The Blessing of Enemies
07-03-18
In this week’s column I reflect on Jesus’ mandate to love one’s enemies.
You don’t need me to tell you that we are living in divisive and polarizing times. You know this already and have likely developed your own coping strategies, which probably sometimes work and sometimes don’t. There’s centering prayer, yoga, exercise, making music or art, cuddling a baby, working to support some issue of social justice, protesting, getting politically involved, and gardening—to name a few. A neighbor a couple streets away confessed recently that her own coping strategy includes anti-anxiety medication. I am sure she’s not alone in this approach. When I lift up a friend’s tiny new puppy and turn the little fellow on his back and shower kisses upon his tummy, and nuzzle his face and he licks my chin, it’s a way to escape—if but for a moment—from the meanness and incivility of the world. I suppose the most spiritually agile among us have a number of strategies at hand, allowing us to confront the latest atrocity without devolving ourselves into retaliatory behavior.
Brian McLaren, in his book “The Great Spiritual Migration”, speaks of the perils of Christians with righteous anger. If, he says, we are promoting Christianity as a means to liberation and peace, we have to be careful how we respond to the atrocities that pop up before us. McLaren says: “If I chose to fight fire with fire, condemnation with condemnation, insult with insult, excommunication with excommunication, then I would spiral down into contentious defeat. If I were driven by the need to be right—or to be thought right by others—I would [in fact be demonstrating] how little I had experienced the liberation to which I was calling others!” [1] And then he quotes Christian activist Shane Claiborne who observes that if you fight fire with fire you get a bigger fire. [2]
As one antidote to righteous anger, McLaren offers the prayer perspective of the late Serbian Orthodox bishop and theologian, Nikolai Velimirovich. Velimirovich knew something about righteous anger, apparently: in the midst of a self-sacrificing life of study, teaching, writing, prayer, service, and international missionary work—all of it devoted to God—Velimirovich spoke out against the Nazis and was allegedly turned over to them, betrayed by some of priests under his care. He spent two years imprisoned at Dachau, during which time he witnessed unspeakable things. His betrayal and the atrocities he witnessed polished his anger until it shone in the fire of his righteous indignation. One of Velimirovich’s coping strategies was to pray a prayer he had written roughly twenty years earlier: [3]
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have.
Friends have bound me to earth; enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.
Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world.
Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an un-hunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath Your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless and do not curse them.
They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world.
They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself.
They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments.
They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself.
They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish.
Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a [fly].
Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background.
Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand.
Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep.
Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out.
Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of your garment.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me:
So that my fleeing will have no return; So that all my hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs;
So that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul;
So that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins: arrogance and anger;
So that I might amass all my treasure in heaven; Ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception,
which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.
Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows,
that a person has no enemies in the world except himself.
One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.
It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies.
Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies. A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands.
For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life.
Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
In the footnotes to this week’s column I list the places you can find this prayer, beginning with McLaren’s blog. Velimirovich’s prayer calls to mind for me some very difficult teachings of Jesus, where he says (in Matthew 5:43-48) “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
And further (in Luke 6: 32-36) “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
And further still, the First Letter of Peter, 3:9: “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”
These teachings are part of what made Jesus such a counter-cultural figure. Even though the world seems at times to run on conditional and transactional kindness, tit-for-tat insults, and a seemingly endless spiral of escalating violence, Jesus came to offer a different and freer way of being. Jesus wouldn’t for a moment have us ignore the atrocities and cries for help before us; rather, Jesus would instead tell us to use our outrage not to tear down the perpetrators in anger but to build up and heal the world.
It’s hard work, that. McLaren recalls once overhearing someone declare that we can respond to atrocity either by praying for God to punish the perpetrator, or we can pray to God, “Make me an instrument of your peace.” [4] In his book “The Rebirthing of God”, John Philip Newell says that choosing the way of love (over the way of hate and retaliation) is “not something we do once. It’s something we need to choose again and again and again.” [5] Always we begin again. Always we face the same choice: to retaliate or to heal; to respond in anger or to respond in love. Only one is our birthright. Only one draws us closer to God.
[1] The Great Spiritual Migration, p. 189.
[2] Ibid. p. 256.
[3] Ibid. p. 190, and read the prayer on McLaren’s blog: https://brianmclaren.net/prayer-regarding-critics-and-enemies-by-serbian-orthodox-bishop/
[4] The Great Spiritual Migration, p.187.
[5] The Rebirthing of God, p.118.
Buy Velimirovich’s book “Prayers by the Lake”: http://store.ancientfaith.com/prayers-by-the-lake
Read more of Velimirovich’s prayers: http://www.sv-luka.org/praylake/index.htm
Read more about Velimirovich: http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/stnikolai.aspx
