lived nearby that he loved. But the rich man had a hunting hobby, so he traveled to the poor man's country and killed the lion." When the prophet finishes telling the story, the people in the rich country are outraged, and say, "The man who has done this deserves to die." And the prophet says to them, "You are the man."
It feels so good to be outraged, especially at someone who is unequivocally wrong. The story of the killing of Cecil, the beloved lion, made us rightfully outraged. But it's disturbing how easy it is to generate outrage over the senseless killing of an animal, yet how little outrage we muster over the senseless killings of humans that have peppered the news over the past year, whether it's this month's mass shooting or this week's police killing of an unarmed citizen. It's easier to condemn Cecil's killing because there's no complicated law-and-order questions, you don't have to risk looking like you're anti-cop or pro-gun control by expressing outrage over the killing of an innocent animal. But the reaction over Cecil's killing says more about us as a society than it does about Dr. Walter Palmer. Because it's easy for us to express outrage, yet much more difficult to actually change our values.
This incident, just like the parable the prophet tells David, holds a mirror up to our own actions. As Americans, we live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. But we turn a blind eye to problems in countries like Zimbabwe, many of those problems caused by our own rampant drive for wealth, our own unwillingness to curb global warming, or to commit money and resources to stop wars and diseases that plague other people far away, over there. And how many of us encourage or even engage in, if we can afford it, the kind of decadent luxury that inspires someone to think it's a good idea to spend $50,000 just to kill another living being? Palmer deserves every punishment he's getting, but our worship of wealth shares part of the blame. It's only because of our worship of wealth that someone like Palmer, until this incident, was an honored and respected citizen. It's only because of our worship of wealth that someone like Donald Trump can be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. We not only condone the national orgy of wealth and consumption, most of us, in fact, crave it for ourselves. It's this craving that politicians exploit by time and time again getting us to agree to tax cuts that benefit the wealthy and hurt ourselves--because we have this fantasy that someday, we'll be wealthy, and we don't want to pay taxes either! Cecil's death is heartbreaking, but his story is one of the thousands of logical consequences when the priorities of our hearts go awry.
When David was confronted with what he'd done, his reaction was, "I have sinned." He immediately saw his action reflected in the story of the man who killed another man's beloved pet lamb. Palmer's reaction instead was, "It wasn't my fault." Just like the reaction of the police officer who shot and killed Samuel DuBose in Cincinatti, just like the reaction of the trooper who arrested Sandra Bland for not signaling a lane change. Along with our national worship of wealth, we seem to have a national love of passing the buck. It's always someone else's fault.
When we are moved to outrage as David was when he heard about the lamb, it's a good impulse, born of a place of compassion. But even though indulging in it feels good, we are called to a higher moral standard than making ourselves feel better by condemning someone else, and we should ask ourselves what's our own role in this? What are we doing to create more equity in the world so that people in Zimbabwe, for example, have more opportunities in life than poaching endangered animals? In fact, two years ago at the same park where Cecil lived, over 300 endangered elephants were poisoned by cyanide in their watering hole so that poachers could cut off and sell their tusks. What are we doing to create a world where people can find meaning and value in who they are rather than in the wealth they can accumulate? How tragic that Palmer and others like him feel that's the way to find meaning, by making a lot of money so that you can then spend it on destroying life. Thanks be to God, that is not the life that Jesus calls us to. Jesus says, "I am the bread of life [John 6:24-35]; I am the solution to that horrible craving you have within you that drives you to seek wealth and power over others. You don't need to do that. God has provided for you everything you need within your own communities and within your own hearts."
You have heard the expression, the lion shall lie down with the lamb, a paraphrase of the prophet Isaiah. This prophecy has come to pass: in another African nation, Kenya, another lion named Larsens began adopting baby antelopes, a species lions usually hunt and eat. But this lion protected them and cuddled with them and treated them as her own. She ended up doing this with five babies. Like Cecil, she was beloved by the people who lived near the park, who were moved by her mothering of those she could easily have killed, and they gave her a new name: Kamunyak, "The Blessed One," reminiscent of another mother called "Blessed," Mary.
If the lion can lie down with the lamb, surely someday, the meek and the poor and the weaponless will have nothing to fear from the rich, from the powerful, from those in authority. Let's use our outrage over innocent deaths by channelling it into re-creating the world God originally gave us, a world without violence, without innocent deaths. Outrage may feel good in the moment, but it is not outrage that will change the world. It is the root of that outrage: compassion, what David called, "pity." It is love--love for the beauty of creation God gave us, for our fellow brothers and sisters. We do not need to be slaves to our hunger and thirst after things that bring only destruction. As Jesus has promised, when we know who and what is the bread of life, when we have that love inside us, we will never hunger and we will never thirst. Jesus, give us this bread always.