April 18 Easter III
In 1569, in Holland, a Mennonite named Dirk Willems was charged with heresy and locked up in what was once a residential palace, which made an effective prison in part because of the moat that surrounded it. But a cold winter lingered that year in the Netherlands, and the moat was frozen when they locked Mr. Willems up. So one day he made a rope of knotted rags, pried open his window, dropped onto the ice below, and fled for his life.
Unfortunately a guard witnessed the escape and set off in pursuit. Thanks to his meager prison diet, perhaps, when the chase headed out over a frozen pond, Dirk Willems crossed safely, but his pursuer fell through the ice.
Hearing the cries of his enemy for help, Willems stopped, and considered a dangerous, foolish question: “So what’s a Christian to do?” His pursuer was no longer a threat. But left in the frozen water, he would soon drown. In a situation like this, what is a Christian to do?
Was that prison guard an enemy to be hated? Or was the guard an enemy—or even a neighbor—to be loved? “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” said Jesus. “Do not repay evil for evil,” we read in the letters of Paul and Peter. And beside the explicit teachings and the parables, there was the whole witness of Jesus life and death. His disarming of Peter in the garden. His silence before his accusers. His plea to God for forgiveness of the people who were crucifying him.
We can’t know what went through Dirk Willems’s mind there by that pond in Holland. But what we do know is that he turned back, and pulled his pursuer from the frozen pond. Only to be escorted back to prison, and burned at the stake on the 16th of May. Burned at the stake by Christians, we should remember, who believed they were doing justice and defending the faith.
What’s so stunning about this story—aside from the fact that a preacher would be rude enough to tell it during the happy season of Easter—what’s so stunning about this story is how thoroughly Christ-like Dirk Willems’s gesture is, and how few of us Christians over the centuries have felt even a tinge of worry that discipleship might demand the same of us. That discipleship might actually demand even a simple act of selfless love toward an enemy.
Well, we’re not reading the Sermon on the Mount or Paul’s epistle to the Romans or the First Letter of Peter, and we just got the uncomfortable business of Holy Week out of the way. So it seems we could avoid fussing about how Christians might be called to treat their enemies, at least for today.
But there are landmines everywhere for unsuspecting readers of the New Testament when it comes to enemy love.
For instance, we think we know the story of St. Paul’s conversion. The Damascus Road has become a cliché for any place or moment of dramatic transformation. So rather than reading this as a story about peaceableness toward enemies, we send up a little cheer when the light flashes from heaven and the murderous Saul gets knocked on his can. The risen Christ is no gentle Jesus meek and mild. He gets even.
But then Ananias enters the story. Jesus appears to him in a vision as well, and says, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul.”
Now Ananias knew of this Saul. Ananias was well aware that this was the guy “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” as we were told earlier in the chapter. Jesus says, “Take him in, Ananias. Lay your hands on him. Heal his sight. This Saul is a chosen instrument of God.”
Turn back, Ananias. Walk across the frozen pond, and take hold of the hand of your enemy. This is what it looks like to be a follower of the crucified and risen Christ.
Ananias’s hesitant response makes a lot of sense, even for someone speaking directly to an apparition of Jesus. “Lord,” he says, “I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name…” Saul is a dangerous man to the likes of Ananias. But there’s probably even more at stake and at work in this story than a fear for Ananias’s own safety. Ananias’s identity was at risk as well.
Lewis Hyde says that forgiveness is losing attachment to our wounds. And on a very basic level, an enemy is someone who has wounded me. We may never have met, but something in my enemy, even if it’s only an opinion or idea, has caused me harm. And the insidious truth is that that harm can become how I know who I am. Our wounds and our enemies are part of what define us, so they become precious to us. Attachments to our wounds will soon grow strong.
It’s perfectly right and natural and Christian to oppose injustice, to keep our moral sense alive. But how quickly do our enemies define us, and how quickly do our wounds become dear. We all have a little Jonah in us. Remember in that Old Testament story how he sulked when the people of Ninevah actually did repent and avoid the great judgment he’d warned them of? We hate to lose our enemies, because we lose track of a part of ourselves when we do.
Ananias was a Christian (though the term wouldn’t appear in the New Testament for a few more chapters); he was a follower of The Way, as Acts puts it. And while to be a Christian is simply to be a follower of Christ, we’re inclined to define ourselves also by what and whom we’re opposed to or by. And so for Ananias to receive Paul, he had to let go of a deep and defining wound. To be a follower of The Way was to be the enemy of Saul’s people. To be a follower of The Way was to be opposed and persecuted by the religious leaders of the day. Can we appreciate what it must have meant for Ananias to let go of his attachment to this wound and welcome Saul into the community of Jesus’ followers?
Peaceableness toward our enemies is as radical and countercultural now as it was in the first century. MSNBC and Fox News thrive by keeping our wounds fresh and open and by keeping the enemies who define us in front of us and larger than life. Where would these networks be if there were suddenly no enemies to hate?
But peaceableness toward our enemies seems just as foreign to us Christians as well. And it grieves me to read of lawsuits over buildings between dioceses of our own Episcopal Church and congregations who have abandoned this communion. I don’t presume to have an easy answer for these fights, but the New Testament’s interest in sexual mores (which always seems to be the divisive topic in these fights) is nearly nonexistent in comparison with the teachings about how a follower of Christ treats an enemy. When will we Christians reclaim the love of enemies as the core of what really sets us apart in this world of retaliation and retribution?
To love our enemies is a frightening call. And you’ve probably figured out by now that it’s one that your preacher is struggling with himself. The story of Dirk Willems ended in tragedy, although the piercing clarity of his Christian act challenges us still across several centuries. But the story of Saul and Ananias marks a wonderful turn in the Christian story. There is a reason why Ananias needed to lose the attachment to his wounds and trust that he would still have a self when he lost an enemy. There is a reason why Ananias needed to welcome Saul: Ananias’s enemy was to be an instrument of grace. Had he protected himself from this enemy, Ananias would have been protecting himself from God. Protecting himself from the transforming grace God would usher into the world through the eccentric, passionate man who would become St Paul. If it does nothing else this story should remind us that we have no idea what kind of outlandish fool God might just use to usher in the kingdom.
And this story should remind us that the forgiveness of an enemy might be what I’m called to do, the forgiveness of an enemy might be what we Christians are called to do. For radical gestures of peace towards our enemies might still be what makes a little space where the inexhaustible grace of God spills into this world today. Amen.