Enemies, real and imagined

 Genesis 15.1-12, 17-21; Psalm 27; Philippians 3.17-4.1; Luke 13.31-35

Enemies. We all have them. And, if we don’t have any real enemies, we make them up. Or else we paint them in more dramatic terms than is strictly necessary. Observe, for example, what is happening in Ukraine at present. One of the key reasons Putin has publicly offered for invading Ukraine is that Ukraine’s national leadership has been taken over by fascists, even ‘Nazis’, who are oppressing the people. Now, from the point of view of the Ukrainians themselves, this seems entirely false. But from the point of view of Putin, who has in mind the restoration of a past, mythical, Orthodox, Russian empire, the Ukrainian leadership are indeed the evil bastards who are keeping their people from participating in this glorious restoration.

We need to be careful whom we call an enemy. Perhaps we should not call anyone an enemy, even if they explicitly choose that path, and that designation, for themselves. ‘Love your enemy,’ said Jesus in his famous sermon, ‘do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you.’ (Luke 6.27, 28).  This is really tough teaching. If your neighbour is your enemy, what then? If you are the Ukrainian whose house is being raided by the Russian army, what should you do?  If you are an Aboriginal woman who has been raped by a British soldier, and your children killed before your eyes, how should you respond?

Let’s mine our lectionary readings for some wisdom.

The Genesis story talks about the deal or treaty YWH makes with Abram to preserve his legacy against every threat, real or imagined. If Abram is prepared to trust his future, and the future of his descendants to YWH, then YWH will make them prosper ‘as the stars in the heaven’ and the land on which he stands, stretching from Egypt to the Euphrates, will belong to them. Now, if you read this passage in its context, there are probably both good and bad reasons for Abram to feel anxious about himself and his clan’s future. Since arriving in that place, he’d become rich and inclined to feel that others wanted to take what he had. The story of his wife Sarai being given to Pharoah as a concubine is a horrific tale about the lengths that patriarchal culture will go to fight its own paranoia about losing wealth and influence. On the other hand, Abram also got caught up in a regional conflict between various Canaanite city-states in which his nephew Lot was genuinely taken into captivity.

With this background in mind, perhaps we must conclude that the treaty between Abraham and YWH comes about partly at God’s initiative and partly because of Abram’s male, patriarchal paranoia about the preservation of his legacy – legacy here understood as wealth and prestige for one’s descendents – against the indigenous tribes of Caanan. An earlier version of the covenant (in chapter 12 of Genesis) promises something rather different: that Abram’s descendants will become a blessing to all nations. Not their conquerors, but a source of their blessing. Perhaps that is what the covenant is supposed to be about, really. But this later, Genesis 15, version seems more concerned with the ways in which the indigenous nations, the people already there in the land to be taken by Abram’s seed, should be seen as enemies, and therefore a threat to Abram’s patriarchal ambitions. This is an ambiguity that has been played out in that region from the time of Abram right through to the current conflicts between Arab and Jew in Israel/Palestine. And, of course, there are tragic echoes of all that in what has happened here in the colony of ‘Australia’ as well.

The psalmist describes his fear of an enemy that has surrounded him on every side, and his appeal to the Lord for refuge and help. Most every suburban Christian I know usually reads this psalm as if they, themselves, are the psalmist and someone else – whatever or whomever we are afraid of, probably – is the enemy.  But what if that isn’t the case? Have you ever tried to read a psalm, or any other biblical passage, as if you weren’t the hero in the story but the enemy? Have you every considered the ways in which you might be the enemy? An enemy of the earth and of its flora and fauna, for example, or an enemy of the indentured classes of labour who make our clothes? Or an enemy of Indigenous people, because you stole our lands and benefit from our dispossession and hardship? How would that make a difference to your reading of sacred scripture?

The writer to the Philippians is incredibly circumspect in the way that he talks about enemies. He says that the enemy is not so much opposed to particular people, or even to Christ, but rather to the ‘cross of Christ’. Here the enemy is constructed not as someone who wants to steal your possessions or kill you. The enemy is someone who is allergic to suffering in the cause of righteousness or justice. Indeed, this enemy’s ‘god is their stomach’, an ancient way of speaking about the sin of gluttony or personal acquisitiveness. The sin of accumulating all things to yourself at the expense of many others, the sin of narcissism, we might even say. There is a sense, here, in which the writer wants, actually, to critique the acquisitive nature of the covenant we read about in Genesis 15. Here, it is Abram who could be understood as the enemy, for he seems concerned only about his legacy, the land he steals from others, and the prosperity of his own family and clan.  The writer to the Philippians prefers a citizenship that is not so attached to such things, but participates in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of a commonwealth that is ‘in heaven’, that is, in a place and a time that has yet to arrive. In that ‘heaven’ which – I hope you will agree, is a figure for some more hopeful and just future – Christ will transform the humiliated bodies of all who have suffered injustice and degradation and marginalisation, into the form of his own glorious body. In other words, all that is wrong and unfair will be put right. All that is broken will be restored. This is good news for all who suffer, or who are broken and marginalised. But you have to take a leap of faith.

Finally, in Luke’s gospel, it is instructive to learn something about how to regard the enemy from Christ, whose enemy is Herod, the puppet-king of the Roman occupation, who is obviously so afraid of Christ’s teaching that he has put out a ‘hit’ on him. Christ’s response to this news is quite extraordinary. Rather than go into hiding, rather than gathering a militia to protect himself, what Christ does is offer a lament over Jerusalem, a city divided against itself, a city that will at once listen to a prophet’s preaching and honour a prophet’s office, but also, in time, kill that prophet for speaking inconvenient or uncomfortable words.  Jesus himself, as indicated in the final verses of this passage, will himself be welcomed by the Jerusalemites as a prophet and even a messiah, but a week later be killed by those same Jerusalemites. Here the enemy is within. Not the other, someone from another group or tribe, ethnicity or religion. The enemy is your friend, your comrade, your congregation, your synagogue, your church, your ethnic group. Those closest to you and about whom you care the most. In the face of enemies such as these, Christ teaches us simply to lament, which is an ancient way of naming the evil and injustice of which we are capable, and then simply living, with tears, in the truth of it.  Here there is no hint of revenge or strategizing towards getting the upper-hand. There is a simple acceptance of the awful truth of the situation and a deep-down trust that if anyone can make this better, it is certainly not ourselves. It is God alone.

That’s kind’ve how I see the situation here in the colony known as ‘Australia’ as well. I long ago abandoned all hope that we, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations, could ever dig ourselves out of the hole we find ourselves in. We are too busy imitating the coloniser by fighting with each other to present a united front. Although the Uluru Statement from the Heart piques my interest. A deeply compromised and conservative document, it yet represents the closest we have yet come to speaking to our colonisers with one voice.

Certainly, there is little political will towards justice from the coloniser, at least insofar as the political class can be said to represent the will of the people. Colonisers, and particularly the mining, forestry and agricultural companies that continue to enjoy extraordinary levels of subsidised support from the taxpayer, benefit enormously from our dispossession and marginalisation. And they continue to destroy, wound, and maim country in order to make their squillions. In my estimation, we have little to look forward to from these sectors but an endless charitable paternalism, breadcrumbs from the imperial table.

 What can the person of faith do, then, except to be as honest and as truthful as one can be, to name what is actually the case in the presence of the colonising powers, to lament that it is so, and place oneself and one’s people in God’s merciful hands? In this there is a hope, against all evidence to the contrary, that our bodies of humiliation will one day be transformed into bodies of glory. How that might come to be remains, for me at least, a profound mystery. But without the leap of faith which Christian called ‘resurrection faith’ there is nothing to look forward to at all. The last enemy, after all, is death.  And its sting is fierce. Unless . . .  unless God is for us, and not against us.

Notes roughly approximating a homily delivered at Koonung Heights Uniting Church on the 2nd Sunday of Lent, 2022.  The live homily can be found here.

Garry Deverell

The Absurd, Laughable, Grace of God

Genesis 18.1-15, 21.1-7; Romans 5.1-8; Matthew 9.35-10.8

An old man, Abraham, and his wife, Sarah, lived in their tent by the forest of Mamre.  One day they are visited by three strangers.  Being people who believe that God sometimes roams the earth in disguise, Abraham and Sarah welcomed the strangers, giving them food, water and rest.  As Abraham chatted with them over a lovely outdoor dinner, one of the strangers said to him, 'Where is your wife, Sarah?'  'She is in the tent, helping to prepare our food', Abraham replied.  At that moment one of the men leant forward and whispered, 'We will return here at the same time next year, at which time Sarah will have given birth to a son'.  At that, Abraham's mouth fell open.  What an extraordinary thing to say!  Abraham and Sarah were very old, already decades beyond the age of childbearing.  And from the nearby tent, as if to underline the absurdity of the idea, Sarah let out a laugh.

The idea of having a child when you are a hundred years old is, indeed, quite funny.  And it is funny because it is absurd.

Have you ever reflected on the intimate connection between absurdity and humour?  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, absurdity is that which is unreasonable, ridiculous, irrational or illogical.  The absurd comes into being when two realities which are usually understood to have little or nothing in common, are forced to come together in a rare moment of comparison.  Like old age and giving birth.  Like monks and the Ku Klux Clan.  Like bureaucracy and caring.  When such comparisons are dropped on us, our first and most natural response is shock or surprise.  The foreign, the unexpected or the undreamed of, suddenly arrives in our reality.  A piano falls from the sky into the lemon tree in your back garden.  An elephant runs through the front yard.  An insurance assessor asks how you feel about the burglary.  When the silliness or absolute absurdity of such situations dawns on us, we laugh.  Because laughter is our body’s way of embracing experiences of irrationality or paradox.

When God's grace comes to call, it is very often quite irrational.  It surprises and shocks us. It seems silly or even ridiculous in the face of the harsh realities of the daily grind.  Yet such grace helps us to find the laughter and rejoicing in life.  In his letter to the Roman church, the apostle Paul reflects on the absurdities at the centre of Christian faith.  Take this one, for starters: 'While we were still sinners, Christ died for us'.  It is oftentimes difficult for we Anglicans, who have heard these words so many times before, to register the surprise and shock Paul's original hearers would have experienced.  So let's translate the statement into a more contemporary mode.

‘While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’ For moderns, this would be like hearing that while Hitler was still sending Jews to the gas chambers, a senior Rabbi offered his life to the Allies in exchange for Hitler’s.  It's like hearing that while Martin Bryant was still shooting people at Port Arthur, one of the wounded was already negotiating Bryant's freedom in exchange for his own internment.  It’s like reading that the sole survivor of one of many frontier massacres here in Victoria has offered amnesty and forgiveness for the murderers. Can you hear the scandal in that?  Can you hear the absurdity? 'While we were still sinners, Christ died for us'!

The surprise of God's grace is that it interrupts our despair.  It cuts across our hopelessness.  It relativizes our worst fears for the future.  God comes to one whose self-image has been destroyed by glossy magazines and says 'You are special, I love you'.  God visits the person who has failed an exam or lost a job and says 'I believe you are a winner.  Let's explore how together.’ God whispers to the newly disabled ‘You still have a contribution to make’. God stands beside the compulsive liar and says 'You can tell the truth about yourself'.  God visits the greedy and immoral person saying, 'You are capable of giving without thought of yourself, and I will stake my life on it'.  In every case, such divine visitations are downright absurd if you look at them from any rational or logical point of view.  We are all addicted to our sins; and whether we are personally aware of it or not, those of us who are financially comfortable are the beneficiaries of an economic order that exploits and steals from the vulnerable.  That is the reality we live in and have become accustomed to.  Yet, God is inclined to bring an entirely different reality to bear upon our situation.  God is inclined to treat us as though we were not addicts and exploiters, but saints.  And that, my friends, is a laugh.

At first, like Sarah, we laugh at God's foolishness.  How can God be so unrealistic?  How can God be so morally irresponsible?  How can God promise the impossible and the senseless like that?  Yet, in time, and with faith, we come to laugh with God.  We begin to see ourselves and our sinfulness in an entirely new light—in the light of grace, which is the power of God's unconditional love.  In that love, the suffering, the despairing and even the sin-sick may aspire to sainthood.  And that, my friends, can make one laugh—not with scepticism now, but with rejoicing!  Paul describes the process thus: 'We rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us'.

You will have noticed from our Genesis reading that the strangers returned to Abraham and Sarah's tent after a year.  And the apparently impossible and absurd had indeed come to pass.  As Abraham turned one hundred years old, Sarah gave birth to a son, whom they named 'Isaac'.  In Hebrew, Isaac means laughter.  But this time, when Sarah laughs, it is not with incomprehensibility, but with joy.  This time she laughs with God, not at God: 'God has brought me great laughter,’ she says, 'and all who hear this story will laugh with me'.  Sarah, like every reluctant and surprised convert in the history of this planet, has been bowled over by the grace of God.  First by its strange absurdity.  But then by its joy.