Adult Bible Study October 28, 2007

Lesson Text: Genesis 33:1-11
By Melanie Zuercher
E-mail: mz606@cox.net

“No, please!” said Jacob. “If I have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift from me. For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably.” Genesis 33:10NIV

A little over a year ago, a tragedy occurred inside a little white schoolhouse in southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. A man disturbed with demons that even those closest to him could only guess, took ten Amish schoolgirls hostage at gunpoint. Within hours, six were dead—five of the girls and the man, Charles Carl Roberts, all shot with his gun—and five irrevocably injured, even those whose physical wounds seemed eventually to heal. For a brief time the world, at least areas within reach of Western media, stood still in shock, horror, and utter disbelief.

Most who have heard of the Amish hold an idealized view of them as a gentle, peaceful people who live in another time that the ugliness of the modern world surely doesn’t touch. The Amish, and others who know them better, also know that this picture isn’t true, although many elements of it are. There are ugliness and evil in Amish communities, often of their own making; and, just as in any community, there are beauty and goodness.

Within days, even hours, of “the Nickel Mines shooting,” the watching world found itself riveted again, this time in amazement and even awe. Money donations were pouring in to the affected Amish community, soon to the tune of more than a million dollars. Mennonite Disaster Service personnel came to help the Amish sort out what to do. And Amish leaders insisted, “Some of this money must be set aside for Charles Roberts’ family,” a wife and three young children who lived near the school.

Much has been written and spoken since then, in papers from the New York Times to Mennonite Weekly Review and on TV networks worldwide, about how the Amish showed forgiveness in the wake of the Nickel Mines shooting. Many commentators are still puzzled to this day about what motivated the Amish in their choice.

The answer can be found in the Scriptures that the Amish have heard preached all their lives, from the story of Jacob and Esau to the tale of the prodigal in Luke 15. And the Amish surely know the deeper truth—like Jacob, they must realize that the gift is in forgiveness offered, forgiveness received, and therein the glimpse of “the face of God.”