We refuse to be enemies.

There’s a block of stone on a Palestinian Road, facing an Israeli settlement that has carved upon it these words: “We refuse to be enemies”. I don’t know who wrote it, and ultimately it doesn’t really matter I suppose. What matters is that someone, somewhere is willing to take that stand.

And it really is a stand. When we are attacked, when we are afraid, when we feel abused, or manipulated, or used, our instinctive reaction is to cast the protagonist in the role of enemy. This allows us several emotional luxuries, like feeling ourselves to be in ‘the right‘ and hence somehow superior, or feeling justified in our aggression or anger or hatred towards them. But do any of these emotional luxuries actually achieve anything other than soothing our delicate egos and further estranging an already strained relationship?

When Jesus came into the midst of Israel, and told his listeners, that despite the fact that they were being ruled by the Romans; despite the fact that basically every religious order around them was opposed to them; despite years of oppression and hardship, they were to love their enemies, he called them away from any emotional luxury and towards a very costly and very active love.

I don’t think Jesus‘ call is any less radical or necessary today.

In a world where people burn Korans to make a point, where they dance in the streets for joy that someone has been assasinated, where they scream “death to the infidel” at the skies, where they burn churches and retaliate in kind, Jesus’ call to love our enemies has never been more needed, nor more difficult.

To love ones enemies in an international politico-religious climate such as ours requires far more than just moments of good will, it requires more than cheap political rhetoric about multiculturalism or tolerance. It actually requires something akin to stubborn dogged resistance on the part of individuals in all their relationships and their language. To love those who differ from ourselves, particularly when their self-understanding is that they are our enemies, requires a flat refusal to allow oneself to even accept the possibility that we may be enemies. To love ones enemies, at its heart involves the refusal to be enemies.

We refuse to be enemies.

For the different ethnic groups which make up our society, our neighbourhoods, our streets: we refuse to be enemies.

For the different religious groups who are all learning to either fear each other or pretend we’re all alike, we need to realise that we are different, and yet, still, we refuse to be enemies.

Jesus told us to love our enemies. That doesn’t mean agree with everything they do. It doesn’t mean pretend we are all somehow alike. What it does mean is that however we may differ, we won’t let that difference make us enemies.

If Jesus is in any way your Lord, then today, resolve, to refuse to be enemies.