Who is your enemy?
Who is your enemy?
You are probably going to reply to me “I don’t have any enemies….” Afterall it hardly seems very nice to have enemies?
“Live peaceably with all” said our reading (at least if I cut out the words that came before)
Surely if I am a Christian I am not allowed to have enemies? It’s not very Church of England to have enemies…
While I was on holiday I visited a Church where they sang a worship song I rather like which includes the line “I raise a hallelujah in the presence of my enemies” - only in the Church I visited they changed the words to “I raise a hallelujah in the presence of the mystery”. Perhaps they didn’t think it was very Christian to have enemies… We are nice people! We don’t have enemies.
I bet you do!
Perhaps its just the word you don’t like - but if you think about it I bet you do have enemies.
- 29% of people have experienced bullying at work (1) and that’s only full on bullying - that doesn’t include people taking credit for your work so they get the promotion you should have got or passing the buck for their mistakes or other nasty workplace practices
- Over 33% of members of ethnic minorities in the UK (as well as over 17% of the population as a whole) have experienced a physical racist assault (2) and that doesn’t include verbal racism or attacks on grounds of your religion
- 81 percent of women and 43 percent of men had experienced some form of sexual harassment during their lifetime. (3)
- 20% of people in the Uk are estranged from a close relative - parent, child or sibling (4) - and that only includes those who are actually estranged, not those who have a really a difficult relationship with each other.
- I have not been able to find out how many people have been cheated on by their partner - But in all relationships (not just marriages) around 70% of people admitted having cheated on a partner - so even if you are now in a relationship that is wonderful - many of you will have been in a relationship in the past where you had a partner who cheated on you. And given it takes two to tango, that’s an awful lot of people who slept with other people’s partners knowing but not caring how much pain it would cause them (5)
- 84% of women and 74% of men have reported having a “toxic friendship” - you don’t have to watch many TV dramas to see this as a common trope - and perhaps you have experienced having a friend who was jealous, controlling, gaslighting or otherwise toxic. (6)
- Oh and that’s excluding people trolling you on the internet, if you have been a victim of a burglary, international things like if your country has been threatened or invaded by another country or just simple things like people deliberately cutting you up on the A40....
Shall I ask the question again? Who is your enemy?
Romans 12:18 doesn’t say “live peaceably with all.” but “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” Because God recognises the reality of life.
God is not a God of pretense and covering things up, he is realistic. The bible is a very realistic book. That is why the word enemy is one of the most common words in the bible. The different words that can be translated enemy occur 373 times, more if you include the books in the so-called Apocrypha. (7)
Jesus doesn’t say “pretend you are nice and don’t have enemies”- he says something far harder- “love your enemies”. And what does it mean to love your enemies? Well Jesus goes on to say “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you might be children of your father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43).
And Romans 12 goes on to give us even more explicit instructions about what it means to love your enemies.
…
So what practically can we do to love people who have done bad stuff to us?
Jesus’s advice is “pray for those who persecute you”. The simplest thing you can do for those who have treated you badly is to pray for them. That sounds hard “but I don’t feel like praying for them”. I was once advised when you have someone who you find it really hard to feel nice things about - write a prayer for that person (it can be very short) - something like “Lord Jesus, you know how much hurt I feel towards (their name). I find this really difficult to say but turn the anger I feel towards (their name) into blessings on them. Amen”
- and either keep it on you or learn it off by heart
Loving doesn’t start with feelings - there is a certain sense of “fake it till you make it” “Let love be genuine;” doesn’t mean feeling the right feelings - it means “hate what is evil,” if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.
Mike Yackonelli tells a story of a man who went and told his pastor that he struggled to love his neighbour. So his pastor told him to go each week and visit an old man who lived by himself on the edge of town. He didn’t want to do it. But his pastor told him “Do it”. When he went the old man was grumpy and swore at him, but gave him jobs to do, so he did them. And though he hated every minute of it, because his pastor told him he had to, he kept going back. He were do the man’s shopping. He would mow his lawn. He change light bulbs. He would fix him dinner. And the more he did, the more the guy demanded. There was no gratitude . Just cussing and abuse. He told his pastor “I can’t keep doing this - I don’t love old bert at all. In fact I think I hate him”. But the pastor said “just keep doing it”. So it kept up for over a year. And gradually he got used to it. If he went away on holiday, he actually found he missed seeing old Bert - even though when he got back he got abuse for being away. And then one day when he knocked at the door there was no grumpy “come in” like there usually was. He nervously opened it, and there was Bert lying collapsed on the floor dead. And as he looked at Bert he burst into uncontrollable sobs, and at that moment he realised quite how much he loved Bert.
We can see this on an international scale too. After the world war, the allies forgot “vengeance is mine said the Lord” and instead sought to punish Germany and charge huge reparations for the war. Those financial cost of those reparations drove Germany economic crisis leading to the rise of extremist parties and eventually Hitler and the Second World War.
After the Second World War - the allies learnt their lessons - and in the Marshall plan literally fed the defeated Germans who otherwise would have starved in the post war famines. Today the Germans are our allies.“if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink;”
As Abraham lincoln allegedly said “I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.
This is hard stuff.
Lets take it to the next level
Lets take quite a hard example on a more personal level.
In February 1993, Mary Johnson's son, Laramiun Byrd, 20, was shot in the head by 16-year-old Oshea Israel. He went to prison for that — and toward the end of his sentence, he and Johnson made peace
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Mrs Johnson said she originally wanted justice and to see Israel locked up for what he had done.
She said: 'My son was gone. I was angry and hated this boy, hated his mother.
'[The murder] was like a tsunami. Shock. Disbelief. Hatred. Anger. Hatred. Blame. Hatred. I wanted him to be caged up like the animal he was.'
It would be easy for her to be overcome by the evil that had been done. But the bible says “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil by doing good”
So just a year or so before he was released, the 59-year-old teacher and devout Christian, asked if she could meet Israel at Minnesota's Stillwater state prison.
She said she felt compelled to see if there was a way in which she could forgive her son's killer.
At first he refused but then nine months later, changed his mind. Israel said he was shocked by the fact she wanted to meet him.
He said: 'I believe the first thing she said to me was, ''Look, you don't know me. I don't know you. Let's just start with right now.''
'And I was befuddled myself.'
In a three way interview with a journalist, Mary said to Oshua "I wanted to know if you [Oshu] were in the same mindset of what I remembered from court, where I wanted to go over and hurt you," "But you were not that 16-year-old. You were a grown man. I shared with you about my son."
"And he became human to me," oshua says.
At the end of their meeting at the prison, Johnson was overcome by emotion.
"The initial thing to do was just try and hold you up as best I can," Israel says, "just hug you like I would my own mother."
Johnson says, "After you left the room, I began to say, 'I just hugged the man that murdered my son.'
"And I instantly knew that all that anger and the animosity, all the stuff I had in my heart for 12 years for you — I knew it was over, that I had totally forgiven you."
The pair met regularly after that. When Israel was released from prison around 18 months ago, Mrs Johnson introduced him to her landlord - who with her blessing, invited Israel to move into the building.
Mrs Johnson and Israel are now close friends, a situation that she puts down to her strong religious beliefs but says she also has a selfish motive.
She said: 'Unforgiveness is like cancer. It will eat you from the inside out.
'It's not about that other person, me forgiving him does not diminish what he's done. Yes, he murdered my son - but the forgiveness is for me.'
Mary Johnson even wears a necklace with a two-sided locket - on one side are photos of herself and her son; the other has a picture of Israel.
And if he falls out of touch, Israel is sure to hear about it from Johnson — who calls out to him, he says, "'Boy, how come you ain't called over here to check on me in a couple of days? You ain't even asked me if I need my garbage to go out!' "
"Uh-huh," Johnson says with a laugh.
"I find those things funny, because it's a relationship with a mother for real," Israel says.
"Well, my natural son is no longer here. I didn't see him graduate. Now you're going to college. I'll have the opportunity to see you graduate," Johnson says. "I didn't see him getting married. Hopefully one day, I'll be able to experience that with you."
Hearing her say those things, Israel says, gives him a reason to reach his goals.
"It motivates me to make sure that I stay on the right path," he says. "You still believe in me. And the fact that you can do it, despite how much pain I caused you — it's amazing."
But Israel is not the only one who's impressed.
"I know it's not an easy thing, you know, to be able to share our story together," Johnson says. "Even with us sitting here looking at each other right now, I know it's not an easy thing. So I admire that you can do this."
"I love you, lady."
"I love you too, son."
Israel admits he still struggles with the extraordinary situation he finds himself in.
He said: 'I haven't totally forgiven myself yet, I'm learning to forgive myself. And I'm still growing toward trying to forgive myself.'
Israel now hopes to prove himself to the mother of the man he killed.
He works at a recycling plant during the day and goes to college at night. He says he's determined to payback Mrs Johnson's clemency by contributing to society.
He visits prisons and churches to talk about forgiveness and reconciliation. Mrs Johnson often joins him and they tell their story together.
He added: 'A conversation can take you a long way.' (9)
Now I hope you never have an enemy on that scale. But be real you do have enemies. Who are your enemies? Who has hurt you?
How can you love them? It may be a practical piece of help you can do for them - a lift to hospital or putting their bins out for them when they are sick. But it took 16 years before Mary was able to get to that stage with Oshua - you may be a long way from that.
You can start with writing a prayer on a piece of paper “Lord Jesus, you know how much hurt I feel towards (their name). I find this really difficult to say but turn the anger I feel towards (their name) into blessings on them. Amen”
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Footnotes
1) https://www.agencycentral.co.uk/articles/does-the-uk-have-a-workplace-bullying-problem/#:~:text=29%25%20of%20people%20have%20been%20bullied%20at%20work%2C%20an%20additional,relation%20to%20bullying%20at%20work.
2) https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/racist-assaults-survey-finds/
3) https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/21/587671849/a-new-survey-finds-eighty-percent-of-women-have-experienced-sexual-harassment
4) https://www.independentage.org/get-advice/wellbeing/relationships/family-estrangement
5) https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190625-why-we-need-to-talk-about-cheating
6) https://www.mhaet.com/toxic-influences/#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%2084%25%20of%20women,when%20you%20are%20in%20one.
7) 'Oye? x280 tsar x 63 echthros x32 = a total of 373 times in the Protestant bible and another 97 times in the so-called “Apocypha”
8) Mike Yackonelli in Yak Yak Yak https://www.amazon.co.uk/Yak-Mike-Yaconelli/dp/0551024666
9) Compiled from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2000704/Woman-shows-incredible-mercy-sons-killer-moves-door.html and https://www.npr.org/2011/05/20/136463363/forgiving-her-sons-killer-not-an-easy-thing
