St. Alban's Reading Room

Got an enemy?

One day when I was eleven years old, for no reason at all (other than he could) a school bully pushed me off a low foot-bridge in the town park and laughed as I landed in the shallow creek a couple of feet below.

Now, in my childhood household, my mother ran things on a very tight budget. It was a really big deal when we went shopping for new school clothes and shoes, and we were told to watch out for grass stains on the kahkis and mud on our loafers. They had to last.

So, in addtion to being shocked by the petty assualt on the foot bridge, I was alarmed because I knew that my new shoes were ruined and my mother would be upset. Upset with me.

So I stood up dripping, and as the bully walked away chuckling, I prepared my response to his attack.

I walked in my squishing shoes, right up to the front door of his parents' house and rang the doorbell, dripping creek water onto the step. His father, who happend to be the school supernintendent, was surprized to see me, but listened carefully as I explained through my tears what had happened. I wanted the bully to get his comeupance at his father's hand, but I also wanted a witness who could help with my mom's upset. Good plan, right?

What I didn't realize was that I had dramatically escallated the conflict. I had made my first enemy.

The bully must have heard from his father for he walked well out of the way whenever he saw me coming...but he would glower at me with hate. I had made a glowering enemy...one a foot taller than I was. I tried to ignore him, but he haunted me a bit. Our emnity lasted nearly a decade, unspoken but real, until we just didn't know or care about each other anymore.

Humans make enemies...it's a long sad story.

And then along comes Jesus and suggests a different ending to the story.

Today (at page 46) Henri Nouwen calls us this Lent to consider this different ending...an ending without emnity...an ending grounded in God's love of us. Knowing, as Nouwen writes, that people who make our lives difficult and cause us frustration, pain or even harm are least likely to receive a place in our hearts, Jesus directs us to love them, to pray for them, to do that which is the most contrary to our impulses, whether we're eleven years-old or just acting like it.

I hope you do not have glowering enemies, but all of us have suffered injury, and we know this love of enmey is a hard, hard thing to ask. A Lenten thing to ask. But you see, the asking of it is a gift.

For we're invited to know God's love not as an idea or concept, but as a lived experience. Let's live it, pray for your enemy.

Tim+