Enemies

Epistle: Romans 5:6-11

New Testament: Luke 6:27-36

Sometimes, when I do the prayers of the people, there is a line that says, “Let us pray for enemies.” And I always thought of it as “let us pray on behalf of our enemies,” but Tommy Huggins shared with me that he hears it as “let us pray that we will get enemies.” I’ll let Tommy explain to you the logic behind such a prayer (and there is logic behind it, I assure you); however, with all that’s going on in the world, I hardly feel compelled to ask for more enemies. There are already people in my life that I struggle to love. 

Is that true for any of you? Can you think of people who rub you the wrong way? Someone who has wronged you, or taken advantage of you? A person who, when you think of him or her, you just feel that uncomfortable queasiness in the pit of your stomach.

That’s who I want you to be thinking of during this sermon.

I recently came across a story that helps illustrate Jesus’ call in our gospel lesson to “love your enemies” (however many of them you happen to have).

The story was written by a young man named Sean Graves. By way of introduction, he explains: “I have a younger brother, Seth, who is thirteen[, and] my parents work at Lockheed Martin … I like space, but I’m more into electronics. I love computers, anything technological. I’ve been into electronics since I was a kid, that and cooking. My mom’s a pretty good cook, but I’m not crazy about some of the stuff she comes up with, like leftovers, for example. When I cook, I always just make it up as I go along. I never follow recipes. I may look at a recipe, but I don’t measure. I just dump it all in. I go by the feel of it.”[1]

Sean was sixteen when he wrote this essay. A year earlier, he and two friends had gone outside after lunch at their high school and saw two boys coming toward them with guns. Sean was shot several times, and one bullet nicked his spine.

This was the first mass shooting I can remember, and it took place at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. I remember coming home from school and seeing it on the news. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed thirteen people and wounded more than 20 others before ending their own lives.

One of the people they wounded was Sean Graves.

“If I was to list what I physically can’t do now that I could do before,” he writes, “it would be a long list. But what I can do is get around. Learning to walk again is hard, because after the shooting, I was left with no strength in my legs. It was like being a newborn. The doctors immediately had me up in leg braces. I started off with zero skills and zero strength, but then I learned to crawl. I can crawl around the house a little bit now and go down stairs. The stairs are tricky. It takes a lot of strength, strength I didn’t know I had, but I’m getting there. My upper body isn’t affected. It’s basically just my legs. I do have sensation in them. I can pretty much make my legs do what I want them to do, but they’re weak. … I’m slowly, gradually getting my walking skills back.”[2]

Because Sean had to use a wheelchair, he found a lot of people staring at him, especially when he went back to school.

“I feel embarrassed to be stared at, and I feel put on the spot,” he says. “[But] then it occurs to me that this is what happened to Dylan and Eric. This is what everyone says drove them. … There is a way in which my experience now of going to school and having kids stare at me reminds me of the same kind of teasing and bullying that Dylan and Eric got and that drove them to such a place of anger and rage.”[3]

Sean doesn’t write much about his faith – he says that he prays, and that’s about it – so I don’t know if he’d ever heard the passage we read from Luke this morning, but what he says in the conclusion to his essay is a nearly perfect paraphrase of Jesus’ message about how we are to treat one another: “If I could change anything in the world,” Sean writes, “I’d stop people from hating each other. I’d make love the law of the land instead of hate. But I don’t know how to enforce that.”[4]

If Jesus knew how to enforce it, he didn’t explain it to us. The kind of love he describes is a choice each one of us has to make. When I say, “this is a difficult passage,” it is the understatement of the century. My seminary friend, Rachel, reads almost all my sermons before I preach them (and I read almost all of hers). The first line of her email in response to this one was: “Pray for your enemies? What a rotten concept.”

What Jesus teaches about enemies is so difficult, in fact, that commentators believe that this may be one of his most well-preserved sayings.[5] People generally simplify things as they pass them along – they smooth out the rough edges, making stories easier to remember and sayings easier to follow. 

“Love your enemies” is anything but easy – it is a rough, messy command that seems impossible to fulfill. And when he says “love your enemies,” he isn’t just talking about a warm feeling inside; he’s talking about seeking the good of those who have hurt us.

Again, Sean explains this love better than I can. He writes, “If Eric and Dylan were in the room right now and I could say anything to them, I’d say, ‘You need help,’ because they really did need help. If I could go back to any point in time, instead of going back to find them with a fully loaded gun and killing them, I’d go back to when they most needed help, and somehow get it to them. That way, no one is lost.”[6] 

That way, no one is lost. I’m speechless when I remember that this wisdom comes from a sixteen-year-old boy struggling to learn to walk again because of what was done to him.

We may ask, can’t we just forgive our enemies and forget about them? Why does Jesus call us to love them as well? The answer is both simple and impossible: we are to act this way because God acts this way.

“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

In Romans we read that the evidence of God’s love for us is that while we were still powerless, while we were still sinners, while we were still God’s enemies, Jesus died for us. Romans shows us that we are no longer God’s enemies; the paradox of Jesus’ message is that those who love their enemies no longer have enemies.[7] Truly overcoming enemies is not about destroying them, but about showing them unconditional love. Such a love restores them to wholeness and relationship – with the community and with God.

Jesus’ call to unfailing love is a difficult one to follow, but it is one he preached in words, in the way he lived his life, and especially in the way he died. In the story of his crucifixion, we see Jesus’ unfailing love for his disciples, for his persecutors, and ultimately, for us. His love is perfect; ours will fall far short of the mark. And when we do, we ask God’s forgiveness.

How do we even begin this task? The writer Frederick Buechner invites us to begin by taking a good look at our enemies, seeing the lines in their faces, he says, and the way they walk when they’re tired.

He invites us to see who their husbands and wives are – their brothers and sisters and parents. Maybe to see where they’re vulnerable. When we can see that, he says, we can see where they’re scarred. Seeing what is hateful about them, we may catch a glimpse of where the hatefulness comes from.

Seeing the hurt they cause us, he suggests, we may also see the hurt they cause themselves. We’ll still be light-years away from loving them, to be sure, but at least we’ll see how they are human even as we are human, and that is a step toward what Jesus calls us to do in the gospel lesson for today.

It’s possible we may even get to where we can pray for our enemies a little, if only that God might forgive them because we ourselves can’t do it yet. But any prayer we make is a breakthrough.[8]

This is what Sean was able to do with Dylan and Eric.

I think prayer is a good starting place in the process of learning to love our enemies. But maybe praying feels like too much, and the best we can do is try to say their names – to recognize that our enemies are people just like we are, that they need God’s love just like we do. Perhaps even saying their names is too much. Then I think we need a friend who will come alongside us and pray for our enemies for us – someone to shoulder the burden that is just too heavy right now.

That’s what communities like this one are for: helping each other carry burdens that are far too heavy for any of us alone.

Whatever the case may be, as we prepare to share the Lord’s Supper, let’s try to take one step toward reconciliation with those who have hurt us. Let’s work to overcome our enemies not with violence, but with love. Let’s follow the one who comes into the world again and again and again – the one who shows us that there is room at the table for everyone.

That way, no one is lost.

Amen.

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[1] Sean Graves, Real Boys’ Voices, ed. William S. Pollack (New York: Random House, 2000) 182-187

[2] Graves, 183.

[3] Graves, 183.

[4] Graves, 187.

[5] Robert W. Funk, The Five Gospels (New York: HarperCollins, 1997) 147; Donald A Hagner, Matthew 1-13 (Dallas, TX: Word Books, 1993) 133.

[6] Graves. 185-7.

[7] Funk, 147.

[8] Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words (New York: HarperCollins, 2004) 95-96.