This is the Podcast for First Congregational Church of Somerville, www.FirstChurchSomerville.org

Sunday, March 22, 2009

One's Enemies

First Church Somerville, UCC
Lent III, March 22, 2009
Matthew 5:43-48
One’s Enemies
Rev. Laura Ruth Jarrett

When she got the diagnosis of diabetes, it became her enemy. She remembers the day of the diagnosis. She said that day, after blood tests, but before she knew for sure, she ate a meal thinking this was the last meal she would eat as a normal person, though she had not been normal for a while. And then the diagnosis, the phone call, come to the hospital, pack bags for four days, don’t eat anything, she and her mom went to the hospital, crawled onto the hospital bed together, and cried for four hours. Diabetes.

She made diabetes her enemy. She fought with it, swore it would never limit her, she gave her energy to repelling it, made decisions about her life based on what she was fighting. She did what we all do with our enemies. She tried to win over it, ignore it, trick it, kick its butt. She lived as if her time was limited, as if she had no time.

He had a boss that he hated, he could not think of anything else. He’d get home from work and rant and rave – oh the injustice of it, how stupid was his boss, he’d go to bed at night scheming how to get even, how to avoid, or how to work around this boss who impeded all progress, this boss who was a bane and a boil on the butt of good people. At parties, he’d fume to all who would listen, at church he complained, he even wanted to tell his children, to turn the hearts of his small children against a boss whom they would never meet.

I want to know, who are your enemies? The Federal government, the tax structure, the bailout recipients? Are your enemies the Racists? Homophobes? Conservatives? Liberals? Evangelicals? Is the enemy your alcoholic mother, your wandering abusive father, your boss, your disease, your HIV status, your addiction, your empty womb, your partner-less home, your very self, your body fat or thin, your face without make up, the lack of bicep or the abundance of belly, your tendency to talk too much or too little? Are you your enemy?

So Jesus tells us, we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

We might be tempted to think, that loving our enemies is a kind of civic duty, a kind of polite way to be in the world, a kind of middle class exercise in decorum. Let’s not make a scene, dear.

Or maybe you think that, in loving your enemy, you’ll be acquiescing, giving in, losing in games or at battle, sabotaging the little self respect you do have, giving in, giving yourself away again.

If I love my enemy and pray for those who persecute me, I’ll lose my power, my mojo, my place, my life, my fight. I’ll be weak, a namby pamby, a girl (you see how sexism and homophobia work). Or, I am weak, a namby pamby, a girl (you see how internalized sexism and internalized homophobia work), and the only choice I have is a lame kind of love.

But I want to tell you that loving your enemy is mightier than hate, it is faster than a speeding bullet, and it is an altogether different thing. Loving your enemy is a strong kind of love. I want to try to tell you, to convince you that loving your enemy is a spiritual tool that does the work of helping you, helping us to move to the place of the light, a place of joy that is not beyond this world, but lives beneath the seen world in your spirit’s undercroft, inside your body and psyche, in the internal place that is as large as the universe.

Loving your enemy is one of the tools that we, as spiritual people, use to lift manhole cover that blocks our way to the place of light, to the spiritual delights of walking with God, of coming into glory.

I don’t mean coming into glory when you die, although Dibbie told me last week she wasn’t afraid to die because she’ll go into glory – what a strong statement from a bold woman! But Dibbie is already glory.

I mean between now and the time you die, loving your enemy is one tool to help you live in glory now.

Loving your enemy and praying for those who persecute you helps in three ways. It restores your energy. Loving your enemy helps you to heal. Loving your enemy helps you re-orient your life to your unique purpose.

Hate provides a lot of energy. It is why people who feel aimless, or depressed, or full of fear sometimes choose hate. Hate is a force, hate can give a direction, can give life meaning. Hating a thing or person gives agency, mastery. Hate can give a kind of control over a situation, where control is not available. I hate my disease and I will fight it to death! But hate takes a lot of energy. Dredging up high dungeon is costly. But most importantly, hate does the opposite of love. Hate constricts, tightens the body and soul, ties up knots in the conduits of love divine.

Love, which is not the opposite of acquiescence, blooms. It expands, makes room for prayer, and prayer allows for vision. Love restores energy, gives life, allows denial to dissipate as we are able to hold what is true. Love lifts and makes space to decide how to heal.

Loving our enemies can help us to heal. I know a woman who noticed herself in the mirror. She looked up and what she saw in the mirror scared and it shocked her because she looked just like her dad, who had hurt her, her dad whom she had made her enemy.

She decided that it was time to love her dad, to forgive him, not to let him off the hook, not to deny what he had done, not to acquiesce. But in order to heal, she knew, she had to forgive him whom she saw in the mirror, so that she could love herself, so she could become whole. For her, it was the beginning of living again.

This is tricky, here. Please hear me say this: if we choose love over hate, we do it for our own healing. Later, much, much later, when we are incandescently, deeply advanced, spiritual beings like Jesus, like Mandela, like Howard Thurman, we might choose love or forgiveness for the perpetrator’s sake, the disease’ sake, the addiction’s sake, the bad stupid boss’ sake. In the meantime, we can give these ones to God who can forgive for their own sake.

Please also hear me. I am not saying that by choosing to love your enemy, you must go back to your enemy, to your addiction, the one who harmed you. You don’t have to embrace the disease, the behavior. I’m saying, love provides a space to see, to know, to decide how to be free, and how to heal.

When we are healing, we can use our energy to live in the center of our purpose. Gianna told me when diabetes was her enemy, she decided she would be a doctor – it is noble to be a doctor. But Gianna is an artist. Being a doctor is good, but Gianna’s spiritual gifts are in art, music and love. When we are in the throes of battling our enemy, it is hard to see how to become the human we are. So many times, when we are warring, we become the human we aren’t. We do the things we were not made to do. We kill each other, we walk by the wounded, leaving then on the street, in shelters, and in our homes. We take on too much, or we identify ourselves only as not the enemy. when in truth, we might be. And this is no life, no life at all.

But this is a life. Friday before last, some of us went to Cambridge Ringe and Latin High School to be a presence to counter the demonstration of the Phelps clan from Witchita. They came all this way to hate the gay/straight alliance at the high school. Most of us counter demonstators didn’t hate back. This is what I love about some gay folks, in the face of oppression, we danced. Got a boom box? Got Sister Sledge? You’ve got love that stands against oppression, but not against the hater.

Do you see the difference? We dance in order to love ourselves, in order to free energy, in order to heal, not wasting any of our precious energy on hating the hater. We do not give in, but we do not bind ourselves to the enemy.

Bound up in hating, we would likely not be able to look across to the place where the Phelps were to see the young boy who held up an ugly sign, and wish that he be well and pray God to protect him.

You see, how it works. Loving your enemy is not an end in itself, not a tidy discreet action. Loving your enemy opens the door to dancing, to glory, to vision, to living inside your humanity and God given purpose. Loving your enemy helps you to wake up and see who you really are, where you really are, what you really want to do, and who is with you. In this direction is glory.

Loving who loves you – hah, child’s work. Even Gentiles can do it.

But loving your enemy . . . you may have a chronic illness, an addiction, an ex-partner, you may have a stupid boss, an alcoholic father, a cold mother, an imperfect body, but if you make them your enemy and hate them, they have you. If you love them, you can tend them, learn from them, bless them, and let them go.

You will find that you will want to be free, and that you want others to be free.

Be love, be love. This is how Christianity works. This is what Jesus told us to do. Be love.