Abstract
Jesus’ teaching to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you seems a remote possibility in today’s culture-war climate. Loving others who might harm you seems unjust, unsafe, and unwise, and in a cancel-culture, engagement with ‘the other side’ is a seen as a vice.
All the more reason, then, to dig into Jesus’ command, for who was Jesus loving, who was he praying for, if not his enemies? Even his friends were his enemies, or enemies of what he needed to do. We’re all enemies of the Kingdom of God a large amount of the time.
Rachel Remen, author of My Grandfather’s Blessings, remembers her grandfather, an Orthodox Rabbi, telling her young self the story of Jacob’s night-time attacker:
He awakened to find himself gripped by muscular arms and pinned to the ground. It was so dark that he could not see his enemy, but he could feel his power. Gathering all his strength, he began to struggle to be free. . . .With the coming of the light, the angel let go of Jacob and tried to leave, but Jacob held him fast. “Let me go”, the angel told Jacob. . .But Jacob said “I will not let you go until you bless me” The angel struggled hard, for he wanted badly to escape, but Jacob held him close. And so the angel gave him his blessing, and touched him where he was hurt.
But touching the wound, the grandfather said, was not the most important part of the story; ‘the most important part. . .is that everything has its blessing’, even an enemy who leaves you with a limp for the rest of your life.
Of course, enemies are often not angels who want to bless us: their blessings may be entirely involuntary. Eugene Peterson in his NT translation The Message, translates Jesus’ teaching as: ‘Love your enemies, and let them bring out the best in you.’ A stance of ‘we want nothing form you and nothing to do with you’, cuts off possibilities.
When Germany invaded Greece, in World War Two, the Protos of Mt Athos (the head of the monks) wrote directly to Hitler asking him to place the mountain under his personal protection. Hitler was flattered and ordered his generals not to interfere with the life of the monks, though there was a German garrison on the mountain itself. With the mountain thus protected, the monks hid Greek Jewish women and children from Nazi eyes (and these are the only females who have been permitted onto the Mountain). Everything has its blessing. Let your enemies bring out the best in you.
Meanwhile in Northern Europe, some Jews committed themselves in a prayer that was found on a scrap of paper in the clothing of a Jewish girl who died at Ravensbrück concentration camp:
“O Lord, remember,
not only the men and women of good will,
but also those of ill will.
But do not remember all the suffering
they have inflicted on us;
remember the fruits we have borne,
thanks to this suffering:
our comradeship, our loyalty,
our humility,
our courage, our generosity,
the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this,
and when they come to judgement,
let all the fruits we have borne be their forgiveness.”