Enemy pie

 

Psalm 42: 11 – Psalm 43
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
November 5, 2023

Photo of the graffiti on the West Bank wall.
One message is front and center: "Make hummus not walls."

Hebrew scripture scholar Walter Bruggemann as well as many Jewish scholars believe that at one time Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 were a single poem, split into two for reasons unknown. In both psalms is the repeated refrain: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise [them], my help and my God.” Undergirding these psalms is a taunt as well as a plea: “Where is your God?” and the psalmist waiting and hoping to see if God will show up.



“Where is your God?” is the taunt of an enemy, an oppressor, but also one who has made God in their own image. Where is your God? Your God is not my God, and my God is on my side. The transphobe taunts the drag queen. The antisemite taunts Jews. The Islamophobe taunts Muslims. The Christian nationalist and the White supremacist taunts, well, everyone.



Yet we can also hear the oppressed saying the very same thing. Your God, the god of the oppressor, is not my God, and my God is on my side. From the play titled “The Normal Heart” we are reminded: “New oppressions are always forming from the ashes of the old.” Then there is the confusion of who is the oppressor, who is the oppressed. Confusion, some will rebuke, there is no confusion! There is no “both sides”!



And yet Muslims, Jews, and Christians all claim the psalms as scripture and prayer. As much as we try to deny it, we are kindred, siblings from the same source. This psalm could be prayed by any one of us: “Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people; from those who are deceitful and unjust, deliver me!” Ungodly. From there to unworthy. From there to inhuman. From there to violence. From there to unspeakable acts of terror. A road that humanity has not been able to resist, in fact, it is the road well-traveled.



In truth, we are all victims and bullies. Let’s not get into a contest or debate about who has suffered more, who has abused more, who thinks they never could do what others have done. How many people have to be forcibly removed from their land for it to be wrong? How many children, how many hostages, how many generations in a family wiped out? How many have to die for the violence to be wrong? Beating the drum of having the right to defend ourselves begins to sound like “stand your ground” laws and those who are ready to die on the hill of the Second Amendment. If there is something we are prepared to kill for, we are no better than those we rail against.



The biggest problem is that we all think we’re the good guys, especially the United States. We think we’re the scrappy rebels rather than the evil empire. We use words like terrorist and freedom fighter, conveniently forgetting our colonizing, settler beginnings, taking land that was not ours, separating children from their families and their culture, killing the American buffalo within inches of extinction so as to eliminate the people whose very lives depended on it. As I heard recently, “We shoot today and kill tomorrow.” Labor, skill, and ingenuity that should’ve been building African nations was instead enslaved to build this nation.



How dare we call out Hamas, how dare we call out the Israeli government, as if our sensibilities have so demonstrably evolved? Reservations without water rights is violence. Debt and poverty is violence. Redlining, gerrymandering, and voter restrictions are violence. Anti-trans laws are violence. Not banning assault weapons is violence. Secret money in our elections is violence. $14 billion dollars for war but not for healthcare or affordable housing is violence.



We look at everything as a zero-sum game, including how we use power. It’s as if power is a limb or a vital organ or the very air we breathe. If we have power, we must wield it. If others have power, we must destroy it.



Pacifism is not inaction when we take resources intended for war and seek to right the wrongs that lead to conflict and violence in the first place. Which is why Jesus said things like feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Welcome the stranger. Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. Put away your sword. Blessed are the peacemakers.



For quite some time in our liturgy we have passively said, “On the night of betrayal and desertion” when what we really ought to say is “On the night when Jesus was betrayed and deserted by those closest to him”. At this Table Jesus welcomes both victim and bully, betrayer and deserter. Jesus welcomed one who tried to force a solution and another who tried to deny the truth and others who would avoid the question altogether.



When we come to this Table, we come with empty, open hands, ready to receive, ready to serve. Jesus serves us a heaping helping of enemy pie, and there is more than enough to go around. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” Maybe, as James Baldwin reminds us, when we are ready to stop hating, we can then face our pain and the pain we have inflicted. When we learn to listen to our enemy, to their hopes for their children, maybe that will be the day we learn to live in peace. When both the oppressed and the oppressor are liberated and we know that we are kindred.

Benediction - Prayer for the Decade of Nonviolence

We bow to the sacred in all creation.

May our spirits fill the world with beauty and wonder.

May our minds seek truth with humility and openness.

May our hearts forgive without limit.

May our love for friend, enemy, and outcast be without measure.

May our needs be few and our living simple.

May our actions bear witness to the suffering of others.

May our hands never harm a living being.

May our steps stay on the journey of justice.

May our tongues speak for those who are poor without fear of the powerful.

May our prayers rise with patient discontent until no child is hungry.

May our life's work be a passion for peace and nonviolence.

May our souls rejoice in the present moment.

May our imaginations overcome death and despair with new possibility.

And may we risk reputation, comfort, and security to bring this hope to children everywhere.

- Prayer by Mary Lou Kownacki, OSB