A Gnashing and a Blessing: The Possibility of Christian Enemies

Michael Corleone stands as godfather at the baptism of his sister's son, Michael Rizzi, in The Godfather (1971). As he recites the Creed, renouncing evil, he orders the assassination of the heads of the enemy mob families. The irony, of course, is that the Godfather can never really be a godfather.

And whom do I call my enemy?

An enemy must be worthy of engagement.

I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.

It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.

The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.

It sees and knows everything.

It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.

The door to the mind should only open from the heart.

An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a

friend.

Joy Harjo, "This Morning I Pray for My Enemies"

Whenever I offer prayers for our church community from the pulpit, I always pray for our sitting politicians by name. Whether they are Democrats or Republicans, of any political stripe, I have made a habit of listing our the Mayor, Governor, and President using their first name. Living in New York City, this means praying for Eric, our Mayor; Kathy, our Governor; and Donald, our President.

Part of why I do this is because it's a long, time-honored Christian tradition to pray for political leaders. When I came back to faith in college, many of the communities where I worshipped would pray for leaders by name. Something about the specificity moved me, and addressing them by first name felt like it humanized them. We weren't just praying for an office, we were praying for people. But another reason it moved me was because congregations were diverse places, and you could always bet that the folks offering those prayers hadn't always voted for the names in the litany. They were, in effect, praying for their political opponents -- their enemies.

I'll admit that it's been a challenge for me to continue to pray for the leaders of our current administration. Many in our congregation have been directly impacted by the policies put in place by our nation's leadership. It's led me to wonder whether I should continue in my habit of prayer, or at least to ask what I am praying for when I step into this priestly role. Am I, even if unintentionally, helping to give credence to a whole variety of political ugliness? I've received some emails arguing just this point. The jury is still out.

The truth is I don't know, but it's gotten me to continue going over Jesus' seemingly impossible call to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matt. 5:44). At least, whenever someone has come to me to inquire about this odd habit in worship, this is where I've directed them. One of the most confounding and beautiful parts of Christianity, I think, is the call to enemy-love. But enemy-love is also one of the parts of the faith that can feel most co-optable or cheap -- an excuse for moral stagnation. Yet, Sunday by Sunday when we gather for a time of personal confession, proceed to pronounce pardon, and pass the peace with our neighbors, aren't we ritualizing the overcoming of our own adverse relationships with one another? But doesn't such reconciliation presume, perhaps not that we are enemies, but that we experience times of real, substantial enmity with one another? Is there a point to forgiveness without enmity?

I asked some friends this week whether they thought it was a right "Christian thing" to have enemies. Many of them for very good reasons said, no, it isn't. Some shared stories of difficult upbringings in contexts where enemy language was theological justification for dehumanization. Some worried that calling someone an enemy requires a kind of hubris or moral superiority. Some, very interestingly, quoted Ephesians: "For we do not wrestle against flesh, but against principalities and rulers." The real enemies aren't people, they are structures. These points make sense to me.

Still, I admit that these last few weeks I've found the prayerful naming of enemies to be a helpful practice. It's felt honest. If Jesus says to love enemies, I don't know how to love a structure or principality. It's tough to know what it might mean to love an ideology -- say, capitalism, socialism, liberalism, progressivism, etc. But I do know what it might mean to love capitalists, socialists, liberals, progressives, and the like. Forgiveness, like love, feels like something that always happens in the particular. It requires a face, and I wonder if there's something helpful in naming the faces to which I must still be reconciled.

Part of the trouble, I think, is that enemies break down some of our most modern dreams. To acknowledge an enemy feels out of place for us 21st century modern people who so value the virtues of tolerance and pluralism. James Baldwin, writing in The New Yorker, described how the perceived virtue of the 21st century privileged (I'm talking about myself here) can act as a kind of mask, pushing us to conceal our more complex and sinful selves behind a veil of virtue. But love is always iconoclastic, and according to Baldwin, "[it] takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."

James Baldwin in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in France.

I hope this doesn't sound pretentious or self-righteous. I hope it doesn't sound like Elijah calling fire down on the prophets of Baal or Michael Corleone ordering the assassination of his political enemies in The Godfather. Instead, following the Psalmist: at the end of all things, when God will set a time before me in the presence of my enemies, who do I imagine will sit at that table? But enemy-talk in churches should always do two things, and the poet Joy Harjo names them well. To name an enemy always names a "gnashing" and a "blessing." To name an enemy is always to name the risk of friendship, and where that friendship is currently, and often must be, absent.

So, in the meantime I'll continue praying for our officials by name, and I hope every now and again the words said chafe in the ears of all listening. I hope it unmasks the rougher sides of my own heart -- the places where I feel anger and fear and disillusionment. But maybe at some level it will help me hold open the door for a future where, Lord willing, enmity is overcome.