Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you...

This is a recap of our May 17 gathering. An optional spiritual practice is included at the end.

This summer, we’re exploring the sayings of Jesus.

At our last gathering, we took our exploration to Matthew 5:44, where Jesus says: “But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (NRSVUE). In preparation for this gathering, Rebekah had asked me (Court) if I had any enemies. “Of course,” I replied. “I’m certain there are a handful of people who aren’t a fan of me. And there are certainly people– typically people in power– I’d consider to be my own enemy.” To that, Rebekah asked, “but what makes an enemy an enemy?” 

This same question was brought up in my small group conversation during the gathering. We could all consider people we didn’t like, and who didn’t like us, but were they really our enemies? 

As a trans person living in today’s political climate, I’m in a group of people that is being painted as one of America’s many “enemies.” My existence is considered a threat to imagined social norms, while many of the same folks pulling this false-alarm are actually implementing policies and taking actions that threaten land and life. How do we love those who really do appear to be our enemies? Did Jesus have any clue what he was asking us to do? Or what the heck he was talking about? I think that he did. 

Jesus’ times aren’t too different from our own. The world was plagued with war, greed, disaster, famine. Jesus wasn’t naive to what was happening in the world around him: he was living in the middle of it. His life’s work made him a few enemies who had no problem making sure he got put up on that cross. And yet, he dared to love them anyway. This love, and the love that I think he’s asking us to extend, is a radical and creative kind of love that dares to affirm the dignity and belonging of oneself and the dignity and belonging of others…even if we don’t like them very much. This affirmation of one another dares to break through the layers of numbing and hardening that many of us have been conditioned to take on in order to dehumanize each other. And that dehumanization is precisely what systems of empire, oppression, and supremacy rely on. Loving our enemies– in a thousand different and complicated ways– is an act of resistance.

I want to be clear here: loving our enemies doesn’t mean we need to or even should dismiss the very real acts of harm that they’ve carried out. That harm, and its impacts, are important to address. And we should do that: address it. But I think what Jesus is asking us to do is believe that transformation through loving one another is possible. And there are ways to do so while standing in your own dignity. (I don’t have the time to get into it here, but if you’d like some modern day examples on what this could look like, I highly recommend reading, Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement.)

To close this reflection, I’ll leave you with a poem from m jade kaiser of enfleshed:

let love be messy

Love isn't just one thing;

it's fierce and soft,

intimate and collective,

wild and sincere and deliberate and just.

Love can be more chaos than order.

Love can be a boundary.

Love can be conflict.

It's complicated.

It's multifaceted.

Love is hard work.

Love is natural.

Love is a process and practice.

Though its path are many and varied,

love always leads to life.

Love is an ever-unfolding thing

we are all still figuring out.

-m jade kaiser

Questions for reflection:

1. What makes an enemy, an enemy?

2. What does it mean to you to "love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you?" What are ways you might try this on?

3. -What is hard about loving your enemies?

Spiritual Practice: A Prayer for My Enemies

Supplies needed: Paper, writing utensil, fireproof bowl, matches/lighter/candle

1. Take a moment to ground or center yourself.

2. Bring to mind an "enemy", or someone you've been hurt or wronged by. You may choose someone who caused a small hurt, or someone far removed from you. In other words, you don't need to select someone who caused a great deal of hurt or harm to you, especially if you're not ready to offer love, grace, or forgiveness yet.

3. What do you wish for this person, even though they've wronged you? Accountability? Transformation? A change of heart? What words of love, grace, or prayer do you wish you could offer them?

4. Write these words down on a piece of paper. This could range from one word, to a whole page of prayer.

5. Fold the piece of paper, and place it in the fireproof bowl.

6. Light the paper on fire. As you watch it burn, imagine the winds taking the prayer to where it needs to go: be it the person you wrote to, god...wherever it feels most supportive for that prayer to land.

7. When you're finished, safely discard the ashes (ensure they've cooled completely). Carry on with your day, trusting the prayer is being guided where it needs to go.

   https://video.wixstatic.com/video/0708bc_d2c7fee0c7334bcbbb218230d6838fb9/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

   Video of prayers being burned and carried away from the May 17 gathering.