This past week, I’ve asked my husband and friends, over and over, “What was Hamas thinking?” Why take extreme and murderous action that provokes an equally extreme reaction from Israel, and causes the deaths not only of innocent Israelis, but innocent Palestinians?

The answer that has made the most sense to me appears in the op-ed by Thomas Friedman that appeared in the New York Times two days ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/opinion/israel-hamas-.html. Friedman has been covering this conflict for over fifty years. I won’t quote his article extensively; I recommend that you read it. He reports his impressions of what is going on and why, and then asks, “So how can America best help Israel now, besides standing behind its right to protect itself, as President Biden so forcefully did in his speech today?”

What grabbed my attention was his first answer to that question: “First, I hope the president is asking Israel to ask itself this question as it considers what to do next in Gaza: What do my worst enemies want me to do — and how can I do just the opposite?” Friedman continues: “What Israel’s worst enemies — Hamas and Iran — want is for Israel to invade Gaza and get enmeshed in a strategic overreach there that would make America’s entanglement in Falluja look like a children’s birthday party. We are talking house-to-house fighting that would undermine whatever sympathy Israel has garnered on the world stage, deflect world attention from the murderous regime in Tehran and force Israel to stretch its forces to permanently occupy Gaza and the West Bank. … Hamas and Iran absolutely do not want Israel to refrain from going into Gaza very deep or long.”

In other words, Israel needs not to react, but to respond. Israel needs not to let anxiety and fear drive their response, but a real desire for peace and justice. As the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship put it, “An eye for an eye leaves the entire Middle East blind to any hope for justice. Absent justice, there is no hope for peace.” https://www.presbypeacefellowship.org/presbyterian-peace-fellowships-statement-on-israel-and-gaza/.

This Sunday’s lectionary includes Exodus 32:1-14, the story of the golden calf. What we see in this story are two very different ways of dealing with anxiety. First, we see the Israelites. With Moses missing in action, they forget everything, because anxiety affects memory. When people are anxious, they forget what’s important, even their values. They lose perspective; they have trouble seeing the big picture. The anxious Israelites forget that God delivered them from slavery. They forget the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the manna and quail, the commandments that Moses had just given them, and how God has been with them all along. Anxious people often turn to their leaders with unreasonable demands to rescue them, and the Israelites turn to Aaron.

Anxiety is more contagious than COVID. Instead of managing his own anxiety, Aaron is swept into the people’s anxiety. He has them collect earrings, melt them down, and make a calf. Aaron doesn’t tell the people the calf is their god, but when they start worshiping it, he doesn’t correct them, either. Straight off the bat, the people break that first and most important commandment: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt … you shall have no other gods before me.” In their anxiety, they’ve forgotten what was most important about their identity: that they are God’s people.

When we’re anxious, we tend to depend on something other than God, a “something other” that seems immediate and tangible, whereas God is invisible and can feel intangible. We try to fix the anxiety or quell the fear with something other than the truth that every one of us is beloved by God; that all of us are God’s people. Much of the craziness in our own culture, from white supremacy to gangs to addictions to runaway greed, is a response to anxiety, to fear that people don’t know how to manage.

In the meantime, Moses is chatting away with God on Mount Sinai when God says, “You better get down there quick because all hell is breaking loose. And by the way, I’ve had it with these ungrateful people.”

That’s when we get to see a very different approach to anxiety. Moses boldly steps between the forgetful, anxious people and God. It’s an amazing scene. One scholar writes, “Radical trust in God evokes an audacious faith; it not only permits but requires questioning.” “Radical trust in God … not only permits but requires questioning.” Moses must be anxious, but he trusts God and so he manages his anxiety; he stands his ground; he remembers what he was called to do and what God promised to do back at the burning bush, when the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people … and I have come to deliver them … I will be with you.” So, remembering all this, Moses questions, implores, enters into a dialogue with God. And that leads to one of the most striking, even one of the most shocking verses in Scripture: “And the LORD changed his mind.”

Well, that’s a surprise! The bad news is that anxiety is one of the most contagious emotions that we can experience. The good news is that calm is equally contagious. It looks to me as though Moses talked God down. The writer of this passage doesn’t criticize Moses; it seems as though Moses did the right thing. Moses was a non-anxious presence, and God changed God’s mind.

Two ways to deal with anxiety: spreading it or managing it. I will not pretend I know what President Biden or Prime Minister Netanyahu should do. I am convinced, as the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship notes, “The present violence cannot change the past and will not redeem the future. War can never establish justice. War will never result in peace.” I will pray that whatever our world leaders do comes from a true desire for peace with justice, and not from fear and anxiety.