Enemies

By Ilene Bergen

June 22, 2008.

I John 4:7-12  Matthew 5: 43-48

 

Imagine some  fellow carries a stinky bucket of garbage on his head. He walks back and forth, very near you. The smell is horrible and you are extremely bothered by this man and his stinky garbage. Finally you can't tolerate it any longer, so you take another bucket of that same stinky garbage and put it on your head. You do the same as he does. Walking back and forth with a horrible mess on your head.

 

Elias Chacour, Archbishop of the Melkite Church of Galilee tells this story when he does his peacemaking work in Palestine/Israel.

 

Chacour asks...What does doing the same offensive thing get you? How does grabbing another bucket of stinky garbage solve anything? Instead...“if you are courageous you say, 'OK,  this really stinks. I will go and take that bucket of garbage from his head and throw it far away. I will get my hands dirty, but I will clean my neighbour and free myself.' This is answering hatred and violence with  creative love that builds dignity, respect and equality for everyone.” (Elias Chacour, We Belong to the Land, p. 121) 

 

Hafeez lives in the small village of at Tuwani, in the southern part of the Israeli occupied West Bank. His village is more than 500 years old and Hafeez can trace his family roots back right to the start of the village. Both he and five centuries worth of ancestor, were born there, played there as children, loved there, raised their families. They have planted their crops and grazed their sheep on the rugged hills around their village. Hafeez  and his extended family are “at home” in At Tuwani. But the land is now occupied by Israel and an illegal Israeli settlement has been built near by.

 

Hafeez' mother is 75 years old. She's a shepherd and still regularly takes the family's sheep out to graze. Like the shepherds of biblical fame, she leads her sheep to the sparse vegetation and the precious water they need.

 

A few years ago she had taken her sheep out as usual, when suddenly, settlers from the nearby settlement came and confronted her. They brought sticks and chains and attacked her. They threw stones and when Hafeez came to the rescue a gun was pointed at him. His mother spent 3 days in hospital.

 

After that Hafeez couldn't sleep. Violent thoughts just buzzed through his head.  “How can I even the score?” The longer he thought about it the more violent and crazy his thoughts became. How do you get even when lawless, illegal settlers beat up your 75 year old mum? Impossible!! Especially when she's out alone in the field?  What do you do with such cowardly violence?  How do you treat your enemy? Hafeez tossed and turned for many nights.

  

Jesus knew about enemies and getting even. And he knew how we think. Wanting to get even...a bucket of garbage for a bucket of garbage. An insult for an insult, a snub for a snub, an eye for an eye.

 

Well maybe if we're really honest we're not even satisfied with getting even. We're more likely to think: “If you hurt me once than I'm justified to hurt you twice. If you take out my eye well then I'm justified to  gauge out both of your eyes.” Now there's me half blind and you completely blind. It's your turn to get even, but since you're blind you get more people involved. More eyes get blinded and the cycle deepens.

 

Much like a Pontius Puddle cartoon that appeared in the Canadian Mennonite recently. All the creatures  ask Pontius, “Pontius, how can we have peace with our enemies? Pontius replies, “Simple. First we provoke them. Then they shoot at us. We shoot back with something bigger so they launch an all-out nuclear assault to which of course, we will retaliate. Then everyone will be dead and bingo, we'll have peace!”

 

The crowd responds “Wow, great” and Pontius agonizes, “I don't know which is scarier—my plan or the sad fact that so many creatures will accept it.”

 

Centuries before Jesus, Jewish leaders had taught the people...stop the cycle of violence. Take only one eye for an eye, Only one tooth for a tooth...don't deepen the cycle. It was a radical teaching. Years later, Jesus radicalizes the law one more step. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. So that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Matt 5:43-45) Forget about getting one eye for one eye, one tooth for one tooth. Pray for your enemy instead.

 

Hafeez tossed and turned imagining revenge. He dreamt up a few crazy things that would hurt real bad. But then he got to thinking about all the suicide bombers and rock throwers in his country and what they were accomplishing. What would happen if he did something really violent? He realized. I'll only give them excuses to do even worse back to my family. Hafeez decided that day to look for more effective resistance, not violence.

 

Lisa is an volunteer who goes to Palestine for 2 or 3 months every year to work with an organization protesting house demolitions. Palestinians in most cases cannot get building permits. Some have waited twenty years. Finally they build without a permit and a demolition order is placed on the house. The bulldozers come and tear down the house and the home owner needs to pay to clean up the mess. “I hate it,” Lisa told us. “I hate what the Israeli government is doing. But it does no good. My hate does no good. I struggle terribly with that hatred,” she said in tears, 'and I pray every day, that I may learn to love.”

 

For Lisa and Hafeez and Chacour and many people around the world, its easy to identify the enemy. And it's an almost daily decision...will I love or hate, will I bless or curse.

 

But who are our enemies? Do we have enemies? I asked a number of you this week, “Who are your enemies?” Actually now I feel I should apologize to you. It was a rather direct and awkward question. But in spite of its difficulty I do think we need to be asking ourselves, “Who is my enemy?”

 

Perhaps we can list personal enemies, some people who we really don't like: the bully at school who's always picking on someone, the so-called friends who “forget” to text message you when something cool is happening. Maybe it's the ex-boyfriend, the ex-spouse, the competitor who always undercuts your prices.

 

I remember a difficult situation I was in with a fellow board member of a community organization. She was very upset with me, because I did not agree with her in an important decision we needed to make. She  became quite angry with me at a public meeting. I went to my Spiritual Director asking for some help. Maybe I was really looking for some sympathy. Instead she asked me, “Well what do you do with enemies?”

 

“Enemies, she's not my enemy!! I'm just really angry with her right now and I'm justified to be angry!”

 

“Hmmm,” my spiritual director commented, “Sounds like an enemy to me, and Jesus says love them and pray for them because God makes the sun shine on the evil and the good.

 

That advise really shook me. I couldn't love for quite a while, but slowly I started praying for her. Well not for her, but I started praying that maybe someday with God's help I'd be able to pray for her.And slowly my prayer was answered and in praying for her my attitude slowly changed. I began to recognize she was human too and loved by God. I did not agree with her, but some beginnings of love and respect developed.

 

My personal struggle to love makes me shake my head in wonder and amazement  at peacemakers like Chacour.

 

Israeli soldiers forced his family out of their home when he was just a young child and he has faced countless struggles over the years but he says; “I do not hate the Jewish people. I love every one of them. I pity those who have sold themselves to weapons, violence and political ideas that are racist, but whatever they might do to me or my people, it is not enough reason to hate them. Hatred is corruption. I do not choose to be corrupt with hatred.”

 

He adds: “I will always protest every evil act done against me or my people, but I will never protest with the same methods they use. I will never put the same bucket of dirty garbage on my head. Though people may hate me, I will not return that hatred.” (Chacour, p 121)

 

Jesus calls all Christians to love their enemies, to be peacemakers. This congregation has a long history of trying to respond to that call. During the second world war young men

chose to be conscientious objectors, refusing to join the army. They believed violence was not the answer to violence.

 

Today we need to keep asking, “What peacemaking work, what love of enemy work is Jesus calling us to now?”

 

What's our response to terrorism? How do we challenge increased army recruitment in our high schools, on TV and at community events? Do we have any response to the Canadian government's latest plan for spending $490 billion dollars on the military, over the next 20 years. By the way this plan was quietly posted late Thursday night on a government website.  http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/20/military-plan.html

 

This Sunday we begin a summer series on peace. The children in their junior worship will also learn about following Jesus' example of peacemaking. I pray that we can continue to learn what love of enemies looks like. 

 

We are all weak and poor. Only God can give us the power to overcome hatred and bitterness. Only God can give us the compassion to face our enemy, to pray for them and to do everything possible to convert the enemy to a friend, and a friend to a brother or sister.  (Chacour p 163) May we live and love in that way.