Your Greatest Enemy

We have a rule in our house about assembly instructions. If the item being assembled can blow you up, I need to read the instructions twice before I start putting it together. We have an addendum to this rule for power tools. If a tool can lead to significant bodily harm. I must buy and read a book about the use of said tool before I "try it out." To this addendum we also have a caveat, if assembling anything on Christmas Eve, no matter how simple or obvious, the instructions must be used and followed no matter how confident I am that "I can put that together, no problem." You might guess the caveat arose from something not quite "good to go" by Christmas morning.  

              I recently assembled three bookcases.  I knew from prior projects to empty the contents of the box, account for all the parts, and then lay them out so each could be found with ease.  I only made one mistake; it was on the first bookcase; and, to my credit it was not obvious; and the drawings in the instructions were not great.  I put something on upside down. Well, I tried to put it on, and I got the drill and started to modify the part. I took a deep breath and thought, the part isn’t wrong, you’re wrong. It was upside down; I turned it over. No worries.

              I learned from this mistake.  By the third bookcase I was good at this.  Not sure how I could capitalize on this skill, but I could. 

              Somethings you can learn by trying.  You know, give it a whirl.  Other things, you shouldn’t just try out, at least the first time. Things like gas lines to a new stove or 220 lines to a breaker box or soldering pipes, minor surgery.  These things should come with instructions, instructors, or perhaps some sort of license or degree. 

              Some of the first things we learn, lessons of childhood, stand out.  Learning to read.  Learning how to tie your shoes.  Riding a bike.  These come easily to some, others fall a lot, wear loafers.  At some point we do these by ourselves.  I can remember the first time I tried to do laundry.  The absence of instruction was evident. 

              Watching the Olympics conjured childhood memories of swimming.  I loved watching the French swimmer.  He swam so fast his head made a wake the way the bow of a boat does.  Shocking.  Although I am sure he has a god given talent, and I am sure his hard work and dedication really make a difference, I am also sure he was taught how to swim.  The strokes, the kick, the dive, the strategy, the pace.  He was taught all those things.  Watching him I was struck by how different his instructions must have been from what we call swim lessons.

              If you’ve taken a child to the YMCA for swim class, you know what I mean.  You take your three-year-old, four-year-old to a pool. Once there you follow a set of steps, like instructions in an assembly manual.  Step one, get into the water holding your child; two, detach said child from your neck.  Three and four involve letting the child jump to you and hold on to the side without you.  Five, blow bubbles; six, the biggee, the child goes under water and holds their breath. 

              Watching the Frenchman swim, I remembered this.  His swim instructions must have been far beyond these six steps.  Yet watching him swim so fast with such power I realized something about those first instructions, the swim lessons at the Y.  What I realized was that the lessons at the Y are not really about learning how to swim.  The lessons are about fear.  The fear of water.  It is a tutorial in fear and faith more than swim technique and skills.  You can be in the water, be okay, and all is well with the world.  That is what holding your breath teaches you.

              Children tend to be afraid of water.  I am not sure if this fear is universal, but I would say it is common.  I am not talking about aquaphobia, the terror of water.  By fear of water, I mean the trepidation you can see in a child’s eyes as you enter a pool or go into a lake, or the ocean for sure.  Even the bravest child will instinctively draw closer to someone, cling, even flee.  Fear.  They are afraid of water until they gain confidence, freedom from fear. 

              I wonder if there could ever be such a thing as an instruction manual, an assembly guide, swim lessons for the heart, how to live, to love without fear.  There is a strange trust that if we live and we try our best we will become a loving person.  Jesus suggests as much.  Everyone loves the people they want to love. Yet love seems to erode with fear, thus an instruction on love would be how to love without fear.  Love often recoils when confronted with fear, like a child still afraid of the water; when freedom is a choice of fear or love, we chose fear.

              Jesus lists things we fear.  Fear of being hurt, being taken advantage of, being made less.  Almost everything Jesus tells us to do: to not retaliate, not demand, not expect, each of these is a life we would fear.  When I read his teaching about loving the enemy and how God cares for the unjust, it was as if I was a child thrown into the deep end and told to swim.

              This might sound strange, but living without hate, without judgement, without retaliating or punishing, this is a scarry thought: this is a freedom to love beyond what we can imagine. Hate and fear and judgment, think of those as common ground, well-worn path.  We trust anger.  We do. To live not hating, not judging, not retaliating, not punishing: it is as if Jesus calls us to cast aside the safety of keeping people in line.  Using anger, using fear, using violence: these are all places of confidence.  A common path.  When he says lend without expectation of return, it is as he is saying lose the ground we walk on.  Jump in the deep end; don’t worry if you can’t swim.  Scary thought.

A great irony of being human, a great contradiction is this: we are afraid of freedom without fear.  We are afraid of the freedom of not being afraid.

Love your enemies, do good, lend expecting nothing in return. 

Bless those who curse you.

Pray for those who abuse you. 

Give to everyone who begs.

If anyone takes away your goods, don’t ask for them to be returned. Each direction should induce fear. How can someone live like this? 

If we are honest, this is impossible, an absurd way to live.  We are not wired to live this way.  If you hit me, I hit you.  If you curse me, I curse you.  If you take my stuff, I will get my stuff back and maybe some of yours.  If I lend to you, it is not a gift, it' a loan and there should be interest.  Right.  All true.  The opposite is absurd.  Yet Jesus speaks as if it can be done.  He doesn't say, this is a radical way of living, or this is only for really enlightened, spiritual people.  Jesus is talking to the crowd as they walk through villages of Galilee.  Everyone can live and love without fear, everyone can be so free.

Bell Hooks, in her book, All About Love, claims there is no instruction in love.  “How to Love Assemble a Loving Heart.” “Ten Easy Steps to be a Loving Person.”  Just not there.  Strange thought.  There are manuals for just about everything.  But not for the heart.  What if the instruction needed for the heart to love, love of the enemy, what if the instruction is not about love itself but fear? 

I say this because when Jesus calls us to love and give and be without expectation, it is as if we are being called to live in freedom without fear.  We can all love.  But without fear?  Like a child learning to swim, Jesus is saying, if you want to learn how to live in freedom, love your enemies, live beyond fear.  This is what you should do: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  God is kind to the ungrateful, just to the wicked.  If you do you this, you will live without fear, like the child who puts their head under the water and lives. 

When I was researching and writing about anger, what it means to be slow to anger, the teachings we read this morning are the cap stone.  If you become slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, then you can love your enemies and not seek retaliation and so on.  I will confess when I came to these teachings, I thought, "not possible to live this way." Two things changed this.  The first was I hated the guy next door.

Everyone hated Richard.  He was a stay-at-home dad, a terrible parent, screamed all day, just a jerk, nasty.  All the neighbors debated on calling child welfare; he was so bad.  He didn't hit the kids, but he was mean.  Richard hated his life, hated everyone around him, and made things miserable. 

I only confronted him once.  He was awful to our youngest child.  I went next door and said, look, hate me.  Got it. Spew.  Be rude.  But this kid is seven.  He likes butterflies and birds. He’s a cub scout.  Cut it out. His response, “are you done?”  I said yes.  He slammed the door.

Richard was an awful guy and he lived next door so I couldn’t ignore him.  He shouted all day. Raged.  Because he was right next door, I could see a living example of what hate does, what the absence of mercy does, what you become without love.  Richard was a living example of how fear erodes every part of you. Hate was his prison.

              As awful as Richard was, I did feel pity for him, believed hating him was a waste of my time.  In pitying him, though, I saw my own hate, how awful I can be to myself.  Richard was transparently rude and nasty for all to see.  True.  But how much worse was I in the confines of my heart to myself.  The inner voice of self-hatred: you’re dumb, you’re an idiot.  Why are you so worthless?  No one talks to me that way except myself.

              This was the second insight.  Trying to imagine a world where I didn’t trust anger or fear or hatred or disdain, it slowly dawned on me, if I were ever to find such freedom from fear where I could love the enemy, well, I had to start with my greatest enemy.  Myself.

              Watching Richard's misery, I began to see how much I wanted to find freedom from fear and live as a child of God, live as far from the prison of hate as possible.  To walk this path though I needed to lose the fear of freedom, to start learning how to love yourself, be kind to yourself.  No mediocre, pitiful half-love either.  Love isn’t tolerating people; love is finding delight.  Learn to take delight in yourself.  We are not wired that way.  Looking next door I saw no delight, no love. I wanted to be rewired.

              We are wired with fear that leads to anger and then to violence and hate.  Putting these aside seems impossible.  We are afraid of not being afraid.  Better to take a swing, to curse, to demand, to keep the wrong people in their place, to slam the door instead of diving in.  Freedom often seems impossible.  Freedom always seems impossible when we live in fear.  Amen.