Coyote Marie Hunter-Ripper of Cherokee descent opens interfaith
gathering at the First United Methodist Church in Ashland.
Photo courtesy John Darling/Ashland DailyTidings
Love Your Enemies
Remarks prepared for Ashland Interfaith
Ministries
Thanksgiving Day Interfaith
Gathering
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
November 27, 2019
The best sermon I ever heard in my
life was given in Beijing in the late summer of 1989, in a House Church, on Jesus’
words, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate
your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who abuse
you.” (Matthew 5:43-47)
During the somewhat liberal period
of openness in China prior to the June 4, 1989 massacre, local Chinese had
begun attending services with expatriates. After the crackdown, the Chinese
security came down hard on Chinese Christians and other groups seen to be too
close with foreigners. Old anti-religion rules still on the books started
to be enforced with a vengeance. Members
disappeared for weeks, only to return with marks of terrible physical
abuse. It was unbearable. Finally our congregation decided that the
local people and the expatriates in our little congregation would have to go
their own ways and worship separately. It was very hard on all of us. We were close
friends.
One of these Chinese members of our
congregation spoke at the last service together. He said he had always thought
that “love your enemies” was a little over-dramatic, “for why should Christians
have enemies?” He said he now understood the passage much
better. “If I could be so bold, I’d like to refer to a
passage in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.” Most of us
shifted uncomfortably, thinking of the listening devices in the walls.
He told the story: Solzhenitsyn is in the labor camp system in
the Soviet Union. He becomes more and more dehumanized by his torment,
but then, in a chapter called ‘Resurrection,’ regains his faith and starts on
the road back to life. He realized at
that critical time that no matter how tightly his interrogators constrained
him, he always had a choice—though they always eventually could force him to
say what they wanted, he could do so willingly or unwillingly, cheaply or
expensively in terms of the suffering he endured before giving them what they
demanded.
He also realized that they too were
constrained to do what they did, and that they too had a choice in how they did
what they were constrained to do. In a system where all were compromised
and all were victims in one degree of another, he realized the great truth that
the line between good and evil is not found between one country and another
country, between one economic class and another, between one political party
and another, between one religion or another, or one race and another.
The line between good and evil is fine but very definite, and runs down the
middle of each and every human heart. It is found in that space of the heart
where we exert our choices, no matter how constrained our choices may be.
My friend concluded:
“So Solzhenitsyn realized that he
needed to pray for his interrogator, and for all of God’s creatures, even
Stalin. It is where my faith begins as well. This is the reason, I
believe, that we must pray for our enemies. They, like us, are in God’s
image, and have that line down the middle of their hearts, no matter what
decisions they have made before, no matter how distorted the image of God may
have become in them, or how constrained the options left to them might be.”
“We must pray for them–not that they
be like us, not that they treat us more favorably, not that they choose what we
wish they would choose, but that in whatever way God wants they might opt for the
good in their hearts and not the evil. We share with them in our hearts
the capacity to do great evil or great good. Without such a belief in my
solidarity with all my fellow creatures, even those who abuse me and what I
believe is good, I would not have hope that God might work miracles in my own
heart. That is why I must pray for even
Premier Li Peng, who imposed martial law, and Deng Xiaoping, who ordered the
massacre.”
And so the congregation divided, and
our Chinese friends managed to do church on their own. My friend was held
hostage in his own country for two years to buy the silence of his wife, an
outspoken Peking University professor who fled China for Germany in the turmoil
after the massacre. Finally, at the
intervention of the German premier, he was allowed to leave China. But the words of his sermon stayed with me,
and remain so to this day. The most recent
Chinese crack down on all religions, and outright horrendous persecution of
Uighur Muslims in China’s far west have made it all the more pertinent to
me.
We are all God’s creatures and all
bear God’s image, no matter how we may have distorted and twisted it. A call to
love our enemies is not a call to ignore horror and abuse, to paper over real
suffering with facile statements of forgiveness, to docility without work for
justice and amends, or pronouncing forgiveness for hurts suffered by others who
rightly are the ones to forgive, not us. It is a call to continue to engage
with those who hurt others.
God loves us, each and every
one. So we must learn to love each other. Not pretend to love each
other. Not practice passive aggression as we continue to despise each other.
Not silently disengage and passively submit, detached, to abuse. But
love. And love as God loves, which means sometimes being a pain in the
neck and almost always means challenging the beloved.
Grace and Peace.
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